Author: tonihall805@outlook.com

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.

I spent 25 years of my career in higher education helping international students navigate a complicated, contradictory, slow, and broken immigration system. I’ve worked with students who simply earn their degree and return home and many more who wanted to remain in the U.S. after getting their education and completing the work experience provided by their student visa. I worked with undocumented students, students who were seeking asylum, students who married an American, students who found a work sponsor and eventually became citizens, and students who broke laws and faced dire consequences. Through it all, I’ve interacted with all branches of our immigration system from Custom and Border Patrol, ICE, Embassies, regulatory experts, status adjudicators, judges, and immigration attorneys. And what I’ve gleaned from this experience is that Congress is responsible for failing to fix the many things that are broken.

The current crisis at our border is caused by our ridiculous laws. First, asylum seekers can only apply for asylum within the U.S. or at our border and we are required by our laws to grant them entry and a day in court. The second ridiculous law is the extremely low and arbitrary number of guest worker visas available to employers who have difficulty filling jobs that Americans don’t want to do. The third is Congress’ failure to pass the Dream Act, granting permanent status to children brought here by their parents and educated on our dime. And finally, the failure of Congress to fund adequate numbers of people to quickly adjudicate immigration status claims, leaving us with processing lines that can literally take years to process and approve. These are laws that Congress can and should address. Their continued failure to do so is a blatant invitation for people to overstay their visas, enter the country illegally to join family members or look for jobs, or show up at our border seeking asylum. We have created this crisis at our borders, and we have turned otherwise decent people into criminals.

Contrary to political talking points, the president lacks the power to change these laws. Remember, the executive branch is charged with enforcing the law, not making them. So, each president can only place a band aide on the problems or make life a living hell for migrants trying to follow our current laws. It was by executive order that President Obama famously gave temporary legal status to the Dreamers though the DACA Program. He was essentially saying that he wasn’t going to deport them and was going to allow them to live and work in the U.S. if they adhered to strict guidelines and renewal applications. Let us not forget that Obama was also nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief” because of the unpresented numbers of people he deported. To this day, the Senate has failed to pass the Dream Act because it would require at least 10 Republican votes. Getting those votes from a xenophobic white nationalist party is nearly impossible since the Dreamers in question are typically people of color.

Donald Trump, being the white nationalist he is, used the executive branch to take an even harsher approach to the immigration. Remember his Muslim ban? He also reduced the number of green cards available. He tried and failed to deport 98% of asylum seekers, those here under protected status who fled political and natural disasters. He tried to dismantle the Obama DACA Program for Dreamers. He made it more difficult to obtain visas. He wanted to build a wall to keep migrants out. Of course, he promised that Mexico was going to pay for it, but Mexico refused and so did Congress because walls have never been effective. However, Donald Trump had another evil trick up his sleeve to keep people out. He initiated the unthinkable act of separating children from their parents and then failed to keep track of them. He drastically increased the fees associated with all immigration related applications. His policy to make asylum seekers wait outside the U.S. was found to be illegal. In many cases, the court stood between Trump and the policies he tried to enact to curtail legal as well as illegal immigration. He said the truth out loud when he claimed that he wanted more people from countries like Norway and Sweden to come and not from those, “shit-hole” countries.

Obama, Trump and Biden cannot unilaterally fix the current immigration crisis at the border and all three have pointed to Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The problem is that Democrats want reforms that balance human compassion with the country’s actual economic needs while Republicans want to limit the increase of people of color and religious diversity under the false narrative of protecting jobs and “American values”. What Republicans fear most is the replacement of white majority rule. They are afraid that new legal immigrants who become citizens will vote them out of office permanently. However, what Americans see is the human crisis at our border and they wonder how to resolve it.

This week, I wrote to my Congresswoman, both my Senators, the House and Senate Majority leaders and the President (twice). I suggested that they need to act now to address and to make proposals to mitigate the problems. I made the following suggestions:

First, I asked them to end the requirement that asylum seekers be present in the U.S. or present themselves at our border. This law simply invites the border crisis. I suggested that they allow asylum seekers to apply for asylum from anywhere in the world and that we hire enough adjudicators to review the cases quickly before granting admission to the U.S. for those outside. In addition, I suggested that they work out an agreement with other countries to be part of a destination lottery for asylum seekers.

