Dear White Friends

It has been brought to my attention that some of my Caucasian friends don’t know if they are a racist or not!  I know just the idea of this post is probably making some of you gasp and the rest of you salivate knowing me as you do.  Well, this editorial will hope to enlighten you that “don’t know” and bring to light to the rest of you what you already know.  Let me be clear, this is not intended to shock or offend you, this is just to educate you, because you just don’t know.  Let me be clear, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..., (insert wink, only if you understand).  So here we go, “Dear White friends”…, 

Take this quiz to LEARN if you are a racist or not.  Don’t be afraid, and please feel free to share it with others who also don’t know who they are.

  You are a racist if:

1. You have Black friends, but they are the “good ones”.

2. You think “those Black guys who the police shot would be alive today if they had only complied with the cops orders”.

3. You don’t want all of those Mexicans in this country.

4. You don’t believe Obama was born in America.

5. You feel that racism ended in America when we elected a Black MAN as President.

6. (Bonus) you think racism got worse in America because of how Obama did everything for only Black people.

7. You think Black people need to “get over it” about slavery.

8. You think Trump was right for saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of the unrest at Charlottesville. 

9. “These Black people who had the police called on them may not have been doing anything wrong, but it is okay for the cops to be called because, well, you never know”.

10. You think “those Black guys in Starbucks should have just bought something”.

11. You see an mixed race couple and think it is “a shame”.

12. You think the Confederate flag and monuments are about heroes and to removes them is un-American.

13. You think Santa Claus IS White and should be portrayed and drawn that way.

14. You have a lot of good Black friends, but you would NEVER date one.

15. You think the NFL players should just shut up and stop kneeling for the flag because it is turning the protest into a racial issue that is dividing the country.

16. Your definition of “Make America Great Again” is to roll things back to when “all the good jobs went to all the right people”.

17. (In lieu of the Roseanne situation) You think ABC was unfair to fire Roseanne Barr based on just a tweet.

18. Now, this was just a quiz.  How did you do?  Do you think you could do better if this quiz was “more fair?”  (That was a trick quiz question)

Look, racism is a hard discussion in this country, and there are some sincere folks on all sides that want to make things better but harbor racist ideas themselves.  Heck, I myself feel some kinda way, based on some certain situations.  I ain’t proud of it, but I work hard at trying to be a better me, every single day.  But if you don’t want things to be better between all races in this country or you think that you and your “people” are better than “those people”, you will never live in a better America, you just want to live in your own version of it.  But as I said, it is a hard discussion, but it IS a discussion that we need to have if we are going to make things better.  Discussion is part of what makes America’s Democracy the envy of the world, we need to embrace that factor and stop retiring to our own silos and complaining about how bad things are.  Democracy was not created in America, it has just been defined here better than anywhere else.  But Democracy is not the exclusive property of some people; the Constitution was not meant for SOME of the People.  It is said that slavery is America’s “original sin”, but it is not.  The “original sin” of this nation was to steal land from, subjugate, and relocate the indigenous peoples of this land and to this day, keep them from achieving socio-economic equality here.  Racism does not mean you have feelings of superiority against just Black people.   It means you feel that regardless of who anyone else is or does or how they treat you, YOU always know that “they” should not have more than you and you will work to do whatever you can to keep perpetuating that belief.
Let me let you in on a little secret, we are ALL in this together, ain’t not a one of us getting out of it alive.  We might as well love, respect, and get along with each other because hating someone else just gives you a reason to make your life poorer for the few minutes you have left.
Oh, and as for scoring the test; how many do you have to “get right” to be a racist?  ONE!

As my good friend used to say: America is a tough town, you snooze you lose, you can’t get everything you want, sometimes you can’t get nuthin’, but you can ALWAYS get somethin’, whether you want it or not!

Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way…,

First of all, let me start by saying, I dedicate THIS work to my beloved grandmother that I lost last July.  Her hand is always on my shoulder.

My Grandmother LOVED little babies, let me repeat, she LOVED little babies.  It didn’t matter if they were Black, Brown, Yellow, White, Green or Blue, she LOVED ALL babies.  (though I know for a FACT, she had an issue with people of ORANGE hue)

From her I learned that babies are our future; teach them well and let them lead the way.

