Monthly Archives: April 2014

The importance of little reminders

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

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I am a huge tea fan.  There’s just something about it that I love.  It calms and soothes me and puts me in a place I like.  I have collected tea pots for years and have quite a collection, each with a story.  The bright yellow one my first husband bought me when we were in law school, and the Chinese set he bought me while we were married.  The bright yellow one (can you tell yellow is my favorite color?) my sister made for me. The musical one that played “Tea for Two” that my step-mother gave me one Christmas. The gold-rimmed flowered set my partner gave me.  One of my favorites is one I received for my college graduation from my then-boyfriend’s family 42 years ago.  I also love tea kettles.  I usually use a glass electric one that was a gift from my nephew, Christopher.  It’s beautiful and efficient and gets the job done quickly. However, recently I began using once again a tea kettle that I picked up in Egypt (where I met and married my second husband) 13 years ago.  There’s something that is pulling at me about it.

This morning, as I poured the boiling water into my giant tea mug, preparing for a day of intense grading of papers and other end-of-the-semester madness professors go through, I realized what it is.

I needed to slow down.  My Egyptian tea kettle won’t let me quickly make my tea.  I have to heat it on the stove rather than plug it in, and when I pour the water into the cup, the spout is cleverly made so that I cannot pour quickly.  I have to take the time to let it flow.

That is a giant irritant. I’m trying to hurry through and get to my grading. My work plate is really, really full, and I’m in full-speed-ahead, I’ve-got-a-lot-of-crap-to-do mode.  My sister scolded me just yesterday for not answering her phone calls.  But, I know that when we speak, one of the reasons I love it is that it is for hours at a time, and I just don’t have it right now.  Everything is rush rush.

But, not my boiling water flowing out of the tea kettle spout.

I have lived my life long enough to understand that when something like this happens, something else is going on that I need to address.  There is a message I need to tune in to.  I’m being told something I need to listen to.

So, I wondered, what is the lesson here?  Why is this happening?  I’m making tea, for pete’s sake.  What lesson could there possibly be in that? Why am I even using this tea kettle when I could so easily use one that heats and pours my water more quickly?

Then, it hit me.

Because you need to.

Slow down.  You’re moving too fast.  Everything will get done when it needs to.  It always does.  All is well.  Everyone has the same number of hours in a day. Chill out.

Got it.  Thanks for the reminder.

 

The importance of community

27 Sunday Apr 2014

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Yesterday was Lavender Graduation at my university.  What a glorious occasion.  It is the event put on for the LGBTQ students, open to all.  Before you wonder why they would segregate themselves and have their own graduation ceremony, or why a university would allow such a thing, keep in mind that they can, and do attend the big graduation for all students.  This is a supplement.  Read on if you wonder why it is even needed.

It has been my experience that most students who are LGBTQ come to college without having ever even admitted that to themselves.  This happens for several reasons: 1) for fear of rejection from their parents, 2) fear of rejection by their friends, 3) fear of physical harm for being “different,” 4) lack of knowledge of what it means.  I’m sure there are other reasons I’m forgetting, but those are the biggies.

Once away at college, away from their parents, and away from the group of friends they may have known all their lives, they are free to explore the world on their own.  They had not realized how much their reference group had shaped for their entire lives, what they thought they knew, liked, disliked or cared about.  While they thought they were essentially free agents, they realized that their world had actually pretty much been dictated by forces they never really knew or questioned.

Once on their own and free to explore their exposure to new ideas, people, places, things, it opens up whole new worlds to them.  The world is no longer bordered by the county lines they grew up with.  They are free to roam the world during study abroads and be exposed to cultures and people and language far more different than anything they ever dreamed, even though TV, movies, books and the Internet brings these world to them.  They meet people who are no longer just the insular groups they may have grown up with.  These new people are from all over the world, all over the country, many from communities quite different than their own.  They sit in classes where they are exposed to and learn ideas that challenge their very idea of who they are, how they fit into the world, the value of ideas they may have thought were cast in stone in their heads as unassailable.  Such is the nature of education.

In this process, they begin to understand how much they have been impacted by the normal flow of life up to this point and what it means for what they think they knew.  Once out of that normal flow, they come to realize that things can and are different for different people, places and things.  They discover it in big ways and small.  For me, it was a group of us freshmen going to a ice cream shop in Ohio from my home in DC and ordering sodas, only to have them place ice cream sodas before us.  Turns out, in this part of the country, soda meant ice cream sodas.  What we thought of as soda (carbonated beverages) was called “pop.”  Who knew?  Why would we? Light bulb moment.  

One of the things students are often exposed to for the first time in college is others who are open about their LGBTQ orientation.  It is a real wake up call to find that what was whispered about in hushed tones in their hometown, or the basis for vicious ridicule, can be just plain life as it is lived elsewhere.  They come to learn that they are not foreign, awful, shameful, a loser, or an embarrassment.  They discover that there is a community of others like them who value each other for who they are and what they bring to the table rather than the insignificant, though, in some ways profound issue of who they love or are attracted to, or what body they feel more comfortable in, or what gender they present as.  They learn that though these things may tie them together as a community, they are only one small part of what creates that supportive community.  They also learn that there are others who support them and accept them for who they are.  Period.

By the time they reach graduation, that community has become an incredibly important part of their lives.  In a large university like mine, even one that takes inclusion very seriously and works every day at making everyone feel included, there are still pockets of resistance that the students have to navigate.  That makes their community, and sometimes family of choice within that community, even more important.  Nearing graduation, this takes on even greater importance as they realize they are moving from this supportive, protected environment into the “real world” where they may not have the same support system available—that is, until they create it.

All of this comes to the fore at graduation, when you want and need the support of those who truly understand that your struggle to get through the university has not been the same as that of other students without your life-altering self-revelations and all that inevitably came with it.  The broken hearts, the false starts, the challenges to who you are, the search for finding where you fit, the fear over being able to find a job where you are accepted for who you are rather than requiring you to fit a template, the social justice campaigns just to exist as who you are, and, at times, worse.  While other students’ culmination ending in graduation has been about the struggle for balancing time, workloads, a social life and finding a job, yours has been about much more.  At the point where it all comes to an end, at graduation, you want those around you who understand that struggle and appreciate what you have accomplished, and recognize that it was not the same as it was for everyone else.

