themattscott are you listening yet

So there’s been some intense discussion over on Josh Brown’s site about emergent being a white man’s game, if you haven’t read through them I’d highly suggest reading all of the comments as there is plenty of insightful and good stuff in there (and some junk).

So this conversation got me thinking about how most of what I read is from some white guy and I don’t really stretch the boundaries much. In my defense I really want to read both “No Future Without Forgiveness” and “God Has a Dream” by Desmond Tutu, but other than those two books I hadn’t really considered reading books from “minority” authors.

This conversation mixed with a post by Andrew Martin on the differences between American and European focus really got me thinking about how I seem to only want to look at things that I think about. Meaning my focus is on things I know/care about and I tend to ignore important issues that I don’t know/care about.

So what’s the best way to get over this myopic view? Read things by authors outside of my “normal” realm.

Thus I’ve made a commitment to only read a white guy book after I’ve read and appreciated a book by another social/race/gender class than my own.

You might ask why 1-1, well I still want to learn and think about things that I can “relate” to, and I know there are some books coming down the pipe by guys that I already read and enjoy.

Hopefully this little experiment will expand my thinking and understanding to even greater heights than before. (I’m pretty sure it will)