If you're still listening to what people have to say about who they are or what they'll do or what they believe, you've got a lot to learn about people.
First, before you even need to say a word, just show me your record. What have you done? What are you doing? How did you vote? What causes do you give to and how much of your time, advocacy and fortune? Who do you help who can not pay you back? Who are your honest, close friends?
Are any of those actions or situations unusual? Here's a chance to explain yourself, but mostly, I'll just listen to disinterested people who know you best. If more than a few are questionable, you really don't need to speak. Your character speaks loudly and clearly through your actions. You're planning to change? Once you've said those few words, you don't need to say it again. Just change, and we'll watch what you do. If you're avoiding transparency, that tells me everything I need to know.
Enough said.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Monday, July 25, 2016
A Call to Educate Yourself
White people, can you for a minute, for a day, for as long as you can take it, stop trying to opine. Can you suspend your need to be heard, express, influence, impose, or otherwise reinforce your viewpoint for long enough to really understand the other point. Can you interrupt your reflex to respond, retort, interject or rebuff? And just listen and really hear and really feel the other side? What would it take for you to willingly immerse yourself in an attempt to imagine yourself having been raised in another cultural experience, utterly foreign, often painful or degrading, destitute or denigrating? As a member of an oppressed minority from childhood, on the receiving end of racism?
Every childhood, home, family, cultural and economic experience is different, and all come with their ups and downs. But to be able to talk as an educated person about something, you need to deeply grok all 3, 4, ...n sides of the issue.
Old white man and lady, it's easier than ever to explore these experiences. Books are immediately available on your computer, kindle, iPad. Movies are there for you. You could probably even get a virtual reality experience if you looked for it. You could chat with a willing black person. If you told them you really want to understand the big deal of Black Lives Matter, and mean it, they might help you. But without bringing an open mind (is is still capable of letting something new in, or are you done?), it would be for nothing. You'd stay unchanged.
Why would you want to spend your limited time and intellectual effort learning about Black Lives Matter, yes, I hear you.
How long would it take to actually learn something substantial about a topic? A couple 40 hour weeks? 100 hours? I challenge you to intentionally open your mind, allow your inbred beliefs to sit down and shut up for the duration as you drink of the foreign experience. What would your hero, idol, Jesus, do?
Every childhood, home, family, cultural and economic experience is different, and all come with their ups and downs. But to be able to talk as an educated person about something, you need to deeply grok all 3, 4, ...n sides of the issue.
Old white man and lady, it's easier than ever to explore these experiences. Books are immediately available on your computer, kindle, iPad. Movies are there for you. You could probably even get a virtual reality experience if you looked for it. You could chat with a willing black person. If you told them you really want to understand the big deal of Black Lives Matter, and mean it, they might help you. But without bringing an open mind (is is still capable of letting something new in, or are you done?), it would be for nothing. You'd stay unchanged.
Why would you want to spend your limited time and intellectual effort learning about Black Lives Matter, yes, I hear you.
- Treatment of minorities, especially African and Native American is a metastatic cancer that we want to move into remission. It has flared up and down, but has always been part of us, and though we can't change our past, living as a healthy country going forward requires we bring as much of our resources to bear to fight it as possible. Especially the dominant power, which, today, is whitey. The cancer is not blacks fighting back against the system, the cancer is the systemic discrimination, manufactured and delivered by mostly whites.
- It is the predominant social issue of our time, and it hurts all of us from the President and tip-top CEOs to the aborted fetus and high school dropout headed to prison. It costs billions, it diminishes the greatness of our people, and undermines the American character (and consequent reputation) both in and outside our borders. It diminishes the perpetrators equal to their transgressions because it damns their souls, their psyches, identities.
- You can be part of our national healing. It is possible. We can get better and use the experience of our past sins to live healthier in the future.
