Ex Cathedra

When you write your opinions, use strong or crude language. I first learned this when I facilitated a presentation to the Board of Management of Wilmerding YMCA. This is in the days when white people wanted to listen to black people, in contrast to today when white people want to tell black people things.

In part of the presentation, as interlocutor I said “Black people don’t, by God, want to be white people.”

My boss, Ernie Ryman, called me into his office the following day and told me that some of the board members objected to my saying “by God.” This meant that the board members or Ernie himself didn’t want to hear that black people didn’t want to be white people. That their own existence was valid, that while their social or economic positions may have been unsatisfactory, they were perfectly satisfied with who they were and that they needn’t hold up someone else’s culture as a norm.

I’ve found the occasional “fuck” or other strong word will flush people out of the underbrush who don’t want to hear the thing being said, but don’t want to think of themselves as people who won’t hear it.

In my experience, people who’ll bear any kind of language at all when it affirms their worldview will jump straight up to object to language people who challenge their worldview are using.

I usually let that criticism go. Never clog up a valve that sings so reliably.