The Real Original Sin?

Race is a topic which everyone is aware of, but which when discussed can quickly degenerate into recriminations regarding past issues and disagreements about how to go forward. One aspect to this discussion when held among Americans, is a common source which draws anger from one side and defensiveness from the other.

This source is actually made up of perceptions and feelings stored in our minds. These thoughts are often at the ready to be recalled, but remain beyond our awareness. An example of this thinking can be noticed by doing this mental exercise. First is to regard in your mind's eye, so to speak, a black man. Before ascribing any physical characteristic, recognize your thoughts when you believe he is from Detroit.

After some time, note your feelings and the mental images that arose. But then change the birthplace of the man to a place in Africa, such as Kenya or Ghana. Again note your thoughts and impressions. Many people will acknowledge that their thoughts in the first case were probably pejorative in their sentiment. While in the second, the feelings are more of wonder and questioning.

I attended a Catholic elementary school in the 1960s. One concept taught during religion class and preached upon during Sunday Mass was called Original Sin. This is the absurd notion that we are born with some kind of stain because we were conceived as a result of sexual activity. This idea at its core undermines our humanity and emphasizes our "faultfulness."

It has been shown that when our American society is considered as a whole, there is a learned bias in our brains that regards people with dark skin in a negative way. To me, this suggests something akin to the notion of Original Sin, not because we are born with this bias but because it enters our brains starting at an early age and continues to permeate our thoughts.

As much as I ridicule the notion of Original Sin I heard as a child, I acknowledge that the role the Catholic church wanted it to play - an unwitting fault gained through no conscious act which defines the parameters of our interactions with others - is a useful model to describe one of the great challenges of our time. And rather than using this as the basis of a great moral lesson, it provides us with a mechanism to describe the nature of the dilemma of our thinking and in our brains.

I believe it is from the point of recognizing this bias in our minds that we can proceed to understand how it helps explain our current social situation and suggests a way our society can overcome it. And when it is overcome I expect that those minds holding the bias will gain a benefit greater than those who are currently regarded as the object of it.