Second, I suggested that they increase the number of temporary worker visas to better match the employer demand for workers in industries like farming, food processing, restaurant, hospitality, healthcare, and other industries struggling with worker shortages. I asked the president to consider granting employer sponsored temporary work visas to those already here working illegally but otherwise obeying the law. The undocumented worker situation was a problem of our own making by failing to meet the needs of employers for workers. Our failure turned both employers and undocumented workers into lawbreakers. I see them as victims of a broken system. Let’s rectify that and moving forward strictly enforce the law.

Third, I suggested that they hire an adequate number of adjudicators so that the processing and approval of immigration applications doesn’t take years to process. Long processing times are invitations for people to overstay their visas or cross the border illegally to reunite with family members or to find jobs.

And finally, I asked them to pass the Dream Act to grant permanent status to young people with diplomas, jobs, businesses, military service, and no criminal record. These are people whom we have invested in and who are contributing members of our society. Granting them legal status would relieve a burden on our immigration system.

Doing these few things will eliminate much of the human trafficking, the travel perils of migrants, the mean-spirited political stunts of Trumpian governors, and we would free up border patrol officers to crack down on drug traffickers.

The crisis at our border is solvable. In fact, many of the problems within our broken immigration system are easily solvable. We just need a Congress that is willing to solve them. In particular, we need at least 60 U.S. senators to vote in favor of our economy and compassion and a Democratic House. So, lets vote for people who will fix this broken and ineffective system in keeping with our values. We are a nation of immigrants so let’s have an immigration system that actually works.

I wonder if I am the only one to notice the expansion and frequency of acts of cruelty in the U.S. since Donald Trump was in office. And sadly, I’ve seen that much of the nastiness is among professed Christians, represented by a political party that claims to be all about “family values”. But when did family values ever condone separating children from their parents to deter immigration? What part of the family values mindset refuses lunches to school-age children living in poverty or debt relief to struggling citizens while allowing business debts to be forgiven uncontested? What thinking in family values disregards the emotional and physical health of women with ill-conceived or malfunctioning pregnancies? What family values mentality denies children the right to learn about history, science, and the actual diversity of the human race? And when did family values ever include denying access to clean drinking water for entire communities of color?

The Republican Party and their white Christian nationalist have made it clear that certain lives and families do not matter. However, since Trump, they are taking their disregard and distain for others to a whole new level: unabashed cruelty. There is a Bible proverb that reads, “The merciful man does good for his own soul. But he who is cruel troubles his own flesh” (Proverbs 11:17). Mercy is an act of compassion shown towards people to whom you own nothing. It is undeserved favor. It is kindness extended to someone who needs it. Cruelty on the other hand is pouring salt into someone’s wound. It is the ruthless and inconsiderate infliction of pain and suffering onto others.

This past week, Governor Ron DeSantis flew fifty migrants, not illegal aliens, but legal asylum-seeking people, across the country to the island vacation town of Martha’s Vineyard without notice to anyone on the island of their arrival. What’s worse is that he lured these vulnerable people onto the plane with false promises of housing and jobs while also providing them with inaccurate information about how to maintain their tenuous immigration status. The information given would have disqualified them from pursuing legal residence in United States. In addition, some of those sent on the plane had hearings scheduled in other states as early as Monday morning. It bothers me that the news only depicts his actions as a political stunt to gain attention, when in fact his actions show a blatant and cruel disregard for the lives of the people he dumped in Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses. Thankfully, his ploy to frighten, stun, or anger the residents of Martha’s Vineyard failed as they united to choose mercy. They clothed, provided food and shelter, and secured free legal advice to the newcomers. I’m sure that their souls are feeling good about now. I trust in the Lord to avenge the cruelty of Ron DeSantis. And I hope the voters are taking note. But there are others who are delving into that same bowl of cruelty.

