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The Color Blind Myth

Kira Fonteneau — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:55:34 +0000

Carmen Van Kerckhove over at New Demogrphic posted a great post on her Race in the Workplace Blog a while back. In her post, she explains that fear of being branded a racist causes people to say that they do not see the most obvious of physical features. She says:

Noticing a person’s race doesn’t make you racist. What does make you racist is if you make assumptions about that person’s intellectual, physical, or emotional characteristics based on the race you think the person is.

Yes, even if those assumptions you make are positive. Ideas about “strong black women” or “smart Asians” are still racist because they reduce human beings to two-dimensional caricatures and assume that race predetermines intellectual, physical, and emotional traits.

She is right, It is time for our society to begin to get comfortable acknowledging differences rather than marginalizing those who are not members of the majority.

Everything I Need to Know About Success, I Learned From My Grandma Billie, Part VI

Kira Fonteneau — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:37:35 +0000

Successful Women are not afraid to take their seat at the table, or enjoy the meal.

Successful Women are not afraid to take their seat at the table, or enjoy the meal. When my grandmother died, she left me a treasure trove of memorobilia and pictures. Among the items she left me I found some of her writings. Throughout her life she wrote. I found opinion pieces she sent to news papers, poems she wrote to pass the time, and letters to friends and famous people. Soon after she died, I sat down and got to know her in a way that I never did before. I came away with sure of one thing. Billie was determined to leave a mark on the world. Among her writings I found a journal entry Download Barrymore.pdf she wrote concerning a chance encounter with John Barrymore, the early 20th century actor and Drew Barrymore’s grandfather. When Billie met Barrymore, she knew that dancing in front of him could be a life changing event. She decided to make the most out of the opportunity. She didn’t spend any time thinking about whether she was good enough to dance for him or whether he would appreciate her talents. She was confident enough to know that she was good. So when the spotlight came up on her, she danced like there was no tomorrow and she never regretted a thing.

Everything I need to know about success, I learned from my Grandma Billie, Part II

Kira Fonteneau — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:42:00 +0000

Billie’s Lesson: Success is individually defined but universally obvious.

If Billie were here she would tell you that you have to write your own definition of success. When she was a child she decided that she wanted to dance. She was not supposed to be able to become a dancer at the time because she was poor, with little access to formal training and she was not white. But from the moment she decided what success meant for her, she started taking steps toward making it happen. She listened to the little voice within her that gave her purpose and it never let her down. This is important because defining success for yourself is the key to fulfillment.

Billie would also tell you that one trait of successful people is being able to use your background and experiences to your advantage. Billie’s path to success was built upon the things she learned as a child growing up in segregated Indiana. She never forgot that she was poor as a child. She never forgot that she was a person of color who was discriminated against. She turned those experience into inspiration for her dance. She used them because they made her different. She used them because they were a part of who she was, and it was those experiences that made her successful.