Alice Bernstein & Friends

I'm glad to welcome you to my website, where you can read articles by me and persons I am proud to have as friends and colleagues. These articles appear in many newspapers, including Tennessee Tribune, La Vida News/The Black Voice (Texas), Birmingham Times, Harlem News, Omaha Star, Philadelphia Sun. They illustrate the importance of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the great American educator and critic Eli Siegel, in understanding the questions of people everywhere about the wide world and our individual lives. 

 

CURRENT EVENTS  |  THE ANSWER TO RACISM  |  LINKS  |  EDUCATION


Click here for
"Alice Bernstein & Friends" in
South Carolina Black News

logo

Read about the new book from Third World Press!

Ruby Dee, Academy Award Nominee,
says of Alice Bernstein and this book:

"In her commitment to telling the story of the civil rights struggles...Alice [Bernstein] uncovered the play, "The People of Clarendon County."... It moved my husband to think that fifty years later, school children might learn about history by reading or acting in his play. In addition, Alice's book will also inform people about the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in enabling children to learn every subject, and ending prejudice in the classroom."

The People of Clarendon County--A Play by Ossie Davis
with Photographs and Historical Documents,
and Essays on the Education That Can End Racism
Edited by Alice Bernstein
click here

Photo at left was taken at the book launch in November, 2007 at the Harlem School of the Arts, which included: 1) Alice Bernstein's account of conversations with Ossie Davis, her research leading to his play and this book; 2) performance of an excerpt from the play by drama students, 3) a presentation by educator Monique Michael, a contributor to this book, of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, and 4) comments by legendary actress/activist and Academy Award Nominee, Ruby Dee about this book and announcing the Campaign for the Ossie Davis Endowment.
Seated (l-r) Ruby Dee and Alice Bernstein
standing (l-r) drama students Bobbi Booth, Dimitri Carter, Adrian Richburg, and their teacher E. Mesiyah McGinnis. Photo credit: Judy Rappaport.

 

Read about the Oral History Project and Television Documentary of
Interviews with Unsung Heroes, "The Force of Ethics in Civil Rights"

For interviews in Tennessee, click here (may take a few seconds)

For article in the Georgia Informer, click here

For interview with Rep. Tyrone Brooks of Georgia, click below
Part One, Part Two, Part Three

And read, "Labor: A New Beginning in the South"
by Michael Honey & Alice Bernstein
in the Georgia Informer
about the Memphis conference of the Southern Faith, Labor, & Community Alliance

To make a tax-deductible contribution towards this project
Click Here

 
Orange Angle Press Is Proud to Publish —

AESTHETIC REALISM AND THE ANSWER TO RACISM

    This book is being published with a sense of urgency and hope; urgency, because racism is still rampant in the world; hope, because there is a true, practical, kind, learnable, and yes—even beautiful—answer.

    That answer is in the study of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel (1902-1978), who identified the cause of all human injustice as contempt, the “addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Racism, he explained, does not begin with race, but with the human tendency to have contempt for the world, for everything the self sees as different. 

   This book documents how, through study of Aesthetic Realism, 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. 

    >> Click here to read more and order books....


    In this website, as you'll see, there are interviews with people in the arts and government, accounts of current events, and essays on such diverse subjects as universal healthcare, the cause and answer to racism, what makes a person truly important, the beauty of tap dance, and how education can succeed for every child in America.

      I had the good fortune to begin my study of Aesthetic Realism early in life in classes I attended with my parents and others. Today, as a woman, wife and mother - and a person passionately interested in world events - it pleases me immensely to tell about the value of this education for everyone in our turbulent world. 

      My husband, photographer David Bernstein, and I are Aesthetic Realism Associates.  We study in professional classes taught by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism. What we have seen about the world, art, and ourselves is NEWS! 

Alice Bernstein & Friends is the title of my column in La Vida News/The Black Voice of Ft. Worth and Arlington, Texas and in South Carolina Black Media Group, and articles published there also appear in many other journals. Some are now in the book Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism Articles Published Nationwide & Abroad by Alice Bernstein & Others (Orange Angle Press, NY: 2004).  

CURRENT EVENTS  |  THE ANSWER TO RACISM  |  LINKS  |  EDUCATION

© 200-2007 by Alice Bernstein. For permission to reprint please contact me
email: Ajoybern@nyc.rr.com, or call  (212) 691-2978