As Disney and other media companies finally make attempts to be inclusive of a wide range of skin colors in their story characters, racist white people are losing their minds. I noticed the dark-skinned people in the new “Lord of the Rings” prequel and jokingly remarked to my husband that they must have undergone a mass extinction because they were absent in the earlier movies. But their reaction was pure vitriol. Of course, these changes on screen are an attempt on the part of the producers to right a past wrong. I found it interesting that the amount of anger from the racists about “Lord of the Rings” was over-shadowed by the protests over Halle Bailey, a highly talented, black-skinned actress cast as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid”. In both cases, we are talking about fictional characters who do not exist in reality nor in actual history and the racists are up in arms over the inclusion of darker skinned humans. The joy we witnessed among young black girls who see themselves in Ariel must warm the hearts of those producers who had the power to show this little bit of mercy. The haters can keep losing sleep as their blood boils and they spew hatred from their mouths and their keyboards.

I’ve already written about the backlash I’ve received on my Facebook posts about being a better human. And many of these from professed Christian people. There is a scripture I recite to myself, and I hope others take it to heart as well. It says, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). That verse is a nice compliment to the Proverb I’ve highlighted for today.

As much of the world mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth, many are reminded of the past cruelty of the British Empire throughout the world. Many feel only bitterness and regret that Queen Elizabeth passed on the opportunity to issue formal apologies during her reign for the financial harm and for the many lives loss or ruined at the hand of her Empire. While she herself was not a cruel person and much of the harm preceded her reign, she failed in her lifetime to extend the mercy needed to acknowledge and help heal the festering wounds caused by those acts of human cruelty. I’m left wondering why she didn’t.

It’s a fact that humans have always had a cruel side. Acts of human cruelty are an everyday reality, and they seem to be expanding and becoming more frequent. However, humans are also capable of empathy and compassion which begats mercy. I’m going to be like those people on Martha’s Vineyard and those producers that are trying to be more inclusive. Each day, faced with the choice, I will choose mercy. I will not ignore cruelty because that is in fact a brand of cruelty itself. Each time I choose mercy, my soul becomes glad, and the world becomes a little bit better for someone else.

We don’t get to choose our family members, but we do get to choose our friends. And I have very few actual friends outside of family members, some of whom are both family and friends. It may be unusual, but my mother was my very best friend before her passing and I haven’t experienced that depth of friendship since her passing in 1994. It’s likely because of my personality. I’ve said many times that I am an introvert. At times I think I also have reclusive tendencies. If my mother worried about the many hours I spent as a child tucked away behind the big orange chair in her bedroom just thinking or the days I spent playing alone in my bedroom or in my grandparent’s attic, she never mentioned it to me. As I got older, I often shopped alone, visited museums alone, and even went to the movies alone because I wanted to. After her death, I’ve become my own best friend by choice.

However, I do like people. But the truth is that I can only enjoy people in small doses. Because of this, the quality of my rare interactions makes a huge difference to me. I hate drama, bickering, jealously, competition, and gossip. There was a short time in my life when I’d decided that boys made better friends than girls because there was less of this nonsense, and they didn’t appear to be so needy or clingy. Boys didn’t need constant affirmation about their looks and feelings. They weren’t constantly worried about who said or did whatever. But boys had other issues like their attraction to violence and that rubbed me the wrong way. They weren’t inclined toward meaningful conversations either, so that preference was short-lived.

Eventually, the few female friends I made in high school were athletes and academically inclined students like me and they didn’t gossip nor traffic in drama. They didn’t insist that I go shopping with them nor talk to them on the phone. Our interactions were not riddled in competition and insecurities. That positive experience lured me into believing that I could make and maintain positive female friendships so long as we had common goals. So, in college, I joined my two closest dorm friends and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. I soon learned that I loved the community service projects, but I dreaded the parties and the return to female drama.

I was never a shy person and I never lacked friendly human interactions. From the outside looking in, it probably seemed like I had lots of friends because I was well known and well liked. I am approachable because I smile and acknowledged everyone from a genuine place of welcome. To my surprise, I was actually voted “most outgoing” by my senior class. How that happened is a mystery to me because I never once attended a party in high school. I had a lot of “associates” and was I kind and friendly to everyone, but I only hung out with that small circle of friends, whom I saw at school and at youth group.

During my career, I was often told that I give off a warm and welcoming aura that attracts people to me. I genuinely do like most people, and I am welcoming because I feel deeply that most people are deserving of kindness, dignity and respect. However, I’ve always been really picky about people I become actual friends with. I am friendly with a lot of people, but friends with only a few. I realize that some people mistake my willingness to have genuine interactions with them as friendship when it is not.