- Be on the side of the underdog, the bullied. Stand up in defense of good cops who break the code of silence by strengthening the defense from the bullied. Racist cops hurt their victims most, and their good-cop partners almost as much. Bad cops exponentially multiply the problem and get good cops killed.
- If your idea of adventure is picking a new shade of paint for the bathroom, don't you think God put you here for something more important than that? If your adventures have always been for you and selfish, why not take one of them into the realm of helping others for no other reason than that you can and it matters outside yourself. Accumulate a legacy worth emulating, and leave your heirs something to be proud of instead of liquidate.
How long would it take to actually learn something substantial about a topic? A couple 40 hour weeks? 100 hours? I challenge you to intentionally open your mind, allow your inbred beliefs to sit down and shut up for the duration as you drink of the foreign experience. What would your hero, idol, Jesus, do?
Thursday, July 21, 2016
True Believers and Trumpets
When I read True Believer, I took it as an analysis of historical mass movements. Not as a cautionary tale of modern America. I thought the fringe would remain there on the strength of a strong majority of regular people.
Here's where my credulity is tested. These things are so clear, and yet people I know (though none who I regard as well balanced or particularly thoughtful people, but regular people) would allow him to represent the best of America.*
1. He doesn't say it like it is. (He's mostly wrong, so more accurately, he says it like it's not.) He doesn't just say what he believes. (He doesn't really believe in things except for a moment, but that's not really a belief.). He does make things up on the spot, and say what's on his mind. He reacts like a kid, putting people on an enemy's list based on criticism of him.
2. He's has a genius, but it's a middle school bully level genius. His skill is an innate awareness of someone's greed/fear/bigotry buttons, probably because they are only very shallowly buried under his gigantic id/ego (yeah, his id and ego in the colloquial sense have sort of mutated together). He's not a business genius. He's not good with words. He's not good with ideas or systems. He doesn't really know stuff. He's honed his skills at manipulating the basest instincts in himself and others (greed, fear & insecurity, bigotry). That's provides the bedrock of his business dealings. He's not a negotiator, he's a wheeler-dealer, and if you don't know the difference, so are you. Read this: his ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal had a moral epiphany and rebuked his work.
3. He's not good with people. He doesn't have friends, confidants, or relationships like you or I might. Everyone in his life are just work implements. And you could say that we're all like that and our close friends and family are just tools to give us love and to love, but he doesn't feel love like that. His wives are accouterments, his kids are ornaments. His friends are henchmen and there to give him the attention and validation he so clearly needs. He engages in petty feuds with people. Do you? And what do you feel about yourself when you're over it - proud of yourself? I wouldn't either, but I don't engage in that.
4. He is an outsider. But can you think of another outsider who's as much of an idiot as he is? Vanilla Ice comes to mind (no offense, Vanilla, but I read Ice by Ice while standing in a library somewhere and I couldn't believe a book that bad could actually be published. I couldn't put it down, the train-wreck of words was uniquely horrendous. It reads like a Trump Rant, but I was younger then and could tolerate the grotesque much better than I do now.) Can you think of one other business leader who is that full of himself and that shallow a person? Gates. Welch. Musk. Virgin. OK, Fiorina is a distant second. Oh, and Palin. But she's a semi-insider.**
5. This one is particularly pernicious because it seems to make sense but it does not: "Someone who has [raised some good kids/ built a real estate empire/ been successful in business (very debatable)] must have something healthy at the core. Oh my God, no. He didn't raise his kids. Do you seriously believe their testimony in an interview or at the podium when they're trying to get him elected? Of course you don't. Either way, it's a false argument. If you find yourself believing this, you really do need to take some basic psychology. Why people stay with abusive spouses, why people fall for get-rich schemes, why people burn crosses in other people's front yards. There are unhealthy psychological complexes that induce people to believe and do things that are not only false, but against their long-term self interest, and unless you want to be one of them, please educate yourselves! Listening to the Evangelicals rationalize supporting him (who, by their own definition, is the antithesis of living a moral life) is surreal.
