Best advice I ever received was from my dad, though he did not have real good conversations with me, this was the most impactful statement that he ever made to me.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
Growing up in Toledo Ohio, and the air was still rife with racist tensions, primarily from people who looked like me, they are called white people, who had screwed up thoughts and ideas to say the least, about others who did not look like them.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
It is probably a premature statement, that I did not ever consider myself part of this group. Albeit, it was that everybody insisted on putting me into it, and that made me not want to be a part of that group even more. I believe that it was the very influence of my Dad’s saying that made me turn out this way, at least in part. It is that one has influences, but the spirit of that person, or who that person sees themselves as being, and the road they wish to take after they get any given thoughts, ideas, knowledge, this is up to the individual.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
In saying that, a person can readily dismiss what one hears, if it is against what they have already set their minds to, maybe it is that they like being who they are, be it evil of a person who is genuinely civil. So how did I get to be so open minded? Well, perhaps this is one of the first things that I was open minded about, and perhaps I just did not get enough information about other subjects, like growing up with all the weird ideals past to me about gay people or obese people. Maybe it was about these two scenarios, there was much that I could readily believe, and had no way to get any evidence or knowledge that countered them.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
So, what my Dad told me! I must have been about 9ish or so. There were many fights going on, as well as “race wars” – sort of like gang fighting between people of different cultures… black and white primarily! I had been jumped by various black people by this time, and have been victimized for being “white”, which is called racism, because they had the power to victimize me because they seen me as white. But in reality I was Polish!, and what my dad told me, was what made me to never be racist, it helped to solidify my mindset.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
He told me, Son, don’t hate a people because somebody did evil to U, hate the person who did it. That was impactful. I know those who follow some christian beliefs that I don’t believe in, they say, hate the sin not the sinner. I don’t believe that. If anything, I believe the old testament, and I believe it is iterated in the new testament as well, and that is, U confront the wrong been done (if possible) , if not , you try to have some others confront it, if not, and that person is getting away with it, they are to be ostracized until they do right. Now, that is if one is a Christian… a true Christian as I say. Most people, well, many I have know – are not. Only a few that I see are true to the Spirit. And that is not a bad thing – it is Spirituality, or truth to a God one follows.
✈ ☯ ✈ ☯ ✈
So, there is only one race, the human race, and as far as my people go, those who are civil, who take time to understand, who are slow to speak, when needed to be so, those who use logic, common sense, and are seeking to be civil in all they can possibly be civil in, those are my people. And that is the influence of my dad’s saying.
kenneth james 