Values

There are ideas that take years to form. Ones that germinate from youth and are watered by experience. One might call them personal values. I believe we all live by a set of them.  They are hard to articulate and only bubble to the surface under the right conditions for us to have self awareness of their existence and to examine them, so familiar, and yet so foreign as something we hatched in the darkness of our soul come to play on our front lawn.

I submit that not all of our values are good. I believe that this is where an ability to grieve over our mislaid character craftsmanship is powerful. If we have the ability to rise up and look our values over in the sunlight we can choose which to embrace and which to discard, or at least keep at bay.

Our core values are how we see (and out of seeing act) the world, ourselves, and those in our circles, like ripples; the closest circle, then outward spreading in gentle concentric rings fading off into the distance.

*Tarpon Springs, Florida*

Possibilites

with life there is hope

there are options

tomorrow is always a new day

that comes with freedom, autonomy and power

not satisfied with the meaning of today

I can choose change, however small

I do not know how the ending of my story will be written

not despair but hope

not stagnancy but creation

*RHINO district Denver*

 

 

Angela Davis from Marin County Jail, May 1971 — truthfront

I wanted to share this word press author and their voice for the current movement for justice and equity in the black community.

In the heat of our pursuit for fundamental human rights, Black people have been continually cautioned to be patient. We are advised that as long as we remain faithful to the existing democratic order, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we will come into our own as full-fledged human beings. But having been taught […]

via Angela Davis from Marin County Jail, May 1971 — truthfront

The Legacy of Slavery in the US

Racism against the black community in my country is different. It is built on slavery. It is not overt, but like a frog slowly boiled in water, accepted and part of the fabric of our culture.

We are strong individualists and it is a stumbling block in recognizing the legacy that slavery has left to an entire people group. We expect people to rise up out of their circumstances by themselves, hard work, education, ethics and self determination. This can obscure the burden, baggage and the barriers the black community face in having true socio-economic equality.

In a family, if one member is hindered by a disability the other family members (should) sacrifice to help that one member to find self-realization.

I don’t think you can understand the burden of slavery that still exists unless you visit the south, where all of this began. It’s too easy to dismiss unless you look it in the face. It reminds me of the Holocaust deniers who deny Jewish extermination in Germany by the Nazis and Hitler. Many of our citizens who haven’t tasted and touched the roots of slavery cannot grasp the impact it has had on the black community.

If you want to understand why the black community is hurt, angry, deeply wounded don’t look just to the heinous murder of George Floyd, look to slavery. I wish each person could walk through the plantations of the south, see with their eyes where oppressed people (slaves) lived, read their names, read the names of those who died on the slave ships coming from Africa. I wish each person in the US could talk to the descendants of the Africans who were by law kept from learning to read and write,  and hear their oral history. I wish each of our citizens could walk through the large cities of the south and see what color of skin those who live in wealth are and those who live in poverty are. Only in the south can you still taste the remnants of slavery. You can see the buildings; the slave auction house that still stands in downtown Charleston, the slave quarters, the statues to the confederate soldiers (and witness fresh flowers recently placed for them), the remnants of great wealth of the slave owners. Only in the south can you fully appreciate the degradation and oppression of an entire people group.

This is why the black community suffers a form of racism that is different than the rest of the world. We (all US people) should be outraged, mourn, grieve, care, and take responsibility for legacy of slavery that still exists. We should do something concrete. We should have diversity programs, look to the incarceration rate, develop programs, demand justice reform. This is not a generalization either. I believe that as individuals we should each be actively involved in some sort of action. We have a responsibility that goes beyond saying that racism is wrong. Let us act!

Let our black citizens have space to hurt, to voice their pain, to ask for change, to be angry.

We have come a long way since the days where black lives were bought and sold. The civil rights movement brought along much needed change. But until we have true equality and opportunity we have not arrived.

*I took this picture in Charleston in October, 2019. Please note the FRESH flowers that had been placed at the base of the statue*