Here is a wonderful post from Laeli at Force of Nature for Canada Day. Please click on the link below to read her family’s story. O Canada! Our home ON NATIVE LAND! Oh, those aren’t the true lyrics but those are the lyrics I sing and will continue to sing until life gets 100% better […]
I remember some of the names of my high school classmates. Sylvia Coulson, Jane Cripps, Janice Butler, Valerie Russell, Penny Lewis, Peter Blackwell, and many more. My memory gets worse every day, but today I remembered one person who changed my perceptions. Her name was Penny Haag and she joined my class when I was […]
After walking for about an hour today, I decided to take a break by sitting in the outdoor seating area of a downtown San Jose coffee shop that is on a pedestrian walkway. As I turned into Paseo de San Antonio, two people with clipboards beckoned me to them. One said, “Fight racism through hip-hop.” […]
Those white supremacists who fear that they are losing their place at the top of the social heap just proved to the world how their place is still safe. They can do things and say things in a public setting that no person of colour could ever imagine doing without going to jail. That is […]
Talking About Giving Deciding how to contribute to charity has become really complicated. I used to just put a dollar or two into the cups of panhandlers in winter, buskers in summer, and the Salvation Army bell-ringers at Christmas-time. Then I joined a church whose members tithed, so I learned to give ten percent of […]
Last month I was sitting on a bus stop bench waiting for a bus when someone drove by and yelled “Racist! Racist! Racist!” At least, I think that’s what he said, but I can’t be sure as the sound was mixed in with other traffic noises. At first, I felt just confused, then annoyed, then […]
I am too tired even to reply to my roommate’s astonishment that I am awake at 7:30 in the morning. She had greeted me briefly after she came home from work yesterday, just before she asked me to put her laundry in the dryer and went out to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Actually, I didn’t expect her […]
I have just finished reading the very moving and beautifully written Letter to My Son by Ta-Nihisi Coates in The Atlantic. (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/tanehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me/397619/). It is a raging love letter, and a complex acceptance of disquieting truths about racism in America. I won’t try to paraphrase it because I would not do it justice, but I do […]
I have a friend who refers to people by their racial characteristics. She does this frequently, sometimes after saying “I’m not racist, but…” In many ways she is not racist. She has friends and romantic partners from various ethnic backgrounds, and she appreciates all their good personal qualities. Yet, she persists in identifying them by […]
Snowbird of Paradise 