Every Sunday the kids are asked to come up to share the story. The assistant pastor shared how he was bused to school when his town became desegregated. I have not had that experience being born in Puerto Rico in the 70s. My husband in the other hand has had experiences because he was born in the 70s also but in Mississippi. He recalls being young and having crosses burned in his front lawn. I can’t fathom having that happen to me.
The closest experience I had was when I moved to Michigan from Puerto Rico at the beginning of 8th grade year. My brother and I are 10 months apart but we attended school together since pre-kindergarten. I was a very sociable child and my mom said that she felt comfortable sending me to school with my brother even though I was younger. When we move to Michigan we moved in with my aunt and uncle first. When my parents found a home they did not want to change our middle school halfway through the year. We used to go to our aunt and uncle’s house after school but once the weather got nicer, then 1987, my brother and I started walking home. I do not know how far it was but I believe it was at least a 45 minute walk.
One day, as my brother and I were walking a car passed us going the opposite direction. There were two White men in the car and the one on the passenger side, who was the one closed to us, stuck his arm out and yelled White power. I did not know anything about the history of racism in the United States at that time but in the pit of my stomach I knew that he was not just stating his White pride. It felt angry, threatening. I later came to learn that what the man did with his arm was a Nazi salute.
I had additional experiences in college personal and others of friends. My college best friend, who is Black, and I were walking to the store when a car with two White guys drove passed us. The guy in the passenger side said I like chocolate as they went by. Latter a friend I met while she was moving in during her freshman year had a sing put in her dormitory door telling her to go back to Mexico. In my anthrobio class there was a White student who was talking about how people in third world countries are happy about companies coming in and allowing them to make money. She did not understand about the after effects of companies putting maquiladoras and then leaving in shambles when they found another country with cheaper labor.
The saddest part is the recent acts of racial ignorance going on around the world. The Obama election is a perfect example with the posters of him as a monkey. It is ridiculous have in this day and age, there is still racial discrimination. I remember taking my daughter out to Starbuck when she was a baby, maybe three months old a young White teen girl walked in. I looked at her and thought she was such a cute girl. Then I turned and looked at my beautiful Black daughter and I thought to myself, the world is going to treat her differently because of the color of her skin. I know this to be true because little had changed as to how Black women are viewed in this country in my life time. I do not trust that much will change for her. So now I invest my time in building her up and preparing her for those people who are going to make her feel ugly and less than. When I was in high school a classmate that is half Black and Half Puerto Rican thought I was beautiful and told me every time he got a chance. One day our class met at the library. He knew a guy from another class and he turned to him and said look at her isn’t she beautiful? The White guy looked me up and down and said, No! He destroyed me. Now the guy who had spent the entire term telling me how beautiful I was did not impact me as much as the one guy I had never met.
I do not want my beautiful daughter to feel the way I did. I tell her now, at five, that some people will think she is pretty and some will think she is not and that is ok. The important part is that she loves herself and that she knows we think she is beautiful.
I am grateful to be in a church that acknowledges race and social justice. I church that recognizes that the struggle is still happening for people of color, for the LGBTQ community, and for the socially disadvantaged. The sermon today was based on both MLK and the story of the Good Samaritan. MLK imagines that the men who did not help the man robbed asked themselves, ‘if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ In contrast the Good Samaritan asked himself, ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’
Experiences like the ones I had or witnessed or worse what my husband saw as a child could easily make us jaded. We could think about how it impacts us and decided if we should really get involved. But, God calls us to be the Good Samaritan and think of others beyond ourselves.
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