tabula|rasa: Archive

why?

how come the people we love, don’t seem to love us back? i don’t understand that. sometimes people don’t see eye to eye—most people don’t. but that’s no excuse to give up on others—or on your relationship with them—because conflict is inevitable. it’s not something to be feared or acquiesced to; it’s something to be met head on—confronted respectfully and honestly.

how people give up on the ones they so-called “love” is beyond me. it that really love? is that togetherness? (what about “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”)

i won’t always be in your corner on certain issues and you won’t always be in mine—that’s ok! it really is! when did we get to the point as people where we decreed that we all must be on one accord in order to live? difference, conflict have always been with us. sometimes they yield revolutions and progress and sometimes they don’t.

but the bigger point is they are apart of the human experience—for good or for bad. my thing is, i want us to talk—or dispute if need be—i don’t want us to conform to each others’ perceptions. we can be different and coexist. we can see some things differently and love each other all the same.

at least that’s what I thought we could…

Dec 28, 20112 notes

why?

Dec 28, 2011

“Humility is the fruit of inner security and wise maturity.” —Dr. Cornel West, Race Matters, Chapter 3, “The Crisis of Black Leasership”

Dec 27, 2011

“Our first reaction may be quite uncritical, quite unthinking: “What a good idea!” or “That’s outrageous!” But critical thinking requires us to reflect further, trying to support our position and also trying to see the other side. One can almost say that the heart of critical thinking is a willingness to face objections to one’s own beliefs, a willingness to adopt a skeptical attitude not only toward authority and toward views opposed to our own but also toward common sense - that is, toward the views that seem obviously right to us. If we assume we have a monopoly on the truth and we dismiss as bigots those who oppose us, or if we say our opponents are acting merely out of self-interest and we do not in fact analyze their views, we are being critical but we are not engaged in critical thinking.” —From Critical Thinking to Argument: A Portable Guide by Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau

Dec 24, 20111 note

Dec 21, 20114,575 notes

“… for we must remember that humanity, kindness and the fear of the Lord, does not consist of protecting devils… Are God and Mammon in league? What has the Lord to do with a gang of desperate wretches, who go sneaking about the country like robbers-light upon his people wherever they can get a chance, binding them with chains and hand-cuffs, beat and murder them as they would rattle-snakes?” —David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829

Dec 21, 2011

“Ignorance, my brethren, is a mist, low down into the very dark and almost impenetrable abyss in which, our fathers for many centuries have been plunged.” —David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829 (Article II, Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance)

Dec 20, 20111 note

Dec 20, 20114 notes

“I saw a paragraph, a few years since, in a South Caorlina paper, which, speaking of the barbarity of the Turks, it said: “The Turks are the most barbarous people in the world-they treat the Greeks more like ‘brutes’ than human beings.” And in the same paper was an advertisement, which said: “Eight well built Virginia and Maryland Negro fellows and four wenches will positively be sold this day, to the highest bidder!” And what astonished me still more was, to see in this same ‘humane’ paper ! ! the cuts of three men, with clubs and budgets on their backs, and an advertisement offering a considerable sum of money for their apprehension and delivery. I declare, it is really so amusing to hear Southerners and Westerners of this country talk about barbarity, that it is positively, enough to make a man smile.” —David Walker, Appeal to the Citizens of the World, 1829

Dec 20, 2011

“The man who would not fight under our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in the glorious and heavenly cause of freedom and of God-to be delivered from the most wretched, abject and servile slavery, that ever a people was afflicted with since the foundation of the world, to the present day-ought to be kept with all of his children or family, in slavery, or in chains, to be butchered by his cruel enemies.” —David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829

Dec 20, 2011

Dec 15, 20116 notes

#Cornel West #Martin Luther King Jr #Michael Sandel #David Walker

“…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white…

Dec 15, 2011263 notes

American Meritocracy: The Noxious Narrative

I don’t believe in meritocracy because it presupposes so much: equal access, opportunity, resources & that pure “hard work” will get you there. That’s not the case. America can drone on all it wants about being a meritocracy, but history bears out systems of oppression, privilege and inequality. The idea of a meritocracy may seem appealing; the theory of it is enticing, but America isn’t an exemplar of the paradigm—at best it’s a tenuous, fragile, weak meritocracy.

Dec 10, 201118 notes

#America #society #hard work #meritocracy #history

no where near there yet...

such an inchoate, sentient being I am with respect to what I believe and think and know and understand. I’m a young pup trying to find his way.

Dec 3, 2011

Play

Dec 2, 2011

#communication #race relations #race talk #imperfection #ideas #TED Talk #Tedx

tabula|rasa

December 2011

15 posts