Among the many not so funny April Fools “news” stories circulating in Milwaukee today, two were especially telling. One said that the Mitchell Park Conservatory, something of a landmark that has been closed due to four hundred million dollars of deferred maintenance being needed, would be rebuilt with Lego blocks. It’s supposed to be funny,…
Bill Cosby is a douchebag. When the allegations against Cosby first surfaced, and again lately, I have seen people trying to say that the prosecution and (in their twisted minds) persecution are all because he is black. The wife of a former friend identified me as “part of the problem” when I posted a version…
It’s just a snapshot, really. A school bus painted white and pulling out of a Speedway gas station in Lafayette, IN. The print on the side of the bus indicated it was from a “labor company” somewhere in Florida. The front windshield of the bus was loaded with bags of chips and other snacks, the…
It’s funny how we see racism in others but not in ourselves. Last night I listened to a woman who self-identified as being from an historically oppressed ethnicity recite a litany of people who don’t like “us.” She said, “The Asians don’t like us, the Mexicans don’t like us, the Arabs don’t like us, the…
According to current neurobiological research at Stanford University, among other places, our ability to feel compassion for the other is dramatically reduced when we perceive the other as a member of an out group, in other words as inherently different from us. This is an evolutionary development that goes back to the time when humans…
The problem with most “official” anti-racism work is two-fold. The first problem is that it is a part of and supported by institutional academia, which means that there are a lot of people and places with a vested interest in the work continuing – in other words, in the problem not being resolved any time…
Tribalism, which can be defined as “the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group,” is an ongoing problem in our society – and I am beginning to think it is more deeply rooted than I had imagined. Of course, there are the obvious and blatant examples of…
