Main Image Photo credit: Teresa D Hawkes, Ph.D. (Author)The Irish and Cherokee side of my family. This was in a generation that preceded my grandfather by at least two generations. They came up through the south from the Carolinas, through lands not yet fully settled by whites as they migrated toward Oklahoma. They were a Missouri crop. It is rumored that their descendants ran with the James Gang in Missouri during the Civil War. I do not have proof, as we understand proof, that any of this was true. I heard the stories around a large number of meal tables as I grew up, Air Force brat that I was. Teresa D Hawkes, Ph.D., Old Picture Archives.
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Who are we as individuals?
Mother’s Generation. The father was alive then. We see him standing with the ivory hat in the center behind the seated woman with ubiquitous bun. These people either held slaves or were descended from small landowners who owned slaves in the Carolinas. Speaking from moving away from this way of being, as my family did over the generations, the change through the years for how black people were used by white people is continous. These intersecting influences start from the time of black arrival to western shores (Brazil coast, the Caribbean islands and coasts, and the US South) until now. That is a lot of information and comes from many datasets that differ on gender, ethnicity, event timelines, locations, and private histories. So, now is part of our historical continuum, as is the Paleolithic (stone age) worldwide. Teresa D. Hawkes, Ph.D., Old Picture Archives.
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Individuals do count. We add up to all the People in any given location acting in this or that way under these or those circumstances. This very large group votes or obeys and in doing so has great Power, Power to be possessed and used….but our individual pasts that operate on us as we struggle to meet the present and future are always important. These count too.
What is each of our pasts? What does it consist of? Can we recount this?
Those who work in laboratories do record metrics associated with these three categories. These metric sets can be used in AI algorithms as sets of mathematical equations (the linear and non-linear modeling seen in many algorithms) that is almost wizardy in nature, but not really. This information and these methods can be learned in mathematical-, data-, and technology-based blogs and journals on the web or in schools at various levels. Much of this associated literature is available to everyone.
Reading is fun and your friend. I learned that early, as did many.
We enjoy it. We work on it.
It is a skill.
True. We have many skills across the board.
Mother’s mother in her heyday as a small business manager. She was ambitious for women in those years and was admonished as such. She kept going, but she did have a ceiling. Such it was for women in those days, yet she did make a good living and she and her husband bought homes and had cars and vacations. White life was good in those days for hard workers. It still is. Is everyones’? Teresa D. Hawkes, Ph.D., Old Picture Archives.
We survive our pasts and build the best futures we can.
We live for yesterday and today, the past and the future, and the unknowable times scattered about in our dreams.
That is a lot of dreams to survive on People,
dreams and deeds.
Do.It!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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