Month: October 2022

In 1997, psychotherapist Dr. Richard Carlson popularized the phrase, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” and authored a few books on stress management using that phase as the first part of the titles, the most popular concluding with “and it’s all small stuff”. Of course, most issues in our lives are small stuff and he does acknowledge that sometimes there are big issues that we do need to address with our intelligence, energy, and determination. The key is being able to distinguish between issues that are worth fighting over and those that are a waste of time and emotional energy.

Fighting is a big deal. Every fight utilizes vast amounts of time and energy while requiring an investment of mental and emotional effort. These are all limited resources for human beings and should be used wisely. Over the years, I’ve decided what is worth fighting for based on a few values I hold dear.

The first is a devotion to my children’s welfare. As a parent and now a grandparent, I make a silent vow each day to do my best to guard and protect them to the best of my ability. However, the way that devotion is executed changes over time. Now that my children are grown and having their own children, I’m learning what it means to fight for their well-being in age-appropriate ways. For example, I recall making a conscious decision as they became teenagers to only fight about important issues. Among friends I called it, “picking my battles”. I decided that I would fight to ensure their health, safety, ethical development, and education. And I won those battles. They all reached adulthood as healthy, ethical, law-abiding citizens who are college educated and have life skills.

However, I discovered that my devotion to their well-being didn’t end with their adulthood. I find myself still fighting for their well-being. I channeled that care into supportive availability, observations, suggestions, and advice in my communications with them. However, I only fully realized this week that I needed to ensure that they understand that I have fully relinquished parental authority over their decision-making. While I have never used threats of withholding money, relationships, or guilt to bend them to my will or to try to retain parental control that is no longer rightfully mine, I still found myself being called “pushy” this week and my feelings were hurt. We worked it out. They confirmed that they valued my continued input or advice, and I insisted that I only deserved appreciation and consideration, but not necessarily compliance. Getting to this understanding took two full days of concentrated negotiation, but it was worth it because fighting for their welfare is worth it.

The second fight worth having is for the soul of our nation. I’ve spent my career fighting for the acceptance of diversity, inclusion, and equity in a nation built on the exploitation of people and the environment for economic gain. The reality that some Americans want to maintain the status quote that gives opportunity to a few people at the expense of everyone else is a fight worth having on behalf of my children and grandchildren and everyone else’s children. I think conservatives have faith that they can allow industry to destroy the environment through deregulation because eventually human ingenuity will fix the problems before the polluted water and air reaches their neighborhoods. They have shown that they are perfectly content to deny the poor and people of color access to clean air and water. In addition, I’m convinced that they will continue to deny climate change until they see the profits that can be gained by addressing it.

I’ve fought my entire life to insulate myself and my family from the effects of their policies. But the truth is that I’m still affected by the dangerous Republican Party agenda despite the fact that I am a retired, well-educated, financially independent (wealthy), cis-gender heterosexual female who is post-menopausal and Christian. I also live in an upper-middle class white suburban neighborhood with low crime rates, with easy access to voting, well-stocked grocery stores, and I have health insurance. But their policies still put me and my family at risk. We’re black and that means under Republican policy rule we are at greater risk for mistaken identity, police brutality, and continued poorer healthcare outcomes. MY husband and I often lament that if a burglar entered our house, it would be dangerous for us to call the police because they would likely shoot my 6’4″ black husband instead of the burglar. Eliminating the inequities that remain in our nation for many women, poor people, LGBTQ, and people of color is a fight worth having. Discrimination and equity are not small stuff issues, and the fight for diversity, inclusion, and equity is getting fiercer as Republicans are determined to roll back every newly gained civil liberty and to stop protecting the environment.

So, as an individual I use every tool in my toolbox to continue to fight and enlist others to fight alongside me. These days, I write to lawmakers and public officials. I post issues on this blog and on Facebook and Instagram. I respond to political posts on Tic Tok and Facebook. I started my Fully Present Better Human Project to inspire us all to be better and do better. I encourage people to vote. And I vote.

There are things in this life that are worth fighting for. In my life, I have chosen to fight for the well-being of my family and for the soul of our nation.

The last few weeks have exposed the rampant anti-black sentiments from disappointing sources. There was the amusement park character who blatantly refused to greet little black girls during a parade. There was Candice Owens and Kayne West sporting “White Lives Matter” sweatshirts. There was Senator Tommy Tuberville literally labeling African Americans as criminals undeserving of reparations for slavery. In Los Angeles, there was a city council president caught on tape calling the black toddler son of a white council member a monkey in need of a beat down. Even the K-pop world is struggling with accusations of Korean R&B artist, Crush, refusing to high-five black fans in the audience at a music festival.