I can name the few people whom I have called “friends” over the years. These people proved themselves to be incredible human beings whom I admired for their wisdom, empathy, loyalty, and generosity. They are my “go to” people and the people I will be there for in every situation. They are the only people in the world who can keep me on the telephone for more than five minutes.

There were times in my life when I mistakenly thought someone was friendship material. I’m a sucker for intelligence, confidence, and humor. But each time I’ve embarked on a friendship based on these attributes alone, I’ve been burned. I had to learn the hard way that not every smile is truly friendly and not every person who shows an interest in me has my best interest in mind. And then there was the time I joined my sorority after being taken in by the organizational goals and the intelligence, talents, and energy of the sorority members. After being initiated, I soon discovered that the community service at the college level was less important than parties and female drama. It proved way too much for me and I had to extricate myself. It took years for me to return to active membership and that was only because I finally learned how to preserve my sanity in the midst of a dynamic female environment.

There is a Bible Proverb that reads, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” It’s taken me years to finally understand that wisdom is the application of knowledge. It’s emotional intelligence. I want to be an emotionally intelligent person, so I must choose emotionally intelligent people as my companions.

Today, I have many associates but very few friends. But the friends I do have can discern between the truth and lies, are loyal and keep confidences, do not gossip about others, are genuinely supportive me and my family, are empathetic, kindhearted, and are not overly demanding of my presence because they too require time alone. They may not be the funniest people on the planet, but they definitely contribute to my own wise walk and not my ultimate destruction.

I feel blessed and satisfied to observe the respectful and productive lives of my adult children. I raised them with intention, sensitivity, patience, and sacrificial investment while having full faith in Proverbs 22:6 that reads, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

There is a special joy that comes from hearing and watching my adult children put into practice the life lessons and values I instilled in them regarding hard work, integrity, diligence, determination, and respect for others. It wasn’t always easy. In fact, at times when they were growing up, it was really hard, especially during those adolescent years. I had to remind myself that being a teenager isn’t the “old” that verse was talking about. Those teenage years were really tough and sometimes very scary as they took risks and did things that were contrary to the values and common sense that I was trying to instill in them. I found that the key to those teenage years was persistence, insistence, and vigilance.

Proverbs 19:18 reads, “Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.” I believe that is talking about those teenage years when they are hell bent on testing the waters, your patience, and the boundaries. Contrary to some, I believe those are the years when our hearts, ears, and eyes need to be the most open. During those years they need constant reassurance, the greatest display of unconditional love, the assurance that failure is an opportunity to learn, the sting of consequences for their actions, and an understanding that supervision is different from surveillance. Navigating those teenage years was difficult but understanding that their brains were not fully developed and that they were still being shaped and influenced by my example, approval, disapproval, and guidance, helped me be the parent they each needed.

And each of them needed something different from me. I took to heart that part in the verse that said, “in the way he should go” to mean that each child had a specific path that was right for him or her. They each had different personalities, different interests, and different needs and challenges. I believed it was my job to observe my children to discover and help them realize and accept their individual talents, their passions, and the personal challenges that emerged. I never adopted a “one size fits all” or everyone gets the same thing as a principle of fairness. To the contrary, I saw fairness as providing each child with what he or she needed to succeed. One child required greater financial investments while another required more disciplinary creativity and another a greater investment of time.

When it came to discipline and correction, I was far more inclined to use positive reinforcement, recognizing the innate human need for attention and approval. In my mind, the rod of correction talked was not only a belt or paddle, but rather the time I spent explaining why certain behaviors deserved praise when others did not. I was not a parent who relied on the “because I said so” explanation because I saw that as tyranny over the will of a rational human being. A person can’t self-parent later having only heard, “because I said so” as a reason for avoiding certain behaviors. However, I did have a paddle. It was there for those very rare occasions when the incentive to do wrong outweighed rationality. I believe I used it twice when they were growing up and only after a lengthy explanation regarding the continued and intentional wrongdoing that would lead them towards a living hell.

