My daughter, Dr. Lorna Thomas Farquharson, just landed a major victory as the newly elected Chair of the West Hartford (Connecticut) Board of Education. She led a team of seven to victory and threw out the old Native American mascot names from the two high school athletic teams. "Warriors" and Chieftains" are now a thing of the past. It ended a 7-year contentious battle with those who did not want to part with the names and those who understood that real equity means change.
I surprised her and showed up in the BOE Chambers. She was stunned when she saw me. I wanted her to know I supported her completely and would stand ready if any parent had become belligerent, as they had been in previous Board meetings. Shouting obscenities. Booing the Superintendent, who had recently won the State's highest award: Superintendant of the Year.
I stood ready.
Fortunately, the opposing parents controlled themselves Tuesday night, thanks to on-duty police officers and television cameras.
This is what my daughter and her colleagues face as local elected officials.
And as I celebrated the mascot name change and acknowledged the countless "Congrats" on my social media platforms, this is what a lone opposer said on my Facebook page (I'll call him JS):
"Ridiculous. (I'm) mostly Polish. But if they wanted to name the team the Pollacks, I'd have absolutely no issue with it. Everyone today is so sensitive and triggered by anything and everything. Just get over it!"
I responded in an exchange of back and forth comments and heard back from the descender who declared, "Common sense is gone, replaced by over sensitivity and cancel culture."
The potshots continued until I announced that I would use his comments as content for my upcoming training courses!! Now, JS is silent.
I lift up this discourse because this is how common decency has fallen in our society. Name-calling. Labeling. And an individualized focus and concentration that ignores the harsh realities of a racist past.
I am going to talk more about this in my next ezine. But in the meantime, I ask you to invite your greatest skeptic to the Feb 4th Black History Breakfast. It will take all of us working responsibly and proactively to move the needle forward on diversity, equity, inclusion, and multiculturalism.
I even hope JS will read this and attend the event. If Peggy Wallace, the daughter of Governor George Wallace (one of the United States' biggest racists in the 1960s), can build meaningful cross-cultural alliances today, then so can we!
Send a text, pick up the phone, or send an email and invite a skeptic to our event. And let the dialogue begin as we unpack our issues and celebrate the real value of Black History Month.
Black History IS American History.
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