What always saddens me at Lavender Graduation is the lack of parental support.  It is rare to see more than a few family members stand up when the call is made for them to do so.  For some of the students, their families abandoned them once they came out as LGBTQ.  For some there was even violence attached.  For most, it included a huge dose of their families either not understanding, not believing it or simply rejecting the possibility.  As the student keynote speaker said at the event yesterday, when she told her mother she is a lesbian, her mother’s response was “You may think you are a lesbian but Mommy doesn’t think that you are a lesbian.” Pretty soul crushing, whether it was intended to be or not.

This makes the sense of community even more urgent.  We are social creatures.  We need a tribe. One of the speakers yesterday said a quote that was something like “We can’t thrive without our tribe.”  We need a reference group.  Sometimes it will not be the one we thought it was.  At the very least, most of us think it will include the families we were born into.  Maybe not.  Which is why it is so important to have a community here for those students who need it.  They deserve it.  They deserve our support.  We taught them that they are just fine as who they are and that matters.  

Kudos to the university for providing emotional, intellectual, and physical space for the establishment of community for our LGBTQ students, and for having Lavender Graduation as part of it.  As any student who has been a part of it will tell you, it matters.  That sense of community is important.

I can kick your soccer butt and pick flowers too…

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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My grandson Christian is 3.  Today was his first soccer game.  From the minute he was born, he has always looked really serious.  It is hilarious to watch him doing certain things while looking totally serious.  Like his version of break-dancing, drawing a picture or painting (not dying) Easter eggs.  How do you do that and maintain a straight face?  When he finally gives us a smile, with great deep dimples on both sides like my mother, it is like the sun comes out.  He is absolutely beautiful.  But, his usual look is a serious one, as if he has matters of great importance to contemplate.

As a mother of three girls, and having grown up with 3 sisters, I have also been fascinated from the start at how Christian had such masculine traits at such a young age.  I don’t think I’d really given it much thought before, or if I had, I would have thought nurture played as big a role as nature.  I’m not so sure now.  Maybe I should have bought a clue when my first two daughters totally balked at playing T-ball.  I don’t know if they’ve forgiven me to this day, for having them out there playing in the hot Florida sun.  🙂  At any rate, as a grandma (Nana!) who isn’t busy about the business of raising him, I get to look at things in a different way now, and I am constantly fascinated at how what society considers to be his masculine traits develop so young and without seemingly any input from the three females with which he lives.  I promise you, we were not the ones who created his fascination with cars and trains.  We just followed his lead. He did not get it from his Dad either.  It is even more fascinating to me that the traits he exhibits are so subtle, but unmistakably those we associate with males, especially around leadership.

One of the things Christian has also always been fascinated with is flowers.  He loves them.  He loves to look at them, pick them for us, and to learn their names—even when he wants to name them himself.  No matter how many times I tell him a dandelion is a dandelion, he insists it’s a sunflower 🙂 I get it.  It certainly looks like a little sun. I teach him the names and tell him which ones he can pick in the garden and which ones he can’t.  He loves smelling the flowers and herbs growing, and watching onion sets he poked into the earth sprout up just days later.  He will stop dead in his tracks to look at, and most likely pick, a flower.

Today, after we parked for his game, on the way to the soccer field, he became excited at seeing the clover and dandelions (sunflowers…) along the way.  I told him the names (with him still insisting the dandelions were sunflowers) and he picked a few.

I guess we really shouldn’t have been surprised that when he got on the playing field, being on the field would not have stopped him from picking the clover and seeded grass that apparently looked like blooms to him.

So, there he stood, looking very serious, in a group of little ones all dressed up in their soccer uniforms to play their first official soccer game, with a stem of clover in his hand, twirling this way and that, totally fascinated, as if he’d never seen it before.

Of course, the coach was talking to the team.

But Christian was more interested in his stem of clover.  He turned and held it out to show his mother, his sister and me.  Mortified, we said we saw it and told him to turn back around and listen to the coach.

This continued, the game started, and Christian ended up making the first goal, running down the field with a stem of clover in his hand, kicking the ball into the goal.

What?!  Who does that?

I can remember in junior high school gym class being put out in the outfield playing softball and, like Christian, being more interested in looking at the flowers.  But for me, I tuned out the game and concentrated on the flora, only tuning back in at the sound of my classmates roaring for me to run to the next base because someone had hit the ball.  You can imagine how popular that made me when it came time to choose a team.  Whatever…

While we congratulated him and hooted and cheered, Christian spied another clover flower, picked it, and joined his teammates and concentrated more on the clover flower than the coach talking.

Then he made the second goal, much like the first.

He made the third one too, but into the other team’s goal.  🙂

He looked very serious and he held his clover and blades of seed grass the entire time.

I know there is a lesson in there somewhere.  And I love it without even fully knowing what it is.

We don’t generally associate boys and flowers.  We don’t generally associate flowers and soccer.  We don’t generally associate boys and flowers and soccer.

But, Christian didn’t know that.  What he knew is what was important to him.  And he made it work.  He multi-tasked listening to the coach, making three goals, and holding onto his clover and seeded grass blades.

I hate even thinking about the time that will inevitably come when he realizes, through omnipresent acculturation, that he is not “supposed” to be interested in flowers unless he’s studying them as a scientist or giving them to someone.  Or that clover  and dandelions are generally considered weeds.  Or that because he is a boy, he can’t pick flowers while on the soccer field.

I hate thinking about how society ends up squashing who we really are and all we really can bring to the table, for the sake of conformity and ease in pigeon-holing people so we feel some measure of control about the predictability of our surroundings.  Look at all we gain when people can bring their entire selves to the table.

When that inevitable time eventually happens with Christian (and I’m sure it will be much sooner than I’d like), I know he will ignore me when I tell him how he can do all three and it will be ok, because he will still make the goals just fine like he always did.

He will simply look at me very seriously with those incredibly beautiful big brown eyes and tell me he will no longer pick flowers, but only make goals.

I will be sad.

Living diversity

21 Monday Apr 2014

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Yesterday was Easter and I had the privilege of having two of my daughters with me for the holiday.  My former partner, now BFF had the other.  When we exchanged our Easter plans, stories and photos, it occurred to me how diverse they were.  I remember my BFF once telling me that she had a white friend over for dinner and they had steak and baked potatoes.  After dinner, her friend told her she was really surprised at the menu because it was just “regular food.”  Turns out, because my BFF was black, the assumption was that the menu would include fried chicken or chit’lins or other “black food.” That still knocks me out.  The things in people’s heads never ceases to amaze me. How little we know about cultures others than our own.  Even ones we may come into daily contact with and think we know.

