A few weeks back, a 7th grader who hangs around the neighborhood told my kids that Obama was a stupid Muslim terrorist and that if that “nigger” got elected he and his family were moving to Canada.
A week ago, my 10-year-old daughter related the new joke going around her elementary school: What’s the difference between Obama and Simba? Simba is an African lion and Obama is a lyin’ African.
And the day after the election, in a high school lunch-line, a kid standing behind my 15-year-old son appeared to be sulking. A teenage girl asked him what was wrong. “There’s a Nigger in the White House now,” he said. “Yeah, I know,” the girl replied. “I don’t like him either.”
As a parent of mixed-race children, I obviously find the ignorance inherent in these sentiments offensive. But I am not upset with the children who parrot them. I’m unhappy with their parents.
Teenagers are not genetically predisposed to call African-Americans “niggers.“ That kind of prejudice starts at home. Ten-year-olds don’t independently question Barrack Obama’s integrity or sit up thinking of ways to mock half of his ethnicity. It’s something they get from mom or dad as he or she relates a joke from work. And young middle school students don’t instinctively suspect Obama is a Muslim or a terrorist; this kind of obtuseness starts at the parental level.
The “trickle-down” approach to economics may have been proven to be to a terrible blunder of late, but the moniker itself is solid. It’s simply misapplied.
Wealth doesn’t trickle down. Ignorance does.
If a child’s parents are members of the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation or are simply active, vocal racists, chances are that child will also pursue repugnant ideologies or discriminate against ethnic minorities. If a child’s father hangs out on street corners holding up signs that say “God Hates Fags,“ the chances of that child someday becoming a homophobic bumpkin who is afraid of gay marriage increase exponentially.
If mom and dad are shallow, xenophobic Neocons who mock anyone whom they’re instructed to feel threatened by or disagree with, little Timmy is much more inclined to mock or denigrate anyone he is instructed to feel threatened by or disagree with.
To an absurd, sinister degree, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and insensitivity are passed down thru too many families in this country, from the grandparents to the parents and from the parents to the kids, like precious family heirlooms.
Hence, ignorance and cruelty continually dim our collective future by trickling down from generation to generation, miring us in an unsavory wealth of malevolence and woe.
I think the American poet Anne Sexton put it best when she wrote “Live or die, but don’t poison everything.”
If you’re so eat up with hate and fear that you can’t abide the skin color or free will or liberty of others because your fascist, close-minded daddy and/or mommy or “good” book told you so, fine. But keep it to yourself.
No offense, but the world would be a better place if the chains for which you are a part of are broken. And if you’ll stop stuffing your children like Thanksgiving turkeys with your paranoia and prejudices, they might grow up with minds of their own, figuring out things for themselves.
Trust me, as a fellow parent–for my kids and yours–life is too short for them to spend years trying to transcend what we’ve done to them.
It’s worth a try, right? Who knows? Unencumbered by our historical flaws and cultural failings, they might even be president someday.