MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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Baltimore - 22 August, 1999 - One of my friends once made the comment, in this case speaking about a back problem of long-standing, that the one thing it had taught her was that "no one else really gives a damn about your pain."
While recognizing the truth in what she was saying, I also wanted to hold onto my belief in sympathy and compassion as intrinsic parts of our human make-up. I try to hold onto the belief in the essential goodness of humanity, but some days it's more difficult than others.
The dichotomy between what the brothers in the 'hood feel, and what the privileged brothers want the White World to think about them describes the conflict called "marginalization" in sociological treatises.
Because Yours Unruly is acceptable in the White World, speaks without the "accent" and demonstrates some level of erudition, Tupac, Snoop, etc. are not supposed to be part of my psychic landscape. I'm supposed to be non-threatening.
"You could walk a while in my shoes,
You'd be crazy, too!" --- Tupac
So whenever I remember that I had those cardboard inserts in my shoes when my parents couldn't buy me new shoes.... When I say that we had a coal-burning stove in our little house Back in The Day ... ---- Whooops!
There's other stuff to remember, too. The White people in our town throwing bricks through the windows of my parent's home and threatening to burn it down if their nigger children showed up at the White school. I remember that.
What marginalizes people is the *aspiration* to leave all of their history behind. What marginalizes people is the pretense that The System works infallibly, never had any flaws, and that the individual simply needs to be more "reasonable" about "isolated incidents."
I don't accept that. That is why I continue to be a Radical.
I take common cause with the other people avoiding the bullets.
So, even while I look around and see the benefits of this System I also see the people it leaves as detritus on the side of the road. The people it scars and injures beyond recognition. The genius and creativity it destroys.
So I want to continue to believe that someone does give a damn about this pain. I want to believe that we can address it, face its causes, and work to improve the world.
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If anyone's soul has been scarred, mine has. Not just by that free-floating social cancer we call racism, not just by the impersonal punishment of that systemic single-selfishness called unfettered corporatism which we are all asked to embrace. That would be bad enough, surely; that attacks the human spirit every day. But the deepest cuts are always the close, individual and personal ones, aren't they? The times when those you believed were the fellow children you could band together with against the "cruel world" suddenly meet your gaze with a look that denies recognition and the times that you let them and yourself down.
I wish I could be the dreaming child I recall who believed in the Beauty of the World. But he is not here, anymore. The best I can do is reach for him in this magazine. I reach for him in you.
Live for Love.
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
ABOUT THIS ISSUE: We are glad to welcome back a number of writers whose work has not graced these pages in recent weeks. G. TOD SLONE returns to report from Oaxaca with a special photo essay about Mexico's children. RON DIENER is back with a special entry in our new feature "Memoirs of the Information Age." (He says the title of the features inspired him.) JEFF WINBUSH updates "Black Ink" with his own personal analysis of the recent Iowa Caucuses.
And the Usual Suspects of the G-CREW are challenging and provocative as ever.
Work like you don't need the money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
Dance like no one is watching,
Rod
Rod is a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he writes on web design and development issues every Thursday. He is principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviews technology issues five days a week. His opinions on the Info Age began appearing on MethodFive's HYPER technology newsletter in March.
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