6. He's not maligned by the mainstream media, nor the erudite print media, nor the public media, nor the foreign press. There are opinionated people who are out to do him harm, but there are other, often non-establishment Republicans, and others who have never been political, who see him for what he is. His sophomoric deflections fool no one with any time understanding the world. But if you are unable to detect bias and lack of bias, and you're willing to believe a candidate who has given virtually no evidence to support his veracity over every media source out there, there really is no hope, except that you're in the minority.
7. He will shake things up and we need that. I agree. But not without a plan to put it back together. And when you shake things up good, you better have some seriously sophisticated plans to rebuild. If you're going to take apart a complex machine, without any knowledge of how it all works together, you're not fixing anything. Breaking things doesn't fix them!
All the major reasons people give for supporting Trump are weak, if not utterly false. And yet, here he is. With more being caught up in the excitement at the expense of a commitment to integrity. Ouch.
*[I totally understand a Never Hillary attitude. I get that. I wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a complete politico, and is too far gone to be a real person. She sees honesty and transparency as a weakness, probably based on her history of having been elected and appointed to offices without exercising a real commitment to honesty, transparency or authenticity. But she knows things, and her lies are understandable adult lies (if not less egregious): she's trying to protect her political career, whereas Trump is just boasting, trying to make you think he knows something he doesn't, or habit.]
**[I totally understand why you'd want an outsider to be in the White House. I think everyone is sick of the establishment's inability to think for themselves. But let's at least get someone (anyone) who CAN ACTUALLY THINK. Trump is incapable of sitting down and thinking, analyzing, restating a complex thought or argument, working through any sort of rigorous logic, even when logic needs to be infused with the reality of human problems which must understand and accommodate the irrationality of human behavior as part of their process, but at least coherent.]
Here's where my credulity is tested. These things are so clear, and yet people I know (though none who I regard as well balanced or particularly thoughtful people, but regular people) would allow him to represent the best of America.*
1. He doesn't say it like it is. (He's mostly wrong, so more accurately, he says it like it's not.) He doesn't just say what he believes. (He doesn't really believe in things except for a moment, but that's not really a belief.). He does make things up on the spot, and say what's on his mind. He reacts like a kid, putting people on an enemy's list based on criticism of him.
2. He's has a genius, but it's a middle school bully level genius. His skill is an innate awareness of someone's greed/fear/bigotry buttons, probably because they are only very shallowly buried under his gigantic id/ego (yeah, his id and ego in the colloquial sense have sort of mutated together). He's not a business genius. He's not good with words. He's not good with ideas or systems. He doesn't really know stuff. He's honed his skills at manipulating the basest instincts in himself and others (greed, fear & insecurity, bigotry). That's provides the bedrock of his business dealings. He's not a negotiator, he's a wheeler-dealer, and if you don't know the difference, so are you. Read this: his ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal had a moral epiphany and rebuked his work.
3. He's not good with people. He doesn't have friends, confidants, or relationships like you or I might. Everyone in his life are just work implements. And you could say that we're all like that and our close friends and family are just tools to give us love and to love, but he doesn't feel love like that. His wives are accouterments, his kids are ornaments. His friends are henchmen and there to give him the attention and validation he so clearly needs. He engages in petty feuds with people. Do you? And what do you feel about yourself when you're over it - proud of yourself? I wouldn't either, but I don't engage in that.
