This month, I want to greet readers from the USA, Canada, Brazil and India! Hello there. 👋Good to see you visited. Remember thsi is best viewed in Desktop format, no matter the device.
I'm still amazed at how popular V.I.P. is! I hope those of you reading get the message and share it with young people you know.
It's almost the end of the month of March 2021. This has been quite a month.
It began with the furor over Meghan Markle's claims that she experienced racism in the palace. I fully understand why she made the revelation. What would her children think 15 years later when they discover some of the horrid comments about her in the British press, if she never gave her perspective? They need to know her side. I say bravo to Prince Harry for leaving the Royals to protect his family. Some men (race does not matter) do not take their wife's side against blood relations/connections. That I call shameful.
Racism is everywhere. It needs to be revealed. I was introduced by a relative, who looks white, as a "friend" when I was young. I understood why. I continued to interact with the relative. I still recall when as a young adult visiting family (who look white) at a local hotel, I noted the surprise on the security person's face when I explained that "I'm taking my cousin (a rosy, red-haired 3-year-old) back to his room." He said nothing.
That leads me to ask you who have children, to raise them to respect others who are different - racially or who have various challenges. The experience that rankles most with me was being harassed by some brats in a cinema. It was just us. The little tyrants chose to pelt hard candy throughout the movie. One landed no more than a foot from my foot and I was sitting ahead of them and several seats to their left. So it was purposely done. I was not in their line of fire. At the time I was twice their age and wanted to do nothing more than to put each of them over my knee and give them 3 hard slaps on their backsides (not being polite enough to use the term "bottom") and give them 3 months of community service in a non-white neighbourhood. I was an international student, they're not my children so I could do nothing but complain to the duty manager afterward. I was refunded since there was no attendant in the cinema - and there should've been so they would behave their bratty selves. Other than that I've never been uncomfortable looking different from those around me on the train, the plane, the bus, when travelling. I stopped caring what people say about me a long time ago.
Then Bachelor Nation was rocked when their first African-American bachelor, whose choice for partner was the white woman, split up on learning she had made racially-bigotted comments in the past. I understood that too. While their children would be no darker than Harry's and Meghan's children (they'd look white), they still have to be raised to understand the reality of their dad's existence - being followed around in a mall, possibly being stopped by police in a certain neighbourhood. It was good to see that he was conscious enough to know why the relationship could not continue. Of course it's pretty obvious she was smitten but she couldn't wrap her head around his reality. Hopefully they both have a happy outcome in the future.
Now we have anti-Asian sentiment in the USA and another African-American man lost his life at the hands of the police, this time in Virginia. Not going there again.
This month was Awards season. 👍👍 to the Golden Globes for showing some diversity. Andra Day won the Best Actress Award for her portrayal of Billie Holliday in the United States vs. Billie Holliday (basically she was targetted for highlighting in song the dastardly practice of lynching, mostly African-American men, in the southern states) and it is a much more gritty portrayal than the sweetness and light of Diana Ross' 1970s portrayal in Lady Sings the Blues.
