There’s something to be said for Kitchen Table Wisdom — you know, like in the old days when people sat around the kitchen table after a meal and talked about life, the universe and the meaning of it all — as well as the gossip doing the rounds in town.

Well, that’s what this place is — a place to share common wisdom, thoughts and feelings about things important and unimportant, that bring us joy, laughter and happiness and that trouble, sadden, confuse and anger us .

It won’t always be PC or ‘nice’. We’re missing out on true connection and chances to grow and change because there’s too little authenticity, too little honesty, too much holding back what we really feel and mean.

I’m Racist — There, I’ve Said It.

Nothing in this was thought to be disrespectful; in fact, it wasn’t thought of at all — there was no concept of political correctness. and as young children, absorbing this through osmosis, without the capacity or experience to think critically about it, without a frame of reference/context to hang any of this on, how could we possibly know that there was anything wrong in this?

Monday

Of course, later when I got a chance to look at the world with mature eyes, to learn history, to travel and to think things through, I saw how caricaturish, stereotypical and inappropriate all of this was.

I don’t know if anyone MEANT all of this to be actively racist. not in New Zealand anyway. I get the feeling that someone in education for example, working out a reading curriculum, saw the readers on the market, thought «how cute, kids will love these» and plowed on without thinking it through. while New Zealanders then were inventive and creative and bright and savvy in many respects, they were, after all, isolated down at the bottom of the world, away — in experience, distance and time — from much of what was fomenting in the US.

My point is that as a young child, I was exposed to, and took in, various disrespectful, RACIST images and messages about people of colour, mostly African and, by extension, African Americans. Читать далее →