By guest blogger Sadako Red [see disclaimer]
[March 19, 2016] I write best when I’m drunk; although I have to be more careful about my spelling and grammar. After a few shots of whiskey my inhibitions – those internalized by me after years of government training – seem to melt away with alcohol in my bloodstream. Jack Daniels Whiskey was my friend during the Vietnam War where it gave me physical courage and he remains my friend to this day whenever I need another kind of courage … to write about how politicians and racism are as inseparable as blissful ignorance and Jane Fonda.
My small readership here at Satterfield’s leadership blog has drawn more than one complaint about my writing subject matter. Guilty as charged … but at least the topics are not irrelevant and someone needs to write about the elephant in the room anyway. Yes, that same elephant that’s charging down the expensive dinnerware isle at Saks on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. Politicians across the spectrum, city to state to federal levels, have embraced racism as their cause célèbre of the modern age. It’s the gift that keeps on giving; giving votes, federal grants, stature, recognition, and fantastic praise – a politician’s wet dream.
Like the knights of ole who jousted on the field of honor, politicians use racism like The Mace to crush one another and as a Shield to protect themselves. It’s cheap and effective. No other cloak of satisfaction is as near perfect. Sexism, ageism, Islamophobia, and other -ISMs are mere lightweights in comparison to racism and the benefits are unending. The reasons for racism will be debated for generations with blame spread around aplenty. But as a political tool, it’s the best thing since humans learned to use fire.
I’ve been rather busy these past few months (working on something about emails; more on that in another post), so I missed out on how college students are retreating to “safe spaces.”1 It appears that whenever they hear of a scary idea or person who speaks out on discomfiting or distressing viewpoints … like freedom and independence … they run and hide. I must confide that I could have used a safe space when the whole Vietcong army was trying to kill me and my buddies back in the 1960s. I didn’t care what my buddy looked like, his politics, or his hometown but it was his marksmanship skills, a keen eye, and the guts to pull the trigger that mattered.
So, the politicians have won. They are assured of future victories as they ensure that the pantywaist college students – the new leaders of tomorrow – are fully indoctrinated and shorted on resilience. Protect them at all costs and the idea that freedom and independence are just an old-white-man’s outdated concept of another -ISM and we have come full circle in Socialism. At least Bernie Sanders admits it.
You can find me on the web. Just look and find my writings on “leadership”.
Sadako Red’s Previous Posts:
- City of Baltimore: Still Stuck on Stupid!
- City of Baltimore and Race: Stuck on Stupid
- Lead by Example and Show Some Dignity!
- Fear: Racist, Sexist, Homophobe Accusations
- The U.S. Army, Race Relations, and Manhood
- Race: Leadership and the Lack of Leadership
- A Failed Management Culture in the VA
- Race Trumps and Leadership Fails
- Race, Character, and the Government
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- At Brown University safe spaces have been provided and have been equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. See this NY Times article about safe spaces: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html?_r=0