I try to understand other people's viewpoints on things and be better in the future. I think if you look at my history as a baseball player, my history on social media and my history as a person, for those who know me well, they know that I apply that process to everything that I do.
I think that we have positive moments in our history and negative moments in our history. We incarcerated Japanese Americans in the state of Colorado, in Camp Amache. You could say that's part of our heritage; I would say it's a shameful part of our heritage and not something we should repeat.
The media has enormous power. The media is undergoing huge changes now. It seemed like it's time to step back and look at how the media shapes our lives and our perceptions of reality.
Black History is enjoying the life of our ancestors who paved the way for every African-American. No matter what color you are, the history of Blacks affected everyone; that's why we should cherish and respect Black history. Black history changed America and is continuing to change and shape our country. Black history is about everyone coming together to better themselves and America. Black history is being comfortable in your own skin no matter what color you are. Black history makes me proud of where I came from and where I am going in life.
We tend to blame the physical media for most of our implementation difficulties; for the media are not "ours" in the way the ideas are, and our pride colors our judgement.
I am inspired by the reality that actions we take in the real world, no matter how seemingly small, can have impact on people's lives in a positive way. I have always been motivated by the desire to improve the world for women, in particular in the media - because the media is the "face" of the collective philosophy; watching media tells you what we think of ourselves and our "ideal" images and states of being.
Specifically for black women, our images and our bodies in the media and in history have been so hypersexualized.
It doesn't matter if it's social media or radio media or television media - it's all media, and it's all marketing. It's about understanding where your fans are. And when you have infiltrated them, and they're satisfied, and there's demand, how do you grow it from there?
Let me say, it's - what a commentary it is on American media that you have to go to Russian television in order to get covered as a candidate in this election. It's pretty outrageous. And our media could solve that in a heartbeat if they actually opened it up, you know, but they don't. So I think that's more commentary on the crisis in our media.
I think a lot of times when people hear the word dance, they think 'oh, that's something that I can't do.' But dance really lives in our bodies and the thing that I've come to learn, embrace and lift up is that we have history in our bodies that's living and breathing. We have our own individual history but we also have our heritage. Each one of us has our movement language and it's about tapping into that and pulling that out. That's the thing that I try to encourage everybody because it's not about dance, it's about the movement and the gesture and how we honor it.
What Fox News has become in 2020 is a conclusion of decades of right wing media and rhetoric against the rest of the media. In the '90s it was about media bias. In the 2000s it was about media bias. Now, the rhetoric is so much more extreme. It's about enemies of the people.
When in our isolation we see our lives seeping away as a mere succession of moments, tossed meaninglessly about by accidents and overwhelming events; when we contemplate a history that seems to be at an end, leaving only chaos behind it, then we are impelled to raise ourselves above history.
So often, we don't realize that the very moments in which we live become our history, our story.
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
We Americans forget or rewrite even our recent history, and accomplishments of any group not pale and male have tended to get downplayed or erased - one reason why Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and I founded the Women's Media Center: to make women visible and powerful in media.
The people we talk about around water cooler at work or at school, they're all the people who are visible in our media whether it's a sports star or a movie star or a writer or a politician. They are people that have received media exposure and have become important to us in a way that's not realistic.