A friend introduced me at a party last Friday as a writer - citing the "small stones" blogs I did a couple-three years ago. And I also recently finally (once again) dug out the notebook I had been meaning to transcribe into a new blog called "Praises and Lamentations" (a kind of personal psalm writing) and posted the first one. So . . . maybe I'm starting up again? We'll see.
I've been wanting to say something about a small book I've re-reading: Finding the Quiet Mind, by Robert Ellwood. A tiny book published by the Theosophical Society, Finding the Quiet Mind will surprise you.
Ellwood is a widely respected religious studies scholar (now retired) who has specialized in the study of new religions (my favorite beat) and also written some religious studies texts for introductory study of comparitive religions. His small book Finding the Quiet Mind is, to my mind, the single best and most approachable handbook for doing meditation I know of, apart from specialized methods held within particular religious disciplines. (On the Buddhist side, my favorite authors are Thich Nhat Hahn and Pema Chodron.)
Written as an outgrowth of Ellwood's having taught meditation techniques in public university classes, Finding the Quiet Mind presumes no religious interest or background, and introduces several techniques that people can try, with the idea that they will find one that fits well, or branch out to new techniques if the initial techniques get stale.
The opening of Finding the Quiet Mind is especially inviting to the new practitioner, as Ellwood makes the case that anyone who is generally mentally healthy can learn and benefit from doing meditation without needing a guru or teacher. It's easy - 15 minutes a day - and confers immediate and lasting benefit. This reminds me of the enthusiastic introduction I got to meditation from David White at Macalester back in the heady last 1960s (yes, that dates me). (See page 19 of this Macalester Today from 1987 for David White's parting words as he retired after influencing generations of Mac students.) David, too, told us that meditation conferred immediate and lasting benefit for a small commitment of daily time. He and his wife Beverly, a Zen Buddhist practitioner, used to hold meditation sessions in their home - I regret I never attended.
But if you are already a practitioner, you may find valuable insights later in the book, where Ellwood suggests mixing things up a bit and also being open to responding to impulses that arise from within the meditation practice to use meditation time to open to the needs of others. By the last third of the book, Ellwood's Quaker practice can be discerned (he mentions it only in passing) - as the describes the he meditation practice moving to a stance of being open and responsive to the inner experiences, rather than simply the benefits of health and mental peace. By the end of Ellwood's book, it's clear that a thorough overhaul of one's life is likely to take place if the meditation practice is persisted in with good will and fidelity.
Ellwood addresses the book to the individual practitioner, but makes it clear that joining with a compatible community provides a plus. That's also a Quaker understanding (as well as a Buddhist understanding) - for both practical and more mysterious reasons, as the group practice can give power to the individual practice.
The day started with a keynote by Mab Segrest, feminist antiracist activist and author. I was enormously impressed with her candor and her analysis. She combined an account of her own radicalization as a young person in Alabama during tbe days of forced integration of the schools. Poignantly, she watched as her own school was surrounded by marshals as they escorted in the first valiant Black children; subsequently, her father worked with other white parents to organize segregated white private schools for their children, where she ended up finishing her high school years. Other events led to the inner conviction that the system she was living in was insane (insights captured in her 1999 book, Memoir of a Race Traitor, that also includes a succinct history of race relations in the United States).
In her keynote address, in addition to a summary of her own history of radicalization, Mab summarized some critical work that she is engaged in now, looking at the social history of mental health care through a critical anti-racist lens, in a study of the history Milledgeville, an enormous mental asylum in Georgia, a study she has been involved in over the past twelve years. As someone long interested in psychological and psychiatric theory, the clarity she brought to understanding mental health in the context of racial justice was stunning. What was "insanity" - the behaviors that got people locked up for their (abbreviated) lives, or the systems of power and privilege that caused their suffering? Is mental illness something that is happening to an individual because of a disordered brain, in need of chemical alteration by powerful drugs, or something happening in the context of social systems subjecting individuals, communities, and families to trauma (including slavery, lynching, discrimination), with little opportunity for redress?
I am eager for this book to be published, as the speech she gave has given me a lot to think about.
