It's wonderful how they're so innocent

[Rozlee]

I was at my daughter's house helping babysit and I asked my three year-old-grandson what he wanted for breakfast. He told me that he wanted an egg with "a Mexican on it." I had no idea what he was talking about, but oh, the imagery! I'm Hispanic of Mexican descent, my daughter's the product of my first marriage to a German national and she's married to a young man of Polish descent. So, I'm sitting there trying not to crack up and I ask him what he meant, but I finally had to call my daughter. She straightened things out. It seems like when they eat, they like to switch back and forth from Louisiana Hot Sauce to some kind of Mexican hot sauce and, since my grandson insists on having hot sauce, too, they dump ketshup on his food and tell him it's his hot sauce. I worried a little if he wouldn't blurt something about Mexicans on his food while surrounded by Hispanics while in a restaurant or some other public place; they live in a city heavily populated by Hispanics, Corpus Christi, and he's a little blond green-eyed guy, but I figured I'd let my daughter handle it.

A couple of weeks later, we were at the Corpus Christi Christus and he and his little sister were playing with three African-American children at the OB-Gyn clinic (my daughter didn't get my lecture on carbon footprints). We were discussing politics with their parents, also Democrats, and race was introduced. "We're black," one of the older little African-American boys said, overhearing our conversation. "I'm black, too," my grandson announced. I had to smile. But, in a way, it made me sad. I remembered the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. A few days afterward, I was sitting in my classroom in the first grade and my little classmates were discussing the incident, fuming. "And they say it was one of us!" I remember one white child saying angrily. "It was probably one of their own people." Said another one. These weren't the words six-year-olds would say. These are the words six-year-olds would overhear their parents saying. But, this is Texas, what can one expect? Liberal views are few and far between today, but they were even more so in small, rural towns back in the segregationist days of the Civil Rights era.

I'd like to think things are getting better, but Teabaggers make me wonder. They make me wonder how many of them might be those children all grown up, that were spouting the bigotry they overheard and learned at their parent's feet. But, it's a crying shame. Because they're all born so innocent and they're all just blank slates, absorbing what's being taught them. I've heard of, and even known a few, people that have been taught hate that, nonetheless, broke out and learned to love their fellow humans on the planet, and others that were taught to be tolerant, but became hateful in later life.

But, for now, it's wonderful to enjoy seeing this period of innocence before the world's xenophobia starts to close in.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Beautiful

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. :-) They are so doggone innocent aren't they? Before the baddies influence them . . .

[onethatcares]

2. kids learn what they live

and they have an amazing way of seperating the crap out of the real world. It takes alot of teaching to get them to hate and their parents are a large cause of that.

Keep teaching love and peace and the rest will work out.

Thanx for the story

[islandmkl]

3. Rodgers & Hammerstein said it:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!