This isn't the better world we hoped our children would be born into.
Still a Nation of Cowards
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
I was with my two daughters a few nights ago—my wife within an earshot—as my oldest, now 12, worked on a school project. She was supposed to develop a family timeline from 1910-2010, in which family events coincided with historical events. Of course, unlike some of my daughter’s classmates, there is no shared immigrant narrative that begins with a view of the Statue of Liberty and a visit to Ellis Island.
My daughter seemed genuinely perturbed at having to recount the role that racial discrimination, segregation and violence played in her family’s development and those of so many African Americans. When I explained that her grandmother and grandfather were not allowed on the beach that we now vacation at every year, my youngest daughter, eight, simply chimed in “lame.” Lame indeed, but this seemingly jovial recognition of how far we have come was dampened a bit, when I shared that their other grandparents, my parents, were married the same year that President John Kennedy was assassinated and that that their daddy was born the same year that El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) was murdered.
I’ve often had these kind of conversations with my oldest daughter—the 20 minutes we spend in the car in the morning is my version of a daily freedom school—and it perhaps informs some of her rants at the fact that we’ve never had a woman president or that it matters to some people what somebody’s sexual orientation is while they are defending the country. Though she’s never said as much, I suspect she thinks that the world was brutish, boorish, and barbaric in the years before she was born. She would, of course, be right.
Yet, part of the faith that we all have as parents, is the belief that our children are born into a world that is far better than the one we were born in. The stress that we experience as parents, in part, is often the product of the reality that we are never quite sure that’s the case.
The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, along with the shooting deaths of six others including Federal Judge John Roll and a nine-year-old girl, as well as the wounding of 13 others in front of a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket, is yet another reminder that we’ve not come as far as we’ve thought.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
Still a Nation of Cowards
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
I was with my two daughters a few nights ago—my wife within an earshot—as my oldest, now 12, worked on a school project. She was supposed to develop a family timeline from 1910-2010, in which family events coincided with historical events. Of course, unlike some of my daughter’s classmates, there is no shared immigrant narrative that begins with a view of the Statue of Liberty and a visit to Ellis Island.
My daughter seemed genuinely perturbed at having to recount the role that racial discrimination, segregation and violence played in her family’s development and those of so many African Americans. When I explained that her grandmother and grandfather were not allowed on the beach that we now vacation at every year, my youngest daughter, eight, simply chimed in “lame.” Lame indeed, but this seemingly jovial recognition of how far we have come was dampened a bit, when I shared that their other grandparents, my parents, were married the same year that President John Kennedy was assassinated and that that their daddy was born the same year that El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) was murdered.
I’ve often had these kind of conversations with my oldest daughter—the 20 minutes we spend in the car in the morning is my version of a daily freedom school—and it perhaps informs some of her rants at the fact that we’ve never had a woman president or that it matters to some people what somebody’s sexual orientation is while they are defending the country. Though she’s never said as much, I suspect she thinks that the world was brutish, boorish, and barbaric in the years before she was born. She would, of course, be right.
Yet, part of the faith that we all have as parents, is the belief that our children are born into a world that is far better than the one we were born in. The stress that we experience as parents, in part, is often the product of the reality that we are never quite sure that’s the case.
The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, along with the shooting deaths of six others including Federal Judge John Roll and a nine-year-old girl, as well as the wounding of 13 others in front of a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket, is yet another reminder that we’ve not come as far as we’ve thought.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
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