In 2012, right before Christmas, a deranged young man with a gun walked into an elementary school and killed 20 babies, children between 6 and 7 years old.  This deeply disturbed her and deeply touched me.  There can be nothing more innocent in THIS world than a baby going to school to try and learn.  We as parents and those who are educators can’t be more thrown than to think about our children, our charges from God, to be massacred in their classrooms, where we sent them, to learn, and to be SAFE.  But this deranged young man stole innocence from this world on that day, and to double down on the insanity of that act, there are people in this country who refused to believe this event was real, and worse yet, there are those who personally profit from keeping you from feeling what my grandmother felt, what I felt, what I hope YOU felt, when those innocent souls violently transitioned from this life. As you sit there shaking your heads feeling the transactional pain from that memory, allow me to tell you at that very moment when the totality of that event was tallied, I doubted the existence of a God.  How could God allow something like that to happen?  Well I regained my Faith and know that not only is there a God, but there is a Heaven and in that kingdom my ancestors are there now (most of them) looking down on me and keeping me steadfast in my beliefs.  But if you believe in God, you should also believe in the Devil.  The Devil is just as real y’all.  He is real and though it may seem like it, he does not live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC.  That man is NOT the Devil, he is just a puppet of Satan.

In THIS country, Satan is not A person, he is the manifestation of all evil that is the American gun lobby, the NRA.  When in December of 2012 those minions of Satan stood fast and tried to tell you that that massacre didn’t happen and there was no need to try and make it harder for any deranged person or PERSONS to get their hands on weapons of mass murder and the ammo to make them deadly, they convinced ME, that this country, this land that I love, this "country Tis Of THEE", didn’t care about babies.

Babies who are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way, was a song verse, not a way of truth in this country.

In February of THIS year, on Valentine’s Day, in Parkland, Florida, another deranged young man with a weapon of mass destruction, walked into the High School he once attended, and shot and killed his former classmates and teachers and once again, we were told, there is nothing that can be done.  Gun rights trump (marinate on that word) TRUMP…, the rights of babies to go to school and be safe.  I once again shook my head and said to myself, when is enough going to be enough?  Thank God my grandmother wasn’t around to once again fret over another of these tragedies.  Politicians pontificated, pundits bloviated, families lamented, the media salivated, and we all once again, prepared for the next tragedy to happen.  But guess what?

Children ARE OUR future, seems we DID teach them well and now they are leading the way!

How many of us, myself included, have seen things happen in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in the malls, and lamented, “these kids today, Geez, what will our future be like with THIS coming generation taking over.  You see, WE are the future OUR forbearers expected to make changes happen, and to some degree, we have done major things.  But we have also FAILED them because we did NOT prepare the next generation to make things better…., OR DIDN’T we??  The term “It Takes a Village” has fallen away as social media has made everyone LESS social.  Ready made meal restaurants have made family meal time less family oriented.  And we have all, to some degree, abdicated the responsibility to, “teach them well, and let them lead the way!  But human nature is at it’s core, NATURE, and as the man said in the movie Jurassic Park; “Nature will find a way”.

Social media and all of its evils, has been utilized by THIS group of babies to create a movement, a powerful movement that reached not only across this nation, but around the WORLD and called upon caring adults to join with them and show the minions of Satan and the fool in The White House, (who left town) that they will not die away quietly THIS TIME, they will not go quietly into that good night!  THESE babies, this group of children who were 10 and 11 years old when Sandy Hook happened, and some of them who were not yet BORN, stepped into the Light and yelled out from the podiums and platforms at marches and rallies, WE WILL BE THE CHANGE THAT YOU REFUSE TO MAKE YOURSELVES!  An estimated 800,000 people marched on Washington, DC.  Over 200 more rallies and marches were held all over this world on that day.  The streets of Boston looked as crowded as they do on any Patriot’s Day for the marathon.  The reality was, MILLIONS of voters and immediate future voters came out to support this very just cause.  Those numbers and this movement cannot be dismissed nor ignored.  I could not have been more proud, (until I found out that my own son was in DC for the march, refusing to be another tragedy of these times ) than to see on MOST networks that the world is now going to HAVE TO TAKE NOTICE.  My heart welled with pride and my resolve was strengthened because THESE BABIES, THESE offspring of our efforts, THIS representation of the future to come;

IS NOW TEACHING US WELL, AND SHOWING US HOW THEY WILL LEAD THE WAY!