These are not the hoodies you're looking for.
It ain’t about hoodies; it’s about fear, and guns, and the vigilante impulse, and race, and, well… hoodies.
And, it’s not about race. But, then, everything in American society boils down to race eventually. Race is just a fact of life in a former slave state. Period. So, it is about race, but maybe not as much as people would have you believe.
Where hoodies are associated with race, you might say the Trayvon Martin killing is about the fact that he was a black teenager and black teenagers are associated with hoodies. But I wear sweatshirts with hoods, always have. Of course, when I was 17 I would never have admitted to wearing any article of clothing with ‘ie’ at the end. I did, then, and do, now, wear sweatshirts with hoods. Sometimes they are black sweatshirts with hoods.
It would be naive not to realize people sometimes wear hoodies to stick up liquor stores and Churches Fried Chicken.
And, when you’re all down inside your hoodie, you are intimidating. Why else would you be down inside a hoodie when the temperature is 80 degrees? Of course, the temperature wasn’t 80 degrees in Florida Feb. 26. It was raining lightly. Read more…
One heckuva road map.
Every once in a while you get the chance to sew what other people are doing with their college experience. The goals that they’re working toward; the things they’re trying to accomplish; the lives they’re trying to touch. It’s when you’re around these people that you realize you haven’t done anything of significance yourself.
Two weekends ago I had one of those experiences.
I was asked to take part in a softball tournament, a harmless request that I though would be a good way to spend my time of a Saturday before I went into work. It wasn’t until I got there that I realized there was something tangible, important, going on.
Many of you have seen the email sent out through Imprint Express, but then again, many of your are probably like me and delete all things that don’t come directly from people you know or professors. Read more…
A condescending use of the ellipsis
This is getting old. Another person in the spotlight apologizes for something stupid he or she said. It was Mark Wahlberg, this time, for saying he would have done what he does in movies if he had been on one of the planes that were steered into the World Trade Center.
I don’t want him to apologize. I want him to stand up and say, “Well… really, that’s what I would have done. Call me stupid, that’s what I said and I meant it.”
But, no.
I don’t want the speaker of the Kansas House to apologize as he did for a really stupid e-mail message he sent about Michelle Obama. I want him to stand up and be proud.
You read that right. I’m sick of apologies. I’m especially sick of forced apologies. Read more…
It's good!
But, can we sell that? Doing good in the world is not a lost concept, as two of my students have recently shown… fight the power!
Good news.
Well, good news to me, anyway. Two of my students made the news this week and they have something interesting in common.
Andria Enns was profiled in the Independence Examiner for her next adventure spreading the ideas of peace journalism in the world. I take no credit for this, by the way. She was inspired by my colleague Steven Youngblood to pursue this concept. He took her to Uganda a summer ago and, she says, changed her life.
I have to be honest here and admit I’m not completely comfortable with the principles of peace journalism. How can you not be comfortable with an effort for peace, you say? Well, that’s the problem. Read more…
