Our Mission
Discrimination is widely regarded as one of the most ubiquitous and consequential issues undermining humanity and societal progress today. A host of actors, including governments, community activists, organizations, and people have become increasingly engaged on the subject, and more importantly, on how to better formulate and implement effective measures that ensure fundamental change in combating discrimination. And while these efforts have brought some demonstrable improvement in addressing discrimination, there are profound shortcomings in our collective conceptual understandings in terms of not only how to ensure change, but in the very ways, many people think, view, and frame the notion of discrimination.
​
We have created Evolving Ideas: Addressing Discrimination to play our small, yet meaningful part in identifying common societal misconceptions and discussing the causes and implications of these societal shortfalls through a range of the most pressing topics related to discrimination.
When discussing the issue of discrimination, tolerance is often mentioned as the gold standard society must achieve. Politicians especially have a history with such language, for example, Angela Merkel telling the people of Germany to “tolerate your variations” regarding the East-West divide.
The problem with the idea of tolerance is its relationship with prejudice. Tolerance means forcing yourself to outwardly appear as if you are accepting of different types of people, while retaining some level of prejudice beneath the surface. For this reason, we believe acceptance should be the societal standard when addressing matters of discrimination.
​
While being ostensibly similar to tolerance, acceptance should be the benchmark for society as it requires people not only to coexist without interaction, but to in fact make an effort to understand another’s culture. Our goal beyond producing content to educate people on this topic is to get people from various backgrounds to engage with each other in meaningful ways, which can ultimately help lead to true acceptance.
​
We aim to achieve our goals by establishing and maintaining a multi-pronged online community that publishes insightful blogs on a diverse range of subjects related to discrimination, misconceptions on the idea of tolerance and how to better strive for the goal of acceptance throughout society. Our intention is to not only frame discussions in a thoughtful manner, but to also create a safe and inclusive space for people of all backgrounds to share their experiences, views, thoughts, and ideas on issues of discrimination.
We believe that discriminatory behavior is one of the most harmful, destructive occurrences in society and that traditional discussions and views on how to effectively address these issues have failed to produce tangible results. Our inherent interest in promoting societal progress and change, coupled with these existing failures, serves both as the underlying premise, and motivation for this project. We hope you will join us as we strive to promote and enact meaningful change.