Categories
Category: Values
Categories
Float like a …
Me, they can kill.
You, they own.
– Papillon (Steve McQueen, 1973)
Dammit, Stand Up …
Keep your temper,
Hold your head together, and
Keep going forward.
– John Thompson, Jr. (giving credit to the counsel of Dave Gavitt, during his Basketball Hall Of Fame Acceptance Speech, 1999)
Categories
The Fight
to love we must survive
to survive WE MUST FIGHT
to fight we must love
– Posy Lombard
P.S. It seems as though ESPN, in its wisdom, has chosen to take down the image that was previously posted above. So …
I have chosen to post this new image here, as a replacement.
Hopefully, you will take the time required to read the entire original article which, I believe, is still available here.
If you are looking for some inspiration in your own life, right now, it is well worth it!
The way to eliminate Racism is to eliminate Racial categories.
– Teja Arboleda, MEd.
Amen.
To this point in human existence, many People have a limited understanding of Colour.
This includes understanding what Colour is and what Colour is not.
How many Colours are you able to see in each of these three diagrams?
In light of this experience, each of these other topics is important, as well:
Colour is a function of the human visual system.
Colour is not an intrinsic property.
Objects do not have a colour.
Objects give off visible light which appears to be a distinctive colour.
Within the spectrum of visible light Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple (or Violet), Magenta, and Cyan all represent a distinctive colour.
Black, White, and Brown, also, each represent a distinctive colour.
Black is the absence of all visible light.
White is the presence of all visible light.
Brown is a combination of Red, Blue, and Yellow.
Colour is simply a perceived quality of visible light.
Culture is a function of the human social system.
Culture is not an intrinsic property.
Culture is not an object.
Culture does not give off visible light which appears to be a distinctive colour.
Culture is not Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple (or Violet), Magenta, Cyan, Black, White, or Brown.
Culture encompasses social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the Language, knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of People in these groups.
Language is a social construct.
Language is not an intrinsic property.
Language is not an object.
Language does not give off visible light which appears to be a distinctive colour.
Language is not Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple (or Violet), Magenta, Cyan, Black, White, or Brown.
Language is what People use to communicate.
People are a distinctive combination of individuals with a shared Culture.
People are not objects.
People do not give off visible light which appears to be a distinctive colour.
People are not Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple (or Violet), Magenta, or Cyan.
People are not Black.
Black is not a Culture.
Black is not a Language.
Black is simply a distinctive colour.
People are not White.
White is not a Culture.
White is not a Language.
White is simply a distinctive colour.
People are not Brown.
Brown is not a Culture.
Brown is not a Language.
Brown is simply a distinctive colour.
People are not simple. People are complex.
People create culture with their language choices.
The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here,” his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the “final word,” the precise “summing up,” acknowledging their “poor power to add or detract,” his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns. It is the deference that moves her, that recognition that language can never live up to life once and for all. Nor should it. Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable.
Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction.
“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
– Juneteenth (June 19, 1865)