Dorothy I. Height
Brian Betts (District of Columbia Public Schools)
April 28, 2010By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)
Thought is the ancestor of every action, as American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson said. Imagination is the beginning of creation, according to playwright George Bernard Shaw. Physicist Albert Einstein echoed: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
To repeat what I have written for years in this space -- and repetition is not without importance for many -- first, you imagine what you desire (a goal), and you believe it is reachable, then you create a will to reach it, and finally you take action to attain it. American engineer Charles F. Kettering said, "Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail." What emerges is change.
Any individual can contribute to bringing about change. Recall Japanese poet Ryunosuke Satoro, who said: "Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." There are many heroes -- and "sheroes" -- in unsung roles who help bring change.
Last Friday, reporter Griff Witte wrote from Kabul in The Washington Post, "The Afghan parliament, long a bastion of dysfunction and docility, has emerged this spring as a robust check on President Hamid Karzai's power, giving the United States an unlikely ally as it tries to persuade the government here to clean up its act."
The article speaks of the Afghan parliament, "a rogues' gallery of drug barons, criminals and warlords, ... many are uneducated and even illiterate," as shifting in complexion, as "reformers -- including many women -- coalesced into a working group of approximately 30 that increasingly drives the body's agenda."
Witte quoted the director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies as saying the parliament can have a significant impact on Karzai's agenda: "The only way to have checks and balances in Afghanistan is through the parliament."
As Bernard Shaw said, "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react," and the Afghan lawmakers are taking action.
In the same vein, many were saddened on April 20 when Dorothy I. Height, 98, passed away. Though some had little or no familiarity with who she was or what she did, those who recall her strong-willed grace know that she will be remembered as "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans," as she was eulogized by President Obama.
Though the world is familiar with the story of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., The Washington Post editorialized a day after her death that for 40 years "Ms. Height and her work often went unnoticed and unpraised."
"To appreciate Dorothy Height," it stated, "is to understand the slights she endured and the obstacles she encountered both as an African American and as a woman, and how they only spurred her life-long campaign" for racial justice and gender equality -- a campaign she carried out "with such tenacity, dignity and resolve."
Height was "marginalized in the civil rights movement because of her gender" and "marginalized in the feminist movement because of her race," the editorial stated, but she "had fought, ... not with anger or bitterness but with determined grace." It quoted Height: "I've ... learned that getting bitter is not the way."
She was not just a civil rights fighter.
That the American Civil Rights Movement was successful in transforming America owed so much to Height, whom the Post's front page article, "A movement's matriarch," described as "the 'glue' that held the family of black civil rights leaders together."
She "was widely connected at the top levels of power and influence" in government and business, the article noted, and she "did much of her work out of the public spotlight, in quiet meetings and conversations."
Another who made a difference, in a relatively short time, also was eulogized last week in the U.S. capital. The popular white principal in a predominantly black and Hispanic middle school in the District of Columbia, 42-year-old Brian Betts, was found shot dead in his home in Montgomery County, Md., on April 15. Betts was a popular principal among students and colleagues -- in his 18-month tenure he successfully transformed an underperforming school and built self-esteem in his students.
The Post wrote, Betts "raised expectations for his students, recruited strong teachers and fired those who were not performing well."
The emotional wake at a funeral home speaks much of Betts: two thousand mourners, among whom were eight busloads of students, who grieved for and remembered Betts. Students found in Betts not just "the best principal ever," but "a best friend," "a father," "a mentor." A group of ninth-graders learned from and loved him so much they asked the school system to let them stay on as ninth-graders for another year in their middle school with Betts rather than go to a high school. Unbeknownst to his family, Betts had put several of his former students through college.
In our world there are formidable human beings who imagined change, believed in change and acted to bring about change.
In Lord Buddha's words, "Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death, can erase our good deeds."
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
To repeat what I have written for years in this space -- and repetition is not without importance for many -- first, you imagine what you desire (a goal), and you believe it is reachable, then you create a will to reach it, and finally you take action to attain it. American engineer Charles F. Kettering said, "Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail." What emerges is change.
Any individual can contribute to bringing about change. Recall Japanese poet Ryunosuke Satoro, who said: "Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." There are many heroes -- and "sheroes" -- in unsung roles who help bring change.
Last Friday, reporter Griff Witte wrote from Kabul in The Washington Post, "The Afghan parliament, long a bastion of dysfunction and docility, has emerged this spring as a robust check on President Hamid Karzai's power, giving the United States an unlikely ally as it tries to persuade the government here to clean up its act."
The article speaks of the Afghan parliament, "a rogues' gallery of drug barons, criminals and warlords, ... many are uneducated and even illiterate," as shifting in complexion, as "reformers -- including many women -- coalesced into a working group of approximately 30 that increasingly drives the body's agenda."
Witte quoted the director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies as saying the parliament can have a significant impact on Karzai's agenda: "The only way to have checks and balances in Afghanistan is through the parliament."
As Bernard Shaw said, "The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react," and the Afghan lawmakers are taking action.
In the same vein, many were saddened on April 20 when Dorothy I. Height, 98, passed away. Though some had little or no familiarity with who she was or what she did, those who recall her strong-willed grace know that she will be remembered as "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans," as she was eulogized by President Obama.
Though the world is familiar with the story of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., The Washington Post editorialized a day after her death that for 40 years "Ms. Height and her work often went unnoticed and unpraised."
"To appreciate Dorothy Height," it stated, "is to understand the slights she endured and the obstacles she encountered both as an African American and as a woman, and how they only spurred her life-long campaign" for racial justice and gender equality -- a campaign she carried out "with such tenacity, dignity and resolve."
Height was "marginalized in the civil rights movement because of her gender" and "marginalized in the feminist movement because of her race," the editorial stated, but she "had fought, ... not with anger or bitterness but with determined grace." It quoted Height: "I've ... learned that getting bitter is not the way."
She was not just a civil rights fighter.
That the American Civil Rights Movement was successful in transforming America owed so much to Height, whom the Post's front page article, "A movement's matriarch," described as "the 'glue' that held the family of black civil rights leaders together."
She "was widely connected at the top levels of power and influence" in government and business, the article noted, and she "did much of her work out of the public spotlight, in quiet meetings and conversations."
Another who made a difference, in a relatively short time, also was eulogized last week in the U.S. capital. The popular white principal in a predominantly black and Hispanic middle school in the District of Columbia, 42-year-old Brian Betts, was found shot dead in his home in Montgomery County, Md., on April 15. Betts was a popular principal among students and colleagues -- in his 18-month tenure he successfully transformed an underperforming school and built self-esteem in his students.
The Post wrote, Betts "raised expectations for his students, recruited strong teachers and fired those who were not performing well."
The emotional wake at a funeral home speaks much of Betts: two thousand mourners, among whom were eight busloads of students, who grieved for and remembered Betts. Students found in Betts not just "the best principal ever," but "a best friend," "a father," "a mentor." A group of ninth-graders learned from and loved him so much they asked the school system to let them stay on as ninth-graders for another year in their middle school with Betts rather than go to a high school. Unbeknownst to his family, Betts had put several of his former students through college.
In our world there are formidable human beings who imagined change, believed in change and acted to bring about change.
In Lord Buddha's words, "Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death, can erase our good deeds."
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing this article. I like Dr. Gaffar's writing as it brings lots of wisdoms along, not to mention philosophical view. I agree entirely that any goal is achievable if one takes action to reach that goal, however, some goals are unattainable regardless of how much one has tried. The reality is life is full of constraints and other factors that I call stuck in the mud factors.
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