Comments on Bahá’í Thought: Black Power Comes From God

Welcome back Barney, it has been a long time and y...

2007-05-03T09:24:00.000-03:00

Welcome back Barney, it has been a long time and you've been missed. Thanks for the encouragement. It always feels good. I too am so grateful to Baha'u'llah for the Guidance He has provided to humanity.

Sorry to be late on this one, Philippe, but my min...

2007-05-03T07:40:00.000-03:00

Sorry to be late on this one, Philippe, but my mind has been elsewhere for a time.

I really like what you've written in this blog - and in your previous posts about the Imus affair. Clearly what Baha'u'llah says provides us with a clear guide on this (as in other matters).

That's for sure. Wish I had time for two blogging ...

2007-04-18T18:29:00.000-03:00

That's for sure. Wish I had time for two blogging lives. It would be interesting to have a forum to invite people to share experiences along these lines. It mostly goes unexpressed - both the more subtle forms of negativity that people may hang onto as well as times when that gets broken through.

Thanks Paul. It's hard to know when we interact wi...

2007-04-17T11:08:00.000-03:00

Thanks Paul. It's hard to know when we interact with folks if they are really relating to us or whatever image they have in their heads about us. This happens on both sides of the color line.

PHILLIPE: Thanks for really hearing me. In the med...

2007-04-17T10:44:00.000-03:00

PHILLIPE: Thanks for really hearing me. In the media, seems like you often hear statements along the lines of "this country needs to have a conversation about race" but it hardly ever happens - especially among different racial and ethnic groups, which it seems to me is where it may most need to happen.

Yeah, I honestly don't get why my family was so good that way, because it's screwed up in so many other respects, lol! Statistics I guess! But I'm very glad of it. It's been constructive. I especially remember an experience one year with an African American fifth grader.

My last setting before becoming too disabled to work was a highly diverse neighborhood school - people from literally around the world. As a white person, I noticed it was pretty common for African Americans to be a bit reserved at first until they got to know me. But R's mom remained aloof throughout the 2 or 3 years of our acquaintance. I did what I always do with parents - said hi if I ran into her, tried to chat if there was time and to give her a chance to bring up any matter with R that she might want to. But she'd never greet me first and communication was minimal. So it was clear there was a problem on her end.

Still, she did give permission for me to meet with R, who had some behavior problems and whose dad was out of the picture. She didn't have to do that.

One time around MLK day King's name came up and I happened to mention to R that he'd been my major childhood hero.

R looked at me: "But you're white!"

I wish I could remember exactly what I said to him then, but afterward I clearly remember thinking it was just right. It was some brief acknowledgment like "Yep" followed by a slight pause. Then the conversation naturally picked up on some other topic we'd been discussing. In effect I was responding to his "Big deal! Amazing!" with "No big deal."

Really felt that this was a "teachable moment" for him. It felt to me that after this he started to literally see me differently.

Liz, Liz, Liz. Where yah been? It's nice to have y...

2007-04-16T06:59:00.000-03:00

Liz, Liz, Liz. Where yah been? It's nice to have you back and thanks for your thoughts. We shall see how the spirit moves this process forward post Imus. Druzelle, good points, it's true in our culture that people sometimes do the right thing for the wrong reasons. As a deeper consciousness of the oneness of humanity takes hold in our society, this will hopefully change. God willing. Bless our hearts, we are trying as imperfect as we are to find our way toward the light. If this little blog can offer any help in that direction, I will be quite pleased. Thanks Druzelle for commenting. I guess I discovered the secret of getting people to comment, just say Imus a couple of times and the keyboards just get fired up!

Thank you, Phillipe, for this and the last post. A...

2007-04-15T16:46:00.000-03:00

Thank you, Phillipe, for this and the last post. As a writer and lover of language,I appreciate that fact that words convey spirit, and learning to choose words with attention to spirit as well as thought in our conversations, whether we talk or write, in formal or informal situations, is a mark of maturity. What we often have operating in the language of our current culture is an adolesent attitude in the worst sense, that total self-centeredness.
As for Imus and MSNBC, what I think as a white person is that Imus in one sense is a scape-goat. Not that he did not get what he deserved. But intersting that MSNBC did not do anything until advertisers started pulling out. What message do you think Imus has been getting all along, even with earler gaffs? As long as he pulled in the money, he was ok, and he knew it, until this one. Imus is a relatively small cog in the larger wheel here. What I really want to see is the kind of transformation in which the corporations pay as much attention to the spirit of the language as to the adverstising money. What I would have preferred to see, for example, is MSNBC taking action at once, before the advertisers forced them to pay attention.
-- Druzelle

Hi Phillipe,It's been a bit since I came by to say...