It’s all too much, but not at all new. Notions of “cultural” superiority among humans has always been a horrible problem with deadly consequences. Humans are tribal and greedy by nature. It is a combination that ensures that the tribe with the best weapons and the greatest propensity towards violence always wins. Today, the aggressor is Putin. In our past, Columbus and European settlers after him annihilated the Indians across the Americas for their land. Throughout human history, all across the world, the spoils of war included the exploitation of labor by forced slavery of the conquered. However, no one mischaracterized the humanity of the conquered and enslaved peoples until white slave owners in the United States realized the economic necessity of perpetual enslavement of an entire race of people.

This country was built on the slave labor of black people and enforced by unheard of legalized brutality. But in order to overcome the inevitable guilt that perpetual exploitation by violence causes the human psyche because we are also empathic by nature, white people had to create a narrative that relieved their guilt and silenced the need for empathy. White Christians decided that blacks were the cursed descendants of Noah’s son Canaan. In the Bible story Noah says of his son, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” (Genesis 9:25). They convinced themselves that enslaving millions of Africans wasn’t wrong because they were introducing these heathens to a salvation that would save their souls. But their actions ruined the lives of African slaves and perverted their mindset into thinking they were superior in every way to these Africans. Their might literally made right until a mightier North (with the help of the enslaved) beat them in a bloody Civil War.

But the warped thinking persisted. It didn’t take long for white supremacists to use violence and threats of violence to oppress black people. And then came eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that ranked all humanity by race. Eugenics placed white people at the top and black people squarely at the bottom to justify legal discrimination and oppression. Hitler used this pseudo-science to claim a superior race and justify his murderous actions. The entire world was infected by these debunked beliefs. To this day, white supremacy has led people across the world to bleach their skin and straighten their hair. Many Asians get eye surgery to look more European. However, the stigma attached to blackness cannot be resolved by any amount of bleach, surgery, and hair products to straighten curly hair.

These are the false notions about black people that have inflected the minds of people around the entire world: 1) they are inherently less intelligent; 2) they are less rational; 3) they are overly emotional and sexual; 4) they are prone to violence; 5) they are stronger and more athletic; 6) they are musically inclined; 7) they experience less physical pain; 8) they lack morality; and 9) they are less attractive.

Every man, woman and child living on this planet today has been subjected to images, behaviors, and rhetoric that reinforce these falsehoods. When I was a child, my mother who was light skinned constantly kept me from playing out in the sun. She would say, “You’ll get dark” as though that was a bad thing. In her experience, it was. So, as a loving mother who only wanted the best for her child in a world where the reality was summed up in the saying, “If you’re white, you’re alright. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” I know first-hand that anti-black sentiments reside in everyone, including within us as black people. However, it can be rooted out with intentionality when we understand how it gets into our heads.

The feelings of inferiority creep into our psyche without our even realizing it through subtle actions, inferences, and images. For example, I’m reminded of the time when as a child, I heard my grandfather prove a point by saying that a white person had agreed with him. That ended the discussion because the legitimacy of a white voice outranked our own. I watched how my mother had to present “state identified gifted” papers to school officials at an all-white school to convince them that I was capable of taking honors college preparatory classes.

For so long, the only positive images of black people presented to the world were athletes, ministers, and entertainers. The depiction of blackness in movies, with very few exceptions, were of thugs, drug addicts, unwed mothers, or imbeciles. Our many contributions to the intellectual fabric of this country were hidden from view as much as possible. Sometimes, entire families and communities of prosperous blacks were destroyed by violent white people. Even that history has been hidden until recently. I’m beyond thankful for the movie makers who are finally telling our stories for the world to see.

Keeping the false narrative alive is a way to preserve a crumbling sense of white self-esteem that was built on debunked science. I know that in my professional life, my contributions were often hidden from public view. I recall feeling frustrated over numerous missed opportunities to inspire black college students and younger black colleagues with my contributions had white people in charge not allowed for these “oversights” to occur. Some would call these “oversights” a form of microaggression. But I think there was an unconscious inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the accomplishments of a black person. The instinct of fragile whiteness is to hide the outstanding deeds of black people and to highlight the misdeeds as an unconscientious means to reinforce their pre-established mindset.

