Tag Archives: equality

Inquiring Minds, Poetry Work

Cri de Coeur

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When you are a minority in this country, be it a woman, or of a different race, gender identification, or a non-prevalent religion, you are already a second class citizen. You are simply tolerated and you are either outright told you are not wanted at times or its whispered in your ear at the most unexpected (or expected) moments in your life.

You often will just nod to yourself inside and say, Yeah, that’s right, I almost forgot I wasn’t different from you. How silly of me to have forgotten. Thank you for reminding me I don’t really belong.

A woman or man may become shamed, fearful, angry. Cry tears of sadness, frustration and/or indignation. They make drink, smoke, shoot up, live life to the excess all to assuage their disgust, their inadequacies, or the perpetual fight they think they may not be able to overcome for something they simply were born into. Nothing more. A chromosome here, a chromosome there, all amounting to being defined, boxed and put in your place. Categorized.

Becoming a category, a subject matter, a thing, provides disconnection for the majority. So when the times comes to fight the status quo it is simply met with indifference, ridicule, generalities, skepticism, and even outright suspicion.

What does the majority think we fight for? Why does a woman call out a man in power when he threatens her with her career if she won’t sleep with him? Why does a black man kneel when the anthem plays because he simply wants to make sure that flag really seems HIM in equal measure when it waves in the wind. Why does a man marrying another man, or woman marrying another woman rankle the majority so, when love is love is love?

Majority is the key.

Remember, Majority is the key.

Stop thinking of yourself as not the majority. Don’t acquiesce. Don’t bow your head.

Being a minority is only a state of mind you put yourself in.

So simply cry out from the heart. And say enough.

Philip Wardlow 2017

Inquiring Minds

Hey, I like Brown Rice too! – My opinion on racial inequality in regards to media

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brown_rice_vs_white_rice

l loved seeing  the 50th Anniversary for the March on Washington. I will say my equality wish is for it  to be present in television, movies,writing, and comics. Hell, I will settle for commercials for now.(sighting the latest Cheerios stupidity a few months back – look it up on YOUTUBE if you don’t know what I mean)

I haven’t seen equality surface yet in media..not really. Yeah sure , you have one little token character here or there in television or movies…but nothing really substantial. I just think its ingrained in our psyche to see a character or story played out as a Caucasian.  Imagine a black British James Bond, Doctor Who,  or  Edward  from Twilight , heaven forbid, (but yeah we got a Native American in there!)

Hell, I’m half black and I write consciously seeing  my main character be it a man or woman as white…how messed up is that. I have to consciously think of my characters differently when it comes to race. It just comes naturally to think of them as white. And that’s the whole point. It comes natural to us as a society because it’s all we know.

We grow up with a social media targeted majorly to one race. So each new generation thinks that is the norm out in the world. They become comfortable with it and everything else is alien. So that “alien” is just a filler or sideshow to pull in once in a while to say a line and go about your merry way or get killed off (case in point Walking Dead..great show btw) .

Now they are making some  slow progress, don’t get me wrong.  In the Ultimate Universe  version of Marvel they killed off Peter Parker and have made Spiderman a black boy (even though his last name is Morales, what’s with that.)  The Nick Fury from that Marvel world  is also black (and it carried over to the Avengers movie with Samuel Jackson…I bet you guys didn’t  know he’s been white in the normal Marvel world since forever)  Anyways, what I am trying to say in my own roundabout way is that there are many little facets in society that affect our overall perception of what’s really going on in the world. These facets mean a lot because they add up. Media is just one of those facets I would like to see evolve.

I think  back to the ridiculous movies and commercials and news  footage from the forties & fifties when television and media  took off. It painted an America as super wholesome and super gleeful and happy to be alive every moment of the day.  When people behind the scenes were hiding their bigotries, true sexual tendencies, alcohol dependencies or spousal abuse they endured on a daily basis.

Then the sixties came and everything changed because they realized the world was bigger than there own little world they lived in, in  there own little isolated neighborhood, and they were forced to reflect on what was right and wrong from civil rights to the Vietnam War.  And it was all played on what? Yep, television.