Category Archives: Race

Compassion, Humanity, Politics, Race, Social Justice, Society

Why the Confederate Cause Should Never Be Celebrated

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea (of “equality of the races”) ; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. – “Corner Stone” Speech, by Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy – Savannah, Georgia – March 21, 1861

Not an American portrait of which to be proud – Click   for NPR story

Whether you believe the cause of the American Civil War was slavery, or economics or the economics of slavery, the Civil War comprises a period in American history that must always be remembered but never celebrated.  While there may have been  people of   integrity fighting for southern independence, the ultimate goal of that independence was neither noble nor of moral integrity.   The words of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, should leave no doubt as to the purpose of the Confederacy, which had nothing to do with heritage and everything to with white supremacy.

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Culture, Humanity, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Race, Social Justice, Society

Pass the Mic

How do we empower the people we call the voiceless?  Pass the mic.
 – Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, editor-in-chief of MuslimGirl.com, June 2016  panel at the White House’s United State of Women Summit

An editorial cultural-appropriationpiece by Lionel Shriver caught my eye in the Tampa Bay Times this morning.  Not familiar with Shriver’s work or immediately with the context of her situation as a keynote speaker at the Brisbane Writers Festival, the editorial puzzled me.

“Briefly, ” she wrote, “my address maintained that fiction writers should be allowed to write fiction — thus should not let concerns about “cultural appropriation” constrain our creation of characters from different backgrounds than our own. I defended fiction as a vital vehicle for empathy. If we have permission to write only about our own personal experience, there is no fiction, but only memoir. Honestly, my thesis seemed so self-evident that I’d worried the speech would be bland.”

As a writer and an avid reader, the topic interested me, and at first I couldn’t see what the issue was. Of course readers have to speak in other voices, and sometimes from the perspective of people different from themselves.  Without the ability to do that, we wouldn’t have Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird.   Right?

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