So, it should not surprise anyone that the bias born of these stereotypes plays out on a daily basis in police brutality, inadequate classroom teaching and discipline, overly harsh judicial decisions, substandard medical care, and public policy decisions that harm black people. The public rhetoric of leaders and news media coverage are huge factors in how we see ourselves and how others see us. The fact that black and white children continue to view white dolls as good and black dolls as dumb, ugly and morally bad some 80 years after those first experiments tells us that we still have a lot of work to do to dismantle anti-blackness.

It starts with acknowledging that we have a problem. And the entire world has a problem, including us as black people. And as the Doll Test demonstrates we have a big problem with ourselves. We don’t like ourselves. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our black sons don’t value our lives and callously murder each other. I know we don’t like ourselves because too many of our daughters are over-compensating for their need to be attractive by exposing more of their beautiful bodies than is decent. I know we don’t like ourselves because we are too easily offended by each other and sever relationships too quickly. I know we don’t like ourselves because we silently endorse a system of tokenism. I know we don’t like ourselves because we let poverty problems become character problems. I know we don’t like ourselves when we side with white supremacists who want to roll back our rights and we vote for them anyway.

It is time for us to look in the mirror and to see ourselves for the beautiful and worthy creation we are. We are no less intelligent, moral, beautiful, or sexual than any other human beings. However, because we have had to fight so hard for our right to exist, we may have gained a few heightened survival attributes like determination, tenacity, creativity, flexibility, assertiveness, and sensitivity. Let’s bring these qualities into our work, our art, and our childrearing. Let’s ensure excellent educations for our children while boosting their self-esteem and self-image with the new positive images we can access. And let’s create more! Let’s launch our own public relations campaign to reclaim our identity and our history as fully capable, fully worthy, and fully human people deserving of dignity and respect. Let’s demand lawmakers and school boards who respect us and act in our best interest. Am I in favor of reparations? Hell yes, because damage has been done and we are in desperate need of repair.

When we fully value ourselves, others will value us, too, and our children and grandchildren will finally have the opportunity to live up to their full potential with their self-esteem in tack.

There is a segment of our citizenry who are afraid of losing the privileged status they have enjoyed since the founding of the nation. When confronted by the notion that they ever had such a status that provided them exclusive access to opportunities, capital, law-making and criminal justice leniency they will vehemently deny it. The fact that whole segments of society were legally and socially denied access to these same tools for social mobility and in fact were also subjected to their violence and exploitation is a fact they ignore in order to preserve their self-esteem. Look at it this way: A runner who wins a race would like to believe that he won his race because he was faster than his opponents and not because there were shackles around his opponent’s feet while he had to dodge arrows. As long as those shackles and flying arrows remain hidden from the runner, he will continue to win all his races and falsely assume superiority.

That is America in a nutshell. White males have been winning the economic and social status race in this country since its inception because they were willing to use violence to steal land and then create laws to discriminate, exclude, oppress, and exploit women and people of color. Their rhetoric today demonizes black and brown people as criminals while shielding their own wrongdoers from criminal prosecution. In short, they ran unimpeded while everyone else had invisible shackles around their feet and arrows being shot at them. An example of this kind of mindset came directly from Senator Tommy Tuberville yesterday. If you don’t want to use the link to watch it, here’s an excerpt from that speech:

“They want crime because they want to take over what you’ve got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit! They’re not owed that. We have to understand what’s going on. Folks, what’s going on is a takeover from underneath our country from the people behind the scenes to create such havoc on our streets that we’re afraid to go outside that they can control us. They could stop it today. They don’t want to do it.”

What’s frustrating is that they continue to build on a false narrative that was created to explain their substantial gains in power and success. They supported and promoted eugenics, a debunked pseudo-science that injected the poisonous notion into the minds of the entire western world that white peoples’ success is due to their superior in intelligence and morality (not violence and political maneuvering). That mindset of white superiority remains deeply engrained in the western conscientiousness even though it is objectively and scientifically proven to be untrue. It continues to be used to promote whiteness and as a weapon of oppression and discrimination.

