Tacoma Urban League announcement.
Join the Tacoma Urban League for our next Family Engagement Workshop – How to Talk to Your Child About Race & Racism on Friday, Dec. 9th at the Eastside Community Center (1721 E 56th St, Tacoma, WA 98404) from 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm.
Children are observant seekers of truth and understanding. The topic of race and racism is one that adults must address and speak about truthfully to young people. The most important lessons start at home.
You will learn the importance of discussing race and racism with your children and how it relates to the context of their lives to build awareness, resistance, and pride.
Let’s continue to build our Tacoma village!
Please register by clicking here. Dinner will be provided.
Questions? Email me at sheree@thetacomaurbanleague.org
When Twina Nobles says she wants to talk about racism, she really means why she wants to talk about white people. Feel free to look up who runs the above “non-profit.”
As a member of a mixed-race household, I can tell you that race as a focus is a negative distraction from what really matters.
Race as a focus becomes an excuse for everything that doesn’t suit you.
Your race is simply your genetic makeup.
What you do with you is what matters, and that is called choice.
In my household we talk about good choices vs bad choices, and the expected outcomes of those choices.
A stroll thru Tacoma today is a real-time lesson on bad choices, no different from any place that takes the emphasis off of choice and places it on perceived circumstance.
Every American citizen is born with inalienable rights under the protection of our Constitution, but that just isn’t good enough for those who take a dim view of themselves for whatever reason.
We all come from an ancestry of war and suppression under this monarch or that tyrant.
The university types have us chasing too much theory these days, while avoiding what has long been established for success and happiness.
If that’s you, get over yourself.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get back to making the hard, right, but gratifying choices, so my family doesn’t sit around and stare at their skin, in this land of opportunity.
“New scientific understandings about human variation demonstrate that human populations are not clearly defined, biologically distinct groups that some people call races,” says Mary Jo Arnoldi, chair of the anthropology department at the National Museum of Natural History and curator for the exhibition at the Smithsonian.”
If there is only one human race, as the Smithsonian research claims, perhaps we need to reach a new understanding on how to bring people together instead of what divides us.
Yes, God gave us the inherent ability to fashion a rudder (metaphor), with which to determine our course.
A rudder is a physical accomplishment, not a theory or a con game.
Those who build rudders steer their own ship while others just drift about, hoping to bump into something good.
Those who pirate another person’s ship so that they can skip the building process, are stealing the life of those who applied their God-given ability.
Talk of a village at the expense of individual freedom is the greatest blunder possible, as the loudest and and most belligerent will push the quiet performers aside.
Then those shameless narcissists, carrying a false flag, will lead us into the next war, where we all bleed red.
My main comment is in moderation jail at the moment.
The obsession with racism is something very much like an allergy. An allergy is an overreaction by the body to what otherwise should not be detected as something the immune system has to respond to.
That sensitivity to a specific allergen might result in a runny nose as in hay fever or fatal anaphylactic shock as in certain food allergies (nuts for example). The medical profession has a two pronged approach to allergies: symptomatic relief and desensitization. That is exactly the approach that should be taken to the obsession with racism.
Symptomatic relief comes in the form of elevating success stories unequivocally that occur despite potential impacts of racism, ethnicity, economic status or other alleged barriers to success. There are simply too many success stories to assert that it can’t be done because of racism. Those successful examples can disarm the entire obsession with racism argument just like a Benadryl tablet eliminates allergy symptoms.
The other approach is to desensitize rather than sensitize ourselves, regardless of race, to alleged racism. That often occurs physiologically through deliberate gradual increasing exposure to allergens until the body no longer reacts to them. So it should be with racism: exposure eventually develops an intellectual and emotional “callus” where racism is no longer important to your success.
To quote Morgan Freeman:
“As long as you feel like a victim, you are one.”
“I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”
“Race seems to me to be less and less a subject worth discussing.”
“How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!”
So when it comes to “racism” the Rx is a combination of achievable success examples to shoot for and desensitization to racism as the most important thing in your life.
Success brings its own rewards.
I mostly agree with you John, but one has to be careful about focusing too much on and elevating “success stories”.
The expectations of what is perceived as success in America, has left many otherwise happy and satisfied people believing that they are being suppressed below an unobtainable standard.
We’ve all fallen victim to this media-driven trap at some time or another.
As a result, we are facing debt obligations from promises that never should have been made.
After all, the more money there is in the economy, the higher prices go, canceling any gain for a consumer.
Many very rich and famous celebrity types are psychological basket cases with broken lives.
America needs to redefine success at a more base level.
That would take the pressure of expectation off, and eliminate the need for an excuse when misplaced goals are not achieved. People see billionaires manipulating every aspect of our lives, and they feel powerless, or worse – thirsty for that power.
We just saw that in the last election, where a 30 year old fraud, in concert with his Ivy League professor parents, bought elections for democrats with ill-gotten money from the biggest ponzi scheme in history.
It effectively altered election results right here in Washington State. These criminals are being referred to by the media as “altruists”.
These types just hope you’re stupid and cowardly.
I once read a sticker someone placed on a stop sign.
It read, “If you had enough, would you recognize it”?
That’s a discussion worth having.
When I speak of “success” I’m suggesting the successes we see all around us that are clearly attainable and legitimate. I’m not suggesting that kids aspire to be the next Michael Jordan although that too is a measure of success. Unrealistically reaching for the stars can result in a great let down unless you also have something more grounded in reality. The neighborhood business owner, minister in church, family doctor, English teacher in school, mailman, fire fighter, police officer and the like throughout society show through vision, education and hard work what can be accomplished regardless of the racial, ethnic, socio-economic strata they may have come from.
Success brings its own rewards.
In that regard, yes.
Not long ago, employment in government service was a choice of security over a riskier path toward wealth.
When I joined the Army, first line in the recruitment pamphlet read, “You will not become wealthy, but….”
An average citizen’s life-sphere was smaller and more localized.
Now with benefits and retirement, along with increased pay, it has become an over-promised path toward wealth and mobility.
Something has to give.
Mick Jagger sang it, “I can’t get no satisfaction”.