I have been gone from this space for some time. This has been a self-imposed exile while I ponder everything related to who I am and what principles I deem important enough to express and defend. The reason I am back is that I believe just saying something is not enough – one must stand behind that belief in a real and measurable way. In layman’s terms – put up or shut up.
A brief history of what led me to pause my writing each time in this space is encapsulated in chronological order below. Some of the dates may not be exact but the events are accurate:
- Pause #1 (2015) – I was made aware through third-party sources that my ex-wife (well, she wasn’t my ex-wife yet at the time) was upset at some of the content of my blog. In an effort to not make the relationship (which was already frosty at best) any more acrimonious (and also to shield our two children from any of the discussion which would probably devolve into “he said – she said”) I shelved my blog for the first time.
- Pause #2 (2017) – I received an anonymous email from a source who indicated that my blog had become the topic of some negative discussion in an online forum. The individual who sent me the email indicated one of the people who objected to the content of my blog was a fellow employee at the GTHL. Other members of this unnamed online forum who shared similar negative opinions encouraged the alleged GTHL employee to speak with my boss in an effort to get me fired. Since I only had recently begun my position I thought it would be prudent to stop writing… again.
- Pause #3 (2022) – I had only recently begun writing again and once again the heavy hand of cancel culture threatened me again. My boss at the GTHL summoned me to a meeting (well it was actually a Zoom call since we were not in the office full time due to Covid). During the meeting he revealed to me that someone in the mainstream media (let’s just call him RW) had contacted him and asked his opinion on the content of my blog, specifically my takes on race and gender which have dominated so many spaces over the past several years. My boss indicated that he read my blog and did not see any issue with the content but others may not necessarily agree with his sentiment (or my opinions). To protect my livelihood I stopped writing… again
So on three separate occasions I have allowed the “woke mob”, an online entity I had vowed would not silence me, to do just that. This left me questioning not only my character but the world that has emerged in the past decade. What message was I conveying to my still relatively young children who are supposed to look to their father for moral guidance? I have been torn – go along to get along or stand up for that in which I believe?
Some life changes have made me choose to stand on principle rather than just to go with the flow. Most notably, I left my position with the GTHL in the fall of 2022. That decision was made partly due to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mandate which had permeated much of society, including workplaces almost everywhere. Imagine coming to work every day knowing that the focus of almost everything you did would have a DEI backdrop. This was further compounded given that some of the narratives surrounding this objective were at best exaggerated and at worst fabricated (I will not get into the discussion in this particular post but maybe, just maybe I will in a future post). Don’t misread what I am writing to mean that I don’t believe that there are issues in society related to race, gender and sexual orientation that need to be addressed but I do not believe, like noted “race hustlers” such as Ibram X Kendi and Reverend Al Sharpton, that racism/sexism are baked into the system. The process of doing my job had become mentally exhausting given my conflicting beliefs to the all-encompassing DEI agenda.
I think the tipping point for me was sitting in a DEI workshop with all the staff at the GTHL. I remember listening to the material which in essence told me that everything should be looked at through a racial lens. I was the oppressor due to my skin colour (and my gender). Unless I acknowledged this I would be in effect contributing to racial bias and discrimination.
This goes against everything I have ever believed to be true – that people should be judged on their character – not by the colour of their skin. The world that Martin Luther King had expressed his desire to live in when he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the height of the civil rights movement had been hijacked. Now instead of a society striving for a “colour-blind” world where skin colour would be irrelevant, we are living in a world where we are told to always look at race. The race hustlers I mentioned earlier had successfully created a narrative that when an injustice or slight (whether perceived or real) occurs it depends on the colour of the alleged victim’s (and the alleged perpetrator’s) skin as to whether racism is at the core of said injustice/slight. A rewriting of language where people with white skin could never experience “racism” and a man could never be victim of “sexism” are just a couple of the core beliefs of this twisted ideology. The collective rather than the individual has become more important. Terms like “intersectionality” can determine one’s position in the ongoing victim Olympics. Facts no longer seem to matter (ask Roland Fryer, esteemed Harvard professor about that contention).
The time has come for all of us – regardless of race, skin colour, religion, gender or sexual orientation to stand up and push back against a divisive ideology that has permeated our schools, public institutions, corporations and political offices. Should any one ask why the simple answer is the truth still matters.
One Dad With a Blog
OneDadWithABlog 