Nova Diversity

My word of the year is intentionality.

Living with intention is about knowing what is important to us and giving our attention to it. Assessing where we are now (at the moment) physically, emotionally, and mentally. It’s a choice we have to make about being honest and accepting ourselves.

What do you plan to be intentional about this year? Change? Growth? Self care? Love? Living?

Words Matter: Why We Should Put an End to “Grandfathered in” ie “grandfathering”.
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The term "grandfathered" has unfortunately become part of our language. It's a way to describe individuals or companies who get to keep operating under an existing set of expectations when new rules are put in place. But like so many things, the term "grandfather," used in this way, has its roots in America's racial history. In the late nineteenth century, a group of U.S. Southern states passed legislation and constitutional amendments that made it harder, if not impossible, for African-Americans to vote. They introduced new requirements for literacy tests, poll taxes, and residency/property ownership restrictions in order to register to vote. States would exempt citizens from these new requirements if their ancestors (grandfathers) had voting rights before the Civil War. The motivation and outcome was to keep poor and illiterate former slaves and their descendants from voting, while allowing poor and illiterate whites to vote.
Eventually, these original grandfather clauses were ruled unconstitutional. States found new and creative ways to suppress the African-American vote, right up through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which formally abolished literacy tests and other racist voting restrictions; though, unfortunately, voter suppression still continues today. The term “grandfathering” should have died with the grandfather clause, but instead it stuck. It’s been adapted over time and has become common legal or business speak.
We need to change that. One term that is being used in its place it the term “legacy” (being legacied in). So let’s change the legacy by changing your vocabulary.
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