You ever have one of those days where more than one of the blogs you read is focusing on the same subject? That happened to me yesterday, with the subject being: racism. The odd thing about this? Although most everyone in my blogging circle (as far as I can tell) is aware of racism, and strongly opposes it, barring a few exceptions racism is not something we discuss regularly. Probably because it's a downer, a cold glass of water thrown in the face, a discouraging reminder of how messed up we still are as a culture. I'll be blunt; this frustrates me. I wish that more of us would get involved. I wish that I wasn't such a blog-o-panderer that I feared the loss of readership were I to attack the -isms more than I do now. So it came as a very encouraging surprise when synchronously so many chose to speak out this past week. Excellent opportunities for discussions and reactions can be found here @ Rainbow Ruminations, and here @ The Rich House, also here @ Eric Stoller's blog.
For your listening enjoyment, a blast from the past courtesy of Lawrence Parker a.k.a. KRS One.
The Racist ~ Edutainment ~ Boogie Down Productions
Blogs to Explore
- A Slant Truth
- Automatic Preference
- Can't See the Forest
- Caught In the Stream
- Climate of Our Future
- Deep Thoughts
- Deregulated Thought
- Electronic Village
- Empathy
- Eric Stoller
- Frozen Truth
- Gazing Into the Abyss
- Goodness Graciousness
- I Am Inspired
- Kellementology
- Looking Beyond the Cracked Window
- Midlife: A Journey
- mnemosyne
- Mother Anarchy
- My View of "It"
- Nourishing Obscurity
- Ole Blue the Heretic
- Peace Garden
- People In the Sun
- plezWorld
- Professor Zero
- Rainbow Friends
- Sunrays and Saturdays
- The Absent Mind
- The Field Negro
- The Francis L. Holland Blog
- The Free Slave
- The Intimate Side of Capcity
- The Liberal Journal
- The Naked Soul
- The Rich House
- The Thoughts
- Thinking Girl
- Unsane and Safe
- Wonderland Or Not
- Word Up
- Write For Life
- Writer's Blog
- Writing Under a Pseudonym
- Yo-Yo Philosopher
- Zuky
Zeitgeist
12 comments:
That's a great KRS track, hadn't heard it before.
I read your comments @ rainbow and rich house and you were spot on.
There are so many enlightening personal stories out there. And I stress personal because a lot of those experiences I couldn't recreate. I wish there was a way to have some kind of socially conscious blogroll or a posting exchange. Or we could dedicate maybe a minimum of a post a week to Isms. I don't know, what do you think about any of these ideas?
What's to discuss, Dave?
Nelson,
You're definitely on to something there. Even if the "blogging against the isms day" was once a month, it has the potential to motivate those who truly care, but otherwise wouldn't post.
I realize that to speak about the same subject(s) over and over can have a numbing effect, or become annoying even, but there is always that one person for whom exposure has yet to arrive.
I like the idea of forming a socially conscious blog roll, but not sure how I feel about segregating my roll on this site here. Look at the afrospear community project for instance. They have a blog roll of black activists that have joined their ranks, and a separate blog roll for their supporters and allies who aren't black. What's that all about? So yeah, I worry it would give an impression similar to that. You know, like here is my list of socially aware blogs, and then there is everyone else.
What if we opened a new blog with multiple contributing authors? Start small, somewhere in the neighborhood of four authors, each posting once a month? Or being responsible for a weeks worth of content each month? Announce that anyone is welcome to contribute, but make it clear that the emphasis is on raising social awareness, and discussing ways of attacking / resolving systemic -isms?
James,
It seems that way to us... but there's always someone out there waiting to be reached.
I'm still a work in progress myself, and find it beneficial to involve myself in these type of discussions because they often help me to reduce my own ignorance in ways I didn't realize I was.
Dave,
Let's do that. And then we should make a widget for it with recent posts and put it on our individual blogs. And anyone could join and post as long as it's relevant. What do you say? And what should we call it?
How about The Unshackled Mind?
I like it. Maybe we could have a graphic of a brain bursting through chains. Or just broken chains, that might be easier.
Excellent idea. Maybe a broken chain laying on the ground with a few errant chain links scattered about? We should probably carry this over into email. ^^
I tend to believe that the people who read the stuff you are speaking of read it already. I think, for me anyway, posting periodic posts on a personal site which isn't so focused often presents it to people who usually would not care, or would care but wouldn't bother looking in to it.
Sites where prolonged academic dialogue takes place in tend to be more about the people posting and their wish to win the argument or at least have their opinion noticed more than anything else.
I see and read a lot of stuff about racism though, so it is out there, has been for some time.
Eric Stoller has some good stuff I rad him via slanttruth, but there are literally hundreds of blogs where which to read it.
There is however a new social media site started in February, the owners emailed me last week and it is an interesting concept which could be applied to another venue, such as the isms.
http://blog.iconflict.com/about/
interesting concept and although ZAADZ is full of do- gooders
the scope of it is very broad. maybe a more focused social media network where everyone was focused on say just the isms, work and be more fruitful.
cooper
Cooper,
That's true. Hundreds, literally, but doesn't it need to be all blogs before we can really afford to back off? Wouldn't that be awesome? If everyone was concerned enough about discrimination that they spoke out against it, regularly, until it became socially unacceptable by the majority?
I want to steer clear of anything relating to public pissing matches. Or my cause is bigger than your cause. I have had the misfortune of already stumbling into several of those conversations, and it's a zero-sum.
Going to check out that link, thanks Cooper.
It is such a touchy subject that can spark and argument with little effort. It is unfortuante that discussing racism is avoided.
Hi D