Next, we went to the half-day institute by Heather Hackman, "Climate - Change - Mind - Set: The Necessity of Replacing Whte Liberalism with Racial Justice As We Courageously Act in Response to Climate Change." Heather is a captivating speaker, and had put together a lot of information for us. It would have been good to have more time, but she shared quite a number of resources that I am going to follow up on. The core point is that climate change will require major changes in what privileged people believe they are entitled to in consuming resources (white Americans and other largely white privileged populations around the world). This sense of entitlement comes from white privilege, which leads people to feel they both need and have earned all of their "stuff." She included a sobering amount of information about the science of global warming and the rate we are proceding toward a point of no return in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are already far beyond what would be a truly sustainable population level for everyone in the world to have plenty. Current wars around the world are caused in large part because of diminishing resources - such as the situation in Syria, where the government siphoned off the water to the cities, leaving the farm areas drying up and impossible to farm. The farmers reluctantly took up arms. (This issue of "who owns the water under the ground" is going to continue to be critical.)
For this workshop, the task we had was to really grasp the connection between systemic injustice, white perception of entitlement, and the ticking clock of climate change that gives us very little time to make adjustments. Heather is taking this message to environmental groups as well as to social change groups. She left her academic position a couple of years ago to concentrate on this work.
At the institute, we met a woman from Louisville (Loo'vl), who invited us to a supper that night being held at Central Presbyterian, an inner-city church with a strong social justice tradition. What we didn't realize until getting there (she and her gentleman friend drove us and then back to the hotel), was that this dinner was being put on by the Louisville SURJ group especially for SURJ members from around the country and others who had attended WPC16 and were still in town.
The church basement was full of anti-racist movement people from Louisville and from the WPC conference (I saw Chris Cross and Mab Segrest among others). We had opportunities to learn about each others' work and what keeps people going over the long haul. At the end of the evening, local organizers from the Black Lives Matter group invited individuals who were able to join in a protest at Fourth Street Live, where a young black man had been arrested last summer for refusing to leave after being told he didn't meet the dress code. The young man (I didn't get his name) was there at the dinner as well, and explained that he hadn't even been violating the dress code, but had refused to stand down when confronted, so he was arrested and subsequently lost his job over this - a job of counseling and guiding individuals leaving prison.
Diane and I weren't able to go to this, as we had to catch an early plane, but I did a search to see if the event had gotten any response. Here is a link to a very brief news item about this event published a few hours ago, and a picture of the protest - I know that some of the people I met at the dinner were there:
The news item mentions that there is controversy about the dress code of Fourth Street Live, "Louisville's Premier Dining, Entertainment, and Retail Destination," being racist. They didn't detail the entire dress code itself, which (to my mind) speaks for itself:
DOES FOURTH STREET LIVE! HAVE A CODE OF CONDUCT? Yes. Please know the Fourth Street Live! outdoor area has a code of conduct at times when the street is operating as an entertainment venue with alcohol being consumed in the common areas: During these times Patrons must be 21 years of age or older and possess a valid ID. Smart casual attire recommended: clothing that is fitted, neat and appropriate. The following is NOT permitted under the Fourth Street Live! code of conduct: profanity on clothing, sleeveless shirts on men, excessively torn clothing, exposed undergarments on men, full sweat suits, sweat pants, excessively long shirts (when standing upright with arms at your side, the bottom of your shirt cannot extend below the tip of your fingers), sunglasses (after 9pm), shorts or pants worn below the hips, and athletic shorts. Security reserves the right to deny entry or remove any individual who does not comply with the code of conduct. Please note that the code of conducts of individual venues may vary. For any questions or concerns, please ask to speak to a supervisor or please call Fourth Street Live! Customer Service at 888-576-2588.
One more thing: I was curious about SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice), which had been a sponsor of the WPC16, and had such wonderful people as members, so I looked up more information. It turns out the Minneapolis contact for SURJ is my colleague Lisa Albrecht, who was also at WPC16. This is an anti-racist activist group for white people. There is helpful information on the SURJ Web site about why an an anti-racist organization for white people makes sense, and links to different groups around the country.
One of the things people try to do at WPC is give each other an opportunity to be accountable. My next steps: to do some reading of the books I've linked here. I'll post summary comments as I go. I'm also going to talk with Diggett about sharing some of the information from the Saturday institute on racial justice and climate change with my TCFM Meeting. This brings together work that different groups and individuals are doing in the Meeting, and making these connections may be helpful.
I am also committing to follow up with a young woman who was one of the FGC organizers, Sonali, who had been part of the Quaker Voluntary Service to talk more with her about that program, which might be something we can bring to the area.
