When we were kids, one of the most demeaning experiences you could go through was “being played.” “Being played” means being fooled, being “chumped,” or someone taking advantage of you. It often involves someone that you trust. It was even worse than people snapping and joking about your mother or family. But those were situations […]
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Growing up, when someone called you something other than your given name, we usually complained, “stop calling me names.” Name-calling was usually an act of ridicule or disrespect. Feeling a bit contrarian, my focus in this piece will be about name-calling that glorifies people, groups, or concepts, in my opinion, unjustifiably. I’ll start with the
My 4th-grade teacher, Miss Bogner, a wonderful woman, and teacher, once told our class that ignorance occurs when you don’t have access to information and that it deserves empathy and understanding. Once you have access to knowledge and refuse to inform yourself, any expectation of empathy or compassion dissipates. She called them “willfully ignorant.” Those
