So here we are in the 21st century. Women can vote. Black people can be President. Slavery is relegated to sexual fetishism. The WASP guy can marry the new-agey Hindu Indian dude. Poor rappers can grow up to be rich and powerful symbols of betrayal to their roots.
Life is good and you decide to reheat your cup of coffee while reading the paper. Suddenly, a freak microwave accident occurs and you find yourself transported across time and space to a room with no way out. Trite stereotypes start materializing around you: There’s a Nazi partymember, an Ancient Greek philosopher, a Japanese samurai, a Roman senator, an American colonial settler, an Ancient Egyptian pyramid foreman, a Spanish conquistador, a medieval European lord, and a clown.
Much violence and hilarity ensue and soon the clown is decapitated. You search his body for loot and find a joint and a bag full of Babel fish. You light up the joint, pass it around, hand out the fish and a few minutes later everyone is calm and amicable. They start sharing life stories and eventually it’s your turn. You tell them about your country and your world and how everyone is more or less equal, at least under the law and in theory and if you don’t look too hard.
At that point the room breaks out in laughter.
It eventually subsides and people shut up once they realize you’re being serious. At once, in a mind-blowing chorus that spans all time and distance, the entire room demands, “What?! Surely you jest! Are you mad?! WHY would you ever want to live in a world like that? HOW did it ever get to such a terrible state?!”
Nazi excepted, many would have no problem with many of the ideas. The Egyptians might have an issue with a “Nubian” guy incharge, but then to be fair they two kingdoms hated each other, and if your Gypo is a pyramid foreman, well he might let that pass. Women were pretty free in early Dynastic period in Egypt. The Anicent Greek would have nothing against homosexuality, hell he might be againt hetrosexuality. American Colonial settler fled tpo avoid dioscrimination, so he may pretty much like the new idea.
I think this is a great question. I don’t have an answer, but I’ve thought before about how completely alien our modern notions of equality would be to most people in history. For most of history it was simply a given that some people are superior and some people are inferior to others. Individuals or cultures might disagree about which people are superior or inferior, but it was considered self-evident that some types of people are better than others.
I think the best way to handle it would be to portray modern society not as a radically egalitarian one, but as a radically meritocratic one. (It is debatable which of these our society actually is or ought to be.) I’d point out first that the alleged differences are not absolute. Surely the Greek philosopher would admit that there is at least one man somewhere less rational than at least one woman. And surely the most racist American settler would admit that some white people are so defective that they are less capable than the most educated and sophisticated slave. Once you get them to admit this, then it’s a small step to admitting that an ideal society would let these people find their own level in society, rather than classifying them purely according to type. After all, if a meritocracy actually works, it will merely reflect any actual differences (should they exist) between social groups, while allowing for greater flexibility and justice when it comes to the “exceptions” to a rule.
After that point, you can perhaps get them to consider the possibility that after a long history of meritocracy, a people may discover that their previous assumptions about the worth of various groups were in fact unfounded. And that that is, by and large, what we’ve discovered - that although there are still great differences in people’s abilities and achievements, that they seem to vary at least as much according to their manner of upbringing, education, nutrition, and economic opportunity as according to their parentage.
At that point, if they seem amenable, I suppose you could start arguing philosophy and trying to convince them that even a person with obvious deficits, such as a significant birth defect, still deserves as much happiness and productivity as they are capable of, and that all people are equally deserving of dignity and respect.
I’d argue from a purely pragmatic standpoint: The society we have works, and it can only work if it is free of arbitrary restrictions on who can contribute to which field. I’d demonstrate our technology to them, I’d explain how violent crime has been decreasing since racism has faded into the past (it’s been decreasing since the 1990s, in fact), and I’d show them how prosperous we are (unbelievably so, even from the perspective of the Nazi). Most of them would be overawed by the fact we largely don’t have most of the historically really nasty infectious diseases anymore. (Polio, smallpox, dysentery, scarlet fever, German measles, tuberculosis, and so on.)
The Nazi would be hardest to win over because his whole philosophy is rooted in racial extremism. I’d probably take the easy route and show him just how badly his side was destined to lose and how quickly (while covering up exact dates and places) the balance tipped against the Nazi forces once the world decided to wake up and do something. Showing him pictures from the Camps might be devastatingly effective or it might have no impact at all: He could view them as forgeries, as the result of some other group’s actions (the Soviets, perhaps), or as images of the just punishment for whoever the Fatherland put into the Camps.