Category: Growing Up
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microaggressions – BIG SCREEN
Get Out was the number one in America last weekend. Written by comedian Jordan Peele, Get Out uses satire to discuss racism and its subsequent prejudices and microagressions. This film combines fiction and reality to make the topic of race more palatable/ comfortable. Microaggressions are a common phenomenon. They plague the media, relationships and conversations. Microaggressions: the everyday…
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Strange Fruit
17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Matthew 7:17-20 Growing a tree takes…
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The Advantage of Viewpoint
Within the political paradigm, the cultural concept, the religious routine, emphasis is placed on distinction. In an effort to maintain their identities, members of certain groups keep to themselves, lest they be tempted to a new way of thought. “Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling…
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More Than Meets The -I-
The need for community it an intrinsic human desire. When asked of the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31. Written almost 1,000 years later, The Epic of…
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Free Time?
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We are conditioned to make friends, become successful and contribute to society. We are conditioned to these things in way that differs from the normal and natural progression of the human experience. Millennials especially, value themselves based on their achievements, goals and acquaintances more than…
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There is room
“Sometimes you have two children born at the same time; one is stillborn but the other one alive and healthy because the dead one gave the other a life transfusion in the womb and in essence sacrificed itself” Edwidge Danticat’s. Danticat likens discrimination, and the subsequent prejudice and oppression, caused by a perceived scarcity of…
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Friends and Familiarity
I’m not comfortable around dogs. I grew up an only child. I never had a dog, a cat, a gerbil or a parrot. I enjoyed the company or a few goldfish, but besides for that my interactions with animals were few. A dear friend of mine as three dogs- in her house! A black lab,…
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Mary Tyler gave television Moore
Mary Tyler Moore is a dearly remembered actress, who embodied style, charm, grace, independence and confidence. Moore challenged social norms of what a woman should be and how she should act. She inspired women to shape their identities that didn’t rely on being a Mother or Wife (Feldman). As a millennial, I missed many of Ms. Moore’s original…
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Include Yourself
We often exclude ourselves. One of my professors, a Brooklyn Native, told my class how she befriends and interacts with members of her Puerto Rican culture who weren’t born in the continental US. She spoke about how much fun they have together. As the only American, she is often asked about cultural norms and policies, but…
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I’m my brother’s keeper, and my brother keeps me
After murdering his brother, God asks Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain responds, “I don’t know.” Cain then turns his feigned oblivion into a universal question; a question asked by families, generations and nations of people throughout the course of history. In Genesis 4:9, Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Perhaps both Cain’s and…
Kalen Nicole 