One thing that must be dealt with in mixed families and in most families for that matter is religion.  I personally don’t believe that a family can really get along if they have drastically different belief systems.  I am an atheist and believe in the untapped potential of the human mind.  My wife does not ascribe to any religious dogma either but tends to be more spiritual than I and even uses the word god, although, her definition, I dare say, would differ greatly from that of a devotee of a specific religion.  Even though my family is Jewish and hers is Baptist, our personal beliefs are close enough that we find common ground, learn from each other and are, most importantly, in agreement about what our children are taught.  Religious belief is incredibly important to people and, as the “holiday” season approaches, along with goodwill, tensions also rise surrounding the “hows” and the “whats” of celebration and practice.  Sometimes those sensitivities, I believe, run a little too high and get in the way of what we should be focusing on; family, universal values, loving kindness, etc.

Ironically and somewhat hypocritically, I admit, I work for a Jewish temple (sent through an employment agency).  Someone called the temple during the December holiday season a while back to ask me if putting holly up in their company’s common areas for decoration would be appropriate.  They wanted to know if it had a negative connotation or was offensive to Jews.  They also wanted to know if there was a more neutral but still seasonal decoration that they might use to spruce up their building grounds.

Holly is one of the symbols of Christmas, representing the crown that Jesus wore and the flower of the material from which the cross was built amongst other things.  Since Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, let alone believe that Jesus was the son of god, my first thought was obvious:  create wreathes of holly in the shape of Jewish stars.

However, if you represent both Judaism and Christianity in your decorations do you offend neither – or do you offend both?  Further, what about all the other religions not represented?

What if you used symbols from all religions in your decor?  Well, that design might get a little busy.  I don’t know that a Christmas tree flocked with Hanukkah blue faux-snow, adorned with lotus flowers and a nine-pointed Bhai’i star and placed upon a Kwanzaa mkeka (mat) would be so Feng Shui.

So, logically, I recommended created a completely non-denominational atmosphere.  The major symbols of the holidays like menorahs, dreidels, Jewish stars, objects of African heritage, Christmas trees, wreathes, frankincense, myrrh, ivy, mistletoe, holly, poinsettias, candy canes, statuettes of men in loincloths, animals or swaddled babies and crucifixes would be the obvious things to avoid.

And, since Hanukkah has the menorah, Kwanzaa has the misumaa saba (seven candles) and Christmas is associated with light and candles, it would be best to avoid any lighted display.  Especially do to the fact that the number of candles lit varies from religion to religion.

Further, any invocation of the solstice or other Pagan holiday would certainly not do.  So, the place should be constantly heated to avoid association with winter.  Any snow naturally fallen should be removed as it falls.

The crescent moon and star of course is used widely as representative of Islam. This also might mean that the grounds would be closed at night or outfitted with a roof-like covering so nobody would see the moon and stars in the sky and think they might be left visible intentionally to invoke Islam.

Plus, subtler symbolism like Christmas bells or the Buddhist Precious Umbrella or Dharma Wheel should not be part of the mis-en-scene either.  This means that the location should be soundproof in case there are bells at nearby locations.  Streets around the location should be blocked off so that the wheels on the cars aren’t misconstrued (this can be arranged with the city) and people should be restricted from carrying umbrellas even if it rains.

Fruits and vegetables (especially corn) are associated with Kwanzaa and any other food, unless checked by a rabbi might not be Kosher.  If it were Kosher, it might offend the tastes of those who are not Jewish.  Thus, people should not be allowed to eat or carry food through the decorative area.

Further, I suggested being cautious with coloring.  I recommended staying away from Hanukkah blue, white or silver.  Red and green stand for both Christmas and Kwanzaa, which is also represented by black so these would also be colors to avoid.  Of course any other color derived from combinations of these colors could be construed as being biased.  And transparent or translucent decoration could not be used since placing them in front of anything colored which would be seen through them might be offensive as well.

I also realized that joy, dreams, miracles and any other emotion or concept associated with religion should be kept to oneself as one enjoys exists in the decorated area.  You wouldn’t want anyone else to think the company put you up to feeling or thinking a certain way to promote one religion over another.

