Tag: Language
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What Is the Language of Justice?
“If there was no such thing as language, would we all be saying the same thing?” — Kelly FitzPatrick Silva (Kitchen Philosopher) After the controversy that emerged from the conversation on race between Lou Giglio, the CEO of Chick-Fil-A, and the rapper Lecrae where Giglio tried to rebrand the concept of “white privilege” as “white…
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Communicating to Death (or some better title)
“Urkel is dead and I can’t breathe.” Those were the words Oprah spoke to the interviewer when they asked her about one of the most recent casualties of a senseless shooting. I couldn’t breathe either. How could Urkel be gone? He held the hopes of so many of us. He had achieved the dream and…
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Is Common English An Inherently Biased/Oppressive/Racist Language?
Can a language be biased/oppressive/racist? I know that right off the bat some people will take issue with the question this title suggests. They’ll say, “No. A language can’t be inherently racist or anything else other than a method of communication. It is neutral. Words don’t hurt people. People hurt people.” And to some degree,…
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Sight Beyond Sight – A Commentary on “Mansplaining and more…”
Are you familiar with the conversational phenomenon known as mansplaining? If you have never heard of it, here is a working definition of it: Mansplaining can be when someone who has lesser or incomplete knowledge on a subject offers an explanation to someone with greater knowledge of the subject under the assumption that the person…
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When One “ism” Ends, #Embracism Begins
Racism doesn’t exist. There I said it. Now we can move on. Don’t you wish it was that easy? What if we could uncreate racism or all of the other divisive isms just as easily as they were created and create a new way of being together? Let’s call that effort #embracism. As I define…
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If There Was No Such Thing As Language…
Recently I’ve made the error of reading comments from people at the bottom of some the articles about the recent shootings, racism in America, so called white privilege, and the Black Lives Matters movement. For years I stopped reading the comments because after doing so I typically walk away with a sense of foreboding. I…
The Roofless Church 