-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
CHHR will participate in a Sep. 10 panel to comment on the events in Charlottesville. When participating in conversations about pressing issues, it is important not to be fixated on cursing the current reality, but rather to highlight glimpses of the culture we want to work towards. In my preparatory research, I found this story of Keith Plessy and Phoebe Ferguson, descendants of the sides in the Plessy v Ferguson case that upheld segregation.
Their first conversation in a New Orleans coffee shop called Cafe Reconciliation went like this:
Plessy, descendant of the carpetbagger of color who deliberately sat in a white train car to get arrested: “Hey, it’s not Plessy v Ferguson anymore. It’s Plessy and Ferguson.”
Ferguson, descendant of the lawyer who defended the “separate but equal” doctrine apologizes.
Plessy: “You weren’t alive during that time. Neither was I. We have to change that whole image.”
And so the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation, which educates communities about the importance of the case to today’s culture, was born.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
-Buckminster Fuller
(Image: the two founders, the Foundation’s website.)
#CHHR #healthasright
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