There comes a time in all our life’s when we need to think outside the box. This is an understatement. We all should view the world as a corporate body. Life comes at from so many different angles and we all gain abstractions or judgments. I understand your method of teaching although I don’t agree with all you believe, I do respect what you’re trying to do. As a result of your class I have learned to think more outside of my own box and get past my abstractions.
You have discussed so many different topics and they all have a correlation, which is the crazy world we live in. I am not going to comment on every discussion, if that is okay. There were always a few of these topics on my mind, even before I had the privilege of attending your class. In this paper I will explain what I agree with as well as what I disagree with. You were always open to our views and this is a good thing. We always agreed to disagree in your class and this is a good thing.
The decline of family morals in our country is one of the most obvious problems we face. When we brought up the internet adds pertaining to infidelity in the marriage it was not a shock to me at first; however after the viewing the web sites I was disgusted about the matter. If you don’t have a stable environment for our children to grow up in then what are we going to do? Where are they going to learn right from wrong? How are they going to know how to have a stable family of their own? Who is going to show them the way? Are we putting too much on our educators like you? Are you prepared to take the place of the parents? No! It is not your job to teach our kids the path to a strong America. You can point them in the right direction and I feel you try.
You know as well as I it has to be their ideal. If we plant the seed and someone else waters it, it will grow. I paid attention to your line of questioning and it showed me your morals. Yes I believe you have morals! And I feel you understand what it means to lead without being condescending. This is one of the things I have learned from you. I always knew that you don’t persuade by telling, you pursued by asking. Also I understood you came from a different angle as to not let them know you were trying to help them with their own problems. That was cool.
I am sure there will be some of your student who has it together enough to catch your drift or meaning, but you still let them think they are being prepared to help others. Clean your own back yard up before you tell someone to clean up there’s. Don’t get me wrong, they are hopefully being prepared to help others deal with today’s issues. None the less they must search their own hearts, find themselves and teach through their own experiences.
I didn’t agree with your point of view on how you think Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Doctor King were making the same point. I believe that content is only a small part of a speech and that modulation and inflection are very import when getting your point across. You can listen to the major differences in their speech. This is something I have to work on myself so I am trying to get the board out of my eye, before I work on the splinter in my brothers. I can agree that they both wanted what is best for black Americans.
In addition I am not in agreement with your definition of a racist. "That a person who is not trying to help fix the problem is benefiting and therefore part of the problem." I see your point; however this goes back to what I am saying about communication. If someone would treat me with respect I would reciprocate in kind. I would go to war for a friend, but for me to have a friend he must treat me as a friend and be willing to go to war for me. For this reason I don’t feel America is ready for change. I have seen more abuse of white people used since Rodney King than another time in my life. This type of behavior will only cause people to fight back. Unless all people have a leader Like Dr. Martin Luther King, they will not come together.
Being a forty six year old man I seen a lot of changes. Also I know of the recording that J Edgar Hover supposedly had on Dr. King (the white girl in the hotel room being sexually abused). Even when I heard about that many years ago it didn’t change the respect I have for Dr. King. He had an approach that made people more unified. If he were alive today I would follow him anywhere.
I didn’t go into all of the experiences that have shaped me (in class or in your office). Growing up in the sixty’s in Orchard Manor was tuff. The riots made life in the ghetto a lot harder. Let’s say I seen the worst come out of people. I didn’t have a dad growing up or a mentor. There was no one to teach me how to hate people who are different. Thank God with all the bad there was plenty of good to balance the messed up things that happened. But just for an example, as to what happened with me and some of the guys I hung out with, there was young men raping younger men. The young men were black and the younger men were white. It was motivated by hate and I am sure of that. However I am a firm believe that hurting people hurt people. So with this belief it is easier to keep everything on a micro level.
I was later blessed, having a black man that lived beside of me in Barboursville, who treated me like a son. This man was a lot like Dr. King as far as the love that was shed abroad in his heart. His memory is one of the strongest and best of my miserable childhood. I feel this is a Yen/Yang world we live in, there is good and bad in everyone and everything. Why do we insist on pressure to change? The man I was referring to made a difference one person at a time. He was honored by having a building named after him. I am so glad to have known him.
As far as your view of gender being a spiritual thing or a reincarnation of oneself, I don’t have the experience of a life before my life. I suppose it is a way of explaining why people feel as strong as they do about their sexuality.
Once again we are forced to walk on eggshells or forced to be politically correct. My point was made with the young lady who was sitting in front of you in class, when you ask her “if you and I were married and I told you I was in love with a man, how would you feel?” her response was not the way should would have reacted if in fact she was in love with you. Remember I called her on it? It all is becoming such a time bomb. I see it every day in young people who don’t attend college mainly. They feel like they are being forced to accept the burdens of other people because of the color of their skin or heterosexuality.
This brings me to my last topic we touched on in class, the school shootings. This was not the order in which we discussed, however I feel this order is justified. The shooters were commonly young white males who felt that they were alien to the rest of us. I have had these feelings in my life from time to time. Only by the grace of God and the help of some of my professors (no names, you know who you are) have I not acted on them. It is a strong spiritual disturbance that drives these young people to do what they do. The same pain as an addiction, is the best way to describe it. It causes a fear or panic that eats away at your core strength and drives you to insanity! How do we stop it? There is a quote that says “when the student is ready the master will appear”. I live by this and I am constantly looking for a lost soul to help. If I can just reach one person, I am doing well.
My approach is an amiable one. A feel, felt, found method. Letting them know I know how they feel. Explaining how I felt the same as they do and chose another path. Finding the peace of after changing my own beliefs, repetition being the mother of skill, I chose to take the path of least resistance. I have to do this day after day or it doesn’t work. Sow a thought, reap an action, sow an action reap a habit, and when you sow a habit you reap your destiny. You don’t persuade by telling you persuade by asking. This is very noninvasive approach to making it become their ideal. When it becomes their ideal, then the pain-pleasure principle changes and they with find themselves or the answer to the question that is the root of their insanity.
In the book of proverbs it says “A house divided against its self will not stand.” , we need unity so bad. However losing our own identity is not the answer. Although most of the young people are embracing rap and hip hop this seems to cause not only division with in their own culture, but it has caused people to make some really bad choices as far drugs and dangerous behaviors. If we are to have more social cohesion we need to address all of these things and fight them together without blame or anger. We need to change our beliefs about ourselves and our by helping one another. Let’s fight drugs, hedonism and crime together.