I'm not sure what next steps make sense to share information with my colleagues in CEHD Student Services - I'll talk this over with Diane and Hans. One good idea might be to do a book club and pick a book in common from among the many that were referenced over the conference - maybe Memoir of a Race Traitor would appeal to others as well as myself.
This post covers Friday, which opened with an energetic presentation by Chris Crass, who told his own story of becoming a social justice activist, starting with his high school and community college years in Orange County. His story and his critique were encouraging and hopeful, and at the end, he was joined by a group of young people (Lost Voices) from Ferguson to speak and lead us in some of the chants they had led from the streets there.
Chris described being inspired by many past leaders, especially by courageous women, and he has very consciously worked to become feminist in his work as well as anti-racist and anti-oppression in all he does. He showed us this picture of Anne Braden (Louisville antiracist activist) and Ella Baker leaving the Highlander Center, perhaps in the 1950s. He described them as striding out to do their work after the reflective time at Highlander, while still in dialogue. It's a great image of alliance and community providing the strength for these two women's life-long work.
Another feminist scholar/activist who has inspired Chris is bell hooks - I didn't write down the specific book he cited, but I know her work is about working both with heart and critical consciousness. (I have been particularly attracted to her use of mindfulness as a key component of activism. She has written about how important it was for her to meet Thich Nhat Hahn in her early career; this dialogue with Pema Chodron something I enjoyed reading: "Cultivating Openness When Things Fall Apart.")
Chris suggests that we use a positive approach: focus on what we can do, rather than what we oppose. He said it is important to take steps that are right for where we are in our development, and learn from the experience, in doing social justice work. An insight from late in his presentation was about the need to create a counter-weight to the "gravitational pull" toward white supremacy/racism, by creating social supports that provide a pull toward liberation. That means that we need to build community.
I took a break for a bit to buy his book (Toward Collective Liberation) and sit by myself in the Quaker space until lunch, then participated in an action planning session with fellow Quakes from all over the country.
Some ideas from our Action Planning (which was held in the Quaker group): story telling (self and others); publish about the White Privilege Conference or anti-racist work in local press publications; discussion groups on classic anti-racist texts like The New Jim Crow or the June 2014 Atlantic article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations"; learn from elders on the margins (don't reinvent the wheel - others have done this work for a long time); join in with interfaith dialogues; learn to listen deeply across difference; focus attention on local historical issues, like the Sand Creek massacre for the Boulder Meeting - as local history is not generally taught in schools; create affinity groups, which could be internet-based, to include people from different areas (like the group of us in attendance at this WPC).
Next was the second keynote, with Gyasi Ross: "Native Rules of Racial Standing: Derrick Bell Revisited."
Gyasi summarized the invisible rules for legal standing for African Americans from a classic work, Faces At the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Then Gyasi presented a parallel case for the treatment of Native people in law, media, and society in general, which revealed even starker conditions, including the shocking lack of redress at a recent event where a group of Native children attending a sports event were racially harassed by some white hooligans, and only one individual was charged - and that was with disorderly conduct. The mainstream media didn't pay any attention to the event, which was traumatic in the extreme to these grade-school aged children.
A key point in this presentation was that Native people are frequently not asked to speak for themselves in the media, but have white people speak for them. He also pointed to the assumption that any Native person represents the views of the whole population. Native issues are not of interest to the media; violence against Native people by law enforcement doesn't create the outrage that Black Lives Matter represents; and crimes against Native people are disproportionately caused by non-Natives, compared to similar rates of violent crimes commited against people in other racial groups by those not of their group. These issues are invisible to the mainstream press, and even largely invisible in the social justice movement.
The day ended up with a celebratory dinner, where I was able to hear the story of how Demi and Diggett, friends from my Meeting, met as children and reconnected recently. We also had the presenter from Thursday's afternoon session, Pem Davidson Buck, and a couple of UU activists who had a lively conversation with Diggett about the UU.
Take aways? - the emphasis of the morning's keynote on intersectionality. I am getting a better sense of this concept, and especially how it is the legacy of Black feminists (womanists, in Alice Walker's term). My challenge is making connections between the ideas, my own experience, and work that's needed in the world. I'm not an organizer! I have been calling myself, somewhat disparagingly, an "armchair activist," and of course that includes reflection and writing. That is partly what I'm trying to do here, at least to get started.
I'm at the White Privilege Conference #16 in Louisville - the fourth for me. It's exhausting and invigorating at the same time. There is a good-sized group of Quakers here from all over the U.S., and I am also sharing the experience with an old friend and colleague from my workplace as well as with my newest workplace colleague, who is also my supervisor.