As an educator, I never left the education of my children to the schools. Reading was a requirement in our home because it expands knowledge, experience, possibility, and creativity. We took trips to the library, I read to them, and they got to follow their own reading interests. We did homework at the table together when they were younger, and I provided educational toys, educational field trips to museums, zoos, factories, farms, and amusement parks. We played in parks, went camping, fishing, and hiking. I gave them cooking lessons and together we operated a candy store from our garage. Our family vacations included historical sites as well as family visits and reunions. We did crafts and they had chores. Each got to choose a musical instrument to learn and one or two athletic endeavors. All played team sports for as long as they were interested. I’m thankful for church activities, youth groups and scouting that further supported their growth and development.

As they matured, they were always busy going in different directions and at times I was exhausted. I’m thankful that I had an incredible mother who provided loving and competent childcare whenever I needed a break and she also provided financial support when opportunities seemed beyond our budget. It is because of her example and how much our family benefited from her generosity that I’ve been determined to return that favor to my children as a grandparent.

I haven’t provided a lot of specifics about each child because I want to protect their privacy. But I will say that all that time and attention I invested in training my children in the way they should go definitely paid off because now that they are old (in their late thirties and forties) they have not departed from it, and I am so proud of each one of them for the successful, respectable and productive adults they have become. They continue to seek advice and I am quick to provide it with a gentle reminder that they no longer need my approval. They always reply that they know that and for that I am even more grateful.

Some of my favorite Bible passages that guide my everyday life are found in the book of Proverbs. I began discovering and unconsciously memorizing verses in Proverbs as a young teenager. They have become the underlying principles behind much of my decision making and lifestyle choices. In the next few posts, I’ll share some of my favorite Proverbs and how they have impacted my life and relationships.

The first is a well-known and often quoted passage. Proverbs 3:5-6 reads, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.” For an analytical personality like mine, this became an essential reminder for me that I don’t know everything, that information can be incomplete or distorted, and that things are not always what they seem. It is a comfort to trust that I can rely on the God who knows, sees, and understands the daily road I tread and to trust that He will get me through life successfully as I trust His direction. And I do.

I make a habit of listening to my heart even more so than listening to my head. Some people call that voice intuition. Some say it means to follow your gut. Others call it the voice of the Holy Spirit or that still small voice. Whatever it is, it is the voice that I trust and follow even when reason or the evidence I see and hear seem to indicate that I should go a different way. I’ve learned through failure and many experiences that the voice of my heart is always right.

To people who know me, it may sometimes seem like I’m clairvoyant, highly intuitive, or foresighted when in fact I have simply learned to tune into the voice in my heart. I say things like, “I just know” or “I just feel” or “I see this happening”. I have dreams. I see snippets. I hear an inaudible voice. I receive inspiration and “good ideas”. These have been the norm for me for many years and I accept them as normal. I’ll make decisions on whether to take on a new venture or not based on what I’ve come to call “grace” for the venture. It simply means that I feel in my heart that God is providing the open doors, the skills, the courage and the energy to see the project through. I’ve relied on this “grace” so much that I have only ever applied to one specific job or one specific University throughout my entire education and job career and have always been accepted without a moment’s worry. It’s not that I’m so great, but that I had a confidence born from hearing this voice to apply to a particular place.

A good example of a time when I had to fight my head in favor of the voice was when I decided to finally pursue the doctoral degree that I’ve known that I wanted since high school. I didn’t know when or in what subject, but I knew that degree was in my future. As my children neared adulthood and I had earned my master’s in counseling and guidance and was enjoying my career in higher education, I started feeling that the time was approaching. So, I applied to the PhD program in Educational Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was accepted. However, I felt this strange uneasiness in my heart when the acceptance letter arrived. All indications were that it was the perfect program and that the timing was perfect. But I couldn’t shake the uneasiness. That letter sat on my desk for three full weeks before I finally obeyed the voice in my heart and notified the University that I would pass on the offer. I knew that the “grace” to start that program was absent.

I waited another two years. One day in passing, I heard about an EdD program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and I immediately felt a strong urge in my heart to apply. I even had to learn the difference between a PhD and an EdD. I was so glad that I waited because in the two years since foregoing the PhD program, I discovered that I enjoyed being a hands-on practitioner who enjoyed transforming research into practice. I enjoyed policymaking and practical engagement as opposed to teaching and research. That was the difference between the two degrees. And an EdD, which I didn’t even know existed, was a much better fit.

