This is the first post I've posted as "Freinds Only" in ages. I probably shouldn't post it at all... but since I feel it has an important message I'm going to anyway. I don't want my family to be able to read it, because even though thier opinions aggrivate the shit out of me sometimes, I still love them and I wouldn't want to hurt thier feelings...
My daughter Meaghan goes two days to a learning center in Lawrence, MA. Lawrence is a city with a lot of ethnic diversity, so the decision to send her there was made by me based on many factors. One the one hand there aren't many places for he to go and interact with other children and actually learn something at the same time (in other words I didn't just want to send her to daycare.. which is to me just like glorified babysitting). I didn't want to wait for her to be old enough to qulify for "Pre-School" because she is very bright and I felt like she'd be missing out on nine months of very important learning if I waited. Also "Little Sprouts" which is the name of her school is highly credited and very pro-active in the programs they offer. And lastly, I didn't want her to be isolated... in other words because I feel like prejudice can start at a very young age, I didn't want to separate her out into a school that was going to consist of solely caucasian teachers and classmates... I felt like diversity would be a positive influence on her. I mean I could have taken the easy way out and just sent her up the street to Winchester... but instead I drive and hour out of my way (each direction) two days a week because I feel like this place offeres the most positive experience for her.
Now that you have the backstory, here's the point of the whole post. Just before Christmas Meaghan would come home singing one of the songs they learned in school, which is sung to the tune of Frère Jacques. It involves placing the name of a teacher, schoolmate, family member in the first two lines ("where is so-and-so"), and for some reason she was always singing about this one boy Owen. So then we started joking that she had a little boyfriend or whatever, esp. when one day by accident the teachers sent some of Owen's artwork home with Meaghan by accident... and we would tease that she took them on purpose. Well I finally saw Owen the other day, and he turned out to be this not very cute little mama's boy (he was crying with his place pressed to the door of the classroom for his mom) so I joked around that I would have to teach my duaghter to have better taste in men (as if somehow I had a reason to talk, LOL!).
So I was relaying this story to my mom yesterday when she picked up Meaghan to watch her for the weekend (she took her away to Nantucket so we could go to a friends birthday party)... and do you know what the first thing she asked me was? "Is he white?". I looked at her as she then back-pedaled and tried to pin it on my dad... "Well you know you're dad.. he's a bit prejudiced".
This is of course quite true. Each and everytime I brought someone home that was not "white" it was always a big deal.. and believe me I've dated several different races (Indian, Korean, Japanese, Lebanese, I could go on here but you get the picture).
What I can't quite fathom is how this happens. Now I realize my dad grew up in the 50's and it wasn't really accepted to mix and that whole deal and esp. since he lived in Dorchester there was a lot of racial tension and whatever.. but I'm sorry I don't get it at all. What the fuck is the difference? I mean we're all human, why does it matter where someone comes from or what color they are? We all have the same basic hopes and dreams and drive and feelings.
I for one am always ready to learn new things, and find people from different walks of life quite fascinating. If I can learn about a new culture or some way of looking at history I haven't considered before.. I'm all for it. I mean sometimes I get bummed out a little that I have no heritage, being a mutt with at least 5 different ethnicities as part of me I can name off the top of my head without actually doing my geneaology.. but at the same time I also appreciate my mixed breed. I just wish the stories had got passed down, but I like the idea of when enough people have relationships and children across race that it thereby makes race a non-issue (in other words if everyone was a mix of at least 5 things like me, we couldn't very well bitch about one another).
I dunno that's my rant... and ironically this happened only 4 days after Martin Luther King day and only a few days before Black History Month.