As of the end of this month, I'm an ex-pat American living in Israel for the last five years and I'm really really upset at the state of my 'motherland.' I have no words for the disgust I've been feeling when I read about the experiences of my good friends throughout their lives and how it's been an uphill battle for them each step of the way. I worry for them and for their children and how they'll be viewed, treated, and spoken to simply because of the increased melanin in their skin and the kink in their hair.
A protective pigment in skin. THAT is what bothers and offends way too many people. A pigment. A shade. A color.
Ignorant people treat others poorly because of a COLOR. That's literally one of the stupidest things I have ever heard of in my life and I'm a mother to three small children.
I'm sitting here in front of my laptop, distracted and disturbed. This morning, my 6yo son had a fantastic conversation with my good friend, a brilliant man who does robotics engineering for NASA. I have never seen my son so engaged, so thrilled to be speaking with someone about space, robots, and designing rockets. He started drawing the shuttles and robots at 6:30am and didn't stop until we had to leave for Gan. At the same time, my friend was very excited to be speaking with him and looking at his pictures, especially because those drawings were cheering him up from the desolation of discrimination he has been inundated with.
This friend, this man, who is bright, resourceful, kind, caring, sweet, and polite has been at the receiving end of both direct and indirect discrimination for a long while. Why? Because he's got more melanin than other people. His family has fought it (non-violently) for three generations and he's getting tired of the fight. Can I blame him? Absolutely not. And he worries about his adorable little son who might have to grow up in the same warped world that he did.
Certain aspects of my country, my old home, are embarrassing me. And I won't sit here and say that my new country is perfect - it isn't. It's depressing as hell accepting reality when the most I can currently do about it is teach my children (and others, to the best of my ability) that we are all worthy of respect and love. That behavior, character, and choices dictate our opinions of others, not color.
Do you really want to judge someone?? Take a look at their actions - their CHOICES.
It's 2020 and, on days like today, I feel like almost nothing has changed and I'm practically in tears.
It is each person's responsibility to understand that human beings are all the same species. We are all the same organs, tissues, and bones on the inside. There's no difference. None.
It is each parent's duty to teach their children what my 4yo knows... that everyone is simply a different shade of beige, peach, or brown. How lovely it is that people come in a variety of shapes and sizes! One can never be bored when there's so many physical differences to admire from person to person!
I want to help make the world a better place, not just for my blond, wavy haired son who loves science, or my strong and physical caramel colored son with curls, or my intense blond, green eyed daughter... but also for my friend's sweet cocoa colored son with big brown eyes and my friend's new, chubby chocolate colored daughter. My mixed-race friend with light eyes who rocks in a band and helps others with loss deserves the same respect as I do, as does my kind, darker friend with beautiful natural hair who balances mortgage brokering and modeling.
If I hadn't physically described anyone in this blog article, no one would even know what shade of beige/brown each individual was. And it wouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter.
It's days like today I'm glad I'm not living in the United States (and it's upsetting for me to say that). And it's days like today where I need to say something because perhaps, there's a small chance, that something can be done to fix the long ingrained problem that we have as Americans. I say WE because Americans are supposed to stand as a team. We are all different. We come from 50 different states and different territories. We have different cultures, different accents, different backgrounds, etc. But we're supposed to stand up for each other. If one of us is offended or hurt, we should all be offended and hurt. That's the true 'American way.'
Right now, our family is broken, our path has been overgrown with weeds and cracked concrete.
And I don't know what I can do about it.
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