4. He is an outsider. But can you think of another outsider who's as much of an idiot as he is? Vanilla Ice comes to mind (no offense, Vanilla, but I read Ice by Ice while standing in a library somewhere and I couldn't believe a book that bad could actually be published. I couldn't put it down, the train-wreck of words was uniquely horrendous. It reads like a Trump Rant, but I was younger then and could tolerate the grotesque much better than I do now.) Can you think of one other business leader who is that full of himself and that shallow a person? Gates. Welch. Musk. Virgin. OK, Fiorina is a distant second. Oh, and Palin. But she's a semi-insider.**
5. This one is particularly pernicious because it seems to make sense but it does not: "Someone who has [raised some good kids/ built a real estate empire/ been successful in business (very debatable)] must have something healthy at the core. Oh my God, no. He didn't raise his kids. Do you seriously believe their testimony in an interview or at the podium when they're trying to get him elected? Of course you don't. Either way, it's a false argument. If you find yourself believing this, you really do need to take some basic psychology. Why people stay with abusive spouses, why people fall for get-rich schemes, why people burn crosses in other people's front yards. There are unhealthy psychological complexes that induce people to believe and do things that are not only false, but against their long-term self interest, and unless you want to be one of them, please educate yourselves! Listening to the Evangelicals rationalize supporting him (who, by their own definition, is the antithesis of living a moral life) is surreal.
6. He's not maligned by the mainstream media, nor the erudite print media, nor the public media, nor the foreign press. There are opinionated people who are out to do him harm, but there are other, often non-establishment Republicans, and others who have never been political, who see him for what he is. His sophomoric deflections fool no one with any time understanding the world. But if you are unable to detect bias and lack of bias, and you're willing to believe a candidate who has given virtually no evidence to support his veracity over every media source out there, there really is no hope, except that you're in the minority.
7. He will shake things up and we need that. I agree. But not without a plan to put it back together. And when you shake things up good, you better have some seriously sophisticated plans to rebuild. If you're going to take apart a complex machine, without any knowledge of how it all works together, you're not fixing anything. Breaking things doesn't fix them!
All the major reasons people give for supporting Trump are weak, if not utterly false. And yet, here he is. With more being caught up in the excitement at the expense of a commitment to integrity. Ouch.
*[I totally understand a Never Hillary attitude. I get that. I wouldn't vote for Hillary because she's a complete politico, and is too far gone to be a real person. She sees honesty and transparency as a weakness, probably based on her history of having been elected and appointed to offices without exercising a real commitment to honesty, transparency or authenticity. But she knows things, and her lies are understandable adult lies (if not less egregious): she's trying to protect her political career, whereas Trump is just boasting, trying to make you think he knows something he doesn't, or habit.]
**[I totally understand why you'd want an outsider to be in the White House. I think everyone is sick of the establishment's inability to think for themselves. But let's at least get someone (anyone) who CAN ACTUALLY THINK. Trump is incapable of sitting down and thinking, analyzing, restating a complex thought or argument, working through any sort of rigorous logic, even when logic needs to be infused with the reality of human problems which must understand and accommodate the irrationality of human behavior as part of their process, but at least coherent.]
Monday, July 18, 2016
What Does Trump Believe About...
Trump is "Success Driven" and "Goal Oriented." He doesn't believe in things like you might think of someone who has spent time pondering, analyzing, troubling over things, researching things he doesn't understand, and then thinking some more in order to understand an issue and take a stance. That's clear from his lack of depth in any given topic. You don't NEED all that thinking to make a buck or a billion in America. (Though it does come in handy when you want to steer a prudent course for a big nation.)
Clearly from his interviews and speeches, he's not that kind of person. He's like a lot of other people who may expend their blood, sweat and tears on the matter at hand, and not on high-falutin' or abstract ideas that don't immediately apply to today's profit. He doesn't know things. He sort of feels and sees the outer shape of things makes a gut judgment. But, a gut gets its judgment from experience in that area. I don't need to talk about his experience in statesmanship. His behavior and words are clear.
Politicians, even the best of them, color their remarks about beliefs depending on who they are talking to, and someone who hasn't ever committed to something long term, like marriage, business commitments, etc., don't even care. It's not about what they believe. But someone who is averse to knowing real things and making that knowledge part of their repertoire is not a person who should be making decisions about important things. Not for someone who is a professional in public service. Someone who makes up stuff, blathers incoherently from topic to topic and fears actually committing to a single piece of substantial policy is not the person to lead policy execution.
