When it comes to child rearing and upbringing I am a self admitted elitist. I had excellent parents. Not that I appreciated them to the extent that I should have when they were raising me, but looking back I find more and more reason as to why parents like mine exist few and far between.
They raised four wonderful children, of which I am the least amazing and honestly often the unanswered where did we go wrong question. It is this reality through which I view the entire world. So it’s not that I see things through rosy lenses or even the jade of skepticism, it is the simple truth that yes a tree produces after its own kind.
Why does all of this suddenly matter? Why is the indictment on our parenting skills one that we can no longer afford to ignore? Because as I survey the world we live in, and I become more and more acquainted with the crisis of character, integrity and conscious that we face, I can’t help but wonder, what are we really teaching our children? Have we become a people so engrossed in ourselves that we fail to recognize that not only are robbing our children of hope for a successful future, but we are robbing society in general of a socially conscious future adults that will undoubtedly assume that they are owed something since they have not had to work for anything.
My parents taught me that not only does a village raise a child, but that same village pays for or is rewarded for the decisions that child makes when they become an adult. How many adults are we dealing with everyday that have grown no further than the microwave reality that my generation has grown up with. We live in a time when everyone gets a trophy for showing up, we have no more healthy competition, we have no more winners, we have a sea of victims waiting to be healed with whatever magic pill the pharmaceutical companies release next. Can’t sleep, there’s a pill for that, need a better sex life, want a new body? Have a body ache, bet you there’s a syndrome, melancholy, mania and everything in between has a drug and a dealer with a MD in their title. But that’s not what got our attention.
We need only look to the economy to prove that parenting is no longer a priority. It wasn’t the epidemic of teenage pregnancy, global youth AIDS, or poverty that has made it crystal clear for us all. It’s the Wall St. mentality of greed and the welfare without work mentality of a handout; the irony is that they were both found in the same place. In the board rooms of Fortune 500 corporations that somehow believed that after looting America as if they were Saxon’s in lower Britannia had the nerve to be worried about whether or not they would be able to continue their $400k trips to the spa. There is a grave difference between caring for the poor among us and creating an impoverishment of drive, ambition and flat out work ethic. What we face is a global endeavor to get ahead and never look back at what we left in our trail.
These are dangerous and radical ideals. Talk like this sparks Marxist inquiries and McCarthy commissions on Americanism. But do we have the right to enjoy the benefits of a free market capitalistic society, when we can barely manage our fiduciary responsibility to raise the next generation to handle and survive the stuff we have amassed. What is funny is that we need a license to drive, a degree to get a job, be 18 to vote, 21 to drink and 25 to get into some nightclubs, but the only requirement to be a parent is simply to have excreted or accepted the necessary fluids to procreate.
Am I wrong for wanting more for my daughter than the world she will inherit as of now? What does it say about me that I have made a million mistakes and that if she were to make them I would be outraged? Am I a hypocrite or just another parent striving to want more for my children than what I had? Unfortunately that is both my gift and my curse. I don’t know if they make parents better than mine, I’m sure that I will be no where near as effective as they were, far less make as few mistakes as they did. I’m sure if I asked them they would say what all parents say, they just did the best they could and tried to make sure they passed along real values. They succeeded, I’m left to wonder though, will real parenting die with my parents and their generation? Can us children who grew up with microwaves, computers and VCR’s have anything to really give to the DVR, iPod, iPhone, generation that will give them purpose?
And I thought solving world peace was hard…
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
The 44th
Last night at 11pm I watched the world, as I have known it, how I have feared it to be and what I’ve envisioned for it, change radically before my eyes. I watched as we as a nation embraced our hope and faith and cast a vote for a man that no one really thought or held back their excitment in the quiet reservation of years of disappointment, would become the 44th in a line of men that have been distinguished to be leader of this dynamic nation.
I listened to my father’s tears, who came to this country during the civil rights movement, has the nerve to be equally liberal and Catholic, who believes in the separation of church and state say, “praise the Lord”. This same man who raised me to have a social conscious where race wasn’t a hindrance but an empowerment and to believe that not only was I able to be anything that I wanted to be, but I better be.