I thought about that yesterday as I thought about how varied my tribe’s Easter experiences were.  

At my house, where my nephew was also visiting, my Le Cordon Bleu Grande Diplome-having, Le Cordon Bleu-teacher daughter cooked up a New England Boiled Seafood Dinner, though we are in the south.  I guess you could have easily have called it a “Low Country Boil or a Louisiana Seafood Boil.  She loved the idea of throwing in the big pot the red potatoes, corn on the cob, shrimp, Snow crab legs, crawfish, sausage, limes and Old Bay seasoning, then having us enjoy the cheese and wine she and her sister bought the day before at a local wine tasting event, while the pot turned into a delicious dish. She also served garlic butter braised King crab legs.  Yummy.  Later, at her request, I made Sherried Tea Biscuits, which we ate while watching movies.  The latter is their favorite thing to do.  The whole event was far from the traditional American Easter dinner with ham.  Of course, my grandkids, who were with their dad for the weekend, came over to hunt for Easter eggs and get their chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps.  🙂

My BFF and third daughter, on the other hand, outdid us in regional food diversity. They went to the house of my daughter’s girlfriend’s sister and her boyfriend.  They were met there by the parents of the sisters.  One of the parents is Jamaican and the other Indian, so my daughter’s girlfriend is a mix of the two, with dark blonde dreadlocks down to her behind.  Their family had never dyed Easter eggs or had an Easter egg hunt before.  Though my daughter is 26, she still loves to hunt for Easter eggs and please don’t make the mistake of getting between her and a hidden egg she has sighted.  Girlfriend, with her competitive nature, she will mow you down to get that egg, and apologize later.  

My BFF took eggs stuffed with lottery tickets to the dinner party and hid them all around the lusciously tropical Florida backyard.  The host, my daughter’s girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend, had also never done an Easter egg hunt and didn’t want to because he did not think he would like it.  He ended up loving it and finding the most eggs.  A great time was had by all as they ate Jamaican and Indian food and participated in their first Easter egg dying and hunt.

Talk about mixing it up!  My southern household of black folk had an Easter dinner of a New England Seafood Boil, Garlic Butter Braised crab legs and Sherried Tea Biscuits later, while my third daughter had Jamaican and Indian food and introduced a culturally mixed family to the age-old American tradition of dying Easter eggs and hunting for them.

Talk about living diversity!  Love it!

 

 

Microaggression 101

21 Monday Apr 2014

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The other day I was chatting with the president of my university at a reception when someone came over and asked if he could interrupt and introduce someone.  I said fine, and he proceeded to do so. I am an African American female and all the others involved were white males.  He did not bother to introduce me, but only the president. I finally introduced myself.  Of course he then apologized for the oversight. I couldn’t have cared less about being introduced to his person, but it was clearly rude of him to ignore me. Because I am African American and female, I experienced the act as one of microaggression.

After he left, the president turned to me and said, “That’s the microaggression you were talking about, isn’t it?”  Astonished, I said yes. I had mentioned the concept to him in an email a few weeks earlier in another context, but we had never discussed it.

That he not only had read it, but recognized it when he saw it, and and actually acknowledged and pointed it out was pretty profound.  It shouldn’t be, but, sadly in our society, it is, and I made sure he understood that.   When I got home and opened my latest issue of Time magazine, there was a full page article on microaggression by John McWhorter, which I immediately also sent along to the president.  

The reason what the president did was so profound is because when microaggression is noted, it is generally by the one to whom it is directed.  If it is mentioned by them to someone outside the group that is the basis for the microaggression (often race or gender, but can be any traditionally marginalized group), that person will generally poo-poo the idea and give alternative ways to interpret it, say it was the object’s imagination, they misunderstood or they are being overly sensitive.  This, lack of validation, of course, only further aggravates the problem and makes the object of the microaggression less likely to share this information again.  Bit by bit a solid wall is built up until the object of the microaggression no longer discusses such matters with anyone outside his or her group again.  Any communication that could facilitate understanding is lost.  The acts go on, but there is little or no discussion of them, generally until some precipitating act occurs and the issue bubbles to the surface, usually in an acrimonious way.  

You see this reflected in statistics such as the majority of whites thinking the Trayvon Martin verdict of acquittal was just, while a majority of blacks think it was unjust.  It always seems to be such a surprise to the newscasters reporting it, but rarely is a minority surprised.  We know of very few people who don’t have a “driving while black” or “walking while black,” other similar story.  We also know that telling it to whites generally gets us nowhere because they will only say we are being too sensitive.  So, when the Trayvon Martin tragedy strikes, we’re angry, but not surprised.  Yet it always seems to take whites by surprise. The micro aggression that leads to such outcomes only seems to be apparent to those to whom it is directed.

That is, until now.  For some reason the term has found its way into the mainstream and is now often the subject of the press and filtering into other areas of life.  Thank goodness.

The term “microaggression” has been around for years but was mainly used by academics.  The title of the Time magazine article is “Is ‘Microaggression’ the New Racism?”  [note that in the online article the title is “Microaggression is the New Racism on Campus] It is a term that is used to describe the numerous daily slights and disrespectful acts that are primarily directed to women and minorities living in a world that, intentionally or not, marginalizes, demeans, belittles and overlooks them all day, every day in ways big and small.  Most learn to ignore it or tune it out just to get through the day.  Others choose to call out every slight as an intentional personal insult, often to a startled, unaware offender who is clueless as to what he could have done to deserve such ire.  Those who take this approach are usually labeled as troublemakers, extremists, “angry black man or woman,” as “playing the race card,” or in the case of females calling out gender slight,  a bitch, feminist,  or a raging “feminazi.”

But, however the object of the microaggression chooses to cope with it, it has an impact that eats at your soul and acts to undermine your sense of self and comfort and is a constant reminder that you are not in a world of your making or intended for you. Dr. Laura Brown, a clinical psychologist and self-described “radical lesbian feminist,”  in a talk at my university recently referred to it as the “acid rain” that erodes one’s sense of self.  The end result is constantly feeling like an outsider, even in a place you may absolutely belong.

