Stumbling Blocks: Consequences, part 1 (beyond 25)

A few resources for further consideration about the stumbling blocks of language:

Coded Racist Language is Still Racist

This satiric piece goes a long way to illustrate how deeply embedded is racist reporting and language and reporting

“If you watched that segment and thought that is a ridiculous premise and an absolutely terrible way to talk millions of about people who share nothing — nothing! — but broad pigmentation,” Chris Hayes concludes, “you are right.”

This essay breaks down some key points.

This frustrated Baltimore official tells CNN to just go ahead and call young people “niggers” if she’s going to insist on using “thugs.”

Racist Language Kills (Really)

Recent research links racism — studied through a “search-based proxy of area racism” (based on vocabulary) — to Black mortality. Racist language has deadly — actual human health, not metaphor — results.

In this way and so many others, allowing the use of racist language to go unchallenged “gives the means, or prepares the way for wrong” (see yesterday’s post).

We counted 25 on the evening of April 28. Tonight, we count….

Making the Omer Count

from On the Road to Knowing: A Journey Away from Oppression A key element in the journey from liberation to revelation is understanding the workings of oppression, and our part in them. We cannot work effectively to end what we do not comprehend.

So this year, moving from Passover to Shavuot, I commit to learning more about how oppression works and how liberation is accomplished. I invite others to join me:

Let’s work together, as we count the Omer, to make this Omer count.

Thoughts and sources welcome.

Share this graphic to encourage others to participate.

A Meditation

Aware that we are on a journey toward knowing God — from liberation to revelation — I undertake to know more today than I did yesterday about the workings of oppression. I bless and count [full Hebrew blessings in feminine and masculine address]: Blessed are You, God, Ruler/Spirit of the Universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us to count the Omer.

Today is twenty-six days which are three weeks and five days in the Omer.
Hayom shishah v’esrim yom shehaym shloshah shavuot vechamishah yamim la-omer.

In the spirit of the Exodus, I pray for the release of all whose bodies and spirits remain captive, and pledge my own hands to help effect that liberation.