Speakers & Life

This week we had some interesting speakers. We went a KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school in Arkansas. KIPP is basically a certain mindset and philosophy about how a school should be run. It was refreshing to see a school in a high poverty, mostly minority area that cared about the kids. It was also refreshing to see one that got results. The kids were well behaved and 100% of graduates got accepted to and went to college. We spoke with the pricipal, Mr. Marcus Nelson.

We also spoke to Mr. Reggie Barnes. He spoke with us about his experiences being amoung the first group of black people desegregating public schools in Mississippi growing up. He used to get in a lot of fights. He also spoke with us about his accomplishments and how he accheived them. He invited us to his lovely home on a lake and made us a bunch of great seafood.

However the speaker I am going to focus on for this post is Otis Pickett. Brown University released a paper about its past involvement in slavery, the effects of American slavery, the historical context of American slavery, and what can and should be done in modern society. Later this week I will blog more about the specifics contained in the report itself and now I will focus instead on Mr. Pickett himself.

We had a previous, unplanned discussion with Mr. Pickett before but this one was even better. We used the report as a jumping off point to discuss issues of race and class in America and the world at large today. Consider these thoughts, why do some cultures focus so specidically on themselves that they exclude, and may even be offended at being included with other cultures with many simularities? For example, Dominican versus Puerto Rican, Trinidadian versus Jamaican, and Chinese versus Korean. I feel that more can be acheived through working together, especially in America, where all of these groups are usually lumped together. I understand the need for cultural identity, but not at the expense of solidarity with other cultures, specifically with cultures that are close to my own and especially when we have a common goal.

Basically it became an interesting open forum on race and identity, particularly in the American South. There were many topics openly discussed and I feel that we all took things from the conversation, Mr. Pickett included. I hope to have more like it.