Dissecting the Legacy of Hate: It's A Matter of Love
In 2015, I find myself doing for my child what my mother did for me in 1985 though I do not have the 30 year old audio tapes that still haunt my mind with screams of Black women as they reacted to billy clubs, fire hoses and attack dogs wielded by police. Instead, I have Youtube.
My mother was literally born into the civil rights movement. I was born into the tail end of the Carter Administration. I sent President Reagan jelly beans in the same year in which the Ku Klux Klan attacked our duplex with homemade fire bombs. In Obama's America while watching a play at my daughter's school, I saw that, just as I had seen in my younger days, none of the brown and black children had speaking parts.
My daughter has noticed that black people are likely to be poor. She has noticed that popular kid shows lack black and brown lead characters. She has seen the acceptance that her white father enjoys and the silent stares for me as we explore her dad's predominately white and wealthy neighborhood.
I bring the stories of systemic injustices, forced intergenerational poverty and white supremacy to my sweet child because it is her inheritance. Her lens in a society that claims "Mission Accomplished" in regard to racial injustice while black and brown lives, including social contributions, are represented as though they are "off brand" at best sending the message that #blacklivesmatter least of all.
I share this knowledge out of love. She must know this history to put bigotry and the symptoms of oppression into a historical context that will prepare her to indict the system while loving herself and her community.
My mother was literally born into the civil rights movement. I was born into the tail end of the Carter Administration. I sent President Reagan jelly beans in the same year in which the Ku Klux Klan attacked our duplex with homemade fire bombs. In Obama's America while watching a play at my daughter's school, I saw that, just as I had seen in my younger days, none of the brown and black children had speaking parts.
My daughter has noticed that black people are likely to be poor. She has noticed that popular kid shows lack black and brown lead characters. She has seen the acceptance that her white father enjoys and the silent stares for me as we explore her dad's predominately white and wealthy neighborhood.
I bring the stories of systemic injustices, forced intergenerational poverty and white supremacy to my sweet child because it is her inheritance. Her lens in a society that claims "Mission Accomplished" in regard to racial injustice while black and brown lives, including social contributions, are represented as though they are "off brand" at best sending the message that #blacklivesmatter least of all.
I share this knowledge out of love. She must know this history to put bigotry and the symptoms of oppression into a historical context that will prepare her to indict the system while loving herself and her community.
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