It finally came down to suggesting the decorations be a nice black hole, which of course would have to be referred to as a “great void” because, as I mentioned, the black Kwanzaa candle.  But, then again, if you are trying to be neutral so as not to offend a particular religion and you decorate with quantum physics, which is science, you might be seen as catering to atheists by all those religious people who reject science.

At this point the solution is extremely clear.  Offer handicapped differently-abled children to do the decorating.  Nobody gets offended by them.  But, just in case, the only material you provide them to do the decorating is a legal notice that makes clear your intentions are not to offend or show bias.

Just don’t use my tax dollars to pay for it!

It’s barely Thanksgiving and I already see holiday decorations around town.  Let’s start this season off with the intention to remember what matters in life and get along, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof

I was very upset recently about the news that an interracial couple was denied a marriage license in Louisiana.  I won’t go into details, since I am sure you all have read about this ad infinitum.   How such a blatant bigot, a man who unapologetically enables hatred and breaks the law himself could be sitting in judgment over others in a public courtroom or anywhere for that matter is very troubling.

Stewing about this incident brought to mind another upsetting issue.  Even though the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry, some states, including my own state of California, make an exception for gays, who have been denied that right. 

In turn, pondering this issue made me think about the many discussions I have had with my brother about the right of homosexuals to marry.  We used to think alike about most social and politically issues but, in the past few years, his views on many things have changed.  We love each other dearly but our “talks” can be quite frustrating.

From news stories, family, friends, colleagues, and seemingly everywhere else I turn – on the radio, television and even in my beloved dad blog community, I am confronted with things that upset me more often than not.  Sometimes it’s sensationalized news, spun facts and opinion passing as truth.  Sometimes it’s the genuine real life problems of this world or just people looking at different sides of the coin.

Subsequently and inevitably, I involve myself in confrontations filled with misinformation (on both sides), disagreement and eventually, touches of vitriol and a few exclamation points that leave me frustrated and depressed.  Even when it’s a respectful conversation between people of different viewpoints which there are plenty of, I am left a little despondent when I can’t seem to convince people of certain things that I know are true (I have been wrong on occasion ;-)  I know there are others who feel the same.

Maybe in the current political and social climate, with media having evolved into  a major lobbying force for one side or the other, people’s views are much more polarized then they have ever been in my lifetime.  Maybe it’s because I am more aware of the world around me, not just as a consequence of maturity, but because I am a parent and much more concerned about the future for my kids’ sakes.

Whatever the reason, I find my “panties in a wad” much of the time nowadays.  I don’t know how much this affects the way I interact with my children, but I know it does.  Further, I know they see my behavior with others and sense my moods, which I know affects them as well.

Why am I writing the obvious?  Because, as a parent, I need to be clear about what I teach my children about confrontation, frustration and how to always be respectful.  I must give them tools to take care of their own mental and emotional health and to keep anger in check.  This is often harder than it seems, since much of what they learn is not from what they are told but what they witness.  I can preach to them all day about right and wrong but, if I don’t set the proper example, they are possibly learning the wrong lesson. 

Further, my children are bi-racial and, the reality is that they have been born into a country and a world that may, at times, be more hostile to them than it is to me, being white.  They will especially need to have the tools to deal with hate, anger and frustration, and to be able to talk about what they believe with others who disagree and to remain happy through it all.  And, that is what my point is (finally) or my question, rather.  How do we, amongst the furor, remain happy and calm?

I have come up with a few suggestions I would like to share, if you’ll indulge me.

The first advice was indirectly from one of my daughters.  She loves to repeat her teacher’s dictum when kids speak out of turn, “Zip it.  Lock it.  Put it in your pocket.”  I’ll leave you to imagine the hand choreography that goes along with this.  I was recently participating in numerous blog comment streams with random people with whom I disagreed and an email exchange with my brother that was approaching 100 printed pages!  Then, I would rant to my wife and friends on Facebook, Twitter, at home at work and wherever else I could find sympathetic ears.  I was doing so much research, writing and talking, you would have thought I was running for office.  But, what I was really doing was neglecting things that actually matter, not the least of which was my own sanity and happiness.

I decided to stop it all – Zip it, lock it, put it in my pocket - at least for a while, in order to re-group.  For the time being, I’m not going to have the last word, put someone in their place or show them how wrong their argument is.  I made a commitment to look at all things from a positive angle, and talk about nice things.  This is tough.  Even just in this post, I had paragraphs filled with angry words about the aforementioned judge and the anti-gay forces.  At first, I couldn’t delete the paragraphs, I just hid them.  But, I finally forced myself to actually delete them and I really felt calmer.

