"Foundations"
We are built on a foundation that is rooted in our culture, race, family and religion. Our foundations create a base for how see and interact with the world around us.
Understanding your foundation is key to understanding how you impact those around you for good and bad. To know what your foundation is made of requires honesty and can be a hard thing to do. I means looking at your roots for what they are, how they fit into the world around you and ultimately finding truth within them.
This is the truth of my foundation:
Privileged white contemporary American culture constructs a damaging masculine identity within men and women through religious and political institutions. These institutions use “traditional values” to place women, children and minorities under a capitalist power structure that overwhelmingly benefits white men. Communities are manipulated and oppressed by privileged white masculinity to increase productivity for individual and state needs.
The abuses of privileged white masculinity are justified through a machoism that is deeply rooted in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ, Christianity's first teacher, taught that faith is love and compassion for other people through a love of God. Fundamentalists redefined faith as, “God will help those who first help themselves,” creating a visual faith work ethic. The suffering of minorities, women, and children is then justified; their poverty is due to lack of faith.
I am a white heterosexual Christian male and my identity as a male is built on “traditional” Christian values. The culture and society I live in was and is build to benefit me. By understanding who I am and where I come from space is created for the voices of the disenfranchised around me empowering them to be heard and understood.
