One of the realities of racial prejudice is that it inflicts real pain on real people—often people who are hiding the pain: the woman who cares for your kids or cleans your house, or the man or woman who cooks the food you eat in a restaurant or who processes the food you eat in a processing plant nearby.
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Economic Bust, Schools, and Civil Rights Buildings crumble. Teacher pay hovers at the bottom rung of the pay scale ladder. The public school system in America has long needed an overhaul. With the economy tanking, most schools will face very real and sizable budget cuts. Recession spells disaster for the public school system in the [...]
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Posted in Arts, Culture, Uncategorized on Mar 9th, 2009
I live downtown in a mid-size East coast city. Within a radius of two blocks of my house are five museums, six churches, a library, a soup kitchen, and three homeless shelters. Demographically speaking, we inner-city dwellers are the “risk-oblivious”…artists and homosexuals mostly, who gentrify a difficult area. Mixed in, of course, with the homeless [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 6th, 2009
Maine is the whitest state in the Nation. And I live in Northern Maine. Let me put it to you this way; if Maine was a soft-serve ice cream cone, it would be vanilla, and we’d be the dippy-do curl on the top. I’m not even sure if we have a racism issue here. An [...]
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Posted in Culture, Racism, Religion on Mar 6th, 2009
Planning on attending the U.N. conference on racism in Switzerland next month? Not anymore, at least not if you’re a member of the Italian, Canadian, Israeli, or possibly even American delegations. Why not? Is it because these countries are, in fact, racist nations and don’t want to participate? No. It’s because religion has worked it’s [...]
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 5th, 2009
As a kid, I swam, fished and floated my summers away on a lake in Northern Wisconsin. The cabin was nothing fancy, but then we didn’t spend much time inside anyway. Our home was on the water. Our little speedboat was just big enough to fit the family and a couple of friends. My brothers [...]
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Posted in Mexico on Mar 5th, 2009
Music is said to be a universal language. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is known for putting on a show during twenty days assembling some of the best legendary entertainers to large sell out crowds. Every year Hispanics look forward to “Go Tejano Day” for the performance of the Charros, (Mexican cowboys) Mariachi groups, and Tejano music. The 2008 Rodeo Houston management though handed Hispanics one big bum steer. NO TEJANO MUSIC!
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Posted in Relationships on Mar 4th, 2009
-A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 4th, 2009
I was listening recently to an interview with Reverand Gardner C. Taylor, “the dean of American preaching”, mentor and advisor to Martin Luther King. He said that Dr. King was the only ” spiritual genius ” this country has produced. A striking statement. First because undoubtedly true, second because of the juxtaposition of two seemingly [...]
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Exline Park by R. C. Hickman (1955) From the R. C. Hickman Photographic Archive at the Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin I’m giving you really short notice, as this show will only be up until Sunday, March 8. But if you’re anywhere near the Irving Arts Center (3333 N. MacArthur [...]
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