The conference opening ceremony was a drum song blessing and then brief opening statement by a Native American elder. I was moved by this, though feeling, as I often do with these ceremonial openings by Native American leaders, that I'm not sure where to take it - I recognize the spiritual power, but I don't know how much I'm invited in, and how much I'm an onlooker. The fact that the audience applauds at the end of these is jarring to me.
The opening plenary speaker was Loretta Ross, a full-force dynamo with a history of activism and leadership in the women's movement and as program director for an anti-KKK group (Center for Democratic Renewal, which closed down in 2008). I was impressed enough to go to her session later in the day.
Ross's plenary session talk included comments about the construction of white consciousness as connected to a white supremacist agenda which serves only the smallest minority (1%) even of white people. Loretta explained that the ideology holding this worldview together includes rigid categories of identity around gender and sexual expression, and negatively impacts almost everyone in many ways. The main point of her plenary, though, was to provide pointers on how to work and live in a world where the kind of critical consciousness fostered by the WPC is not shared. Where possible, we were enjoined to operate from a loving mode of "calling people in" rather than "calling people out." Her example: don't use the family Thanksgiving dinner to drop an "identity bomb." Also helpful is finding definitions that people can agree to share as a basis of conversation, such as differentiating between prejudice and racism. (We are all prejudiced in many ways, she explained - but racism requires a system of power and privilege.)
Having conversations about racism and white privilege is difficult for white people, she explained, because they don't feel that they are privileged as individuals, or the conversations make them feel stupid, or they feel they will get called out.
The next session was quite lovely, though rather emotional: "Having the Hard Conversation" - which involved a frank and somewhat personal conversation between three WPC veterans and well-known figures in anti-racist work, Heather Hackman, Jamie Washington, and Shakti Butler. I thought my colleague Diane would get a good sense of the passion behind this conference by hearing these three, who did indeed have a hard conversation among the three of them, with the rest of us listening in. We also had a period of small group conversation ourselves, which included the two of us and a Quaker friend from my Meeting, Demi Miller. At the end, two young persons of color shared some very painful stories about recent experiences that were radicalizing for them.
After lunch, we followed up with Loretta Ross's "Manipulating White Anger," which took us through different aspects of a far right agenda for maintaining power through fostering racial and other divides in the country. Much disturbing to me in this session were comments about legislative efforts to push back abortion rights, some that I had no clue were going on - such as a particularly chilling effort to characterize Black women having abortions as perpetuating racial genocide. After an exhausting tour of many forms of bad news, we got to what Ross proposes as a way forward - which is to fully embrace human rights in all their dimensions, which she listed and explained (nine of them). As she talked through these, I recognized how very far we are in our society right now from providing even the most basic of human rights to all people in the country, and I believe this is truly is a matter of priorities - because we are a wealthy enough society that we could afford to do so (including providing a college education for all wthout having students walk out the door 40-90 thousand dollars in debt).
The last session, "So What's Race For, Anyway?" by Pem Davidson Buck, was a fairly formal presentation on the creation of race as a category of human division, covering some of the same historical ground as a keynote and session I went to last year, but adding some information from the field of anthropology. We chose a more academic session as the earlier ones were pretty emotional and draining. Some book titles to follow up with: American Nations by Colin Woodard, and Worked To The Bone: Race, Class, Power and Privilege in Kentucky, by Pem Davidson Buck.
We ate at a Persian restaurant, then were too tired to go to a movie preview, but if I had been able, I would have gone to Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Ruskin. Ruskin worked with Martin Luther King Jr., and organized the march on Washington in 1963. Ruskin was a gay man who was marginalized in the civil rights movement and in the public eye because of his sexual preference. He was also a Quaker, though I don't know if this came up in the film.
I don't know where all of this exposure will take me. Will I start distancing myself from the pain and fear that some of the material raises in me, and start seeking for weaknesses in the analysis? I have a tug back to unconsciousness, as in some ways, it is a particularly painful time: some of the politics going on right now feels like we are turning back the clock on civil rights - voter suppression, erosion of the public good in many areas, education becomng corporatized, thus even more unequal. But one of the hopeful thing about the WPC is that it brings together a fresh crop of young activists, not just the old warriers of my generation. Also, the emphasis is on compassion, not hatred, as fundamental for social change. It's also reassuring to be in the company of the old warriors, who remain vital and full of humor, expressing righteous outrage but not bitterness. We're not done yet, my generation, radicalized in the 1960's and 1970's. It's just a much harder, longer slog than we imagined.