Again, I was accepted and this time I strongly felt that the grace to pursue the program was there. I was one of a few in my program who sailed through the program in three years, completing and defending my dissertation without having to make any adjustments to it, which I’m told is unheard of. It was a lot of hard work and really long hours. It was grace that got me through hour (or more) long drives to UCLA several times a week and an unbelievable amount of reading and research, projects and assignments, and finally my dissertation. I would sleep for about three hours and then start studying at 2am every morning before going to my full-time job. I told my friends that I wouldn’t see them for a few years and then completed the degree with enjoyment and ease. At one point, one of my dissertation advisors asked me to slow down because she couldn’t keep up with my passion and pace. That was grace.

My understanding is decent and perhaps better than a lot of other folks, however it is no match for trusting God to direct my path. This Proverb I adopted to guide my life in my early teens was the best decision I ever made because He has never steered me wrong.

In classrooms across America, three kinds of children monopolize the attention of teachers. The most dreaded are those extremely obnoxious, outrageous, and disruptive children. The most revered are the academically eager, highly responsive, and responsible children. And the most liked are the charismatic, talented, and attractive children. All the others go largely unnoticed as they make their way through school. Even to this day, I remember the kids who fit into one of these categories. And as adults, not much has changed.

One of my earliest lessons on how to succeed in society came from the saying that the squeaky wheel gets oiled. To me that meant that I had to get myself noticed to have my needs met. From my earliest days, what I desired most was a peaceful, safe, and equitable environment. Some of that was personality but perhaps that desire also stemmed from being raised in an unstable home with a violent alcoholic father and a hard-working mother who struggled to hold things together.

School was a safe haven where I could relax and enjoy the company of my best friends, Laura and Myrna. In my early school years, I was solidly in the category of the unnoticed and being an introvert, I was comfortable with that because I had what I needed. However, my satisfaction vanished when my two best friends were promoted up to the next grade level when the state eliminated the A and B grade classifications. I remained in the second semester of the third grade while they both moved up to the fourth grade.

At the time, I was emotionally devasted because I thought I was being left behind due to my invisibility. I believed I was overlooked because I didn’t stand out enough academically. That was when I decided to become a squeaky wheel by reinventing myself into the model student academically and socially. Thankfully, I learned well after my academic and social stardom that, like my brothers, my friends’ promotion up was because of their spring birthdates. I was born in the summer and was therefore solidly at the desired grade level for the new system.

But I didn’t know that. The impact of staying where I was while my best friends were promoted up a half grade, pushed me toward academic and social excellence. I became the squeaky wheel that got oiled from fourth grade all the way through college. My teachers noticed me, encouraged me, and they opened multiple doors of opportunity to me. I was blessed with the mental capacity to become the squeaky wheel by positive means. I’m thankful that eventually learning the truth set me free of a chronic fear of being left behind and allowed me to regain a focus on building a peaceful, safe, and equitable environment for myself and others.

When I think of some of the politicians we have elected to office in recent years, I wonder why they get so much attention. Obama captured our attention through a combination of his intelligence, charm, decency, and good looks. But then the nation couldn’t quite gather enough support for a female candidate with intelligence but lacking in charm. By a fluke of the electoral college, this country elected Donald Trump, a disrupter who used charm or charisma (like Hitler) to disguise his corruption and cruelty.

For whatever reason, we as humans give our limited attention to the squeaky wheel. I just hope that we are wise enough in the coming election to check to see what is causing each candidate’s wheel to squeak before we cast our next votes.

I like my doctor because he once told me that his goal was for me to enjoy a healthy retirement. However, it turns out that we have very different methods for accomplishing that goal. His method is medication plus intermittent fasting and mine is the food plus intermittent fasting. It turns out that the kinds of food I consume, the amount I consume, and when I consume it is the key in addition to exercise and good sleep. I wonder if my centering on food and rejection of new medications challenges his thinking.