This must be addressed if we are to successfully move from diversity to true inclusion.  Determining what that means only takes thinking about your own world at the minute level and thinking about what makes you feel comfortable.  Chances are, there are significant parts of that feeling missing for minorities and women in most public settings.  That is, outside the circle of one’s family and friends.  That does not necessarily have to happen.  The key is to treat people as you would wish to be treated.  Sound familiar?  Yep, the good old Golden Rule.

Think about the public setting in which you feel most at home: work, school, church/synagogue/mosque, a bar, the barber shop, playing a sport. Wherever.  Now, think about why you chose that spot as the most comfortable.  What makes it so?  The people?  What about them?  Because they look like you?  Share your interests? Dress like you?  Share your values?  Your goals?  Your socioeconomic status?  Your choice in clothes?  Music?  Hairstyles? Language?  Sense of humor? Ideas? Food? Family background? Geography? Facial expressions? Tone of voice?  Choice of words? Outlook on life?  What do they do that makes you feel comfortable?  Speak to you?  Speak to you in a pleasant, familiar way?  Make eye contact?  Have open, welcoming body language?  Treat you as someone familiar rather than alien or different? Not act standoffish?  Smile rather than scowl, look officious, or ignore you?

Chances are, the more of these you say yes to, the more comfortable you are.  

Now, imagine if those things were not the same. How different would the picture be?  How would it effect your comfort level?  If everyone wore long hair or a beard, and you didn’t, would it feel the same?  Would you have the same comfort level?  What if they didn’t wear shoes, or wore flip flops and you wore dress shoes?  What if they spoke a different language or were rich and you weren’t?  What if they did not smile at you, but scowled, or simply ignored you?  Would it feel the same?  Should it?  Could it?  Would it matter?  Should it matter?

My point is that an awful lot goes into what we consider comfortable and most of us take it for granted.  Unless, of course, it is not available to us.  We often don’t even realize when we are doing it for one group and not for another.  This was demonstrated in a startling way in a ABC 20/20 piece, “True Colors,”  by Diane Sawyer in 1991.  Many more of these types of pieces have been done more recently with the same or similar results.  

In many ways—most ways, actually—so much of how we feel in our environment is controlled by small things that we have completely in our control. There are no big laws that can be passed to handle that.  Changing this is up to us.  I tend to think that for most people, it is mostly a matter of it being brought to their attention because they simply are not aware. Amoja Three Rivers does a great job of showing us how this occurs in her piece, “Cultural Etiquette: A Guide.”  For most people, once they know better, they do better.  

Of course, there are others who actually intend to treat certain groups poorly, and I don’t know that there is really anything to be done with them except pray for them, bless their hearts.

So, what does microaggression look like? It is acts that make someone feel like an outsider, “the other,” like they are “exotic,” or otherwise not just a part of the group. Pointing out, or only dealing with them on the basis of their differences and never bothering to deal with anything else qualifies.   Only dealing with them on race/gender/LGBT/ethnic issues (depending on the group the target of the microaggression belongs to).  This is seeing them as only having an existence relating to that aspect of themselves rather than as a whole person.  I am African American and female, but I am also a mother, a writer, a quilter, a gardener, a textbook author, a lawyer, a friend, a sister, an enjoyer of music, a mystery reader and writer, a lover of poetry, a grandma, a gym rat, enthusiastic survivor of a simultaneous double knee replacement, a tea lover, a social justice activist, a spreader of love….is that enough to add some dimension?  

A black female colleague told me last week that she was the only person of color sitting in a meeting about diversity and rather than asking the group the question, a white faculty member shocked her when he turned to her and said something like “So, tell us what blacks want” or some such nonsense,  as if she was supposed to speak for all African Americans.  And, of course, making it clear that he thought she was only there because of her race rather than anything else she might bring to the table. The great irony was that it took place at a diversity meeting of those who supposedly knew better.

It could also be giving backhanded compliments (“You’re really pretty for a dark girl” or “I don’t think of you as black”–leading the person to believe that if you did, that would be a negative). Or, perhaps, treating someone only as a member of a group rather than as an individual (“I think black people are so funny! And y’all can dance so well and play sports so well!” or  asking questions like why all blacks expect a handout or why they all like watermelon or chicken (as if KFC’s Colonel Sanders got rich off only black folks.  I haven’t been to a country yet where there wasn’t a KFC).  Yep.  I actually get these questions.   It’s also not making eye contact with someone you don’t consider to be like you, not engaging them in casual conversation as you would others. Simply not treating them as you would like to be treated in similar circumstances.

Because they are members of the human race and are social creatures, everyone has the need to feel accepted and included. Short of death,  the worst our society offers to its worst transgressors is solitary confinement.  That is, taking a convicted criminal who has committed heinous acts against society away from the society of other inmates.  Even for hardened criminals, it can drive people mad to feel isolated and outcast.  

The isolation doesn’t have to happen all at once like solitary confinement.  It can instead be like death by a thousand cuts.  It will come out in seemingly insignificant ways.

Like totally ignoring the black female as the only other person not introduced to someone in a group.  

As the object of the microaggression, you don’t get used to it, you just learn to cope with it so you don’t go crazy.

 

 

What we value

18 Friday Apr 2014

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As I approached a workplace meeting the other day, I saw one of my female colleagues who is battling cancer.  For the first time I can remember, she was without a wig.  Her short pixie-type hair was quite different than the full head of curls she once had.  As soon as I saw her, I mentioned that I loved her hair.  She said that her young daughter had insisted that she not wear a wig that day.

I’m so glad.  My love of her hair wasn’t as much about the style or length as much as it was about what it represented about her.

It is so easy for us to pass judgment about such things as hair.  That probably makes sense in a society in which so much stock is put in how a woman’s hair in particular, looks.  Just think about the commercials.  The overwhelming message for women is clearly a goal of “long, luxurious, shiny” hair (preferably blonde).  Since I’m African American and wear a natural, those commercials at every turn go right in one eyeball and out the other, but believe me, we get our own equivalent version.  I consider it foolishness, but that’s just me. Thank God more black women are tuning out this noise and realizing the value and innate beauty of their natural hair, complete with its tightly curled (for the most part) nature and the unlimited possibilities it presents.

