After I recorded my first podcast episode, my mind has been bombarded with a lot of questions (and challenges for sure ka.) With no professional tools and prior experience, I'll struggle for a while before it has become my routine!
Anyway, this is what I've decided to do ka. I think my egroup messages will align with podcast episodes unless there's something so interesting/exciting to share that I couldn't sit still! You now have another channel to choose what could fit you best ka.
For the first episode, I talked about the first thing I thought of once COVID-19 was announced pandemic to lead the listeners to think and link with what they're doing. I then moved on to the current protest in the US about racism.
Just at the right time, thanks to my American friend and Fulbright alum ka! He shared with me a letter from President of Emerson College, Lee Pelton and his stories made me feel so bad and sad ka.
Let me quote some stories from his message na ka:
"........I have been spit on by a white parking lot attendant. I was stopped 20 feet from my house by two white police officers in their cruiser, the searing heat of their spot lights on the back of my neck, guns drawn on either side of my car because I looked like a black man who was alleged to have stolen something from a convenience store. When I was living on the West Coast, I was pulled over twice in a single night by police officers because, according to each, I didn’t turn on my turn signal the proper feet before a stop sign."
Not so often do we hear those stories from the source to realize how he has been mistreated and how long he has been in such pain despite being a Harvard graduate and holding presidentship in several higher education institutions.
This statement shocked me when he mentioned 'lifetime' and 'every' na ka:
"In my lifetime, I have been called the n-word by white people in every state and every city that I have ever lived in."
The following upset me most ka:
"As President of Willamette University, two teenage boys drove up on the sidewalk to block my path home because I looked like someone who was suspected of stealing from neighborhood homes. When I asked what that person looked like they described someone more than twenty years younger than me."
This issue was from two teenage boys and if the two had such a prejudice against black at that young age, what must education offer before it turned to deeply rooted discrimination and hatred?
My first episode touched quite a bit about the need for each of us to be aware of our own prejudice and to make increased effort to reduce it ka.
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