Being a beer lover I was pleased to hear of “The Beer Summit” being the theater where we can sing Kumbaya or not. This divisive topic about the arrest of professor Gates can be a valuable lesson if we grab it. What are the lessons we can learn? This is my list.
1. Racism is still a very real ugly force we need to wrap our psyche around. To continue to pretend that saying a banana eating monkey is not being racist is making a monkey of us all. It’s time we all get real with ourselves.
2. Generational bias and racism needs to surface to the top like a pimple so we can have a national catharsis.
3. Those of us that have been maligned or suffered from racial aggression need to let it go. Someone has to take the high road why not us as individuals? This week I had one trying encounter that I felt good about how I handled it. Acting in a unified “right” way boosts self esteem. We need to create a person code of honor as individuals and society. Our actions can break the cycle and affect future generations.
4. The compassion that we need desperately can only come by opening up to the concept that we are indeed all one. It’s the perceived notion that we are separate which gives us a licence to disrespect and easily judge others setting ourselves up as better or more right.
5. We need to cultivate faith that others can live up to a higher standard than what we have been handed down by our parents, friends, and our community.
6. We can only see what we believe. If it’s not magical and unifying we need to do archeology on our belief systems to find their source and change them.
7. We need more than ever to have our own original thoughts and not the thought of others or worse the thoughts of dead people.
8. If we can not make any rational sense of crazy acts of those different than us, we need to see the gift they are presenting to us as a good laugh.
9. We need to help ourselves by learning to help other races and ethnic groups outside our tribe.
I have listened to many of the national voices of the pundits. This type of discussion and debate creates buzz and ratings but it does nothing squelch the toxic noise that needs to be silenced.