But as we are seeing around the world, oppressed people will eventually rise up and demand liberty and justice. As intelligent, courageous, and creative beings because we are humans, individual acts of civil disobedience eventually become people banning together to demand access to resources and civil liberties. That happened here in the U.S. when individuals defied slavery and birthed the abolitionist movement that eventually led to the Civil War to finally free the slaves. Then it took the Women’s Suffrage Movement for women to gain the right to vote. And then we had a Civil Rights Movement to eliminate legal discrimination against women and people of color. However, we haven’t yet arrived. Social discrimination continues to this day because it is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans. Even worse, white supremacists are threatened by the progress, and we are experiencing their calculated effort to turn back the clock.

I think the election of Barack Obama was a blow to the unconscientious white superiority many white people and people of color still held. For many whites and people of color, it was liberating to see the indisputable success, intelligence, grace, and morality of a black man and his wife as they occupied the White House for eight years. But for other white people, Barack and Michelle were a threat to their self-esteem and their deeply ingrained belief in white hegemony. Among those threatened was Donald Trump and his ban of white supremacists who launched a birther movement and a demand to see Obama’s academic grades to try to discredit him and hang on to their claim to supremacy.

No one should be surprised that Donald Trump became president despite his obvious character flaws, his failures as a businessman, his ignorance, and his lack of grace and morality. He was running against a highly accomplished, intelligent and strongminded feminist who represented the progress they fear the most. The only thing Trump had going for him was the shared insecurity of enough Americans. Trump convinced insecure white people that through him they could reclaim their place at the top of the economic and social food chain. His slogan, “Make America great again” spoke only to those white heterosexual people who felt threatened by the overwhelming and visible progress of women, gays, and people of color.

And then he appealed to religious and conservative white men and women, sympathetic to male domination, a gender binary, and heterosexual relationships as the true social order. They embraced his leadership when he promised them Supreme Court judges who would do their bidding. Trump fed into their collective belief that non-white, non-Christian immigrants from “shit-hole” countries were bringing crime, diseases, and degradation to “their” country. His promise to close the borders gave comfort to the xenophobia he introduced.

It is no surprise to me that it took another white male to replace him in the White House. I’m convinced that black leaders backed Biden because they, too, understood this. Personally, I think the same will be true in 2024. The Democratic candidate will need to be a white heterosexual cis gender male because we must continue to fight the unconscious bias of too many Americans. Progress is slow and we must be steady and persistent.

So, this is where we stand today. We have a segment of our country who call themselves White Christian Nationalists. That is a nice way of saying they are religious zealots who believe that God made white people superior to everyone else and that this country belongs to them and that everyone else should live by their rules or get out. Their rules include:

1. Arm white people to maintain the social order and support police who kill armed (or unarmed) people of color.
2. Maintain white political rule even if it means suppressing or invalidating the votes of people of color.
3. Legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people.
4. Close the border to non-Christians and people of color.
5. Prevent white women from having access to birth control and having abortions by making it illegal for everyone. They want more white people.
6. Keep people of color from gaining access to adequate healthcare so they and their babies die young.
7. Expand prisons and policing to incarcerate people of color.
8. Limit access to higher education for people of color with disadvantaged k-12 education so we have a continued flow of cheap labor without political aspirations.
9. Keep appointing judges to the federal and supreme court to codify their discriminatory laws.
10. Take over state and local governments to secure elections, enact favorable laws, control the school curriculum and legally discriminate and oppress LGBTQ, women, and people of color.

Of course, they don’t say these things out loud except when their passions take over or when they think they are alone. However, when you dig deep into their policies, these are the desired outcomes. The election this November is critical to stopping these White Christian Nationalists from taking us back to the days when civil disobedience and a civil rights movement is again necessary. Vote like our country and our liberties depend on it, because they really do.

This past week we watched hurricanes kill people, destroy the homes, businesses, and families of Americans living in Puerto Rico and Florida. Living in earthquake and fire prone California, I know a little about the wisdom and luck of surviving these natural disasters. However, I also know that all we can do is plan, heed warnings, and pray for the best. The reality is that the sun shines equally on good and evil people in this world and so even the very best people among us could lose everything. The question is what comes next, especially when we know that climate change will increase the frequency and ferocity of some of these disasters.

I’m a long-time resident of Southern California and I experienced my first significant earthquake while living in Los Angeles on February 9, 1971, at around six o’clock in the morning. The 6.9 earthquake startled me out of my deep adolescent sleep before my alarm went off. I remained in bed and grabbed both sides of my twin bed, naively thinking that if I crashed through the window at the head of my bed, I would safely sail to the ground below from the second floor. Of course, that was foolish thinking, but survival was definitely on my mind. My mother’s voice from the other room to stay put was a welcome reminder that I wasn’t alone, and I took her words as the advice I needed to stay alive. I learned later that this was her first earthquake, too.