This is a person who is not a leader, and someone who follows such a leader . . . I just gotta wonder about your integrity. You can still be my friend, but I'll always wonder about that severe gullibility, brought on probably by a deep need to believe in something! Instead of fall for a charlatan, why not seek out someone worthy to support, or better yet, become someone who is willing to lead something local (or bigger) that accomplishes that which you are hoping your false god can? Rather than put your hope in an empty vessel, find the real deal and elevate them to prominence and influence.
I wrote this before reading the article in The New Yorker featuring the comments from the ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal. It fully confirms my own observations of him as a person.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all
This is a person who is not a leader, and someone who follows such a leader . . . I just gotta wonder about your integrity. You can still be my friend, but I'll always wonder about that severe gullibility, brought on probably by a deep need to believe in something! Instead of fall for a charlatan, why not seek out someone worthy to support, or better yet, become someone who is willing to lead something local (or bigger) that accomplishes that which you are hoping your false god can? Rather than put your hope in an empty vessel, find the real deal and elevate them to prominence and influence.
I wrote this before reading the article in The New Yorker featuring the comments from the ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal. It fully confirms my own observations of him as a person.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Anti Racism - Are You Finally Ready?
According to research psychologists, there is unconscious bias in us all. Even African American children have an unconscious bias to (statistically) predict white dolls over black dolls as positive ideals. And you can test yourself if you dare at this website.
Having unconscious bias doesn't make a person racist. And for this, let's just say racist is treating someone more negatively based on their heritage, skin color, or other external group trait or otherwise contributing to that end.
If you're reading this on Facebook, your a friend among all types. Big white biker boys in the Carolinas, tiny Asian women, men who look very much like Bob Marley, fat old white ladies in the Dakotas, slender nubian-princess activists in New Orleans, young men you'd mistake for Mexican Gangsters if you didn't know them, Jewish women from Alaska and South Africa. Most of you can claim the same - a panoply of diversity. I like to believe I'm not racist. My past experiences have embarrassed most of it out of me, having met men and women and children of every race, color and creed who have bested me in everything I might take pride in within myself. After my teaching and work with street kids, and in my travel throughout 4 of the 7 continents, it's hard to hold onto beliefs based on anything aside from behavior over time. But not being racist does not make me Anti Racist. To balance out and eventually neutralize racism (so we can all use our energy to bring our world to a more productive place), there needs to be sustained effort in fighting it.
We all have room in our lives (with the exception of young mothers and graduate students writing their theses and others struggling with overwhelming issues) for our vocations, our families, and an avocation or two. And a little exercise and "me time." Based on the persistent trouble in which we find ourselves here in America (like since 1492?), it's time for way more of us to add one more. Fighting injustice.
Awareness is a good first step, and I think you can feel this with me. We've had social media, with FB posts and retweeting galore, and that activity is not getting it done. But it IS a first step. The first step (awareness) doesn't get us there. It's the second, third and the habits of moving forward that could get us there. "There might not ever be perfect, but does anyone believe we can't do way better? We see the steady progress of technology (because it's fun and puts money in the pockets, and a compelling sense of accomplishment in the egos, of those perpetrating it). There may be very little (or even negative) direct individual financial gain, in taking more steps toward effecting racial equality, but as a nation, there is ZERO doubt that being able to re-enfranchise more and more Americans into an greater participation will create opportunity, and raise more boats, and ultimately have deep, positive economic results for everybody.
Bringing anti racism to your main vocation may be your greatest influence. Giving a minority the benefit of the doubt, even if it doesn't ultimately pan out, is fair, when you consider that they've been on the receiving end of the opposite side of that equation more than you'll ever know. But taking some of your personal bandwidth and pointing it in the direction of fixing yourself and the world could have additional and important ripples in our ill society.
