I am a person who embraces evolutionary change. I am OK with change overall but am a bit leery of the revolutionary kind.
It is Juneteenth and I think this is a good time to be talking about revolutionary change when it comes to racism.
Evolutionary change isn’t doing the trick with racial equality. It is hard to believe we still have ‘Aunt Jemima’ and ‘Uncle Ben’s’ in 2020. What is equally hard for me to believe is that I have Uncle Ben’s products in my pantry and didn’t even think about how this stereotypes Black people! No more Uncle Bens for me.
Malcom Gladwell defines a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point“.
I got curious and wanted to learn more about tipping points. So I read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , published in 2000. (Side note, I have finally discovered the beauty of downloading ebooks from the Pierce County library). I think his concepts about changing the context, salesmen, mavens and connectors are really interesting. I wish I had read it 20 years ago.
So, have we finally reached a ‘tipping point’ regarding racism? I think we reached a tipping point with the ‘Me Too’ movement. Sexual misconduct has been too common in the workplace. But the ‘Me Too’ movement finally struck the right chord and powerful men were taken down almost overnight. And I think that a similar tipping point happened when the Berlin wall fell in 1991. That also seemed to happen overnight.
Will something similar happen with racism in our country? Will these protests, killing of unarmed Black men and the disproportionate impacts of COVID 19 on Black and brown people finally be the tipping point for racial equality? Or is racism too entrenched and maybe Uncle Ben will be ‘rebranded’, and that will be about it……..
King County COVID 19 data from June 18, 2020
- Positive tests: 8987 (up 403 since last week)
- Hospitalizations: 1537 (up 25 since last week)
- Deaths: 582 (up 11 since last week)
Nicholas Kristof – Antifa
This column is definitely worth a read!
Please physical distance, mask up, wash your hands and have a good weekend.
Allene
Travels with Allene 