What other day would be more perfect than this one to continue this here book along. So for you all still here and did not know today is MLK day. I wish I can say that I personally was inspired by him but that would be untrue seeing that much of my life I have viewed him as a passive individual but not to discredit ANYTHING that he has done for the overall equality and voter's right in the US I simply do not agree with every bit of this man.
Although I morally don't reside anywhere he was and is about I still an respect his legacy and the movie My Friend Martin slapsss.
Today I attended an MLK event at my university that had nearly 70+ individuals participate. It was exhilarating. The event wasn't centered solely around MLK like the ones you attend when you're in elementary school and they herd everyone into the gymnasium to sit on the floor and watch movies. We instead had training and intelligent conversations on economic disparity and race relations.
So I am here to recount the things that I spent hours learning today.
First our Keynote, an educated black woman who has spoken at Harvard, sat us down to discuss race relations in perspective of all individuals.
She had us first discuss among he group in a scenario where we were trying find a solution to a hostile All lives matter vs Black matters incident.
Now this showed who really shined among the group although we had scattering individuals who showed all live matters supports she presented us with ways to combat this through progressive dialogue.
The idea of curiosity, asking question from the person on their beliefs.
Active listening, letting your guard down to talk to the person and not at them.
And to simply to take a step out of yourself and loosen the grip on your beliefs to have an intelligent discussion on your views by being respectful.
Along with this presentation she also introduced many of us to the idea racial battle fatigue. Being that this complex has steered many minority individuals down a not so desired end result of these discussion.
When minorities have to have these similar discussions constantly to explain why they are marginalized it leads them to be hostile to individuals who are naive and may need this explanation to change their but it is not given properly due to this fatigue and angst because the person who is most knowledge on it is too tired of giving the same speech.
I think I will touch on that another day in a different part after I due more research on this topic because I think it could be interesting.
After we had this discussion she gave us key advance in not creating hostile, awkward energy surrounding the topic of race, which although we know does not scientifically exist yet still has left our country divided for centuries, we went into a workshop.
In this workshop we were randomly presented with colored chips that held numerical value and with chips we were to trade and bargain with our peers to try to get a higher number of chips.
Throughout the rounds we came to find a divide among the groups of people with lower numerical chip, mid range numerical chips, and high numerical chip count which was created intentionally through the head of the programming. This was to symbolise classism in the US with economics and got us to think of the redistribution of wealth and how much impact the top percent can be on how the other classes are effected.
Along with this activity we watch a video that discussed the disparity among the poor and the wealthy in the country and how it has only gotten worst over time and that the only was for us to make a difference is to be involved in voting for local individuals that hold the beliefs and desires of the people they are set to represent at heart.
All in all I thought this day was very educational for me and my peers to partake in in order to become further knowledgeable on what we can do and to pay closer attention to the country that we live in.
Seeing that we don't have clear segregation written on plaques above our heads there is still a clear racial, gender, and socio economic divide and strife that is being clearly reflected in this country that has to be intensely identified, spoke on, and completely eradicated.
Remember question everything.
