Let's change the world

How do the attitudes of a whole society change? 

I've been thinking this week about what the key factors may have been in the change of attitudes that the USA and the UK have seen towards African Americans and Black people. Even more startling for the speed with which it has happened has been the change from criminal activity to legalised marriage that has been brought about for the lesbian and gay community. (I'm not writing “LGBT” because I'm not so sure that any change in attitudes is really discernable for transgendered and bisexual people.)

We tend to think in terms of powerful personalities who have made an impact politically, such as William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King, but I believe this is probably because of the way we tell stories to ourselves.  Outstanding individuals become symbols for a whole complex  maelstrom of currents and counter-currents in society, and without in any way wanting to diminish their towering achievements, I have wanted to consider what else has been involved.

It seems to me – and anyone is welcome to disagree – that the key is to achieve communication across different and even opposing parts of society, so that a particular viewpoint becomes common currency, even if not everyone agrees with it.  There are all sorts of ways, major and minor that this has been achieved by and for Black people and homosexual and gay people, but I have come to think that artists of all kinds are key communicators.

A Google search on “attitudes to homosexuality” led me fairly quickly to an article suggesting that the 1961 film “Victim”  starring Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Sims had significantly shifted attitudes. http://www.historytoday.com/andrew-roberts/shifting-attitudes-homosexuality

 I also seem to remember an early storyline in Eastenders that presented a homosexual couple very sympathetically. Try looking at all the images for “Gay pride” on Google images, and you will see that humour allied to imaginative visual artistry can also be very compelling. The Swedes can take credit for any smiles this picture brings. The road is outside the Russian Embassy in Stockholm:

As far as Gypsies and Travellers are concerned, there has not to my knowledge been any work of art with a comparable impact ( unless you count the dreadful Channel 4 series, “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”, of which they should be thoroughly ashamed).  Travellers remain the minority about whom one of my colleagues wrote,” no other race would be subject to such unconcealed discrimination and loathing.”  In fact, attitudes to Gypsies and Travellers always make me think of that insightful Bertrand Russell quote:

“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.” So how can people be given a good feeling about changing a negative attitude that has seemingly performed a useful function for them? Can we help them to identify with a hero who has a different attitude, or even with a victim of their hatred who can be shown to deserve their respect?

Hopeful that there may be an answer, or at least he beginnings of one, I’ve asked Amazon to send me all the Miriam Wakerly books I could find, and one by Rosemary Penfold that Amazon identified as a result of my request.  Watch this space, and I’ll let you know if I’ve found the beginning of a revolution in attitudes. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Miriam%20Wakerly

And remember, it really matters.  A Romany friend recently despaired, saying on facebook, “travellers will never be accepted by gaugis.”  Could you live with feeling like the whole of our society was rejecting you?  And because of who you are, not because of what you do!