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July 2024

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May 2024

Emergency Preparedness: Are You Ready?
05/28/2024

Farewell from the 2023/24 Social Work Interns
05/28/2024

Gina on the Horizon
05/28/2024

Mark Your Calendars for the Healthy Aging Research California Virtual Summit
05/28/2024

Meet Our New Development Associate
05/28/2024

Putting the Strategic Plan into Practice
05/28/2024

Washington Park: Pasadena’s Rediscovered Gem
05/28/2024

Introducing Civil Rights Discussions
05/22/2024

Rumor of Humor #2416
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2418
05/14/2024

Springtime Visitors
05/07/2024

Freezing for a Good Cause – Credit, That Is
05/02/2024

No Discussion Meeting on May 3rd
05/02/2024

An Apparently Normal Person Author Presentation and Book-signing
05/01/2024

Flintridge Center: Pasadena Village’s Neighbor That Changes Lives
05/01/2024

Pasadena Celebrates Older Americans Month 2024
05/01/2024

The 2024 Pasadena Village Volunteer Appreciation Lunch
05/01/2024

Woman of the Year: Katy Townsend
05/01/2024

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Smoke gets in your eyes…

By Richard Myers
Posted: 09/07/2020
Tags:
I grew up in Louisiana in the 40s and 50s. Deep south, racism. Racism was everywhere. It was common and ordinary. Racist tropes and language were used easily and comfortably in polite society.

But I grew up with Black people all around me. They were in my homes, everywhere I went, In stores, and on the streets. They were familiar. I knew them…  as individuals, with personalities.

In that place and time, racism permeated everything, and it is soaked into my head. It was like the smoke in a smoke-filled room that gets into your clothes, your hair, your eyes, and your lungs. You smell of smoke when you leave. But you’re not a smoker.

Living in that world, I knew and absorbed all the tropes and stereotypes about black people; lazy, shiftless, ignorant, unreliable, etc.

But I knew many black people. I met them and worked with them, alongside them. In all my life, and all the black people I have ever met throughout my many years, I have never met a single one who fit the stereotype. Not a single one in all those years.

One doesn’t have to be very smart to notice a disconnect between what you have been told and what you have seen with your own eyes. All it takes is to think about what you’re seeing and hearing and experiencing directly to know that there is something wrong.

It is time to acknowledge this disconnect, and the significance of it, and to get the smoke out of our clothes and hair and eyes and lungs.

 - Dick -

Tagged as racism
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