Life is complex and when you ask all the "why's" about how we got here and what we can do about it, there are a thousand answers. But there are hundreds of millions of us who are spending plenty of time "social mediating" and video game playing and in the gym and watching TV and reading novels and etc. If we were to replace some of that (by all means, waste some damn time -- everyone needs a little of that every week) with something else that propagates positively into the real world and answers a few of those "why's", can you think of a better way to spend that time than working to improve the lot of those worse off than yourself?
Not sure where to start? Me either. Getting together with some friends you trust and talking about what you could actually DO to make a difference. Ask your black friends. Ask your Mexican friends. Talk about it. Think about it. Read about it. Be creative and then create. My gut tells me that our eventual hope lies in the next generation. Let your own kids tag along and have those hard conversations with them. You don't know the answers, but together you can ask the questions together and research answers.
I'm sitting here watching The Shawshank Redemption. When Andy tunnels out and they discover his escape, Red narrates Andy's love for geology, ruminating on Andy's love of geology and its main forces of pressure and time. "Pressure and time." And how that persistence meant his escape. The pressure is growing. The more pressure, the less time it takes for the plates to shift. There's hope now, but it's by no means inevitable. If we care enough about what's right, and we apply some pressure within our sphere of influence, and if we work to expand that influence wherever we can, even if it's within our small circle of friends, and if we network that circle to the next degree of Kevin Bacon, I don't know what might happen. My imagination tells me that it could matter.
Many of you reading this are already actively working within your jobs, AS your jobs, and through other means working toward relegating racism to the ash heap of history. Clearly we need more of us in on that endeavor.
What are some things I could do? Brainstorm:
Get involved in the Urban League or NAACP or Southern Poverty Law Center, participate in their activities, ask where you can contribute to their efforts to help out.
Create your own Meet-Up Group (White's for Universal Rights/ Minority Rights, Anti-Racist San Diego Action Network) and get together, create an action plan, and go with it.
Recruit friends, make friends and get together to discuss options. How awkward is that? As awkward as suffering through another 4 decades of racially-motivated atrocities?
Volunteer at your local school (elementary, middle or high) to help organize an anti-racist program, including curriculum, club, etc. According to Stanford's school of education, Anti-Racist Teaching is one of the 10 Features of Successful Small Schools. Anti-Racist Teaching. Students, staff, leaders, etc.
As you start, learn what you don't know. Expose yourself to some writers from within disenfranchised groups. Read about the enemy (racists). Read about reformed racists. Read the words of Jesus and the Dalai Lama. I started with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Sula, Invisible Man, Huckleberry Finn and some speeches and letters famous for their power and perspective. Get in there and turn your perceptions on their heads.
Google it: What should I read to understand racism? What can I do to stop racism?
Having unconscious bias doesn't make a person racist. And for this, let's just say racist is treating someone more negatively based on their heritage, skin color, or other external group trait or otherwise contributing to that end.
If you're reading this on Facebook, your a friend among all types. Big white biker boys in the Carolinas, tiny Asian women, men who look very much like Bob Marley, fat old white ladies in the Dakotas, slender nubian-princess activists in New Orleans, young men you'd mistake for Mexican Gangsters if you didn't know them, Jewish women from Alaska and South Africa. Most of you can claim the same - a panoply of diversity. I like to believe I'm not racist. My past experiences have embarrassed most of it out of me, having met men and women and children of every race, color and creed who have bested me in everything I might take pride in within myself. After my teaching and work with street kids, and in my travel throughout 4 of the 7 continents, it's hard to hold onto beliefs based on anything aside from behavior over time. But not being racist does not make me Anti Racist. To balance out and eventually neutralize racism (so we can all use our energy to bring our world to a more productive place), there needs to be sustained effort in fighting it.
We all have room in our lives (with the exception of young mothers and graduate students writing their theses and others struggling with overwhelming issues) for our vocations, our families, and an avocation or two. And a little exercise and "me time." Based on the persistent trouble in which we find ourselves here in America (like since 1492?), it's time for way more of us to add one more. Fighting injustice.
