It’s Tuesday …
What have you done for YOU lately?! One of the most important things that one can do … in my opinion … is to learn to be aware of YOURSELF! I mean, have you met that person who seems to know everything … except what they are talking about?!? It is pertinent in today’s world that you know what you are talking about. You can be easily sold “a bill of goods” … aka “complete nonsense” if you trust everybody and don’t do YOUR OWN research regarding situations in our world today. Many of us have been corrupted by the “I’ll do anything it takes to get a head … ” attitude and end up “selling YOURSELF down the darn river”! Avarice and greed … and keeping up with those “Jones’s” so to speak … have caused folks to nearly lose their minds, not to mention their friends and possessions!! It’s all about balance, for the most part, which some folks just don’t have. Worse yet, they don’t try to seek it!! They play hide and go seek with themselves … really because they are the ONLY ones who are lost … and won’t admit it! What to do?!? First of all, calm down and breathe deep … Get a taste of what it feels like to “really be you”! Most of the time, there are no easy answers to “who am I” and it requires developing a real relationship … with ones SELF!! Not so easy … especially for two faced phonies!!
Well, Sunday night, I had the pleasure of watching some of the BET Awards Ceremony! The speech given by Jesse Williams as he received the “Humanitarian of the Year” Award was impacting, on point and probably beyond some folks grasps … especially the racist! Interesting thing, though Williams who used to be a school teacher and is now an actor on Grey’s Anatomy, gave a speech that was “right on point” as he challenged America and his co-African American actors to take a stand and dismantle the system here that promotes and facilitates systemic racism … be it to kill 15 year old Tamir Rice and claim “the child had a gun” in his hands … and cover it up through “the system’s laws”; or, to publicly kill Eric Garner on a street in New York City and claim that he was resisting arrest to the point that one cowardly cop placed his knee firmly on Garner’s head while his co-cronies continued to hold this asthmatic victim down literally choking him to death … on freaking national television. Jesse said, and I quote: “This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, and the teachers of students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.” Williams linked arms in Ferguson in the Fall of 2014 with the activists who stood up to the injustice that took place in Ferguson, MO after the murder of Michael Brown by a cop who was later acquitted. Williams also executive produced the film “Stay Woke”, a documentary tracing the evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement, which debuted in May of this year on BET. His analysis of “our world” here in the USA regarding “whiteness” and the desire to take things of African Americans from culture to money … to dignity and even “black life” should be an indicator that the movement called “Black Life Matters” really matters!!
In closing, I wanted to mention the story of the kid named “Chauncy” who went from West Memphis where he and his mother barely survived to “the other side of town” to a Kroger’s store and offered to carry grocery bags for a box of donuts for he and his mother to eat. One white gent gave Chauncy the opportunity to carry his groceries; yet, upon learning of his situation, decided to shop for he and his mother and take him home with the groceries! Chauncy was given a “Go Fund Me” page by the humanitarian and as of yesterday, the page had accumulated around $100,000.00! So, there are some people who keep their eyes open, like Chauncy, and others who offer to help when able to see the impact of social injustices on families like Chauncy and his mother! So, keep YOUR eyes open … and do what you can to “stand up” to systemic racism.
Peace,
John I. Cook, Director
Educational Excellence 