I recall an observation I made many years ago when I became aware that there were people starving in other parts of the world. I was bothered by the images of emaciated bodies and thought it strange that our country had such an abundance of food that we turned perfectly nutritious food into junk food loaded with fats, salt, and sugar. On the one hand, I was compelled to donate to hunger relief organizations who provided the stables to make bread and porridge, but on the other, I was compelled to consume greater amounts of the junk food being pushed by savvy corporations. As a seventeen-year-old, I once had French fries and a milkshake for lunch. At one point, I had to use a napkin and scrape the congealed grease from the roof of my mouth. It was gross, but it didn’t stop me from consuming either. I realize now that whether it is the abundance of junk food in wealthy countries or the scarcity of basic food in poor countries, we humans are slowly dying because of food.

My over-consumption of food and my addiction to processed and junk food eventually took its toll. It took me a long time to realize than my consistency with exercise, my basic alcohol abstinence, and my avoidance of cigarette smoke were not enough to compensate for my overeating and poor food choices.

My doctor’s answer to my high blood pressure is medication. His answer to my high LDL cholesterol is medication. His answer to my low HLD is medication. His answer to my progressive weight gain was intermittent fasting since I already exercise an hour in the mornings. I do aerobics, stretching, and weight training. But despite all this, I continued to put on the pounds and my metabolic numbers grew worse, not better. Six months ago, I was pre-diabetic and very close to being labeled a type two diabetic. Despite this, my doctor never addressed my food choices.

The issue of healthy eating is very complicated in the United States. Over the years, I’ve tried making many dietary lifestyle changes. The first was a switch to a low-fat diet. The first items to be substituted out for healthier options were whole milk, shortening, cheeses, and lard. I switched to low-fat everything and used smoked turkey instead of pork fat in southern cooking. Then there was the low carb diet where white breads, white pastas, white rice and white sugar were the culprits and brown whole grains became the substitute for everything. I curtailed candy and desserts. I eliminated bacon and lunchmeats that contained nitrates. Eggs were bad and then they were good. Coffee was good, then bad, then good again. Everything in moderation became the thing. Then eating five small meals a day was the answer. Then gut health and getting enough probiotics and calcium became the thing, so plain yogurt became a staple. Then we tried the Paleo diet that glorified animal proteins and made beans, diary (including my yogurt), nightshade vegetables and wheat products the culprits. Then we returned to moderation with hormone free meats and only organic fruits and vegetables. Nothing worked. We only became fatter and sicker.

It wasn’t until my husband was fighting a recurrence of lung cancer, that I started to really look at food for its healing properties. I wanted to support his healing process with the foods he was consuming. I did some research, met with the nutritionists a couple of times and did some more research. I eventually landed on a plant-based diet for us.

At my quarterly doctor’s appointment in May, we had only been on the plant-based diet for about a week. My doctor was concerned about my higher blood pressure and protecting my kidneys. In addition, I was heavier, and my blood sugar numbers were at the edge of type two diabetes. He prescribed yet another blood pressure medication which proved to be intolerable to my system and I had to stop. On the phone, when I told him I had to stop that new medication, I explained to him that I had switched to a plant-based diet and was determined to try that before doing anything more. He gave three months to improve my numbers. At the beginning of July, I added an additional four hours to my intermittent fasting. So, I eat a plant-bases organic diet eight hours a day and fast for 16 hours. And I got results. At my doctor’s appointment last week, I had accomplished the loss of seven pounds while also pushing my blood sugar back into the normal range.

However, my blood pressure is still elevated and my HDL still too low. My triglycerides that had been normal, were now high as fat stores enter my blood stream on their way out. I asked my doctor for another three months to address these issues with the diet and lifestyle changes that I had initiated. I added breathing exercises, a daily walk outside in nature as opposed to the treadmill and bike, and a sharp reduction in my salt intake as well as morning green tea while I am still fasting. Sleep has always been a big problem for me, but I’ve noticed a near miraculous improvement in it. I’m now sleeping an average of six and a half to seven hours a night. I can only attribute this change to my new dietary change where I stop eating by 6pm. I’ve tried everything else that was recommended to no avail.

The temptation to eat foods that harm rather than improve health is everywhere. I now view food for what it is: fuel and body repair or poison. But for me, the greatest motivation is my visit to the doctor’s office every three months. I ‘m excited to see how eating well and less often can restore health to my body. I’m hopeful these changes that improve my health will also provide a case study for my doctor to pass along to his other patients.