Joel

“When we go to the doctor, he or she will not begin to treat us without taking our history—and not just our history but that of our parents and grandparents before us. The doctor will not see us until we have filled out many pages on a clipboard that is handed to us upon arrival. The doctor will not hazard a diagnosis until he or she knows the history going back generations. As we fill out the pages of our medical past and our current complaints, what our bodies have been exposed to and what they have survived, it does us no good to pretend that certain ailments have not beset us, to deny the full truths of what brought us to this moment. Few problems have ever been solved by ignoring them. Looking beneath the history of one’s country is like learning that alcoholism or depression runs in one’s family or that suicide has occurred more often than might be usual or, with the advances in medical genetics, discovering that one has inherited the markers of a BRCA mutation for breast cancer. You don’t ball up in a corner with guilt or shame at these discoveries. You don’t, if you are wise, forbid any mention of them. In fact, you do the opposite. You educate yourself. You talk to people who have been through it and to specialists who have researched it. You learn the consequences and obstacles, the options and treatment. You may pray over it and meditate over it. Then you take precautions to protect yourself and succeeding generations and work to ensure that these things, whatever they are, don’t happen again.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“The colorblind ideology that says “I don’t see race” should not be embraced by Christians. When we choose to look past race, we also choose to avert our eyes from the many ways that even well-meaning people and institutions engage in practices that reproduce and reinforce negative outcomes such as segregation, disadvantages for minorities in the job market, and the portrayal of whiteness as superior in public communications and entertainment. The simple fact is that if we can’t see and discuss the issue of race, we cannot solve the problems that racism causes.”
― Justin Giboney, Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement

“Think of it as the dangle: a wealthy patron can often enjoy favor and influence with a hard-up institution that are far out of proportion to any gifts that have actually been made, because the canny donor learns to dangle the possibility of future gifts, and that is a possibility that the museum or university cannot afford to overlook. When the dangle is executed correctly, there is almost nothing that the institution will not do to keep the donor (or even the prospective donor) happy.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty