Your long weekend has almost lasted a month. You are my laughter. You are my entertainment. I need your posts like a dragonfly’s wings need the wind.

Miss you a ton!

Tuggle

PS- Will you be in Seattle when we return to the states? August 30th?

I’m a UU and I’m sure my congregation would LOVE to do something like this. Would you be interested in having the work reproduced elsewhere? Only with your permission and being credited, natch.

This exhibit looks really well done, and is a great idea on a campus like SPU. I’m no expert on the dynamics of race in the various places within the US, but having lived in NC for almost four years now has expanded my vision of its complexities. I had a wonderful opportunity at Duke Divinity School to be part of some group conversations with a variety of white and black students last year. We met once a week throughout the year, and some good relationships have come out of that, but more than anything I’ve begun to realize how easy it is to shoot oneself in the foot before one even begins a conversation. I’m fascinated that you took up this topic at SPU, whose student body is (I imagine) still not all that diverse, but probably somewhat more so than when we were students. I imagine that the John Perkins Center helps some to make students more aware, but I wonder how there can begin some genuine reconciliation that involves becoming friends across racial lines just because we like each other as people. I am impressed by your efforts at raising awareness, but I guess I’m pushing on the “what now?” question because that’s where I am. I get that I’m privileged. What now? I imagine that if I were still at SPU, I would think that even more, seeing how few students are “raced” as “non-white,” which in itself is a problematic category. [In a course I took two years ago, taught by J. Kameron Carter at Duke, I read a book called Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, by Matthew Frye Jacobson. I found it fascinating, because it described how, for example, neither the Irish nor the Germans used to be the "right" races in the US. They only became raced as "white" when other darker-skinned immigrant populations started coming to the US (other than those forcibly brought here). It's definitely worth a read on these issues]. Anyway, I think your exhibit raises an important and fascinating set of questions that is only the beginning of the conversation. And how poignant to have the exhibit in Emerson. It would be very interesting to see how far “awareness” goes to making some changes.

I really enjoyed this post, and have laughed out loud at some of your other entries. It’s a delight to read your blog.

Peace,
Celia
[celia@spu.edu]

Yes, I love my denomination. But I love the kissingers too…