The Incredible Possibilities of Being

The traditional description of people of color in America has emphasized their passive reactivity to their historical social oppression. By contrast the novelist, Ralph Ellison, has attempted to characterize the tendency of African Americans to develop their humanity in spite of the obstacles and meannesses imposed upon them. Such a portrayal is consistent with Joseph Rychlak's developed view of the human psychological capacity for “dialectic” imagination, by which people envision the intrinsic oppositionalities, and hence the possibilities, in a given situation. In this essay I illustrate the usefulness of dialectical thinking for people in different cultural contexts.