For the majority of my life, I’ve been convinced that I would die early. And hey, it could still happen, depending on your definition of “early.” But for me, in particular, I could never see a world where I lived beyond 42.
How was this possible? The northern states were far more populous- at least in terms of those eligible to vote. But remember at that point, the criteria for eligibility was white, male landowners. But they wanted to have something available in the system to account for total population- women, children, ….and slaves.
I am not offering this list as any definitive “you should absolutely add this to your reading/listening/watching”. But I thought I would share with you all the resources I’ve been working through to gain a better understanding of the past, present, and future of us as a people, as Americans, and specifically of systematic, unwarranted, invisible white privilege.
It’s no wonder so many always wants to go back to “the good ol’ days”, because when we have it great, and we’re the ones riding high on power and wealth, the only things we see through our rose-tinted-backward-facing lenses are the high points. Not the individuals or people groups whose lives were destroyed to get there.
We want to be the good guy. We have this instinctive moral imperative almost built into us that we have to be the good guy. But in order to do this, we’ve taught ourselves that there must be “bad guys” for our “goodness” to overcome.
Society doesn’t improve when the naysayers stand by and proclaim “I told you so.” It improves when, as a community, we decide that we’re better than the sum of our parts.
Sometimes we say the right things. We say “I forgive you” or will even convince ourselves we’ve forgiven someone who didn’t bother asking forgiveness. But in reality, we’ve filed it away somewhere, only to pull it out and use it against them the moment they wrong us one too many times.
When I was growing up, I hated hearing “because I said so”. It felt like a cop out answer when an adult didn’t really have any conviction behind what they said but they wanted it to happen anyway. It felt… lazy. And so I distinctly recall making the decision at a very young age to never tell someone “because I said so”.
My name is Anthony Anderson. I’m a writer, blogger, podcaster, consultant, leadership and organizational development specialist, husband of an amazing woman, and father of two. I also do Myers-Briggs and Enneagram training seminars and workshops. If you’re here, it’s probably because you’ve found me on Instagram or some other media platform and are looking for […]
I hope you’ve all had time to listen to my new podcast. If not, that’s ok- there’s still time! In fact, I had a friend this week suggest that I use that space as a way to share my journey through learning more about Advent. So, I dropped a surprise episode of One More Thing […]