The damage to our home was minimal, but the damage to places closer to the epicenter in Sylmar was extensive. Soon thereafter, my mother became an earthquake preparedness expert and taught community courses for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Her children were her first students. To this day I heed her lessons and have added a few additional preparations since technology changed.

My mother’s lesson on earthquake preparedness is the reason that we bolt bookcases to the wall, why I don’t sleep naked, why I keep shoes beside my bed and a flashlight and more recently an extra cell phone battery pack in my nightstand. She is the reason that I pay attention to the placement of items around the house and why I keep updated earthquake preparedness kits in both my car and in my most secure closet. She is the reason I keep an additional pantry of extra cans goods and bottled water in my garage pantry. She is the reason I know how to turn the gas off and why we keep a fire extinguisher.

Over the years, buildings in California have become much more earthquake resistant and although I’ve experienced earthquakes much stronger than that 6.9, our homes have not experienced any major damage. I’ve learned not to stand under doorways with swinging doors. I’ve learned not to immediately run outdoors. I’ve learned that if I’m in bed, to cover my head with a pillow. I’ve learned to crawl under a strong table or desk. Earthquakes are scary but fully expected in California. They are not the result of man-made climate change and so they have not become more frequent. Unfortunately, the same is not true when it comes to our problem with wildfires.

In my mid-teens, while living in the San Fernando Valley, there was a huge wildfire. We were living against the foothills of the Angeles National Forrest. In fact, that forest was in our backyard. I was always on guard for rattle snakes and coyotes, but I hadn’t ever thought about the danger of forest fires since they were rare in those days. But then one night, my mother rushed throughout out house waking us up and telling us to get dressed. When I was finally awake enough, I could hear a man’s voice on a bullhorn outside saying we must evaluate. I quickly dressed and looked around my room. And that’s when I saw this bright red glow outside my window, just above the hill in the backyard. Empty-handed, I quickly ran outside and looked back at the house. I could feel the heat that accompanied that bright red glow and was immediately filled with terror. We piled into the car and drove to my mother’s sister home in Los Angeles. I’ll never forget the fear nor the gratitude I felt towards those firemen lining our street that night, ready to do battle to protect our neighborhood.

Thankfully, the firefighters were able to save our home and the neighborhood that day. But I learned a few important life lessons. First, I learned to never purchase a home in a fire zone. In California, many homes are built in or against hills and forest areas. If the fire doesn’t destroy your home, a mud slide might. I learned to heed the order to evacuate immediately when the authorities give the order. Trying to stay only adds an additional burden to the already challenging job of first responders and no property is more important than my life and that of my loved ones.

Over the years, we’ve considered moving to escape what has become a frequent and year- round wildfire problem. While our personal property is not in danger, we are negatively affected by the smoky air, road and business closures. We’ve had so many fires in our area that we’ve purchased multiple air purifiers. I stay inside the house and sometimes I’m limited to one particular room with the air purifiers running to minimize the smoke. If I must go outside, I have to wear a mask to guard against the particles.

But where would we move? Natural disasters seem to be everywhere. In some places, they have tornados. In others, they have floods. In others, they have hurricanes. With climate change, we can expect to experience these disasters more frequently. My guess is that eventually we can also expect greater migration as people seek safer places to live. Some places are going to become uninhabitable or ultimately too expensive to rebuild every year.

When this last hurricane hit Puerto Rico, I asked my husband why people are still living on that island after the last one and whether he thought we should continue to invest tax- payer dollars to rebuild a place where we know the next hurricane will destroy everything all over again. Some people did move, but others stayed and said they stayed because they love their home and their community and believe it is worth trying to save. However, as insurance companies pull out of disaster zones, the financial burden shifts to all of us through tax funded FEMA and donations to the Red Cross. My question is whether climate change, fiscal responsibility and charity will even allow for the option to rebuild in the near future.

For now, we are staying put in California. However, with continued draught and wildfires, increasing water shortages, and the looming “big one” (earthquake) we might one day find ourselves packed up and moving to safer ground as well. The migration of people may not just be at our border, but within the United States itself. Of course, crossed off the list of possible destinations are Florida and Puerto Rico.

May God have mercy on the weary souls who have lost loved ones and everything else. And may God grant us the wisdom and the will to do what we can to stop climate change.