37days

A is for advocate

We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written. –Robert Gould Shaw, abolitionist

In 2008, I will be a better advocate for those who need—and want—my advocacy.

Long ago on a faraway planet, I once worked in an organization where I sat through a management meeting every Monday. Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell no longer scares me. Been there. No, actually, it wasn’t that bad. I learned a lot. But sometimes…

One memorable Monday morning, the debate centered on what kinds of notices employees could—and, more importantly, COULD NOT—put on the employee bulletin board in the break room. Nothing sparks a good week at work like legislating the behavior of people you presumably trust enough to represent your organization on CNN to the entire universe, to spend the organization’s money by the thousands, and to write your news releases. Just can't trust 'em with that employee bulletin board, no-sirree-bob.

The debate centered on the appearance of a notice about a gay-friendly picnic that was being held the next month. Up to this point, all had been right with the world, what with all the notices for yard sales and pet sitters and used bikes, until the “gay” word appeared. Add “picnic” and presumably the world as we know it is ending.

I listened incredulously as my peers debated for more than an hour whether this, in fact, was an appropriate use of the employee bulletin board. Hmmm…let’s see. An employee put the notice on the employee bulletin board about something that obviously meant a great deal to the employee. I’m not sure how many more times we can use the word employee in that equation.

One vice president in particular was agitated by the very idea. The debate raged on: “What if?” and “What if?” and “What if?” as I thought to myself, “Man, what if I get hit by a bus on the way home. I’m gonna be really pissed that I spent my last two hours on earth like this.” “What if a picnic is just a picnic,” I thought, continuing my internal reverie. “And what if gay people are as fully human as you are?” I screamed inside my head.

“What if this is just a way to recruit people to be gay?” I heard him say loudly and angrily. “I guess if the KKK wanted to put up a recruitment poster or a notice for a march, we’d let them, too!”

I fell out of my chair. My eyeballs popped out of their sockets. I lunged for his throat.

H is for human rights

Most people, no doubt, when they espouse human rights, make their own mental reservations about the proper application of the word ‘human.’ –Suzanne LaFollette

In 2008, I will fight for the rights of human beings I see being dismissed and excluded and not listened to. And killed for who they are.

And I will remember that H is for human rights. Not white, middle upper class, straight, fine brick home rights, but human rights.

Not different-but-enough-like-me-that-I-feel-comfortable rights, but human rights.

Not multicolored-but-white-inside rights, but human rights.

I will believe in equality, not just with my superiors—which is easy—but with those people I judge as inferior to me. I will believe in equality, not just with people who agree with me--which is easy--but with people who don't agree with me--which is more difficult.

I will remember that it takes action to ensure the human rights of others, not weariness, and not just talk. That it takes being for something, and not just being against something.

And I will remember that being neutral isn’t. As Paulo Freire reminds us, “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

I was delighted to hear a college professor of mine, Jerry Caris Godard, speak this past Sunday. What a joy to reconnect after these many years out of school, to come to know former professors as adults, each of us grey-haired now. His topic was William Blake; he offered ten “angles of vision” into his “passionate entanglement” with Blake. It was number eight, among others, that caught my eye: “As my lifelong openness to others is amplified, I recognize (more explicitly than Blake) that ardent advocacy of gender equality is a necessary but not sufficient condition to set sexism aside!”

“So too,” he remarked, “with racism.”

It is not enough to want something.

It is not enough to want a portion of something. As Desmond Tutu said, “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”

And it is not enough to look away from what is right in front of us, as Carl Rowan reminds us: “It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.”

Intentions: Let’s start here. Now. Consider yourself part of the solution. Grant specificity and humanity to the Other.

From the last alphabet challenge: H is for horse

Read this book...

Thanks to everyone for diversity book club suggestions - you are helping to create an amazing list. Keep those suggestions coming...

The first book we're reading for our April meeting is "The Time of Our Singing" by Richard Powers. My philosophy professor from way back in my days at Guilford College recommended it - thanks, Jonathan!

Called "one of the best novels written about race in America," I am halfway through it now and it is going on my "books I wish I had written" list. The 4-page fictional account of Emmett Till's murder alone is one of the most insightful, amazing passages I've ever read. Take this for example:

"His crime swells past rape, worst than murder. It spits in the face of creation. What the whites must do, they do--no rage to their motion, no hysteria, no lesson. They exterminate by deep reflex--a flinch that comes before even self-defense. They put a bullet through the fourteen-year-old's brain, as they might kill a rabid animal. A desperate protection, the safeguard of their kind."

"They exterminate by deep reflex--a flinch that comes before even self-defense." Richard Powers is a masterful, smart writer - the Chicago Tribune calls this book "a bold and vibrant set of variations on the themes of music, race, and time." The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that "this is a novel God might relish and call enriching. Powers' heart-cry should win big prizes." The Christian Science Monitor wrote, "the best black novel to appear in America since Beloved has just been written by a white man."

"The power of music in its relation to a racially divided family and culture is dramatized with unprecedented brilliance in this panoramic novel..." "Massive and dazzling...." "Opens up a universe of thought and makes you hear the legendary music of the spheres...."

At 631 pages, it's not a wee tidbit of a book. As one book club member wrote: "I checked out Richard Powers’ book today. I want to thank you for choosing the largest novel in the library. I had to have help from one of the librarians to carry it to the car!"

"Wisdom," I wrote him back, "takes work."

Remember the green book

“Far away is only far away if you don't go there.” -O. Povo

When my friend Gay tells a story, it comes out like a hot knife through rich butter—all soft, fluid, full, with a drawl that makes you want to move to Mississippi and listen to a big bearded man in a scratchy green sweater read Faulkner out loud to you in a hot room where dust motes float heavy in the air when the faded velvet curtains dare to part ever so slightly against the hot white day.

That’s just to say that the woman can tell a story.

And here’s a childhood remembering of hers that left an image I won’t soon forget.

Replace "they" with "we" with "I"

We all believe in equality, as long as it is equality with our superiors.

What is the tipping point?

I’ve long been fascinated by the fact that our Social Contract works—that people stop at four-way stop signs and allow the person to their right to move first, creating a sweet dance of understanding and civility. By the fact that social anarchy doesn’t occur more often at Labor Day Sales, by the fact that people generally queue in straight lines and take turns to buy their Big Macs, that we muster the wherewithal to tell people when they have spinach stuck between their teeth, and that we are a nation of givers and volunteers.

Follow the disturbance

“Put down your clever,
Let your partner affect you:
Tenets of Improv”

-- review of Keith Johnstone’s Impro on HaikuBookReviews

I recently had an interesting experience that revealed to me a big truth, a Big Truth, that is, in capital letters. It was an encounter with a client.

My business partner, David, and I were working with the senior team of an organization and our focus was diversity in their workplace, a conversation I have facilitated many times for other groups. But never in my experience has the dialogue gone so deep and been so real and raw, so honest and so true, so close to a point of real change.

Be outraged by your own racism

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” --Elie Wiesel

When my oldest daughter was in the first grade, she stopped me cold with just 16 words. “Mom,” she said as we stopped at a traffic light near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, where we lived. "Why do you always lock the doors when a black man comes toward our car?"