A hundred years seems like a long time. But then I'm almost to the halfway mark of a Century and I feel like that time passed so quickly that it's hard to dismiss how short a hundred years truly is.
So then think of how short a time 244 years is, comparatively, that's how long it's been since the founding of the United States in 1776.
The thing that seems to make a difference in peoples perception of time is that their time is different than their parents time, which was different from their parents time etc. and we overlook the ideas and beliefs that are being passed down from one generation to the next, some that are the same and some that are purposefully different from what we were taught.
Sometimes we are trapped in a cycle that we are unaware of, like the cycle of prejudice. I had believed for instance that the problem of racial inequality had been solved for the most part. That people of color still faced prejudice from some racists and those racists were deplorable, but I couldn't understand them. I thought how could they still hold on to such archaic beliefs after all we've gone through?
But then I couldn't understand the plight of whole generations of people who had gone past the civil rights movement to these modern times not being able to escape the cycle of poverty they were in. I was told that it was a failing of their moral character, or their innate laziness that kept them down. I couldn't see the truth, and that because in the first formative years of my life I had no understanding of how the world outside of my community worked.
But then I wound up in a situation that made me face some hard realities. I was a young mother, I married a man who worked hard but was completely oblivious to how money truly worked and he didn't have a clue about how to deal with children or a wife.
It was then that I found out how hard it was to get help in order to get out of the situation I was in. I went to school so that we could get Pell Grants to cover the rent and some of the bills. I was a frequent visitor to our local Workforce Service office, toting around my babies, one on the hip, one in a car seat. I would have to wait there for hours in order to talk to the agent to figure out what we needed to do to get rental assistance, food assistance, and work assistance. It wasn't easy! Just when I thought things were set they would send something else in the mail requiring some other proof of something or other that we had to get to them ASAP. I had to walk a lot, or drive in beater cars that smelled weird or belched black smoke.
The irony wasn't lost on me, I had to deal with the very ingrained belief that people on government assistance were lazy and living it up on the system to the reality that it was really hard to get government assistance and it wasn't even enough to really help much.
Another thing that I didn't think too much about before having mixed race children was being asked awkward questions. "Where did you adopt them from?" was a frequent question. "I love their hair" was something I would hear sometimes. My kids schoolmates were usually shocked when I came into their classes to pick them up.
I never thought my kids would face discrimination, for the most part I haven't heard from them about being discriminated against but then they just might not be telling me about it.
My perception of the US as a place that had gotten past the past as far as equality for POC drastically shifted when George Floyd was killed. Just looking at the faces of the police officers that were literally killing him in front of the world to see changed my perception forever of what racism truly is and what it does. How deep it runs. Adding POC to the cast of shows, making sure that there are different 'types' of people in commercials, and print Ads is disingenuous. It's fake. I was fooled by the window dressing and couldn't see behind it.
I admit to feeling helpless when it comes to knowing what to do to help though. It's like many of the large issues we are facing today. Deforestation of the rainforest, people fleeing from oppressive regimes in their country and seeking asylum in the US, pollution, catastrophic storms, wild fires, poverty, hunger, the brainwashing of Fox News viewers (like my Dad). I don't know what to do.
I've turned back to my blog to write out these thoughts because I can moderate comments and it's less likely that my Dad's going to show up here ranting about "Socialist, Communist, Marxist Democrats"
Write more later.
SG
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