I felt my own chest fill with pride, relief, fear and joy as the tears broke around the rims of my eyes and those of everyone glued to the television with me. And as I curled into my husband’s lap and cried into him, I remembered what I had written about some of his extended family and the dynamics of race and our cultural backgrounds being different and I felt compelled to write a little more…
I felt a new sense of pride for “mom,” my mother-in-law that is, and a love for her that was too big just to be our common love of her son. It was one that stretched to something vastly different and hard for me to describe. It is and has always been a love as if she had birthed me herself, because I know what she has endured, I know that even in her son and I getting married what she fought from her own family and shielded me from was a pure act of love. I know that this seemingly frail woman who stands barely over 5 feet and weights roughly 100lbs with piercing blue eyes and her modernly cut short blonde hair, and her small town America address is the demographic that the Republican ticket thought that they owned. I know it as well as I know that she cast a vote for Barack without reservations about his color, his age or his character and clung to new hope for her future. A future that the day before yesterday was mired with questions that no one who has worked as long and as hard as she has should have to ask and today know in her heart not only is anything possible, but that what ever we have to face in this life the answer is always, yes we can.
As my sister searched the Internet and played that speech again (Yes We Can) and I listened, I realized that in one night America hadn’t gone colorless, it went boundless and stretched itself beyond expectation and defied even my own cynicism. For this woman who for the last 10 years has voted almost exclusively Republican, which pit me at diametric odds with my father and most of my favorite family members, to have an opportunity to say that a place of agreement is able to be found between my immigrant West Indian father, my Caucasian mother-in-law, my Christian faith and my dreams for my children, words cannot begin to describe the elation that I feel.
At midnight we joined hands, and prayed for our nation, for our new president and thanked God for being alive to see this day. And as our circle broke and I rubbed my stomach, a stomach that carries a child of mixed race and culture, I repeated the words to myself over and over again. Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we did!
I listened to my father’s tears, who came to this country during the civil rights movement, has the nerve to be equally liberal and Catholic, who believes in the separation of church and state say, “praise the Lord”. This same man who raised me to have a social conscious where race wasn’t a hindrance but an empowerment and to believe that not only was I able to be anything that I wanted to be, but I better be.
I felt my own chest fill with pride, relief, fear and joy as the tears broke around the rims of my eyes and those of everyone glued to the television with me. And as I curled into my husband’s lap and cried into him, I remembered what I had written about some of his extended family and the dynamics of race and our cultural backgrounds being different and I felt compelled to write a little more…
I felt a new sense of pride for “mom,” my mother-in-law that is, and a love for her that was too big just to be our common love of her son. It was one that stretched to something vastly different and hard for me to describe. It is and has always been a love as if she had birthed me herself, because I know what she has endured, I know that even in her son and I getting married what she fought from her own family and shielded me from was a pure act of love. I know that this seemingly frail woman who stands barely over 5 feet and weights roughly 100lbs with piercing blue eyes and her modernly cut short blonde hair, and her small town America address is the demographic that the Republican ticket thought that they owned. I know it as well as I know that she cast a vote for Barack without reservations about his color, his age or his character and clung to new hope for her future. A future that the day before yesterday was mired with questions that no one who has worked as long and as hard as she has should have to ask and today know in her heart not only is anything possible, but that what ever we have to face in this life the answer is always, yes we can.
As my sister searched the Internet and played that speech again (Yes We Can) and I listened, I realized that in one night America hadn’t gone colorless, it went boundless and stretched itself beyond expectation and defied even my own cynicism. For this woman who for the last 10 years has voted almost exclusively Republican, which pit me at diametric odds with my father and most of my favorite family members, to have an opportunity to say that a place of agreement is able to be found between my immigrant West Indian father, my Caucasian mother-in-law, my Christian faith and my dreams for my children, words cannot begin to describe the elation that I feel.
At midnight we joined hands, and prayed for our nation, for our new president and thanked God for being alive to see this day. And as our circle broke and I rubbed my stomach, a stomach that carries a child of mixed race and culture, I repeated the words to myself over and over again. Yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we did!
Monday, November 3, 2008
Sensitivity of the Heart
So yesterday I was sitting in the one place that I don’t ever expect to have to fight a war and realized I was in the middle of a battle that I honestly didn’t and don’t know how to fight. I was mired in the wrestling of my ultra compassionate heart and my very logical head. How’s that for an ideological conundrum?
In my personal space I don’t hesitate from confronting how I feel about anything, except maybe with my husband. However, this was not the kind of space where it was neither appropriate nor where I could confront how and what I was feeling. Hence the feeling is still with me.
It wasn’t what was said specifically, it wasn’t even that it was said; it was the reaction of those I was surrounded by that rocked me to my very core. It was the cheers, it was the myopia they were cheering that made my stomach knot and the vomit in my throat rise. I have figured out the older that I’ve gotten that at heart, I am a woman of compassion. The kind of compassion that makes my heart break at the sound or sight of injustice, the kind of compassion that makes me want to cry at the sight of someone homeless, not because they are without a home, but because I’m not in a financial position to provide one for them.