2007-04-14T13:28:00.000-03:00

Hi Phillipe,
It's been a bit since I came by to say hello, but I'm glad I did. I appreciate your thoughts and I do think we are made of stronger stuff. I've certainly had worse said to me, to my face. Although I have always known that the insults thrown my way are not who I am because that's not who God says I am, it does make me think how perhaps I harden my heart a bit to the insults of the world so that I don't get pyschologically impacted by it (or would like to think I don't). When I first heard what Don Imus said, I did think, "Well, isn't this what he's paid to do all the time? It's not the first time, won't be the last." I did not take it personally or think it was about me. But, I know that other people think it's about me and then will interact with me accordingly.

In any case, I hope all the thoughts and emotions this has sparked over the past week are carried forward instead of replaced by more celebrity gossip stories. We certainly don't need more of that!

dear phillipe, your writing is fantastic. i find ...

2007-04-14T06:50:00.000-03:00

dear phillipe,

your writing is fantastic. i find myself savouring every word.

i was just about to leave for Bahji, but i came across this and thought it apropos to share:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikhaela/458385022/in/photostream/

love from leila

(the girl who may have accidentally deleted her blog)

Welcome to the discussion Paul. If you're experien...

2007-04-14T06:06:00.000-03:00

Welcome to the discussion Paul. If you're experience growing up is the way that you've described it, you are richly blessed. There has actually been a long tradition of white Americans who "got it" regarding race, especially in New England which is story that must be told. You're right that this is an issue of a lack of consciousness that humanity is really a single people with a common origin and a common future. We are all in this together and have to share this little planet so we'd better start learning to relate to each other in more effective ways. This includes the way that we talk to and about each other. Just as you may be making an effort as a "brother of another color" to be empathic towards the experiences of blacks or other minorities, I have my own learning curves around difference. Really, we all do. Thanks for your thoughts, please share some more.

That's true - I think clowns like Imus need to be ...

2007-04-13T23:25:00.000-03:00

That's true - I think clowns like Imus need to be kept in perspective. And I like to think they're swimming against the tide. Demographically they sure are.

"Us" white folks better start playing nice soon! I say "us" because, to digress a bit, I guess it's different, in a lot of ways, being white. If you're lucky enough to have been brought up by a non-racist family you really don't "get" racism at a gut level. If you're a minority, you take it in the gut, so I'm sure virtually any black person "gets it" emotionally and unpleasantly.

I know that's often seen as "being in denial" - the idea of not feeling any racism - and that racism is somehow supposed to be natural.

All I can say is that to the best of my awareness it has to be learned or I'm a member of some different species than the human one. As a grade school kid in the sixties living in New Hampshire, where at that time the non-white population must have been like two people, I totally identified with the movement. MLK was a major influence on my development - a hero figure.

Much as plenty of my immediate and extended family had flaws, including some deep ones, bigotry didn't happen to be one of them. I don't know how statistically rare this is, but as a kid growing up, I literally didn't hear a single racial, religious, or ethnic slur from anyone in any generation on either side of my family. So the whole concept of bigotry never made sense, not emotionally and not intellectually.

I'm actually pretty sure I can't be the only white person with this background, even if I may be in a "minority."

A "brother of another color" -
- Paul

PS: Gotta say I do have a clue now, as a severely disabled person, what it's like to be on the receiving end. Imo, all this stuff - racism, sexism, homophobia, jingoism, etc. - represents variations on one theme: dehumanizing other people. Seeing other people as if they're less than fully human.

Pardon me for my droppings, but I just got the mos...

2007-04-13T18:52:00.000-03:00

Pardon me for my droppings, but I just got the most recent post from www.edgeofsports.com , the writer Dave Zirin. He's been indignant about the Imus thing, and he is often a little immoderate in his positions, but I enjoy him. His piece on Imus's firing makes some emotionally resonant points, and I thought your readers might be interested. And you, Mr. C!

Thanks for commenting Jay. It's good to know that ...

2007-04-13T18:39:00.000-03:00

Thanks for commenting Jay. It's good to know that someone out there also thinks that Black folk are made of tougher stuff than we're being portrayed in the media right now.

Sorry, just one more thing, or two. It was Tommie ...

2007-04-13T16:26:00.000-03:00

Sorry, just one more thing, or two. It was Tommie Smith who won the gold in '68. I wrote on my site recently about the third guy on the 200 metre podium, an Aussie who was quietly very supportive of his two fellow athletes. (I got the story from the American sports/activism writer Dave Zirin.) It's the most recent post in my 'Sports' section.

Philippe, you are bringing it strong here. There...

2007-04-13T16:21:00.000-03:00

Philippe, you are bringing it strong here. There was, if my hearing only a bit of it hasn't messed me up, an interview on jock radio today where the (black) columnist Jason Whitlock expressed some of the same reservations about the "deep hurt" felt by these women. (Mind you, they are young, but I expect they've been through harder from sources they care more about!)