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While reading blogs coming out of Pakistan, following today’s tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto, I encountered this symbol again and it reminds me of the frail yet resilient (and cyclical) qualities of the planet and the living things upon it – It does not appear that this New Year will bring PEACE but we should nonetheless continue to work toward this noble end.
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This is a follow-up to my September 27 entry about Nike shoes for Native America feet. recently the story was on NPR again, I caught the tail end of it, but in a nutshell, someone was complaining that this was a for-profit scheme and a bit non-PC because it targeted Native Americans as different.
I am no geneticist and no anthropologist, but it seems to me that, based upon the original NPR interview with the shoes designer, this was developed with a very altruistic goal in mind – to help provide comfort and protection to the feet of Native Americans (being given out only in Native American Communities) in en effort to help reduce foot pressure leading to sores aggravated by diabetes.
Why is it ok to recognize that some populations of people have a propensity to certain health risks, but not OK to try to help – without it being suggested that it is racist or some other overstatement.
Indeed Nike probably woudl like to turn a profit, but perhaps not. Perhaps the designer actually initiated a sufficiently compelling dialogue that they did the right thing. Ridiculous? Maybe. Impossible? Hardly. Might they get community service brownie points? Sure, but isn’t that ok if in the end a very serious problem is resolved?
Does everything really have to be vanilla?
On that happy note – Happy Belated Hannukah or Chanukah (8 crazy nights, no matter how you spell it!) Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Kwanzaa! There, was that PC enough?
