I love it when I turn on the TV, and inadvertently watch history in the making. Obama has famously skirted the issue of race and today, around 1:45pm, there was a turning point. Even watching it, you felt as if something was going down. Something big. I waited the entire week for his speech. I am sure many were also anticipating the speech and out of the blue, he showed up at a White House press conference and spoke. He gave his own accounts of being profiled and addressed what is happening in the nation. He justified the African American response to the verdict and as a people who have spent their lives getting the short end of the stick when it comes to education, jobs, healthcare, justice, and opportunities, their reaction to the verdict was every bit right. I agree.
I think what Obama said was what people needed to hear. It was not a speech about solutions but it was a speech that told the public that Obama identified with the minorities and he knew their struggle. It was all we needed to hear. I would so love to tell the people who constantly say "us and them," and who deny that there is a huge discrepancy in this country (FOX news in particular) to go screw themselves. I feel as if everything about this channel is about keeping the nation in a deadlock and preventing progress. They believe that they are the only intelligent ones in the country and everyone else is wearing a blindfold. Only the fool thinks he is wise!
So here is why I am following this so closely. For me, it is personal. I grew up learning to distrust blacks. In Trinidad, the country is racially divided so I knew what racism was from the beginning. However, one thing changed everything. I started teaching at a school that was predominantly black. It was the single most important thing that could have happened to me and I am thankful that it did because you see how wrong racism really is. You see how it propagates hatred and ignorance. God cannot be present where these things exist. I saw how these kids were always set up to fail and how at an early age, they were fooled into thinking they were given the same opportunity when in reality, they weren't. It bothered me. It is unfair and two things make our future brighter, children and education. That's it and it was enough to show me that all of what I learned as a child was from one pocket in time and needed to stay where it belonged, in the past. It is time to learn, tear down walls, and to move forward.
While there are problems that are inherent to the African American group, these problems stem from years and years of cyclical poverty and lower socio economic status that gives a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. This can be corrected. There is a divide in this country that did not exist in Trinidad. In some ways, I felt as if the near 50-50 division of the races prevented either race in Trinidad from suffering the same injustices I see here.I can safely say that a lack of education and willingness to learn about another person's culture and customs will cause what we are seeing in this country today. Once you learn about a person, you see them as an equal. You don't see color and it is one of the most liberating feelings.
Finally, one cannot tell me that racial profiling occurs. You only have to watch my husband at an airport screening line. Now the strike here is that if this baby I am having turns out to be a boy, not only will I have to worry because I will have a brown-skinned child but someone will think that my little one is a terrorist as well. The sad thing is we are not the same race, extremist, Arab, fanatics, nor are we Muslim! We only share the same skin color and that is enough to profile us as well. Hence, Trayvon Martin's story belongs to all of us who have witnessed and lived racial profiling.
I think what Obama said was what people needed to hear. It was not a speech about solutions but it was a speech that told the public that Obama identified with the minorities and he knew their struggle. It was all we needed to hear. I would so love to tell the people who constantly say "us and them," and who deny that there is a huge discrepancy in this country (FOX news in particular) to go screw themselves. I feel as if everything about this channel is about keeping the nation in a deadlock and preventing progress. They believe that they are the only intelligent ones in the country and everyone else is wearing a blindfold. Only the fool thinks he is wise!
So here is why I am following this so closely. For me, it is personal. I grew up learning to distrust blacks. In Trinidad, the country is racially divided so I knew what racism was from the beginning. However, one thing changed everything. I started teaching at a school that was predominantly black. It was the single most important thing that could have happened to me and I am thankful that it did because you see how wrong racism really is. You see how it propagates hatred and ignorance. God cannot be present where these things exist. I saw how these kids were always set up to fail and how at an early age, they were fooled into thinking they were given the same opportunity when in reality, they weren't. It bothered me. It is unfair and two things make our future brighter, children and education. That's it and it was enough to show me that all of what I learned as a child was from one pocket in time and needed to stay where it belonged, in the past. It is time to learn, tear down walls, and to move forward.
While there are problems that are inherent to the African American group, these problems stem from years and years of cyclical poverty and lower socio economic status that gives a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. This can be corrected. There is a divide in this country that did not exist in Trinidad. In some ways, I felt as if the near 50-50 division of the races prevented either race in Trinidad from suffering the same injustices I see here.I can safely say that a lack of education and willingness to learn about another person's culture and customs will cause what we are seeing in this country today. Once you learn about a person, you see them as an equal. You don't see color and it is one of the most liberating feelings.
Finally, one cannot tell me that racial profiling occurs. You only have to watch my husband at an airport screening line. Now the strike here is that if this baby I am having turns out to be a boy, not only will I have to worry because I will have a brown-skinned child but someone will think that my little one is a terrorist as well. The sad thing is we are not the same race, extremist, Arab, fanatics, nor are we Muslim! We only share the same skin color and that is enough to profile us as well. Hence, Trayvon Martin's story belongs to all of us who have witnessed and lived racial profiling.
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