Category: Culture
What were we ever singing for?
I’m gifted the trust of the pulpit at a local congregation this Sunday. Earlier today I was working on my words. In the background, a M*A*S*H marathon. The episode, “Dear Uncle Abdul” caught my attention. During surgery, the main characters wonder why there is no song for the Korean War. Fr Mulcahy decides to write a Korean War song. At the end of the episode Fr Mulcahy, sitting at a piano in the Officers Club, sings what he has written. Seems fitting for such a time as this.
There’s no one singing war songs now like people used to do,
No “Over There,” no “Praise the Lord,” no “Glory Hallelu.”
Perhaps at last we’ve asked ourselves
what we should have asked before,
With the pain and death this madness brings,
what were we ever singing for?
Fr. Mulcahy’s Korean War Song
(from episode “Dear Uncle Abdul”; sung by Fr. Mulcahy)
High School Students Explain ‘White Privilege’
Though born in the 1960’s I’m a child of the 70’s and 80’s. My read of history has led me to the observation that we are living through a time similar to the late 1950’s and that followed to 1975. Issues of race, gender, sexuality, economics, crooks and cheats in Government, and energy crisis. Some form of those issues have returned here in the early 21st century. They were also present, in contextual form, in the early 20th century. That led to two world wars.
There are TV pundits, mostly at home at Faux News (Fox News), that deny the existence of, or that they have benefited from, ‘white privilege’ in our culture. I’ve lived long enough to observe that a person cannot be educated out of the ‘isms’ that plague humanity. Education can raise awareness, teach critical thinking, and dispel myth from fact. It cannot alter experience unless that formal education is based in experience that challenges cultural norms. Education can challenge experience and provide a different lens to view experience.
A public high school in Westport, CT, offers their students an opportunity to wrestle with topics through an essay contest. This year’s essay topic: ‘white privilege.’ There was some attention and fuss made by news outlets, and Faux News, about this topic. I thought it was intriguing. The essay winners have been announced and you can read the three winning essays here.
I do not want to prejudice your reading so I will not comment on the content of the essays. I will say these high school youth’s words are worth a few minutes of your day.
Here are the title of the winning essays.
The Colors of Privilege
White Privilege and Me
The Privilege of Ignorance