I ran out of time and steam to post anything on Friday, and had to hop in my car and drive back at the end of the Saturday institute I signed up for, so this is a catch-up post covering some highlights from Friday of the WPC15 conference. I have more processing to do and plan to post some additional reflections fairly soon.
First, I should say that the program and other materials posted on the WPC Website provide a much wider sense of research about and individuals doing anti-racism and social justice work than I can capture; my experience was just a small sample.
Friday morning we had the keynote from John A. Powell, a faculty member at Berkeley Law School, and Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at Berkeley. The title of the PowerPoint was "Grammar and Race and Inclusion and a New Self," though the title in the program was something different. It was heady stuff, and difficult to capture in notes. He built on the thesis of the Thursday keynote, where the creation and maintenance of racial difference and racial identity can be tied to economic drivers historically, and he continued the thread by talking about the many ways and dimensions that race operates in contemporary society.
One point he made was that the identity of "white" as we experience it today in the United States is only 50 years old, and was created in part by the erasure of ethnic identities (such as Italian-American or Polish-American) which were maintained previously through neighborhoods and other culture-supporting institutions. The creation of the suburbs led to both a new white identity, and to a hardening of the new white identity especially against Blacks and Latinos.
He also mentioned the role of the "self" created first in the Enlightenment and especially highlighted in Protestantism (alone with God, no mediation), contrasted to the more communal experience of Catholicism, in part, and very much contrasted to the relationship-based self of African or Native American culture. There is also a connection between the Protestantism and the growth of capitalism. (This is a largely male "self," by the way.)
Race, Powell says, is both how we structure our society, and also how we experience our being. While race plays out differently in different social domains (language, social structures, individual identity), race is like air or gravity - we don't recognize it, as it is everywhere. So the task before us isn't so much to interrupt racist behavior, but to transform society at every level.
Because of how deeply woven into the social and personal fabric race is, challenging whiteness leads to "dramatically irrational behavior," such as the Tea Party efforts to shut down government and cause the nation to default.
Powell describes four primary domains in society: public (common good), private, "non-public/non-private" (a domain that is off the maps of general attention or concern), and Corporate, which included government. Now, businesses are claiming the protected rights of individuals in the private domain, and are using these rights to squeeze out actual human interests, pushing more people into the "non-public/non-private" domain - which currently includes disabled, ex-offenders, and non-documented workers, among others.
So, here is how I understand this is all going: psychologically, in terms of brain research, people are able to have empathy and respect for people who are understood to be within their "circle of concern." Corporate and political agendas benefit from reducing solidarity (divide and conquer), so contribute to pushing sectors of society out of the circle of concern of the dominant society (I am assuming by using images in the media). Those images and valuations influence feelings and behavior, largely on an unconscious level - and brain imaging shows that the operations of the unconscious are a much larger proportion of mental processing than Freud thought. Americans are always sizing each other up racially, and this happens instantly, beneath conscious intention, because of the soup of racialized values and images we swim in.
So - to solutions: he calls the approach we need "targeted universalism" - where we want the same good outcome for everyone, but recognize that it may take different strategies to reach the outcome for some. Equality isn't treating everyone the same, because people may need different opportunities based on their social location.
He warns us that we face tremendous anxiety as these structures of social control and meaning-making are shifting - we need to create new relationships.
The afternoon keynote speaker was Joe Feagin: "Racial Justice Efforts: How Social Science Can Help." Dr. Feagin (Ella C. McFadden Professor in sociology at Texas A & M University) has done research on how white people mutually reinforce and perpetuate their own identities as white, and their negative valuation of other racial groups, in part through racist jokes and political cartoons. He showed us a number of rather disturbing politically-based images that are widespread on the internet.
His thesis was that racism isn't a cancer on United States society that can be excised, but is foundational to the nation. Over 200 years of slavery, followed by decades of Jim Crow laws and customs (as well as the terrorism that supported Jim Crow) have deeply marked our society. He pointed out that, "whites have enriched themselves, and unjustly impoverished people of color for centuries."