For me, my colleague’s hair spoke to more than just a hairstyle.  It was an incredibly powerful badge of honor that so accurately reflected her courageous, untiring battle to stay alive.  Though I know she has sacrificed far more in her battle, if a head of hair was all she sacrificed for that privilege, it was a small price to pay.  Having the courage to wear her own natural hair was small in comparison to the courage it must have taken for her to face the notion of dying and leaving her life and family, including two young children.  No matter how dire the diagnosis, her update emails were always full of life, courage, fortitude and bravery.   How beautiful is that? 

I can imagine that in caucasian culture, dominated as it is by images of Madison Avenue’s perfect depictions of beauty that impact girls from the moment they are born and long-tressed blonde dolls are thrust into their hands as toys,  it would not be easy to face the idea of losing something to which society attaches so much value.  Women are judged by friends, family and perfect strangers on the “quality,” length, “grade,” color, and style of their hair from a very young  age.  It must feel totally scary to think of losing something you’ve never had to think about, not realizing it played such a seemingly crucial role in your life until you no longer have it.

When I see women with short hair, whether I know if it is by choice or otherwise, given the value placed on hair in our culture, I tend to think they are brave women to be willing to cut it off and show their faces uncovered by the curtain so many others hide behind.  When it is not cut, but instead lost, the value is even greater.  Seeing a head bald from the ravages of chemotherapy or other illness-fighting treatments gives a face to courage, struggle, and the will to overcome, to not go quietly into that good night.  I don’t look at it and think “bald, poor thing” or “whoa! bad hair day?”  

I look at it and think, “What an incredibly courageous woman.”

To me, that kind of beauty is worth valuing far more than a head of “luxurious” hair that simply reflects being a slave to society’s view of what is beautiful or worthy.  

Not wear a wig?  Absolutely. You Go girl!  Be proud of your courage and fortitude and thereby teach us all a lesson about what we value.

What every parent ultimately wants

17 Thursday Apr 2014

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My mother died quite suddenly when I was a 20-year-old college junior. After my mother died, I had to live with the knowledge that we truly are promised no tomorrows and that each moment could be our last.  Since we were very close, it was a life-altering event that very much shaped what I brought to being the mother of my own three daughters. That is very important to me since being a mother was something I knew I wanted to be for as long as I can remember.  I knew it was one of my callings.

But, when you lose your mother at such a young age, before you really begin to have the questions that guide your life that only she can answer, it shapes you in ways you might not have anticipated.  However, in my case, it was in ways that I believe enriched my daughters’ lives.  So much so that sometimes I believe it happened for just that purpose.  One of the most profound ways was in preparing them to meet this big thing we call life and all that it can throw at you.  I’ve been thinking about this lately because my oldest daughter, who, with her two children, returned to live with me after her divorce, is packing to leave.  She came to stay with me to save up for a house and she is in the process of making that happen.

When I had my daughters, now 25, 34, and the oldest who will be 36 next month, I began journaling about them from the moment I knew they were possibilities. I continued until after they left for college. If I died, I wanted them to know that I knew them, and loved them more than words could ever convey and  wanted them to know what they were like and what they did.  I wanted to give them the same sense of wholeness and unconditional love that my parents gave me that serves as the foundation for being able to have a confidence that cannot be broken—shaken maybe, but not broken.  I wanted them to have the answers to the questions I was unable to ask my mother when I was pregnant with my daughters and raising them.  They were questions a 20-year-old would not yet have experience enough to ask.

You can imagine how heartening it was when my oldest daughter was pregnant with her first child and asked to have the journals I had written about her.  Even though I was there to answer her questions, she wanted to see what it was like when I was pregnant with her.

I taught my daughters to be self reliant and to have a sense of themselves that did not depend on acceptance by others.  As you can imagine, none of my daughters pledged sororities.  Oh, they were social creatures, alright.  One one even made the attempt–in fact, the one least likely to do so.  But, I’m sure it was this very sense of independence that her evaluators sensed that caused them to reject her.

I taught them to live with integrity and be willing to face the consequences of their actions, rather than live life trying to hide from themselves, which, of course, is impossible to do.  When they looked in the mirror, I wanted them to be able to see themselves as they were, not someone they flinched at and wanted to hide from because they knew they were living a lie. I say that my father, a minister, taught me how to get to heaven, but my fiery mother, who thought nothing of giving you a piece of her mind, complete with cursing like a sailor if need be, taught me how to live on earth.  It was my Dad who impressed upon me the importance of being able to look yourself in the eye and go to bed each night knowing there was nothing on your conscience to hide from.

I taught them to love all-in, know that none of us is perfect, try with all their might to make it work, but when it didn’t don’t be afraid to face that fact and move on to Plan B.  Life is too short and your mission you were sent to accomplish too important, to allow someone else’s issues to take you away from your truth.

My daughter leaving has caused me to think about the process of letting go, and what we want for our children.  At their ages, of course, I’ve done this before.  High school graduation, college graduation, etc.  But, this time, I think it’s final.  You never know, but this may be the last one to bounce back.  That would be great.  Because every time I think I’ve settled into my empty nest, here comes one back again.  It’s always for good reasons, and I’m glad to be able to accommodate them, but it does make you ponder things about life.  This time, my pondering is about what we want them to leave us with.  What we want to know they have when we are gone.  Thinking about my girls has been a joy of remembrance.

A couple of years ago, it snowed and we were housebound for several days.  My oldest daughter had recently moved back in after her divorce.  She hates being cooped up.  By the third day, she had had it.  My driveway is steep, as is the hill leading out of the subdivision into the street.  We are on the second block of the subdivision.  This makes it extremely difficult to get the car out of the driveway, up the hill and onto the main road.  When my daughter said she couldn’t stand it anymore and had to get out of the house and go for a drive with the kids, I thought, “Good luck with that.”  I underestimated my girl.  Before I knew it, she had not only shoveled her way out of the driveway, but also down the street and up the hill to the highway and was on her way.  I could only stare in wonder.

I would never underestimate her again.  That is now our touchstone.  When she has doubts, I remind her that she was the one who shoveled her way out of the snow up the hill to the street, so she has no credibility with me when she says she’s not sure she can do something.  Whatever is in front of her is no big deal. We both laugh, but it is enough to stiffen her resolve.

When she decided to get her masters degree in special education, and to become certified to teach art, she did it with a toddler at her feet and a newborn at her breast.   She taught the toddler about the various types of art while she studied, so my granddaughter could tell you about abstract art vs. pointillism. When I visited, I could only stare in open admiration. She set a goal and moved toward it. My daughter accomplished both goals while working full-time as a special ed teacher.

