http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/ Dr. J. W. Wiley has possibly orchestrated and engaged in more conversations about diversity & social justice than anyone else in the North Country of New York. He is as eager to get in your ear as he is to have you share your thoughts. en Copyright 2012 Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:36:01 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I know, just like most Americans, that the Obama presidency has not been inhibited by his race, that his being a bi-racial president, and as a result, also construed by many as a Black president, hasn’t affected him one iota. That is why I am asking my readership to assist me in proving that America is finally colorblind to our leaders racial difference. This is why U.S. Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell’s statement that the G.O.P.’s number one goal was to assure that Barack Obama would only be a one term president could not have been associated with race. After all, Kentucky’s history of race relations could not have adversely influenced McConnell’s perspective on the ascendance of a two-term Senator to the highest political position in the U.S. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2012/03/3d_glasses_required_real_stree.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2012/03/3d_glasses_required_real_stree.html Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:36:01 -0500 COACH KING Martin, Where is it that you placed your dream and why is it that as a team we always appear to be in a game we cannot win. How badly we need you to return and coach again. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2012/01/coach_rev_dr_martin_luther_kin.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2012/01/coach_rev_dr_martin_luther_kin.html Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:40:55 -0500 When you hold hands, situate yourself for a kiss with a potential lover that doesn’t happen though both want it, badly; when you actually do kiss, or don’t allow foreplay to become an afterthought; or actually put some thought into the style of love making that is apropos this coming Friday as opposed to last Sunday; do we really consider any and/or all those intimate gestures related to notions of diversity & social justice? How so? To what varying degrees and relative to what dimensions/themes of diversity are any of these actions? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/11/romance_sex_love_marriage_stra.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/11/romance_sex_love_marriage_stra.html Sat, 19 Nov 2011 01:39:39 -0500 Occupy Wall Street! Presently, is there a phrase more spoken in the world? Because of Steve Jobs and Steve Zuckerman it isn’t hard to believe that people who have reached the threshold of what they can endure would one day refuse to be oppressed anymore. More-so, that they would launch an international movement by occupying a high profile street to make a socio-political statement-is visionary at its best, and gangsta as a quest. I must admit that I myself have also been preoccupied. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/10/preoccupied_with_my_change.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/10/preoccupied_with_my_change.html Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:59:40 -0500 It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I wanted to really be passionate about the next thing I wrote so that the words would just flow. I’ve had many topics that I’ve considered but dismissed them almost as soon as they popped in my head because of their already being overtly discussed. The Obama presidency is always an easy route to go because whether we want to believe it or not, we are undergoing a period in American history that historians further down the road will be salivating over. The fact that people want to downplay this bi-racial president’s Black presidency is almost as comical as it is tragic. First, if I were bi-racial I’d be very upset about the fact that the first bi-racial president is being put into a box that eliminates the richness of his identity. Secondly, bi-racial or Black, anyone, including Obama himself, who doesn’t want to discuss his racial reality is ignoring the biggest elephant to ever saunter though our political discourse. As well, the fact that we have political legislative bodies more invested in the return of their political party to prominence than the good will of the people is the epitome of dysfunctional if not exceedingly selfish. And to know you are doing dirt to thousands, no, millions of people who count on you to do the right thing is abominable. But I don’t want to talk at length about that or I’ll just get pissed off and morph into another rendition of the angry Black man. So, I’ll just admit to being peeved. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/09/considering_a_type_of_unexamin.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/09/considering_a_type_of_unexamin.html Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:30:49 -0500 I recently had a friend tell me that when I was asleep I had said to her that “I can see myself in my dreams.” I wondered what I could have meant when I said that. Was it my vanity revealing itself, some preoccupation with seeing myself? Was it a throwaway statement, so obvious it wasn’t worth unpacking beyond the fact that everyone probably stars in their own dreams. But then I realized that, because of the work I do it might resonate a bit deeper if I dared to go there. So, I dare to go… http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/08/dreams_of_freedom_an_impossibi.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/08/dreams_of_freedom_an_impossibi.html Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:32:17 -0500 Sexism is an intriguing thing in our current society. You can see this in the way many people responded to ex Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and are now responding to Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. Both of these women are often mocked as intellectual lightweights, as if all men who are seeking forms of higher office are intellectual giants. Somehow Hillary Clinton avoided the complex criticism of her aptitude to do the job that both of her female Republican counterparts couldn’t avoid. It could be related to her ability to answer both complex and simple questions with a level of clarity that the others often appear to struggle with. However, no matter how you see what should not be seen as the phenomenon of women in politics, the evaluation of a female candidate will always require teasing out sexist’s views. But a question that might be quite intriguing for you to consider is exactly to what extent does this work both ways in our society? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/06/in_the_card_game_of_gender_her.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/06/in_the_card_game_of_gender_her.html Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:02:00 -0500 I often refer to a very close personal female friend of mine as “a voice of reason,” because she always has tremendously insightful things to share. When I am lost at sea she finds ways to guide me back to shore, and for that I very much appreciate her. Recently, I was drifting, floating, and reached out to her to assist me in pondering the Obama-Osama conundrum, the awkwardness that abounds relative to the celebration of Osama Bin Laden’s demise at the hands of a Navy Seal covert operations team sanctioned by President Barack Obama in response to 9-11. During that conversation I shared with her a conversation I had with my daughter who was taken aback by what she saw as bizarre adult behavior. My daughter felt that many adults should be admonished for their overt celebration of the end of Bin Laden’s life. In that regard I have a couple of philosophical points to make before I crescendo into a Churchill (Winston or Ward, you decide) conclusion. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/05/hypocrisy_isnt_hip_at_all_what.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/05/hypocrisy_isnt_hip_at_all_what.html Sat, 07 May 2011 08:51:03 -0500 It dismantles my sensibilities (essentially blows my mind, but that saying has become a bit trite, don’t you think?) when people immediately want to fight off the accusation that they are racists. They’ll own the fact that their thoughts on women may be limiting, disrespectful, or antiquated. They somehow find a way to attribute their thoughts and behavior to the way they were raised and somehow also find a way to rationalize their sexism as not so much of a problem because they don’t really mean anything by it. Have you found this to be true? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/04/okay_im_sexist_maybe_homophobi.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/04/okay_im_sexist_maybe_homophobi.html Mon, 04 Apr 2011 22:35:03 -0500 In the Examining Diversity through Film class I co-teach with colleagues at SUNY-Plattsburgh we had a very intriguing moment arise as we exited our much less anxiety ridden "ability" theme and cautiously entered our "race" theme. A young woman, who often is very much in the game in terms of the energy and insight she brings to a conversation, admitted that she struggled with the notion that because she is White she is privileged. She argued that she has never felt that way and that when she accomplishes something of merit she doesn’t want it undercut by assertions that her race might have been a factor in her achievement. As the discussion ensued, it was pointed out to her and of course the rest of the class that the reason they often don’t/can’t see their racial privilege is that it is a dominant attribute and we are less apt to focus on those qualities that give us unearned privileges. They were then asked if they thought men had an advantage (privilege) over women in our society. They were then asked did they think it was more advantageous to live a heterosexual lifestyle, or to not have a so-called disability. Upon agreeing with the fact that some cultural groups in our society do have advantages (privilege), why would the dominant race in our society be any different? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/02/why_is_acknowledging_privilege.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/02/why_is_acknowledging_privilege.html Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:07:42 -0500 Recent events in Tucson, Arizona got my attention in a way that was quite disturbing. The wanton murder of six people and wounding of 13 more at the hands of a deranged assailant was hard to ignore, especially when they were gathering to discuss democracy. Undoubtedly, because Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Judge John Roll were two of the shooting victims, it ensured that the visibility of this heinous crime would be more than that given some drug related drive-by shooting in an impoverished neighborhood. However, the tragedy became even greater when one of the victims was a child, a 9 year old, who was only in attendance because of her love for politics and desire to acquire insight into how our democracy works. What would she think of our democracy if she were home watching the aftermath of Tucson instead of becoming one of its victims. After all, no matter how we slice it, the shooting occurred at a political gathering, which makes it some sort of statement about our politics. Whether the shooting occurred because of a crosshairs map, because of heated political rhetoric that disturbingly reflects violence, like “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” “don’t retreat, reload,” or something as inconsiderate of a economically bereft populace as a politician publicly stating the number one goal is to make sure that a sitting president only serves one term, when/where does it stop? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/01/impenetrable_cloaks_inconsider.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2011/01/impenetrable_cloaks_inconsider.html Sun, 16 Jan 2011 07:48:15 -0500 I remember back in the day often hearing friends of mine say that the only way they might do certain things that they didn’t really find attractive (befriending a gay person or someone of another race, dating beneath their class status) would be if they were paid a million dollars to do it. Sometimes, dependent upon how far fetched they were in their thinking, I would challenge them to unpack it. I began my challenge by asking if a million dollars was the benchmark for when they would do it. It was an arbitrary benchmark that they had created and they needed to truly think about the dimensions of their arbitrariness. Puzzled, they often would challenge me to take my point further, which I graciously did. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/11/a_relative_measure_of_worth.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/11/a_relative_measure_of_worth.html Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:32:07 -0500 A young male college student who I have had the pleasure of building an excellent rapport with during his exemplary college career dismantled my sensibilities recently when he shared with me how he was being seen around the campus by many. He vented a concern that he was being viewed and labeled as a predator because of his dating a variety of young women. Now, he wasn’t being seen as a “cheater,” because he had successfully articulated and established himself as non-monogamous. Like George Clooney, a confirmed bachelor, he thought there was no problem with him honestly having his choice of women as companions as long as everything was out in the open. Somehow though, the moniker of “player” that stereotypically gets attached to a male who determines he doesn’t want to be in a monogamous relationship isn’t being used as much on some college campuses. Like the term “whore” or the more abbreviated slang term “ho” that has been used as a mechanism to manipulate women into conforming to Judeo-Christian values, predator appears to carry similar weight and now be the preferred accusation. http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/11/the_predicament_of_socalled_pr.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/11/the_predicament_of_socalled_pr.html Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:54:39 -0500 So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? After you consider that, then answer this, which occurs first, bullying because of our ignorance on how to respond to differences, or inconsideration of differences that contributes to bullying? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/10/diversity_and_bullying_just_an.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/10/diversity_and_bullying_just_an.html Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:28:51 -0500 Have you noticed recently how the saying “I’m just saying” has propagated throughout pop culture communication? It was actually just a few months ago that an extremely lovely woman friend of mine first said it to me in a way that made me focus on it. Since then, I hear it everywhere. Even on my way home today from Burlington, Vermont I heard hip-hop artist The Dream in his song “Love King” give this advice to a woman he was interested in: “N….a” keep playin, change where you layin, I’m just saying.” While the advice seems admirable, it does appear to benefit him to give it, so once again there is more weight to the "I'm just saying," than meets the eye. Someone answer this for me: has this saying been around for years and I just didn’t notice it, or did it actually just expand throughout our vernacular? http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/10/im_just_saying_oh_yeah_what_ex.html http://blog.pressrepublican.com/weblog5/2010/10/im_just_saying_oh_yeah_what_ex.html Sat, 09 Oct 2010 20:09:51 -0500