He describes a "white racial frame," a world-view made up of emotions, racialized images, and narratives. There are two basic features of the white racial frame: the belief in the virtues and superiority of whites and the belief in the inferiority of racialized "others." This plays out in distinctive ways with different sub-groups - but at the heart is the belief of white superiority and virtue that is also the hardest to see. Whites assume that they themselves are the most civilized and virtuous, which leads to a general belief that "I am not a racist" - because that would be not virtuous, even when the individual behaves in a racist manner. There is always an excuse or explanation for the behavior. Some anti-racist activist groups have made use of this white racial frame in research and teaching.
Dr. Feagin showed us images conflating Black people and apes - very old images in our society - and images of Native Americans like the Cleveland mascot "Chief Wahoo," a grinning cartoon-like image. Whites get enjoyment and pleasure out of these images which mock others, and feel no need to consult the groups being mocked, claiming the right and power to say what is appropriate about other groups. In addition to degrading and mocking political cartoons and the cartoon-like mascots, Dr. Feagan showed us commercial material that make use of racialized mockery, such as a t-shirt for a taco restaurant with the line, "how to catch an illegal immigrant," showing a box trap baited by (American-style) tacos. The makers of this image defended themselves when criticism arose. A sports page headline, when the first Chinese NBA basketball team player had a rare bad game, read, "Chink in the Armor" - using a repugnant racist term for the athlete. This also caused a protest.
With another scholar, Leslie Pickett, Dr. Feagan recently published a book about the research they had done with 625 white college students who kept diaries of racist events. They are now working on a book from the perspective of Black students. These white student diaries describe frequent occasions where white young people are together and trade racist jokes, some of them surprising in cruelty. Jokes are traded about Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews. The tellers of the jokes appear to get enjoyment out of using the most extreme imagery possible. The researchers collected thousands and thousands of these diary accounts from over 600 students.
Feagan argues that this activity perpetuates white identity: racializing groups of non-whites using stereotypes and narrative, triggering emotions (pleasure), and leaving the listener with memorable images - this all constitutes teaching and reinforcing the white racial frame.
As discouraging as this picture is, Feagan pointed out that the white racial frame is human-made and learned, so can be unmade and unlearned. Personal action is called for - anti-racist listeners need to interrupt, call out, and act aggressively when racist jokes are made. "Did you learn this joke from the Klan?" - even young white supremacists don't like to be associated with the Klan.
It is also important to present a counter-frame, such as the fairness, liberty and justice frame - activate this frame, because it embarrasses those who perform racist actions, as they like to believe themselves to be virtuous. We need to start early - as white children start learning the "virtuous white" perspective very early. We also need to learn and see white racial frame in our own lives, and reframe with the liberty and justice frame.
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I'll plan to post an additional (after the fact) dispatch in the next days to say more about Daniel Beatty, the wonderful playwright and performer who presented pieces about his own life and struggles on Friday evening, and then the powerful film I went to Reflections Unheard, which presented footage of Black feminists during the civil rights movement combined with the contemporary personal accounts of six Black feminist activists (whom most people have never heard of) who were active in that period.
I'll also describe the Saturday experience of a day-long seminar on "Poverty, Race and Educations" facilitated by three Goddard faculty members, Theressa Lenear, Susan Fleming and Angel Reyes Romero. This turned out to be an unexpectedly insightful opportunity for my own reflection on how very much it matters to me to be seen as knowledgeable and virtuous - which I recognized as being right out of the white racial frame.
Here's a sample of Daniel Beatty's work: "Knock, Knock."
Tonight I had a nice solitary meal in the bar (a bun-less burger with melted blue cheese, baby multi-colored carrots and broccoli, and a small salad), while doing email on my cell phone, then headed for the film showing of The New Black, which was just released in April on DVD. This film won the Best Documentary at the Urbanworld Film Festival and other awards.
The film traced the election contest in Maryland over the rights of GLBT folks to marry, with a focus on African-American gay and lesbian people, and in the context of the organized opposition of many Black churches. I thought the film treated both sides of the divided community with fairness, showing the pain within families, and the pain GLBT folks experience between remaining closeted in a beloved community that rejects who they are, or telling the truth and facing rejection and misunderstanding. The circle discussion that followed went until 10:30, and was one of the most candid and thoughtful I've yet experienced in the WPC.
Well, what you see is what you get. I'm at a point in life where it's not worth the energy to try to maintain illusions - for others or for myself. It looks like some of the some-day-I-will-accomplish-that sorts of things may not come to fruition, but I'm still busy doing work that seems useful, enjoying colleagues and friends, and learning how to do new things with computers. I love it when you comment and introduce yourselves!