Awareness is a good first step, and I think you can feel this with me. We've had social media, with FB posts and retweeting galore, and that activity is not getting it done. But it IS a first step. The first step (awareness) doesn't get us there. It's the second, third and the habits of moving forward that could get us there. "There might not ever be perfect, but does anyone believe we can't do way better? We see the steady progress of technology (because it's fun and puts money in the pockets, and a compelling sense of accomplishment in the egos, of those perpetrating it). There may be very little (or even negative) direct individual financial gain, in taking more steps toward effecting racial equality, but as a nation, there is ZERO doubt that being able to re-enfranchise more and more Americans into an greater participation will create opportunity, and raise more boats, and ultimately have deep, positive economic results for everybody.
Bringing anti racism to your main vocation may be your greatest influence. Giving a minority the benefit of the doubt, even if it doesn't ultimately pan out, is fair, when you consider that they've been on the receiving end of the opposite side of that equation more than you'll ever know. But taking some of your personal bandwidth and pointing it in the direction of fixing yourself and the world could have additional and important ripples in our ill society.
Life is complex and when you ask all the "why's" about how we got here and what we can do about it, there are a thousand answers. But there are hundreds of millions of us who are spending plenty of time "social mediating" and video game playing and in the gym and watching TV and reading novels and etc. If we were to replace some of that (by all means, waste some damn time -- everyone needs a little of that every week) with something else that propagates positively into the real world and answers a few of those "why's", can you think of a better way to spend that time than working to improve the lot of those worse off than yourself?
Not sure where to start? Me either. Getting together with some friends you trust and talking about what you could actually DO to make a difference. Ask your black friends. Ask your Mexican friends. Talk about it. Think about it. Read about it. Be creative and then create. My gut tells me that our eventual hope lies in the next generation. Let your own kids tag along and have those hard conversations with them. You don't know the answers, but together you can ask the questions together and research answers.
I'm sitting here watching The Shawshank Redemption. When Andy tunnels out and they discover his escape, Red narrates Andy's love for geology, ruminating on Andy's love of geology and its main forces of pressure and time. "Pressure and time." And how that persistence meant his escape. The pressure is growing. The more pressure, the less time it takes for the plates to shift. There's hope now, but it's by no means inevitable. If we care enough about what's right, and we apply some pressure within our sphere of influence, and if we work to expand that influence wherever we can, even if it's within our small circle of friends, and if we network that circle to the next degree of Kevin Bacon, I don't know what might happen. My imagination tells me that it could matter.
Many of you reading this are already actively working within your jobs, AS your jobs, and through other means working toward relegating racism to the ash heap of history. Clearly we need more of us in on that endeavor.
What are some things I could do? Brainstorm:
Get involved in the Urban League or NAACP or Southern Poverty Law Center, participate in their activities, ask where you can contribute to their efforts to help out.
Create your own Meet-Up Group (White's for Universal Rights/ Minority Rights, Anti-Racist San Diego Action Network) and get together, create an action plan, and go with it.
Recruit friends, make friends and get together to discuss options. How awkward is that? As awkward as suffering through another 4 decades of racially-motivated atrocities?
Volunteer at your local school (elementary, middle or high) to help organize an anti-racist program, including curriculum, club, etc. According to Stanford's school of education, Anti-Racist Teaching is one of the 10 Features of Successful Small Schools. Anti-Racist Teaching. Students, staff, leaders, etc.
As you start, learn what you don't know. Expose yourself to some writers from within disenfranchised groups. Read about the enemy (racists). Read about reformed racists. Read the words of Jesus and the Dalai Lama. I started with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Sula, Invisible Man, Huckleberry Finn and some speeches and letters famous for their power and perspective. Get in there and turn your perceptions on their heads.
Google it: What should I read to understand racism? What can I do to stop racism?
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