 |
Having grown
up in a household of 10 sisters, I was very much aware that being “the boy”
meant being in the minority. But, over a
20 year evolution as a United States Marine, I learned that being in the
minority does not necessarily make me a minority. I can choose to be equal—an asset and
therefore, not a liability.
|
By Eric
Stradford, U. S. Marine Corps, Retired
AMWS,
December 29, 2018 - Let me be the first to congratulate the disappointed,
downtrodden, distressed and depressed friends-n-kin who have ever anticipated economic
benefits from an emotional appeal.
Confession, I’ve heard, is good for the soul. As a matter of faith or
fact, healing results when good folks take
action.
HAPPY NEW
YEAR!
Yes, it’s true. Donald Trump is the President of the United
States…STILL! Yes, it’s true. The federal government shutdown over a
boarder wall, or, perhaps beautiful steel slats, a fence, “beaded curtain” or
unprecedented shock and awe. You are no
doubt anxious to see what a divided 116th United States Congress
will do to protect and defend the Constitution “from all enemies foreign and
domestic.”
As the
elected consider their roles in “forming a more perfect union,” each of us, even
me can consider a shared cause for healing.
But, be careful, self-diagnosis could be as harmful as ignoring the
problem.
Dissociation
is a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts,
memory and sense of identity. My
particular ailment stems from emotional experiences over a lifetime where the
need for healing was, as Langston Hughes put it, a dream deferred. In my own experience, growing up as “the boy”
with testosterone in a predominately estrogen household of emotionally endowed
siblings may have shaped lifelong personality traits that were more transactional than transformative.
As you come to pray for my healing, know this.
Transient
and mild dissociative experiences are common. Almost 1/3rd of people say they
occasionally feel as though they are watching themselves in a movie, and 4% say
they feel that way as much as 1/3rd of the time. The incidence of these
experiences is highest in youth and steadily declines after the age of 20.
Transactional
leadership and management focuses on supervision, organization, and performance. In pursuing a healing strategy, we’re
cautioned that that folks leaning toward the transactional approach look to
keep things the same instead of looking to change the future.
Transformational
leaders, like my bride of a quarter of a century, serves to enhance motivation,
morale, and job performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms; these
include connecting the follower's sense of identity and self to a project and
to the collective identity of the organization.
Stephanie believes in being a role model for followers, inspiring them
and raising their interest in a particular project.
Over the
Christmas holiday, Stephanie and I discovered common ground for our politically
bipolar partnership. As a result, we’re redirecting our efforts with new shared
goals for a post-Trump America.
Some
influential friends-n-kin have added value to vision on our journey from hurt
to healed. Among them, Bill and C. DeLores
Tucker, Grainger and Jo Ann Browning, Spencer and Juliette Bartley, Ofield
Dukes and, Arthur Allen Fletcher.
In the
seventies, Al Green sampled the Bee Gee’s 1971 release, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.
His journey to healing witnessed a trail of hurt that included an
emotionally charged encounter with his girlfriend, Mary Woodson White.
Although she
was already married, White wanted Green.
An angry White doused Green with a pot of boiling grits while he was
bathing. Police found a note inside White's purse declaring her reasons for
causing severe burns on Green's back, stomach, and arms. They also found the .38 handgun with which
she had killed herself.
Stephanie A.
Walker Stradford paved her own pathway from hurt to healed during the
seventies. After graduating from the
University of Maryland, Stephanie put to test a new minority hiring policy and
landed a studio engineering job with the likes of David Brinkley, Willard Scott
and others at NBC Washington, DC.
Republican Arthur A. Fletcher, a former board chair for the United
Negro College Fund, celebrated “four quarters” in what he called, “Victorious Living.”
As U.S. Department of Labor Assistant Secretary for Wage and Labor
Standards, Fletcher offered unique insights on being African American and unapologetically, Republican.
When
Stephanie and I met Dr. Fletcher, he had discovered the formula for healing a
broken heart. In the sixties, his family
had been denied a rental house in Berkeley's white section. Continuing racial problems, combined with
continuing economic pressures, took their toll, and Fletcher's wife, Mary,
committed suicide.
In 2005,
Arthur Fletcher called on us to plan an event commemorating The 36th
Anniversary of what he called, The Affirmative Action Enforcement
Movement. The event marked his implementation
of the Revised Philadelphia Plan, which required federal contractors
to meet certain goals for hiring minority employees.
Fletcher’s
presentation on “the glasses’ endowed believers with an inclusive vision of
America’s future. The event was
Fletcher’s last public event. He died
later that year at age 80.
After
coordinating a star-studded homegoing and Arlington burial for Fletcher,
Stephanie and Eric Stradford set out once again on their Learning Journey.
In the New
Year, we are reaching out to seven-year-old Americans proposing an economically
inclusive vision of their 21st Century futures. We’re learning that six-in-ten Millennials (59%) affiliate with
the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with about half of Gen Xers
and Boomers (48% each) and 43% of voters in the Silent Generation.
Many of them
see a need for alternative outcomes in both Republican as well as Democratic
primaries, but few are ready, willing and able to lean right to make a
difference.
In a 2005
study, the Pew Research Center identified nine typological groups. Three groups
were identified as part of each, "the left," "the middle,"
and "the right." In this categorization system, "the right"
roughly represents the Republican base, those on "the left" the
Democratic base and those in "the middle" independents.
Within the
left are the largely secular and anti-war "Liberals", the socially
conservative but economically left "Conservative Democrats", and the
economically "Disadvantaged Democrats" who favor extended government
assistance to the needy.
In "the
middle" are the optimistic and upwardly mobile "Upbeats", the
discouraged and mistrusting "Disaffected” citizens, and the
disenfranchised "Bystanders."
The right
comprises the highly pro-business "Enterprisers," the highly
religious "Social Conservatives" (also known as the Christian right),
and the "Pro-Government Conservatives" who are largely conservative
on social issues but support government intervention to better their economic
disposition.