When she came to live with me, the idea of being a grown woman with children and living with her mother was an anathema to her, even though it was necessary under the circumstances, given her goal of wanting to buy a house.  She kept telling me that she had not been raised to live with her Mama.  I told her that I was just glad to be able to accommodate her needs by having a place for her to stay while she worked toward her goal of having, once again, her own home.  She is making it happen and is packing up as we speak, with all the excitement and anticipation she deserves for working so hard to make her dream come true.

Time after time, I have seen her set her goal, work toward it, and do whatever needs to be done to make it happen.  Her determination, perseverance, discipline are incredible. I can die knowing that I don’t have to worry about whether she will be okay in life.  She will be able to handle what comes.

My middle daughter is tiny.  Yet, from the sumer she graduated from college with degrees in Psychology as well as Criminal Justice, she traveled the world alone.  She is like a river; when she meets obstacles, she simply goes around them.  She is amazing.

She wanted to spend the summer traveling in Europe, but he had no money.  So she held an art show and for the first time ever, sold her art.  She made enough money to get her through the entire summer and have some left over.

In September, she attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and when that didn’t suit her, transferred to London and finished up  her grande diplomé (this was back before they had them all over the US; back when you had to travel there to attend).  When we went to London to attend her graduation, all the top French chefs who taught there expressed to me their great love for her and their sadness at seeing her graduate.  She spoke little French, but had captured their hearts.

And this was my “difficult child,” the one I had to go visit the headmaster at her school about on more than one occasion.  I finally realized when she was around 11 years old that she was never going to be compliant kid or color inside the lines of life.  She was going to draw her own picture.  She was always going to march to the beat of her own drum.  I realized that my job was to teach her how to stay true to herself, yet navigate the world, and protect her from others who wanted to impose their expectations on her–and teach her how to eventually protect herself from them.  Boy, did she learn that lesson well.

Being so tiny and traveling the world alone, she learned to do things like be ferocious and loud when she needs to in order to counter the idea people have that they can take advantage of her because she looks like a lightweight.  Bad call to try that with her.  She will set you straight in a minute and not give it another thought. It’s amazing to watch.  You won’t make that mistake again.  And you’ll think about it twice before trying it on anyone else.

She continued to travel for years, rejecting the lifestyle her classmates had adopted of getting 9-5 jobs, getting married and having kids. While they were doing that, she was on a mountaintop in Turkey cleaning toilets at a bed and breakfast to earn her keep and freaking out over a fellow traveler she met falling off the mountain to his death.  Or she was waking up on the banks of a crystal clear lake on a fjord in Iceland to find a dead body floating in the water beside her.  Or in a remote South Sea island teaching children with rotted teeth about the world they may never see and experience. Or getting lost in the deep Oregon woods with the state patrol calling me and asking if I was her mother and notifying me they could not find her (thank God they did!). Or having her clothes (and everything else) get totally moldy in the Costa Rican humidity while she was away traveling.

I had to set straight more than one friend or family member who asked, “Don’t you think you should make her come home and settle down now?”  “Make her come home?” She was a grown woman! “Settle down?”  Who was I too tell her what she should do with her life?  I had not raised my daughters to have minds of their own, only to try to make them live the life others would choose for them–even me!

She worked hard to earn her masters in counseling psychology, only to call me one day and tell me that she decided during a counseling session that she did not want to spend her life listening to people pour out their problems when she wanted to scream at them, “Stop whining and get yourself together!”  After all she had seen in the world, their problems seemed so trivial that she could not even make herself pretend to be interested in them not working their hardest to make their life what they said they wanted it to be.

I am ecstatic that she is now (sort of) settled nearby, but struggling with the idea of being in one place and with someone after years of being on the move and only having to account to herself. She is totally into health and natural medicine and is certified in many aspects of it.  And she now teaches at Le Cordon Bleu.  She said that with her two mothers, aunt and others of her family being professors and teachers, it was in her blood.  🙂

Being brought up as she was and navigating the world alone, she has learned whatever skills she needs for me not to have to worry about her being okay if something happened to me.  The two of us went to a party recently with many of my friends.  I thought I would have to pretty much take care of her since she was in unfamiliar territory.  Wrong.  I went to find her and she was surrounded by a circle of people who were marveling and laughing at something she was saying.

No need to worry about her. She will do fine in life.  She has the skills she needs to deal with whatever comes.

My baby daughter shows me the meaning of perseverance every day when she gets up and goes about the business of living.  She began college nearly ten years ago at age 16, and has yet to finish.  Yet she is a certified personal trainer and owns her own business with a full schedule of clients.  Even so, she agreed to also work at a gym when the owner approached her after seeing her hard at working out over a period of time and told her he’d be willing to hire her if she got certified.  She told him she was already certified and had her own business.  He hired her on the spot.

In addition, she practically works another job as a member, coach and trainer on her roller derby team.  In just three years of skating, she made it onto Team USA, beating out 600 other women to join the roster to travel the world this year and skate for the US against teams from all over the world.  She was just notified she will be traveling to the bouts against Germany and Austria shortly.

All this, and she has such fortitude, grit and determination.  She loves sports, and will try any of them.  Not only try them, but put everything she has into it.  Even when she is hurting, she gets back in there and gives it her all like you can’t imagine.  I could not scrape up that much competitiveness in myself if I tried.

She’s always been that way and it truly serves her well now.  She works hard but still loves to have a good time and has never met a stranger.  Sometimes I think she is still in touch with everyone she ever knew.  She goes nowhere without people knowing who she is before she leaves.  She has that kind of personality and it is totally genuine.  People feel it.

I even appreciate the fact that as much as we would want her to finish college, she chose her own path and did what made sense for her and her interests.  I’m not worried about her.  She will be fine.

So, if I died today, I can go knowing that those absolutely incredible, intelligent, bright, imaginative, personable, vivacious, funny as hell, hardworking, loving, caring, productive, beautiful, young women I am honored to call my daughters, will be okay. They are why I wanted for so long to be a mother. They will be able to handle whatever it is that life throws at them.  They are not perfect, nor need they be.  They will continue to grow and change.  But, the basics are there.  They got it.  Whatever they seemed to be thinking about (other than what I was telling them) when I was raising them, they listened.  They heard me.  They took what I and their other parents gave them and did their own thing with it.  And that’s fine. They don’t have to be just like us.  I love their version. I want them to do their own thing.  But, at least I know they know what is important and can take care of themselves as they journey on their path.  They know that they are in charge of their lives and have to work hard to craft that life they want.

