Character Counts

My mother said her career was building Character. She was a wise woman, with an eighth grade education, who was the “birthing person” for ten well adjusted achievers.

Character Counts - MLK addressed character - “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

I am reminded of the iconic movie, Guess who is Coming to Diner? with Sidney Poitier, where Sidney’s accomplished character said something like, Dad, I don’t see myself as a Black man, I see myself as a man.

Please don’t judge me by the color of my skin. In fact, don’t judge me at all - negatively, that is . You have not walked in my shoes, nor lived in my skin. Why do you think you have a basis to judge me? There are well thought out processes for judges and juries.

The one thing I remember about Peter Seger’s book The Fifth Dimension is his opinion that a human nature trait is, to get a few facts and leap to an abstraction. I see it all the time. It results in conjecture and is not nice, when it results in unfounded negative judgement.

You have heard the saying, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, I think we are stepping back at this point in time..

Steps