Though I’m sure that they didn’t even notice what they were cheering for was the injustice of doing nothing about racial injustice. It was the complacency of understanding race through the monolith of growing up and living in a monochromatic segment of society. It was the prejudice of trying to be so racially evolved that we are blind to realities of living in the context of race in America.
“If you are voting color, you don’t know who you are.”
The truth is, that statement is very true. If all that has occurred to you is the color of your vote than you have missed the promise of your vote. But for me, who not only knows the intimacies of color, but the poignancy of our history as a nation, can we honestly say that to not see color is evolved? Honestly, I don’t buy it. The purpose of diversity isn’t to ignore it. So why is being colorless a good thing? How much do we lose in trying to make everyone see without the hues that we all have, how much more do we gain if we can not only see color, but embrace what each of those colors bring?
Here is a bit of my reality. My husband and I are what we lovingly refer to as bi-cultural and what most would refer to as bi-racial. We are also from vastly different socio-economic worlds. My parents raised me in the halls of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Met. We threw and attended wine and cheese parties, discussed politics over brioche and lamented the stock market. I lived in the suburbs and shopped in boutiques. My father encouraged debate, challenged ideals, and taught his children to cherish rights, reason and democracy.
I’ve stood in the cotton fields of the acres that my husband’s family owns. I’ve watched my daughter play in the sea of white and became acutely aware that she has no awareness of the history of cotton or her color in America. I’ve listened to them refer to my daughter’s hair as “good” and marvel at its length. I’ve heard my husband recount tails of his childhood, which sound nothing like my own. Where he’s from people weren’t like my family, diversity wasn’t a given, it wasn’t expected, it was possible. Where he is from his entire family lives within 10 miles of each other and they still sit down every Sunday night and have family dinner at his mother’s house. Where my husband is from town folk might have refered to me as colored and scoffed at the audacity of my husband for marrying me an educated, uppity woman. These are not only the town members they are also the members of the family whose blood runs through my daughter and that I carry in my womb.
It is through this filter that I hear the cheers, the verbal and silent complicity. It is through the history of this country that I hear what challenges every part of my humanity. It is through that filter that I’m rendered to tears and humbled beyond what I’ve ever known humility to be. As a women who happens to be a believer I’m struck with the stark reality of what we have as a society used in the name of God to justify. In the last 100 years of the American Christian identity, I would have been vilified if not hung for being educated, for marrying inter-racially, for birthing bi-racial children, for love beyond color and being every bit as color blind as a colorless society would have me be. Which is such a powerful ideal right until we indict each other for the lack of color that we see, by indicting someone else for the color that we do.
I look to history to remind me of where I should be cautious of the intent of others. I recall the reality that the KKK was established as a Christian organization, that nearly 4 presidents and countless politicians were elected on the backs of the Klan. That Chief Justice Blackwell was a sworn member. I know that this nation was founded as a Christian nation that believed in the ownership of other people because in Genesis 9:22-23 slavery became a biblical precedent and therefore was the WASP right and God given responsibility to treat Africans as chattel?
Do we even question justice; have we decided that we know whose life is valuable and whose rights we need to protect? What is the measure we’ve used to determine whose lives are innocent and whose are perishable? As a people have we begun to perish as a result of our own lack of knowledge? The truth is, it is only a matter of perception and what you’re looking for to believe. Even worse if our leadership endorses our behavior, why would we ever question whether or not it’s wrong? I can only say to each of us remember the words of President Wilson at the release of the Birth of a Nation, “it was like writing history with lightening, my only wish that it wasn’t so true…"
So I have resolved to this, if I’m going to do anything I’m going to ensure that my motives are pure. I’m going to be honest enough to give total disclosure and I’m willing to risk missing it completely for a shot at hitting the bull’s-eye. I cannot pretend that I know the hearts of all men, I know that I will not allow my heart to ever harbor something that will dishonor the very thing that I seek to be authentic in doing. In James, it clearly says that no river can flow with salt and fresh water, in Matthew, Jesus himself requires us to make the tree good or else make it corrupt. So here I am and I choose to make the tree good and to remember without faltering, that what I have done unto the least of these, I have done unto the Father. I will see color, I will acknowledge the injustice that people of color have endured and I will do it with an honest heart.
In my personal space I don’t hesitate from confronting how I feel about anything, except maybe with my husband. However, this was not the kind of space where it was neither appropriate nor where I could confront how and what I was feeling. Hence the feeling is still with me.
