Things I've Learned About Life And Race As An American (Before the NAACP - Tea Party dust-up)

~ None of us had a vote in choosing the parents that conceived us or the families that we were born into.

~ None of us arrived with knowledge and experience, but had to acquire them from everyday life.

~ Studying your own history, culture and heritage is not selfish.     

~ Positively supporting your own culture or heritage is not unpatriotic or treacherous or treasonous.

~ Studying other histories, cultures and heritage is not a burden; you may not become an expert but you won't remain clueless, either.

~ Education is a precious privilege that in America is granted from birth, and public school or private, I have an opportunity that does not exist everywhere in the world.

~ Life events can bring great trials and heartache at the hands of others, but also great comfort and support at the hands of others.

~ Ignoring a wrong to someone that doesn't look like me doesn't prevent that wrong or another wrong from happening to me; would I want to be ignored?

~ It is more effective to have a conversation about problems and wrongs than a deafening screaming match.

~ If I choose to isolate myself from other people of other cultures and heritages, I have chosen to build my own tower of ignorance.    

~ None of our skin colors rub off, taint the chairs or poison the swimming pools.

~ It's okay to ask questions about another race or ethnicity - how else will you learn the answer?                

                                              

~ Each of us has made mistakes along the road of life. Learning from those mistakes should be celebrated and not held against us.  

                                                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                               

~ My cheese can get moved:                                                                                                  whether career, home, economics or politics - and yours can,too.    

~ I would rather learn to live in an era of change than to die in an era of stagnation and hatred.

                                                                                   

~ I don't choose my friends because of skin color, eye color, hair texture or ethnicity. I chose you because you have ideas, ideals and values that I have grown to respect, and because you bring something unique to the journey called life.
                                                                                                                                    

~ Sometimes the fifteen minutes of fame, the microphone and the television camera are focused on the wrong people. That does not diminish the rest of us. 

~ Every morning in kindergarten we recited The Golden Rule: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'    

~ 'Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.'                          -- Eleanor Roosevelt

~ "The measure of a man is what he does with power."
--Pittacus, one of the Seven Sages of Greece

~ Character is who you are and what you do when you think no one is watching or will ever find out.  It is who you are "in the dark". It is not who others think you are, but who you know you really are.
--David West, Inside Out Leadership Development, LLC

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