How We Experience Race
I’m here with my brother, Tod Ewing, talking about how our generations interact with race differently and how some things are quite the same…enjoy!
This entry was posted on September 27, 2012 by oakritchie. It was filed under Baha'i, Media, race and was tagged with action, author, Bahai, Class, communication, community, culture, Cycles of violence, dialogue, Equality, ewing, experiment, family, governance, government, how we experience race, individual, institution, judgment, Justice, Materialism, media, moving forward, nature, Oak, prejudice, Pressure, race, reflection, Religion, Ritchie, seeing heaven in the face of black men, Society, soul, spirituality, steady flow, time, tod, tod ewing, towards oneness, unity.
Thanks Oak, I think this is an important discussion to have. I hope people will comment because I truly believe as I said we need to understanding each others viewpoint so we can move forward in creating unity and justice and do it with a harmony of understanding. We don’t have to necessarily see it the same way to move forward but at least we need to “feel” each other in an authentic manner. Thanks again my brother.
September 27, 2012 at 4:14 pm
A thought just popped into my head as I listened to your interview. I think I’ve let myself get kind of paralyzed by the belief that oldsters like me need to understand where young folk are coming from before we can collaborate in healing ourselves around race. Maybe that’s just a very subtle distancing behavior designed to keep me in my own comfort zone. I wonder what would happen if we decided it’s a given that we can’t possibly understand each others’ experience of race and let that acknowledgement be our starting point. What would that conversation look like?
September 27, 2012 at 11:54 pm
I feel like I have those conversations all the time with young folks. I had one again last nite and it was clear we were not “feeling” each other. What struck me about last nite is what often strikes me in conversations about race and diversity. It was one of those nites where I was not in a particularly humble posture of learning but rather aggravated by the multitude of injustices. I did not find myself particularly wanting to learn but rather to convince her of my point of view. When I get in that space usually there is a limited result. (Actually this was with a friend so we just sort of went at each other and it was cool in that sense but I don’t think I gained anymore understanding of why she thinks what she thinks) So neither of us I believe really understood each other and thus went the conversation. I do think we can understand each other to a point, in a similar way that men can understand the reality of women, to a point, or the Blacks and whites can understand the reality of the other, to a point. In my “humble” opinion (I am back in that posture this AM) it is the process of genuine consultation that allows people to understand things that they might otherwise not get because true consultation bonds, mind, spirit and heart allowing understanding to take place on many levels.
September 28, 2012 at 9:54 am
Tod, your comment reminds me of an experience I had several years ago at a conference. The speaker asked us to find a partner and she then led us in an exercise where we just looked into each other’s eyes for about 5 minutes. My partner was a young black man, everything that’s “opposite” of my identity. At some point there was a shift and we were communing with each other’s soul. Something very mystical happened. I left that experience feeling like I know that person intimately, even though I know very little about his private life. Maybe that kind of connection is the goal of genuine consultation. Maybe if we could feel each other at that level, these differences in perspective would simply make things more interesting instead of creating frustrations.
September 30, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Love that Phyllis, I have experienced that sort of connection with folk and I think that creates the foundational unity that can lead to discussions that are not polarizing but rahter illuminating or at the very least respectful.
October 31, 2012 at 7:59 pm