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Reparations: the Real Me Facts

In my first post of this reparations journey, I didn’t tell you everything you need to know. The next part isn’t easy, and it would be simple to ignore it and leave it out. But it goes to the heart of the question: why am I making this journey at all? So. The Salacious Part My dad died when I was three years old. If you’ve...

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Reparations: Me Facts

I’ve been writing about race for almost as long as I’ve had this blog. Even before this early post using the metaphor of building a house on a cliff. Specifically, I’ve written about reparations, such as this post on the Mississippi that could have been. My 2022 reparations undertaking is not new. It is focused. I thought some...

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New Blog Features 2022

Good and happy 2022. In this new year, I’m making some blog changes. I actually intend to have regular features, which I’ve never done before (I’m an associative person; I follow ideas laterally; I’m very productive but hardly linear.) My news: I’m adding new blog features! New Blog Features The first of the three...

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Do You Want to be Transformed?

Don’t answer too quickly. Think about it. It’s a big question. Most Christians traditions value transformation, though different churches use different words. Born-again. Repentance. Metanoya. In this Advent season, rebirth is a big one. Most label transformation a goal, if not a promise. Transformed, you won’t see the world...

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When Her Face Changed

The video updated the famous Kenneth and Mamie Clark doll experiment. The videographer gave African American children a white doll and a Black doll. She asked each child, which doll is good? Which doll is bad? You may recall that back in the 1950s the US Supreme Court cited the results of the original doll experiment in ordering the integration...

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Are You a Scapegoater?

Yesterday, we completed Week 2 of the Mississippi Episcopal Church’s Anti-Racism and Racial Reconciliation training. Click here to read about Week 1 of this 4 week training. What did I learn this week (other than, apparently, my voice doesn’t stand out in a large Zoom group, and I have a short temper about that?) Words Matter When...

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Anti-Racism for Advent

This Advent, my husband and I are participating in Anti-Racism and Racial Reconciliation training. If this seems an odd choice, remember that my turn towards anti-racism began with the Memphis School of Servant Leadership, a religious organization. This training is offered by the Episcopal Church in Mississippi. We meet once a week for four weeks....

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When the Stories I Tell are Racist

Hi, y’all. There’s a video making the rounds. It’s a clip of a teacher using a racist dramatization to imprint a math concept on her students. The whole thing was so strange that I researched it, unable to believe the teacher created this out of whole cloth. I was right. Not only do sites recommend using the mnemonic to remember...

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A Different Way to Write Book Club Questions

I am nearing the end of my Beta reader feedback on In the Name of Mississippi. Thus, in complete blind faith that I will find an agent for this manuscript and, unlike my last three agents, they will sell this novel about a groundbreaking civil rights lawsuit, I’m moving on to the next step. In the Name of Mississippi is contemporary fiction,...

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It’s Happening Again

History happens in slow motion. We look back in time, and see events compressed into clearly demarcated eras. But in real time, history unfolds like the proverbial (and false) frog boiling in the pot: so slow you almost don’t notice. I’m not talking about frogs. I’m talking racism (again–why can’t I confine myself...

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