And ultimately, isn’t  that’s really all every parent wants for his or her child?

 

Mixin’ it up

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

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Last night I had the distinct pleasure of attending an Amos Lee concert.  I don’t go to many concerts.  They tend not to be worth the time, money or effort for me at this point.  I’ve had my share of screaming moments over the years for everyone from the Supremes and Temptations to Barry White to Luther, Earth Wind and Fire, Janet Jackson, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Cher, Yanni, Johnny Mathis, and many others (the excitement of Michael Jackson will never be topped).  But now, I’m pretty much like, I’ll download it to my iPhone, thank you, or I’ll watch it on YouTube.  At this point, if you want to get me there, give me somebody like Luther Vandross.  Not only will I be there, but I’ll totally embarrass you by acting a fool. Since Luther isn’t with us anymore, that’s unlikely.  But, when my BFF told me Lee, whose concert she had just attended (she’ll go see anyone…)  was really good and he was headed to Athens, I booked it even though I’d never even heard of him.  When I asked her what sort of music he played, she was about as vague as when she said she didn’t know his ethnicity.  How does that happen?

Turns out, attending was a good move.  Thank heaven our Civic Center makes the logistics such as parking easy.

Not only was the music good, but what I really loved was how she was absolutely correct about both ethnicity and music genre.  It was such a lesson for me.  Listening to Lee, I could not quite place his music genre.  If there were any other black folk there, I didn’t see them, so I could not clearly use attendees as a clue. Amos’s appearance was not a clue, as I couldn’t really tell his ethnicity by looking at him.  I finally Googled him and saw that he looked mixed.  And because his music was such a mixed bag of rock, country, R&B, reggae, hiphop, Irish/Scottish dirge, blues and 30s and 40s songs, I could not even figure out what his genre was.   It will tell you all you need to know about his music if I tell you that his cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” emanated seamlessly from an Irish/Scottish ditty.  My BFF was right.  It was unbelievable.

Then came the best part.  I finally wondered why it mattered that I couldn’t classify him.  What difference would it make if I knew?  I had to really think about that.  That was sort of new for me because when teaching about such things, as I do, I say that it shouldn’t matter what people’s ethnicities or other labels are, yet here I was doing it.  I was doing it even though fusion music that mashes up cultures and sounds is one of my favorite kinds.  I love Native American music mixed with jazz, for instance.  In fact, one of the biggest posters I have in my office is one I begged off the owner of a music store in Maui.  It shows two guys standing next to each other:  One is in native Hawaiian dress and the other in a Scottish kilt, each with their instruments.  I love the audacity of it and I love that it demonstrates how we can meet across cultures.  As polar opposites as they are, who would have ever thought to put those two together? Yet, there they stand.

I realized that so much of how we accept things presented to us is based on labeling.  I’m sure there are complex reasons why, but we shouldn’t let it get in the way of enjoying it.  I wanted to classify his music so I could understand what it was so I could better appreciate it.  But, did I really need to do so in oder to enjoy it?  Did it matter if it was a country song and if he was black?  Or an Irish/Scottish jam and he was black?  Or that it was hiphop and he was white?  Or that it was Zydego and he was not from Louisiana? Why couldn’t I just let my ears determine what I liked or didn’t?  Why did I need to place it in a box and interpret and process it in order to decide if I liked it?

I wanted to know what his race/ethnicity was, so I would know what to expect or how to interpret what he did.  But, did I really need to know?  Wouldn’t doing what I wanted to do put him in a box that only allowed him to engage in certain acts in order to be judged “authentically” whatever I thought he was?  He had smooth, totally cool swagger that I attribute to my tribe, black folks.  Yet, he did not let that define who he was.  It didn’t matter when he was in the midst of sweating it out in a Irish/Scottish jam session, or a sad-story country song, or an upbeat hiphop selection.

What a great vehicle for getting me to examine these issues.  I loved that experience!  What a great reality check for me.

So, today, as it happens,  I was reading an assignment submitted by a white student about being out of his comfort zone at a campus-wide Greek sorority/fraternity event because he was one of only a few whites in the audience and he realized that he had never seen blacks in their own environment totally enjoying and interacting with each other.  He’d only experienced them as one of a very few in a class of many. Because he did not understand the environment and culture and music that everyone else there totally understood, he felt so left out that he almost left. All they were doing was jamming to the music and enjoying each other.  But since it was so different than what happened in his culture, he didn’t know what to do with it.

I think he was doing what I had done, but he did not process it enough to be able to truly enjoy the event.  He got stuck in feeling like since he and his culture were not the center from which he generally viewed things, he could not enjoy it.

I am glad I checked myself in plenty of time to just relax and go with the flow and determine that regardless of what his race, regardless of what his musical genre, whether either could be determined by me or not, it was just a great opportunity to hear great music.

And, at the same time, to learn a great set of lessons.  It may seem to make things easier in our heads to be able to categorize,  classify and label,  and it is human nature to do so, but it is a double-edged sword.  Once we do that, we confine, relegate to certain space, and thereby limit the possibilities.  Not good.

So, you GO Amos Lee!  Do your thing, whatever it is; whoever you are! Don’t let people label you and thereby confine you!  Keep mixing’ it up and teaching us that great music need not be labeled and racial and ethnic labels do not dictate musical genres.

Love it!

Sometimes you just need to show up

13 Sunday Apr 2014

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Thursday I drove a couple of hours to the University of South Carolina Upcountry in Spartanburg to attend their 6th annual Bodies of Knowledge symposium.  This year’s symposium had LGBT issues as a theme.  While these are issues that I care very much about personally as well as professionally, I had no intentions of attending the symposium. The semester is ending, with all the madness that comes with that, I had calendared events to attend, and it simply wasn’t in my day.  

But sometimes you have a plan and life takes over. A few weeks before a friend who had taught in the SC system sent me a link to an article about the SC legislature taking money away from programs at a SC college after they assigned an LGBT novel by Alison Bechdel, saying it promoted a “gay lifestyle,” whatever that is (there is no lifestyle….it’s just a life).  

