Monthly Archives: November 2016
After reading this lovely piece in the aftermath of the triumph of hatred and vapidity in the US election, we invited Kay Burch to offer it for this week’s post in Political Straight Talk. After all, sometimes the only thing to do is look for the biggest of big pictures.
Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has published a book-length meditation on a fascinating concept: Is beauty the driving force of the natural world?
…..
We’re continuing here with our discussion about the September 23, 2016, CBS This Morning show with Gayle King and Oprah Winfrey on the grand opening of Washington DC’s Smithsonian National African American Museum of History and Culture. We think it’s really important for us as white people to get a much deeper understanding of racial discrimination as it has been historically and continues to be experienced by Black Americans. We also know it is similar to but not identical to all kinds of other intolerance of many groups,
…..
In one of our recent blogs, we talked about the books we’ve been reading that have enlightened us about the unconscious assumption that history equals white history and that white history holds the whole truth. Turns out that is so untrue, to find out the rest of the story can be mind and heart shattering. So how can any of us, or each of us, get by our feelings of overwhelming powerlessness regarding the violent instability of our identity as a nation?
…..
On the CBS This Morning show, September 23, 2016, anchor Gayle King discussed the grand opening of Washington DC’s Smithsonian National African American Museum of History and Culture with her guest and friend Oprah Winfrey.
They were discussing the history of the enslavement of Africans in this country as depicted in the museum, when the TV viewers’ eyes were drawn to a plaque with a quote by Ida B. Wells (1862‑1931), an African American journalist,
…..
One of our Founding Fathers’ “four foundations of freedom” was Widespread Education. They felt that every generation needed to grow up learning the history of this country so that the origin of and reasoning behind our democracy would be generally and broadly understood by every schoolchild in America. And that by the time each schoolchild became old enough to vote, he (until 1920 anyway) would know who was in politics because of self-aggrandizement and who was in it to fulfill the Constitution’s mission of governing for the general welfare of all the people.
…..