In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
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racist hiring
Try hard enough to find a job: race and reality in the U.S.
Mon, 2008/03/10 - 12:30pm — Benjamin Melançonhttp://coanews.org/article/2008/what-dead-presidents-can-do
Excerpts:
Dead Presidents is the story of a black veteran who -- upon returning to The Bronx after volunteering for two tours in Vietnam -- robs an armored car with his fellow vets since he can't find a living wage job that'll allow him to support a family. The acting, the soundtrack -- everything about this motion picture is perfect, but after [a romantic interest] saw it for the first time with me, all [she] had to say was, "I don't think Anthony [the protagonist] tried hard enough to find a job."
"It haunts me to this day"
Wed, 2007/08/22 - 2:36pm — Benjamin MelançonIn Philadelphia, Dad answered a job ad, he was probably about 16, he said.
There was another boy there, an African-American, a real go-getter. [Who looked like he really expected to get the job.]
Coming out of the interview where Dad got the job, it came to him that the other boy was not going to get the job.
It haunts me to this day. This very moment it haunts me.
I make a living doing web design and development with a great team
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I'm trying to make possible a worldwide nonviolent revolution for justice, liberty, and making more good things doable.
People Who Give a Damn
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Favorite Quotations
We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.