shame and self-esteem

One thing I read about with Grigoriy last night while we were trekking through Rabbi Teichtal's book was this idea that peole feel shame and suffering (within their sense of self-esteem) when fellows they identify with are humiliated. R"T's idea is that when the Jews of America (1930's-40's G noted that this was a period of time when Judaism in America was on a severe decline) heard about the way Jews of Europe suffered at the hands of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers that they paid a psychological price -a mild refinement as he calls it ...refinement being the suffering one endures to better oneself Zohar-style... -anyway, the part of this I find interesting is that.. R"T is sensitive to the fact that one's media image influences one's self-image. He implies that the emotional and psychological suffering that one endures with adverse media images is actually quite serious. This reminds me of the argument in Brown v. Board (I think.. have to look it up properly) of course where the experts asserted that African-American children were affected by the society to want to be white. Now, years later, we still think that this is probably true, but no one has really done much about that. The overwhelming truth is that whether you're talking about American/European, third-world/Western privilege, Jew/non-Jew, White/Black/Asian, Ashkenazi/Sephardi differences the influence that media (advertisements, pop culture, film/tv, etc.) has on one's self-esteem is great. We don't do anything about it really though. I don't know why and I wonder about it a lot.

People are so strange.

by the way, for those of you who're looking...
http://public.fotki.com/gTitievsky/kollel_torah_mitzion/2004-2005/kollel_torah_mitzio/img_5125.html
shtei sephardim -chatul v'haim