Secondly, I changed the focus of my research and looked into happiness.  I found the “happiest man in the world”, Matthieu Ricard to see how he does it.  He was a French molecular geneticist at the Institut Pasteur who moved to Tibet and became a Buddhist monk.  A side note – this may not be the most solid science but he actually received his title by volunteering for a University of Wisconsin–Madison study, which tested levels of happiness, where scores ranged between +0.3 indicating depression and -0.3 denoting great happiness.  He scored -0.45 which was off the scale compared to hundreds of other volunteers.

I read his book, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.  Basically, his “secret” to happiness is meditation or mindfulness, as it is called in Buddhist practice.   I won’t go into specifics but you can hear all about it from him here or go to TED.com and find Matthieu Ricard.

So, I am putting a temporary moratorium on political conversation, turning off the talk radio and tuning out the news for a while.  That, in conjunction with my beginning the practice of meditation has made me so much happier.

Don’t worry bloggers; I’m will be back.  You won’t lose this liberal-progressive voice.  And, I’m not cutting myself off from the news of the world permanently either.  But, hopefully, stepping back for a moment will allow me to step back in as an even more open-minded, rational and calm voice.  More importantly, I think it will help me teach my children how to effectively and respectfully participate in an argument and even how to remain happy in the face of hate and hate-enabling from the likes of soon-to-be former Judge Keith Bardwell of Louisiana.  Or maybe we’ll all just meditate the hate away before they have to deal with it.

What do you do, if anything, to find happiness?

In a previous post I wrote about Disney’s upcoming animated movie featuring its first black princess, The Princess and The Frog. As the father of biracial children, I am excited about the movie and about the interracial relationship it depicts.  Since I brought it up, I didn’t want to drop the ball so, here is a little follow-up.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t make any judgments but I do want to pass on some interesting tidbits. You read all kinds of things on the internet and often, can’t tell rumor from truth but here are some things that I have culled that have sufficient verisimilitude along with some facts and useful resources from Disney itself.

First, the controversy…apparently, information leaked early on about the movie started a firestorm of criticism.  The original title was “The Frog Princess” rather than “The Princess and The Frog.” The princess’ name was going to be Maddy, which sounded too much like a slave name for some and she was depicted as a chambermaid as was her mother. The story takes place in New Orleans, the site of one of the worst natural disasters in recent history that affected, disproportionately, New Orleans’ black population. The creative team behind the movie is Ron Clements and Ron Musker (who have did brilliant work on Aladdin and The Little Mermaid) and the movie was scored by Randy Newman (who is also brilliant).  However, these are all white men. Some of the other characters in the story include practitioners of Voodoo and a singing Alligator. I could probably go on listing things that offended people if I looked hard enough and I am not personally convinced that all of these things are offensive, although I can see how some might take them that way.

Disney quickly responded to the outcry.  I don’t know how much they changed but certainly the name of the movie, the princess and her depiction have been altered. Disney spokesperson Heidi Trotta told A-List Magzine the following,

“While it is a Studio policy that we do not comment on our animated films while they are in the early stages of production due to the nature of our evolving development process, it has come to our attention that there is incorrect information being circulated about Disney’s 2009 motion picture The Princess and the Frog.

The central character is a young girl named Princess Tiana. The story takes place in the charming elegance and grandeur of New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter during the Jazz Age. She is the newest addition to the Studio’s royal family of Disney Princesses. Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney’s rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity.

This American fairy tale is several years away from completion and the creative process is ongoing. No other details regarding the film have been released at this point, and unfortunately much of the information that has surfaced, including the casting breakdown . . . is inaccurate. When we do casting calls we frequently use substitute information as we don’t want details out about the movies. Therefore that information you have is incorrect.”

So  it became The Princess and The Frog featuring Princess Tiana. She is a great “heroine” and it takes place in the New Orleans fabled French Quarter. Certainly sounds better.

Enough of the controversy…. Disney responded to criticism and seems to be making every attempt to please all while still staying true to their artistic vision, which is a positive thing.

