History and perspective

[aeditimi]

It hit me just now.

I was trying to explain to my daughter who the man on the CNN page was, and why he was special. I didn't even have a frame of reference for explaining that his skin was a different color than hers. She just kind of blinked at me. "Skin? I don't want skin." And that's when I got it, right between the eyes. She has no concept of

Comments

inheriting

[ckofke]

We, too, were having a conversation at lunch about Barack Obama. Specifically about how "older" people - the age they picked was over 45 see Obama's nomination as historic and momentous and younger people just think that it's as it should be. The point was that younger people don't see skin color. Now they weren't talking as young as 3, but rather for people of voting age 18-40 or so. Our conversation centered around those with children who had example after example of their kids, literally, not even seeing that someone else's skin was a different color! One teacher told of her six year old who said, "What do you mean Mom? Why do you keep talking about Alyssa's skin?" The mom decided that if her daughter didn't see the difference, that she shouldn't be the one to point it out to her. And of course, my own daughter who is now 23, who is open and inviting to all people's regardless of skin color, ethnicity, nationality, or sexual orientation. She is truly of a different generation than mine, and I am so pleased. She had Thanksgiving in the (foreign) country where she lives to introduce this totally American holiday to all these people. She had 18 people present from 11 different countries! Cool, huh? Hooray, our young people are inheriting a world that is better than the one I grew up in. Thanks goodness. I was a teenager during the fire hose and German shepard incidents in the deep South and heard Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech on TV that night. We surely don't want to return to those times.