Protecting the Public's Right to Know
The power of influence is in a word. Powerful. There is an old adage: You become like the company you keep. This adage affirms the fact that the people with which we surround ourselves have a significant and substantial impact on what we believe and how we see the world. This fact is echoed many times over, especially with young minds -- often in the early to mid teenage years. Now mix in this modern American lifestyle whereas most working parents actually -- both work -- thus presenting a situation where parents often, unintentionally, drift away from their teenager(s) or otherwise simply wake up one day and realize they hardly, if at all, know their own teenage child(ren). That should be terrifying; but, unfortunately such is fairly common these days. Needless to say but you become like the company you keep.
In the absence of parents, who then influences teenage minds? Their peers. Of course, the 'Peers influence phenomenon' is nothing new. What is new is the degree of negative influence projected upon teenagers and young adults, especially minorities, from other adults (usually of the same ethnicity or race). In this 2025 era, there is a substantial amount of influence on minority teenagers and young adults from other minority adults with respect to how they are impacted in life and society because of their race. Not so. Sure, there are people who will tend to notice race and treat others differently in some cases. On the other hand, another adage has much more weight: Believe in yourself and others will generally follow. Perhaps this adage is not taught to this generation or otherwise withheld by those seeking to sow seeds of negativity into such youth.
The truth of the matter is that life is what you believe it is, and how one looks at the world. Thus, again, it is immensely important to weed and keep out negative people, values, and mannerism; since before you know it, your mind will have adopted that which it has been fed. And once the damage is done to the mind, and as teenagers grow into young adults and older, such mental training generally becomes permanent and very difficult to reverse.
Personally, I have no qualms with saying that if yours truly ever had a child, in this day and age, and my offspring ever came home and said: "Dad I be that, become this, or do that that because of my race (or ethnicity)," from that day forward there would be one more missing child case, one never found or seen again. Race is not the problem. The mind is the limiting factor, and like every other muscle in the body, the mind must be trained, fed, and maintained. This is not 1920 but rather 2025, and while not a perfect world free of racism, it doesn't not need to be -- per se. Why? Because there will always be one person or another who will not like another -- whether it be because of race, color, religion, zip code, type of employment, status in life, outlook on life...the list is endless.
So what's the formula for success in life, aside from managing the company one keeps? Well life is complex, yet simple at the same time. Try these tips on for size.
The final word: What possessions you have or don't have, who you love or don't love (regardless of race or ethnicity), where you choose to live and/or work is entirely up to you. Choose well. Choose wisely.