So here we go again, unnecessary violence! I wear my hoodie in solidarity with Mr. and Mrs. Martin b/c were I them, I would be inconsolable as a parent. In these moments there is no 'hierarchy of oppression' whether in Baghdad or Florida. These are all our children and we are leaving them a dreadful legacy of discrimination-as-usual. We are in the midst of that "dangerous course", one marked by the cultures of violence of our age. And beyond race, the Trayvon murder is, to me, a horror story about a man and a boy and the war on our children in every nation in the world. We seem to give them up to violence much too easily. Either it's sending them off to war to kill other people's children, ensnare them in human trafficking, or watch them kill one another as if each human life were expendable. Where is our sense of shame?

From an unlikely source-Charlotte Bronte-these thoughts are offered: " “Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.” Many Americans who are aware of the extent of racism in U.S. culture know that 'Trayvon Martin cases' recur on a daily basis in almost every state and throughout the world, to both young men and women. I remember my father having a strong aversion to the police b/c his was the era of the 1930's when lynching and Emmett Till's murder (1955) were fresh realities, even in Cambridge(MA), the city of his birth and where I was raised. Douglas Blackmon's conscience-crushing Pulitzer text Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to WWII(2009) described the illegal bondage of Black citizens about which my Dad knew from 'the grapevine'. Dad has passed away a few years before the Rodney King incident (1991) but it would have broken his peace-loving, boogie-woogie heart to have watched the infamous Holliday videotapes of excessive force by the LAPD.  And James Byrd's 'lynching-by-dragging' murder (Texas 1998) would have sent him over the edge. I am skipping over the bad parts-all of the other unknown, young men of color (and other ethnics) whose mortality arrived too soon for them to grow into men. The murders of Vincent Chin and Matthew Shepherd, however, would have equally tested his faith in American society. Indeed, I was more than lucky to be raised by such a lover of humanity, one who regularly brought home strangers of every race to our family table for a meal.

Our work to eliminate prejudice is oil-rigg deeper, requires that we're man and woman enough to go to darker places within ourselves to redeem our country's destiny and our children's futures. No joke. The 'mutual understanding, amity, and sustained cooperation' required to eradicate race hatred and the war on our children is a lifetime commitment, not a media frenzy that activates our momentary shame. 

What was absent from Zimmerman was this: freedom from fear...

Racism and Development

In the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development [Consumption], Chief of Women's organizations, Bisi, Ogunkele stated at a CNN panel that preceded the conference "If the rich nations of the world do not share their wealth with the poor, the poor will share their poverty with the rich". 'Lower-income'/'Developing Nations' demanded that he conference's focus on 'development' be renamed 'population and consumption. Their position was that the 'west'/'developed nations' were over-consuming the planet's resources as rapidly as the 'Developing nations' were overpopulating. Time for a truce and a new approach some 18 yrs. after that conference? The reality is that poverty and its minions have spread globally, despite some increases in some measures (e.g, literacy and disease prevention in some settings).

Where are we to focus our attention? What new directions, principles, or approaches can we imagine?

In the current climate of global chaos, financial collapse, environmental degradation, and widening gaps between wealth and poverty, we have much to ponder, to confront in ourselves , and much t to change. The global development community is a cauldron of individuals, motives, and practices that are unsustainable in their current configuration and worldview. We have been focusing, wholeheartedly, on poverty reduction, "the poor", and the alleviation of problems associated with the lack of material resources. We might shift our attention to 'wealth reduction', a strategy that requires personal reflection and overcoming the fear of living with less. But the latter reveals that living with less is better for human contentment and better for the environment.
Various impact assessments and research studies have provided adequate testimonials to the links between literacy, income, and longevity-even 'happiness'-  as one set of indicators of 'quality of life'. 'How Matters' has been blogging about race and development and has been brave enough to raise the spectre of the "R" word-racism http://www.how-matters.org/2012/01/17/the-elephant-hasnt-left-the-room/

To what extent is racism embedded in those constructions of the haves/have not gap and how to resolve this global crisis, esp. in our approaches to local and international development in every country?

These are critical questions we discuss in my "Globalism, racism, and human rights" course at a US university and in my "Changing Ourselves" workshop -'Games People Play'. In mid 20th c. social psychologist Gordon Allport wrote the classic, "The Nature of Prejudice". Among other research insights, he stated that a person is more likely to admit they're a liar, cheat, or thief than admit to being a racist. Being a 'racist', of course, makes everything more personal than discussing 'racism'.
Join in and share both your thoughts and what you are doing to eliminate all forms of prejudice in your own life and work. Don't be shy!

'Made' in America? or "We" too )still) sing America?

 http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/08/11/movies/100000000992277/on-race-and-hollywood.html

What happened to america's sense of destiny, a progressive society? The late Langston Hughes poem "I Too Sing America" foretells that 'nobody' will tell me to eat in the kitchen..and 'they'll see how beautiful I am...and be ashamed. Sorry, little has changed as George suggests in this clip from "The Maid". Successive ethnic immigrant groups from low-income classes still have to 'eat in the kitchen', are not seen as 'beautiful', and few people are ashamed at the living/working conditions of newly arrived immigrant groups, more specifically communities of color. I am not comforted by the fact that not everyone has a 'sense of shame' because it is often the sense of shame that triggers the conscience to be more aware, more open, more ethical, and therefore, more conscientious about issues of equality. Thus, a society and an entertainment industry that still, even with a brilliant, highly educated , and influential African American First Lady, still continues to reward women of color  when they are subservient. Is the film trying to 'humanize' white women or Black women? Or is this still the troubled and scary conversation between White women and women of color that everybody's avoiding? What do you think?


As a member of a future-oriented, pragmatic religion-The Baha'i Faith- founded on eliminating all forms of prejudice as the cultural work we need to do in this era, here's the deal. There are three(3) and four(4) sets of behaviors that have to change in ourselves, respectively as 'black' (non-dominant) and 'white'(dominant) individuals for a racism-free society. Governments exist to control the outward expressions of intolerance, nothing more. If you're 'Black', the transformation tasks are to 'show the warmth of your response, your readiness to forget the past, and your ability to wipe out every trace of suspicion that may linger in your heart.' If you're 'White', the transformational agenda is to 'abandon usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, correct a tendency to reveal  a patronizing attitude toward members of the other race, the need to persuade (the other race) through intimate, spontaneous, and informal association them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions, and to master their impatience with any lack of responsiveness on the part of a people who have received for so long a period such grievous and slow-healing wounds.' (Shoghi Effendi," The Advent of Divine Justice").
Ok, Hollywood and you moviegoers! Hattie McDaniel already got the Oscar for playing a maid decades ago. No more games. Let's get with the spiritual program and change our world.