It wasn’t what was said specifically, it wasn’t even that it was said; it was the reaction of those I was surrounded by that rocked me to my very core. It was the cheers, it was the myopia they were cheering that made my stomach knot and the vomit in my throat rise. I have figured out the older that I’ve gotten that at heart, I am a woman of compassion. The kind of compassion that makes my heart break at the sound or sight of injustice, the kind of compassion that makes me want to cry at the sight of someone homeless, not because they are without a home, but because I’m not in a financial position to provide one for them.
Though I’m sure that they didn’t even notice what they were cheering for was the injustice of doing nothing about racial injustice. It was the complacency of understanding race through the monolith of growing up and living in a monochromatic segment of society. It was the prejudice of trying to be so racially evolved that we are blind to realities of living in the context of race in America.
“If you are voting color, you don’t know who you are.”
The truth is, that statement is very true. If all that has occurred to you is the color of your vote than you have missed the promise of your vote. But for me, who not only knows the intimacies of color, but the poignancy of our history as a nation, can we honestly say that to not see color is evolved? Honestly, I don’t buy it. The purpose of diversity isn’t to ignore it. So why is being colorless a good thing? How much do we lose in trying to make everyone see without the hues that we all have, how much more do we gain if we can not only see color, but embrace what each of those colors bring?
Here is a bit of my reality. My husband and I are what we lovingly refer to as bi-cultural and what most would refer to as bi-racial. We are also from vastly different socio-economic worlds. My parents raised me in the halls of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Met. We threw and attended wine and cheese parties, discussed politics over brioche and lamented the stock market. I lived in the suburbs and shopped in boutiques. My father encouraged debate, challenged ideals, and taught his children to cherish rights, reason and democracy.
I’ve stood in the cotton fields of the acres that my husband’s family owns. I’ve watched my daughter play in the sea of white and became acutely aware that she has no awareness of the history of cotton or her color in America. I’ve listened to them refer to my daughter’s hair as “good” and marvel at its length. I’ve heard my husband recount tails of his childhood, which sound nothing like my own. Where he’s from people weren’t like my family, diversity wasn’t a given, it wasn’t expected, it was possible. Where he is from his entire family lives within 10 miles of each other and they still sit down every Sunday night and have family dinner at his mother’s house. Where my husband is from town folk might have refered to me as colored and scoffed at the audacity of my husband for marrying me an educated, uppity woman. These are not only the town members they are also the members of the family whose blood runs through my daughter and that I carry in my womb.
It is through this filter that I hear the cheers, the verbal and silent complicity. It is through the history of this country that I hear what challenges every part of my humanity. It is through that filter that I’m rendered to tears and humbled beyond what I’ve ever known humility to be. As a women who happens to be a believer I’m struck with the stark reality of what we have as a society used in the name of God to justify. In the last 100 years of the American Christian identity, I would have been vilified if not hung for being educated, for marrying inter-racially, for birthing bi-racial children, for love beyond color and being every bit as color blind as a colorless society would have me be. Which is such a powerful ideal right until we indict each other for the lack of color that we see, by indicting someone else for the color that we do.
I look to history to remind me of where I should be cautious of the intent of others. I recall the reality that the KKK was established as a Christian organization, that nearly 4 presidents and countless politicians were elected on the backs of the Klan. That Chief Justice Blackwell was a sworn member. I know that this nation was founded as a Christian nation that believed in the ownership of other people because in Genesis 9:22-23 slavery became a biblical precedent and therefore was the WASP right and God given responsibility to treat Africans as chattel?
Do we even question justice; have we decided that we know whose life is valuable and whose rights we need to protect? What is the measure we’ve used to determine whose lives are innocent and whose are perishable? As a people have we begun to perish as a result of our own lack of knowledge? The truth is, it is only a matter of perception and what you’re looking for to believe. Even worse if our leadership endorses our behavior, why would we ever question whether or not it’s wrong? I can only say to each of us remember the words of President Wilson at the release of the Birth of a Nation, “it was like writing history with lightening, my only wish that it wasn’t so true…"
So I have resolved to this, if I’m going to do anything I’m going to ensure that my motives are pure. I’m going to be honest enough to give total disclosure and I’m willing to risk missing it completely for a shot at hitting the bull’s-eye. I cannot pretend that I know the hearts of all men, I know that I will not allow my heart to ever harbor something that will dishonor the very thing that I seek to be authentic in doing. In James, it clearly says that no river can flow with salt and fresh water, in Matthew, Jesus himself requires us to make the tree good or else make it corrupt. So here I am and I choose to make the tree good and to remember without faltering, that what I have done unto the least of these, I have done unto the Father. I will see color, I will acknowledge the injustice that people of color have endured and I will do it with an honest heart.
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