A Thought Experiment About Race and Hope

Steven Barnes
5 min readAug 5, 2019

I’m not going to try to “prove” the following. It is a statement of the way I see things, based on decades of thought. Doesn’t make it correct, but if correct, it is better said than unsaid.

For a moment, let’s assume there are two different views of human beings: that we are basically evil, or basically good. YES, there are other options, including mixtures of these, but for a moment, let’s just look at these. One might also phrase this as the battle between love and fear.

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Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.