One thing this thread highlights is the importance of experience and cultural or ethnic history in shaping how and what we perceive or DON'T perceive. Traditional music is one oral tradition used to transmit cultural heritage and experience. Each of our legacies are both gift and burden. When a dominant group has largely shaped the institutions of a society, those who most closely resemble the stereotype of the dominant group will be the most blind and deaf to how those more distant from the dominant group may experience or perceive the actions and effects of social institutions. And visa-versa.

    Most of us can probably identify in some way with being part of a group with less power, a group that experiences institutional descrimination. For myself, those are the experiences of being a woman, being over 50 in the work place, and being from West Virginia. From that I can at least try to imagine what it would be
like in America to be a person of color on top of the rest.   

    Prejudice and descrimination are not synonomous. Prejudice on the part of those with power leads to descrimination. When one is part of a group which has been (and continues to be to one degree or another) descriminated against, that very real experience can make some people in that (those) group(s) people hyper-sensitive and can sometimes lead some persons of the group to experience something as descriminatory when it is not. Conversely, people who are blind to their prejudices, and especially those who are both blind and in a dominant group, can be hypo-sensitive and fail to recognize when they are descriminating against some one.

    Unintended consequences are consequences none-the-less.

I say---let's keep talking!

Janie