Attendees learn their love language at Sister Spokesman event

By Laura Poehlman

Contributing Writer

Saturday, Feb. 11, had a bright and happy feel for attendees who came to soak up the energy and sunshine at Sister Spokesman’s latest event at LifeSource.

Sister Spokesman founder, Tracey Williams-Dillard, kicked off the festivities with a door prize giveaway. After everyone had time to say hello, and have lunch, Alex Merritt, aka “The Love Engineer,” opened up the Sister Spokesman conversation around the event theme, “Learning Your Love Language.”

The purpose of finding your love language is to discover, which of the five different ways are best-suited for various personalities to give and receive love: words of affirmation; acts of service; receiving gifts; quality time; and physical touch.

There was a lively discussion about how to identify individual preferences and how to recognize which of them makes you feel most loved and valued.

The soundtrack of the day was a playlist curated by Kylee Jackman, Sister Spokesman’s junior coordinator, which ensured everyone bopped as they shopped with the small business vendors selling their wares.

The remainder of the afternoon was full of lively games and prizes that resulted in a few lucky winners getting tickets to upcoming shows by Katt Williams and Janet Jackson.

Like the original published material, there is also an entry on American music. With the help of noted cultural critic Wesley Morris, musician and uber-producer Nile Rodgers, noted rapper Rapsody, and eclectic musician Brittany Howard, “The 1619 Project” illustrates that tactics used in the music industry put in place a system of cultural segregation that in turn perpetuated social segregation based on race.

The six episode series, like the source material, spins a truth both ugly and beautiful at the same time: that the inhumane system of slavery was—and still is—at the heart and soul of all that is America.

“The 1619 Project” is available for streaming on Hulu. Nadine Matthews welcomes reader responses to nmattews@spokesman-recorder.com.

As happy attendees trickled out, one could be heard summarizing the event beautifully: “Who doesn’t have a good time at Sister Spokesman? You eat something, you buy something, and you learn something!”

Sister Spokesman’s next event

“Roadmap to Retirement” takes place on March 4, 2023, from 12-3 pm at LifeSource, 2225 W River Road N. in Northeast Minneapolis.

Visit @SisterSpokesman on Facebook for the latest updates. Find photos by Steve Floyd on spokesman-recorder.com.

Laura Poehlman welcomes reader responses to lpoehlman@ spokesman-recorder.com.

Academic curriculum is a racial battlefield

By Dr. Luke Tripp

The United States educational system is a major social institution in sorting and preparing people for different social locations in the social hierarchy. It is a formal institution whose central purpose is to promote White-dominant cultural beliefs about how and why society is the way it is.

It is a central site of racial conflict over the breach between its professed egalitarian mission and its unequal structure, process and outcomes.

The United States standard academic curriculum is designed to foster patriotism, capitalism, and oppressive systems based on race, sex, class and sexuality. The standard curriculum is being challenged by these oppressed groups.

This article will focus on how the dominant White ruling elite attempts to undermine and impede antiracist changes in the academic curriculum. The major problem is the White right-wing political opposition to a conceptual framework for understanding and challenging racism. The solution is the implementation of a standard curriculum that is historically accurate, insightful, and open to critical examination.

White Republicans stifle antiracist education

Right-wing propaganda institutions like our local Center of the American Experiment and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research launched an intensive political campaign against anti-racist education.

Fox News was a major out-