Δευτέρα 13 Ιανουαρίου 2014

“[…] Early in my freshman year, my dad asked me if there were lots of Latinos at school. I wanted to say, “Pa, I’m one of the only Latinos in most of my classes. The other brown faces I see mostly are the landscapers’. I think of you when I see them sweating in the morning sun. I remember you were a landscaper when you first came to Illinois in the 1950s. And look, Pa! Now I’m in college!”
But I didn’t.

I just said, “No, Pa. There’s a few Latinos, mostly Puerto Rican, few Mexicans. But all the landscapers are Mexican.”

My dad responded, “¡Salúdelos, m’ijo!”

So when I walked by the Mexican men landscaping each morning, I said, “Buenos días.”

Recently, I realized what my dad really meant. I remembered learning the Mexican, or Latin American, tradition of greeting people when one enters a room. In my Mexican family, my parents taught me to be “bien educado” by greeting people who were in a room already when I entered. The tradition puts the responsibility of the person who arrives to greet those already there. If I didn’t follow the rule as a kid, my parents admonished me with a back handed slap on my back and the not-so-subtle hint: “¡Saluda!”

I caught myself tapping my 8-year-old son’s back the other day when he didn’t greet one of our friends: “Adrian! ¡Saluda!”

However, many of my white colleagues over the years followed a different tradition of ignorance. “Maleducados,” ol’ school Mexican grandmothers would call them.

But this Mexican tradition is not about the greeting—it’s about the acknowledgment. Greeting people when you enter a room is about acknowledging other people’s presence and showing them that you don’t consider yourself superior to them.

When I thought back to the conversation between my dad and me in 1990, I realized that my dad was not ordering me to greet the Mexican landscapers with a “Good morning.”

Instead, my father wanted me to acknowledge them, to always acknowledge people who work with their hands like he had done as a farm worker, a landscaper, a mechanic. My father with a 3rd grade education wanted me to work with my mind but never wanted me to think myself superior because I earned a college degree and others didn’t.” 


Source : http://www.chicagonow.com/white-rhino/2013/11/mexican-traditions-some-white-people-need-to-learn/





















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Τετάρτη 8 Ιανουαρίου 2014

Ubuntu

 





“An anthropologist proposed a game to children in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the children that whoever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run, they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats.

When he asked them why they had run like that when one could have had all the fruits for himself, they said, ‘UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?’ (‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: ‘I am because we are.)”




 Source : http://true-affection-sings.tumblr.com/post/41995411616


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Πέμπτη 2 Ιανουαρίου 2014

01/01/13

Ομίχλη κι υγρασία, γέλιο κι ευδιαθεσία .
Χορός και μουσική, αφημένοι στο χάος, στην έμμεση έννοια της βιοηθικής.
Κρυφός καπνός, συνείδηση παρελθοντική.
Περιστροφή, χάδια και λύπη.
Τα μάτια της ξεχειλίζουν από αίσθημα καθώς με κοιτάζει δακρυσμένη.
Αγάπη εξευτελισμένη, αγάπη μοναδική.
Αγάπη ρημαδιασμένη, αγάπη αληθινή.
Είναι δύσκολο να πράττεις βάσει ορθολογισμού κι εγωισμού.
Είναι δυσκολότερο να γνωρίζεις την ταραχή που σου προκαλεί η ιδέα του ερχομού.
Ζήσ’το. Πάλεψε για να το νιώσεις, πάλεψε για να κλαις από υπερφόρτιση αισθημάτων, πάλεψε να κρατήσεις τη μαγεία της ανεξήγητης καλοσύνης, πάλεψε για το δικαίωμα του λάθους.
Πάλεψε για όσους δεν μπορούν ή έχουν χάσει την ελπίδα και τη γοητεία του αγώνα.
Πάλεψε για σενα.

Πάλεψε για μενα.











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