Journalist Alice Bernstein and co-authors— authorities in education, medicine, anthropology, filmmaking, business, photography, music, and aesthetics—come from cities throughout the US, Puerto Rico, Israel, England, Haiti, Germany, Egypt. Racism, we learned, does not begin with race, but with the human tendency to have contempt for everything the self sees as different. Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism, identified the cause of all injustice, contempt: the "addition to self through the lessening of something else." This anthology documents how contempt changes—not into tolerance, but into true respect for other people, and a conviction that we need the difference of the world to be all we can be.

Some chapters are: "Words, Truth, and the Confederate Flag"; "Israelis and Germans Need to Study Contempt"; "An Anthropologist Speaks about Race";"The Answer to the Poverty and Prejudice Afflicting Native Americans";  "A Latino Perspective"; "Every Subject Is Anti-Prejudice: the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method."

We reprint one of the earliest essays by Eli Siegel, "The Equality of Man," and the landmark commentary "Racism Can End" by Ellen Reiss.

 256 pages (6"x9"), richly illustrated, softcover $16.95

Each of these passionate essays by Chaim Koppelman, an esteemed printmaker, illustrates the great Aesthetic Realism principle, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." He writes of the ethical meaning in the greatest prints of Picasso, Munch, Hogarth and Daumier, and we see in their powerful and subtle oneness of opposites—dark and light, depth and bright surface, mass and delicate line—what we and all people want to do in our lives. Picasso's "Minotauromachy" is powerful and tender, and Munch, he writes, "is showing a dramatic oneness of closeness and distance, presence and absence."

Chaim Koppelman has taught printmaking at the School of Visual Arts since 1959 and is on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. His work is in most major collections, including: MOMA,  the Met, Whitney, Guggenheim, Philadelphia museums. He was honored in 2004 with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of American Graphic Artists. 

32 pages (7"x8.5"), illustrations, $5.95

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High in the mountains of New Guinea are a people untouched by contact with whites—the Mengti people. A baby is born, and given the name Gwe, meaning "seed." One night, as he nestles in his mother's arms, five days' walk away across a freezing mountain range, two white Australian patrol officers and a black policeman are killed in a surprise attack. The Australian press calls it murder. The native warriors call it justice. 

We see Gwe grow up, save his father's life during an armed conflict, and learn of the goddess inhabiting a towering pine tree. Meanwhile, Alan Hull, studying anthropology in America, travels to New Guinea for research. The young anthropologist who impatiently questions people, demanding "data" and arousing anger, comes to see—intensely—that Gwe's people deserve his respect and kindness; that they have emotions like he does and are not "numbers" to put in notebooks in order to  advance his career. Racist preconceptions are opposed with true perception about inner lives on an island. 

Aesthetic Realism, was the basis of Arnold Perey's doctoral dissertation sponsored by Margaret Mead at Columbia University—about the Mengti people: Oksapmin Society and World View. 

268 pages (6"x9"), $19.95 

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Were They Equal? is a lively and ethical tale from the Ndowe people of Africa, told and illustrated by Dr. Arnold Perey. It tells us how Tortoise tricks two very big animals, Elephant and Hippopotamus, into being kinder and smarter. It is a little tale against prejudice that children love. Good and evil are in a big tug of war, and good is victorious. 

For children of all ages.

30 pages, (11"x8.5") color illustrations, $14.95

 
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