90 days of #socialdistancing
Hubby and I with our children, C and C have been immersed in anti-racist work, promoting critical thinking to deconstruct our biases and prejudices since 1992 when the riots broke in Koreatown and South Central.
A year before that in 1991, I was immersed in doing the first Leadership Training in Interethnic Relations by then Asian Pacific American Legal Center. Those were tense uncomfortable moments of learning for me to see all of us confront our internal biases and prejudices. I had hoped by now we have moved the pendulum on this.
Hubby has developed a curriculum on teaching Race, Racism and Critical Thinking and have taught that course for decades, before becoming Professor Emeritus at CSUN.
A good friend just promoted to me and another friend to watch a tv show on #BLM, at 5pm, a redo of a prior show that a tv host did since she got lots of criticisms for not doing the proper work on this issue. How irresponsible is it to air your show without proper content depth from adequate research?
Folks, lives are at stake. We cannot be lazy and delegate the content work of scrubbing out the racist prejudices and biases out of our hearts, minds, souls, molecules and say hurtful, inflammatory garbage on television or worst, in our real lives. These are #unacceptablebehaviors to profit from our lazy minds and unconscious behaviors.
If the Catholic bishops, priests and even Pope Francis are being humble in saying their past actions were wrong in covering up sexual abuse wrongdoings, I truly appreciate now how some are taking a knee to join blacks in their sufferings. Thank you for your enlightened spiritual leadership!
We too must call out unacceptable behaviors of journalists who say inflammatory words because of their anti-Black prejudices and say, what you did was wrong!
It reminded me of how years ago, this Filipina immigrant anchor asked a white gay male on her tv panel if being gay can be prayed away. He responded with a logic, so compelling: “J, can you pray away being straight?”
She went gaga over it, paused in silence. Then, she used an edited version of that gay awareness show segment, edited out her prejudiced questions and went on to receive a pioneering community awareness award from the #lgbtq community. Her content panel was curated by me, who personally begged my friends to be interviewed, to help educate our community. I am not asking for credit, just stating facts.
We must not delegate our personal work of being aware and conscious of our biases, we must do the personal critique to challenge and get rid of them. We must do the dirty work of scrubbing out our own prejudices and biases from our human personas so we may not hurt others by our biases.
The brilliant white gay man whom I respect is now dead and his death anniversary was celebrated in May by his loving Filipino gay husband. I loved them both but something got in the way of our friendship. May you rest in peace JD!! – I think of you when I take a stand on moral righteousness. I know you are looking down on us as one of our Angels!
P.S. Amy walked by holding her sign, doing her own work that “we are in this together,” and she does this at busy corners. I told her how we have been doing this for 4 decades now. She agreed to be photographed!#blacklivesmatter