[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] Fwd: [ExComm] Fwd: News-Gazette coverage

[Morton K. Brussel]

I believe, Marti, that you are not talking from experience in  
attending AWARE activities. Yes, the demographics you ascribe to  
AWARE "membership" are valid, but you seem unaware of efforts by  
AWARE to include minority, African-American, viewpoints and to engage  
in common pursuits and interests. It seems that unless an  
organization is mostly populated by African-Americans, there will not  
be a sustained attendance by the latter. It may be due to class  
(economic) differences, cultural differences, religious differences,  
educational differences, historical differences, etc., but it is a  
general problem to blend smoothly the interests/participation of  
blacks and whites.  It seems that among African-Americans, grosso- 
modo, that racial problems/conditions/interests are foremost, above  
those of foreign affairs or (even) civil rights, and that concern is  
not reflected in an organization like AWARE, where race is very  
important, but not dominant. As you imply, the matter of  
comfortability with ones cohort is essential.

Some thoughts,  --mkb

On May 1, 2008, at 4:39 PM, Marti Wilkinson wrote:

> AWARE has no "leadership" positions
>
> I stand corrected - however in any organization there are going to  
> be people who stand out as natural leaders and this may be where  
> the criticisms you are addressing is derived from.
>
> However, it's an observation that most of the individuals I have  
> seen at AWARE meetings are predominately white and middle class.  
> While there are a few individuals who attend both AWARE and CU  
> Citizens for Peace and Justice the general demographics of AWARE  
> doesn't have a strong minority presence. At least not in what I  
> have observed. In order for an organization like AWARE to be more  
> effective in addressing issues of racism and defamation the group  
> needs to have a more diverse representation of people at their  
> meetings.  Just saying that 'everyone is welcome to come' is not  
> good enough.  Some of the literature I've read regarding critical  
> race theory and social justice movements supports that. In  
> particular writers like Thomas Nakayama, Stuart Hall, Raka Shome,  
> and other individuals have made some very astute observations on  
> this issue.
>
>   We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as  
> fools.
> Martin Luther King, Jr.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>
> >minorities really
> >   have not been invited to be part of the leadership
> >   of the peace movement.
>
> I'm not at all sure what you mean by leadership. AWARE has no  
> "leadership" positions.
>
> And no, Carl is not our "leader" as Bob Naiman seemed to indicate  
> in a post about a month ago.
>
> -karen medina
> a white, middle class, overly educated, middle-aged female with  
> nothing better to do on Sunday evenings.
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080501/45826cbd/attachment.htm