When your personal relationships with colleagues cloud your judgment you lose objectivity. You begin to base your decisions around how you feel about your colleagues instead of what you know about your colleagues. This influences who is hired, who receives contracts, who serves on committees, who is invited to “special” meetings, and who is even invited to lunch.
1. It’s unlikely but possible that you could get killed today. Or any day. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. Black maleness is a potentially fatal condition. I tell you that not to scare you but because knowing that could save your life. There are people who will look at you and see a villain […]
Learning how to play “the game”.
A clip from Higher Learning (1995)
Lawrence Fishburne, Omar Epps, and Ice Cube
During my lifetime many things have changed. Fashion, technology, food processing, and the cost of living are all dramatically different from my child hood. In some ways the world has progressed and in other ways we have regressed. In some cases items have simply been rebranded, repackaged, relabeled, and sold on shelves again. In order to illustrate those changes here are some questions or phrases that I may never hear from my children. Can I have a quarter for the payphone? I missed that, could you please rewind the video tape? This video game doesn’t work, can you blow on it?
Let me start by saying that I am an American. I was born, raised, and currently live in the Midwest. My mother and father were born in America, so were my grandmother and my great-grandmother. This is all that we have ever known. While most of us African Americans know that we are connected to the continent of Africa, we may never genealogically connect ourselves to a country in Africa. The place that kidnapped us we now call home. We are America’s illegitimate children trying to find our place in a land that never meant for us to be free.
