I am a 71 year old African American woman living in Hemet, Ca. In all of these years I have lived through many ugly racially charged events in this country that I call home. I have survived the humiliations that have been heaped upon me, even in my home state of Minnesota.
Lynching’s, assassinations, and the bloody marches in this country have all left me with emotional scars, that I have attempted to heal by believing that surely, surely time would allow humanity to realize that we are here together and that working as one cohesive unit is the only means of our survival. However, today my heart began to bleed again. Here in the year of 2009, my ten year old grandson arrived home from school with a permission slip to be signed by his parents as to whether he would be allowed to listen to the speech next Tuesday being given by the president of the United States, one Barack Obama. I was unable to speak, I felt as though I was being strangled by some unseen hand. The insult was so obvious and painful that I found it difficult to breath. Nothing had changed.
The fact that the Hemet Unified School District or any other, in this country that espouses freedom of speech would exhibit such a blatant disrespect of their president and then by implication channel these same feelings into their students who are 90% Hispanic and a10% blend of Caucasian and African American a feeling of being questionable and/or inferior is reprehensible. I have no recollection of the necessity for students to be given permission as to whether or not to listen to the first President Bush, or any other duly elected head of this country.
I realize that no one wants to play the ‘race card’ but it seems to be the only deck in play at this time. Let’s be honest and admit that this over the top desire to bring our first black president to defeat is racially charged. I had prayed that my grandchildren would not have to wonder if their black skin was their greatest detriment. I see that I must keep up my personal work with them of being proud to be black Americans in order for them to maintain their own integrity and self esteem.
Racism has pushed the rocks away and is alive and well and living in America. With all of the talk of ‘death panels’, it seems that those who hold these narrow concepts that cripple the progress of this country, would realize that they are blind sheep, being led on a suicide march over a cliff by politicians who have no concern for their constituents other then to be re-elected.
I say WAKE UP before this vitriolic, hateful and self-defeating current sweeps us into oblivion and brings an end to what was intended to be a great society and country.
I would like to close with excerpts from a book CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS by Eldon Taylor:
‘It is a strange world we live in when the criteria for establishing one’s self-worth are based on the subtraction method. Subtract from John and Sally and Luke, and we somehow gain? The mature adult recognizes quickly the fallacy inherent in this kind of thinking. The circular nature of getting even or “getting evener” creates a world of insecurities and distortions, both in the physical and the mental. Robert Laing has stated that the condition of the normal man is one of self- alienation” Laing continues with strong words that are altogether too true, insisting that man pretends to be what he is not until he loses what he is.
The truth is that whenever we denigrate another, we subtract from ourselves. To the precise degree that we make less of another, we make less of ourselves. Further, this precedent subtracts from all of human potential. Mankind’s unkind tolerance for unkind deeds perpetuates only unkindness. Thus, fear itself is fed both by the acts of unkindness and by the inherit circularity of getting even.’
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