Further, it is incredibly exciting that this movie is the first in 4 years to return to 2D hand-drawn cel animation. And the stills I have seen are amazing!

It is confirmed that the lead character Tiana will be voiced by Anika Noni Rose, who most of you probably remember from Dreamgirls but I had the privilege of seeing live on Broadway in her Tony Award winning role in Caroline, or Change. She is a superb actress and has a voice beyond compare.

Disney has set the movie in the Jazz Age and has provided, on it’s web site, some excellent educational resources for anyone interested in hearing or learning more about Jazz and it’s history.  On their web site, click on the tab that says “Community.”

The movie opens in limited release in Los Angeles and New York on November 25 and then everywhere December 11.  And, for those lucky enough to be New York or Los Angeles from November 25 through December 13, Disney is offering an The Ultimate Disney Experience which includes a screening of the movie, meeting ALL the princesses, including Tiana, a lesson in drawing from a real Disney animator, a display of original props and costumes, a Bayou adventure featuring rope swinging and tree climbing and Kodak Photo booths that put you in the movie.

The link above is for regular tickets or you can go to Goldstar, through which you may be able to get discount tickets.

I know what some of you may be thinking and no, I do not work for Disney. However, I may be updating you occasionally with any new news as the release of the film approaches. 

I used to do stand up comedy as a hobby. (I know you couldn’t guess that by the seriousness of my posts but it’s true). In one of my bits, I proposed that my wife and I (she is black and I am white) walk into a restaurant in a particularly racist pocket of America; she dressed in traditional African clothing and I in a Klan robe. We would sit in a booth and just start making out heavily - just to get a reaction.

Racism exists all over this country and the world. The seemingly unanswerable question is “how do we fight it?”

In my previous post (Unintentional Prejudice) I pointed out a relatively innocuous example of a questionable situation at my daughter’s school where there may or may not have been racism involved. In that post I expressed frustration with a lack of recourse or action that might shed light on it without having adverse consequences for my daughter. Since then I have been thinking quite a bit about the subject. Certainly, in some ways racism has been quite diluted today compared to the levels it once was and this should be celebrated as we move to eradicate it further. However, in other ways is has become even more concentrated and harmful. One example of this is something I came across recently that illustrated how prejudice and hatred of all kinds (racism, homophobia, sexism, etc.) has evolved into the insidious and extremely dangerous bigotry that masquerades as honest scientific inquiry. This convinced me that I really must do something.

I was going to write about a particular study and how it was totally twisted by a white supremacist group to try and show, scientifically, that mixed-race people are biologically inferior. I had dissected their argument and provided proof and statistics to show how idiotic their bastardization of the study was. But, the community to whom this post is directed is one of intelligent individuals who don’t need the case made for equality and mutual respect. Plus, to argue with nonsense would be to give it validity it does not deserve. So, I decided I wanted to focus on the question I asked above; what can be done?

One reason hatred continues to exist is because it is instilled in us as youth and humans have trouble extricating ourselves from what we are taught when we are young, nonsense or not. It is the same reason that if you are brought up in a certain religion, you will most likely follow that religion as an adult, logical or not. This is why it is SO important that kids be taught tolerance for all. We need to not necessarily always write letters to teachers or argue with hate groups. We need to personally inculcate our youth with ideals that teach love and acceptance so that future generations will not experience prejudice and, supremacists of any color or ilk, hate as they may, will be rendered impotent.

I finally realized what I should be doing is what I am already doing, talking to my kids rather than just writing to their teachers. But, I also concluded that I must take a step further and communicate with my daughter’s teachers about what I expect to be taught in school and even go into the classroom and participate in discussions. To that end, I would like to provide a great resource to parents who are interested in helping their kids’ schools build tolerance curriculum. There is an amazing group called the Southern Poverty Law Center that fights all forms of discrimination. They have a teaching arm called Teaching Tolerance which provides award winning resources to educators, including a magazine, DVDs, curriculum, books and much more. I recently contacted the principal of Sosie’s school about introducing their yearly Mix It Up at Lunch program that helps develop inclusive school communities.

I am not going to complain about Sosie being moved to a different class in what may or may not have been a decision motivated even unintentionally by racism. I am going to talk to my kids even more about what I believe and make sure their school has the resources and is using them to teach kids acceptance of and respect for all.