I was really upset about it for two reasons: (1) with me being female and my longest relationship (15 years) having been with a female and knowing that landscape in a personal way, I know the negative hype about LGBT issues is absolute and utter nonsense, and 2) as a professor whose classes delve deeply into workplace discrimination issues as defined by our laws, I understand that professors need to be free to assign things that may make some uncomfortable. But if it allows students to explore, it transmits knowledge, enlightens, and takes students to a new understanding based on knowledge rather than whatever other garbage is in their head, then it is a good thing.  In fact, it is more than just a good thing, it is what education is about.  

One of the mottos of my university is “to inquire into the nature of things.”  You can’t do that with your hands tied about what you can assign to accomplish that.  That is, in part, what academic freedom is about.  I understand a legislature, in part, ultimately provides funding for public institutions, but they must not allow their personal issues to get in the way of the search for understanding and enlightenment that is the very basis of education in the first place.  Education does not only seek to enlighten only about what we may like or agree with.  

So, I was pretty upset that the SC legislature had intruded so heavily into the space of education.  If it happened to them, it could happen to us.  I immediately forwarded the email to our president as a heads up.

Then a couple of weeks later I received an email saying that the SC state legislature was so upset about the Bodies of Knowledge seminar that it had become a news event.  The director of Women & Gender Studies, Lisa Johnson, had been receiving vicious hate mail and was really feeling targeted.  I immediately emailed Lisa, who I did not know, words of support.  She was very grateful and told me she was feeling very vulnerable and threatened.

The more I thought about it and the more I thought about how I would feel in a similar situation, the more I realized I needed to do more.  I let our director of our LGBT center know that I was willing to pay the registration fee of up to ten students if he knew of any who were planning to go. It was clearly not to entice students to go, but only to support them if they had planned to do so. I knew that with only a couple of weeks left in the semester, they might be able to put it in their schedule, but the gesture was important to send the message of the importance of fighting oppression and injustice wherever it arises.  

And I decided that I myself would go.  Nothing says support more than simply being there.  The school was only a couple of hours drive and the registration fee was only $25 rather than the usual hundreds, so everything in me was saying I needed to do this.  Having been to much larger resistance situations including marches and sits ins on civil rights, issues including race, gender and LGBT, I figured that showing up to learn more at an academic forum the state legislature found threatening to the future of its population was the least I could do.

So, I cleared my schedule and made the drive.  As I was at the registration table, a woman who heard me give my name approached and asked if I was the one who had emailed.  I said yes.  It was Lisa, and she immediately moved to shake my hand.  I said, “A handshake?  This deserves at least a hug!”  She said she didn’t want to presume, I told her it was an expectation, so we had a warm hug and chatted about her recent travails and the importance of my coming.  She was so, so glad I did.

The presentations that day and the next were top rate.  They were excellent academic vehicles to explore various aspects of the LGBT experience and try to bring understanding and enlightenment.  Dr. Jane Ward (“Not Gay: Straight White Men, Homosexual Sex, ad the Making of Heterosexuality”), Thomas McBee (“Born in the Right Body”), Dr. Bernadette Barton (“The Extraordinary Lives of Bible Belt Gays”) were mind-blowing, well done and exhaustively researched forays into new areas of exploration even for those of us familiar with this territory.  Paper presentations by student panelists were top grade: Panel I: Queer Moods, Moody Queers included “Undoing ‘Normal’ After ‘Born This Way'” by Masters candidate Jennifer MacLatchy, “Our Beloved Qranks” by Ph.D. student Gary Lee Pelletier, “Wake Me Up When September Ends: LGBT Suicides, Empowerment Music and the Anti-Bullying Movement,” by Shana Hirsch.  Even the students who introduced speakers had great, great comments which led me to worry a tiny bit less and appreciate even more, the power of education in SC: Chase Moery, Ariana Sanchez and Stacey Gullion.  

It was my daughter’s birthday, so I had to leave the symposium in the early afternoon in order to attend her birthday dinner in Atlanta, so I was unable to stay for the second panel.  But, it included such damning, world-ending topics (I am being sarcastic here, in a tip of the hat to the SC legislature—I have to say that because they have shown they are unable to tell the difference between reality and sarcasm–see below)  Ph.D. Nicholas A. Guittar’s “I’m Not the Stereotypical Lesbian: Gender (Non) Conformity and Coming Out,” Ethan Johnstone’s “How To Build Your Own Community,” Dr. Heather Talley’s “Queering the New Normal: Harm Reduction in an Age of Gay Progress,” and  Ph.D. student Amy Stewart’s, “Passages of Apprearing: Arendt and the Existential Politics of Transgender Liminality.”(take that to your Lesbian Hootenanny!–see below)  I also missed the last speaker, David Halperin, on “What is Sex For.”    

The opening performance the first day was to be by Leigh Hendrix, a comedian who was to perform “How to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less.”  Unfortunately, her performance was yanked by the powers that be because the SC legislature looked at the title and decided it was intended to recruit innocent young women into the “lesbian lifestyle.”  One legislator commented on a local newscast that he did not know what the presentation would be about, whether it was an academic presentation or a “lesbian hootenanny,” but it should not be permitted.

“Lesbian hootenanny“?  Did we really need to sink to that level of discourse, or even thought process in this day and age?  

Failing to see any satirical value (or not having enough knowledge, even in this day and time, to realize the possibility of satire rather than reality), Hendrix’s performance was cancelled.  Thank goodness she later spoke on the issue of what it was like to have her work, previously performed in several venues, banned in SC.  We gave her a roaring reception, I’m sure, born of our emotion at the ridiculousness of having her performance banned by a body that was responsible for creating laws for an entire state’s population but was clearly willing to kick some of its members to the curb.

Lisa is to be given major kudos for her courage in putting on the event despite the backlash, and for delivering such a magnanimously gracious, insightful, and urbane set of opening remarks both days and for bringing together such an extraordinarily knowledgeable group of presenters for the symposium.  She truly demonstrated that she is willing to perform her task as an educator of facilitating “inquiring into the nature of things.”

Even though I had to clear my calendar, pay for it on my own, and even walked out of the house without picking up off the bed my outfit for the next day (yikes!), it was worth every minute I spent at the event.  

Lisa needed to know she wasn’t alone, that others knew of her plight and supported her efforts to stand up in the face of flagrant oppression of an unprotected group by those in power and the encroachment on academic freedom by the Goliath of the legislature.  I was glad to be able to lend that support. 

Sometimes, you just need to show up and take a stand.