I Learned You Were Racist Today

One day, back in 2008, when my son was in the second grade, as I did every day, I asked him how his day was at school when I picked him up.

“I learned you were a racist today!”

“Um, OK.  And how did you learn this?”

“We had mock elections, it was a lot of fun.  But if you didn’t vote for Obama, you were racist.  You are not voting for Obama.”

“It’s a little too complicated to explain to someone your age, but I’m not voting for Obama because I agree more with Bush’s policies, that is what voting is supposed to be about, policies.  I don’t choose who I vote for based on skin color.”

“Well, everyone at school says you are racist if you don’t vote for Obama.”

“Well, if you see me do or say anything racist, let me know.”

“OK.”

Years later, when my son was in middle school and had found an interest in history and politics, on the way home from school one day, he out of the blue said, “Mom, I’m sorry for ever calling you racist.”

“What?”

“Remember, about Obama.”

“Oh, OK.  Thank you.”

“You aren’t racist, and I really don’t like some of Obama’s policies either.”

“I’m glad to see you have learned to think about this stuff.”

In 2008, I did not have a Facebook account, and probably many of you did not either.  I wouldn’t doubt, though, that if we did, I’d have been called a racist there for the same reason as what my 7 year old had been told, and that is the point where I think all of this began.  By all of this, I mean the assumption that anyone that has conservative views or is Republican is ABC and anyone that has liberal or Democrat views is XYZ.  It’s when we really began categorizing people and assuming who they voted for told us everything there was to know about them. The popularity of forums like Facebook and Twitter really amplified it, even to the point that many people deeply believe that.  I really understand now why my parents would not even tell us kids who they voted for.

I’m don’t belong to either of the 2 major parties.  I haven’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since that 2008 election.  However, it is not because I assume the party to be racist or any other mass categorization, I just haven’t liked the candidates and some of their policies.  Ditto with the Democrat candidates, I didn’t vote for them either, not because I assume them all to be snowflakes or any other mass categorization, but because I didn’t like the candidates and some of their policies. 

A week ago, I stated that, though the white supremacist groups may have a hate message, they still have the same rights as the rest of Americans, including their right to protest and to free speech (as does any other group) and I was deemed to be racist and supporting the supremacists.  It wasn’t because I actually have racist or supremacist ideology, but just because it was the narrative of the day.  Personally, I’m not worried about the people who may think that of me, any more than I was worried about it when my son told me he learned I was.  I know what is in my heart, and, honestly, there is no way to “prove” that to anyone else, others have the choice to think what they do.  However, that type of assumption towards large groups of people because of what party they may belong to or who they voted for or because they support the laws of our land, it just fuels more hate and it’s not productive.

If you ever see me actually do or say something racist let me know.  If you see your coworkers,  neighbors, friends, or family do the same, let them know. 

Be mad at those that are yelling racial or religious epithets, be angry at those who belong to white supremacy groups, say something when your neighbor whispers, “I think the people who bought that house might be black.”  Remember that bigotry comes in a lot of forms, and stop yourself when you are about to say something about Muslims when you are actually referring to a terrorist group or about Christians when you are actually referring to the actions of one televangelist.  Realize that a hateful response to hate only fuels more hate, and that hate can only be overcome by our own loving actions. Know that hate is something that consumes and blinds you.  Understand that if someone has hate in their heart, that the blame does not lie on anyone but themselves, and it can only be eradicated by appealing to their heart. 

Listen to people, accept that there are different opinions, realize that most situations have a lot of complexity that can’t be summed up in a sound bite, and truly try to understand that there are other legitimate points of view on just about every topic.  Grow from being the 7 year old boy who believed the soundbite generalizations to the middle school one that learned how to look at people individually.  That’s how we combat hate.

When we start assuming everyone’s motives are racist, we diminish those that experience real racism, and we lose sight of who the actual perpetrators are.  Don’t be a part of that.

That’s why they have wine.

It's Not About Us

Parenting.  It’s not about us.

Well before I had a child, there was a sermon in church that for some reason really resonated with me.  The point of it was that in order to effectively raise a child, you had to learn the “language” of your child, and that language would not necessarily be the same among all of your children.  That language, that is the thing that should guide you in how you talk to, discipline, and even love your child.  That language is how THEIR brain works, what they think, what is important to them, how they react to things.

I was blessed with a wonderful, funny, intelligent, strong willed child.  However, that blessing came with some issues, issues that caused friction, distress, and even pain in him that I was unaware of, that were the source of some frustrating behavioral issues.  I was so sure all I needed to do was be strict, to demand he behave in a certain matter, to punish him when he didn’t meet my expectations.  I completely ignored the message of the sermon that had really touched me a couple of years before.  I was sure that I knew how to make a child grow up to be the perfect adult.

I was wrong.  So terribly wrong.

I see some other parents or caretakers make the same mistake, and it breaks my heart.  It actually brings me to tears reading some posts online.

Our kids, the majority of the time, they aren’t being “bad” just for the sake of being bad, to hurt us, or to try to make our lives difficult, yet that is usually our first response.  So, we go into the situation concerned about ourselves, we take it personally, our focus is on our feelings of anger or disrespect.  I know this well, because this was me.

The result of my parenting choices the first 9 or 10 years of my son’s life was that I had a child who didn’t fully trust me, lied to me, hid things from me, hit or bit me, was afraid of me, was destructive with his belongings, got in trouble at school, and if he did what I wanted him to do, it was out of fear.  Something obviously wasn’t working.

Around that time, he also started failing in school.  He always had some struggles, but they intensified greatly.  Though I had previously brought up behavior issues to his pediatrician before, they were now taken seriously.  After extensive testing, he was then diagnosed with several disorders better known by their acronyms, and it was then that the sermon from so many years earlier smacked me upside the head.  This wasn’t about me, it was about my son.  Had I only realized that earlier.

I let go of everything I thought was right about parenting, and relearned it all.  I have learned not to react to things as if they are an assault on me, but to find out the WHY, and to deal with the underlying cause.  I don’t automatically punish, I approach everything with as a teaching moment.  I realized that as a parent, I am here to guide and teach, not to scare into compliance.

Right now, I’ve got a teenager who has above a 3.0 GPA at a private college prep school, who plays for his school baseball team, who has some incredible friends, who volunteers in the community, and, the next time he leaves his room to go get a snack or use the bathroom and sees the light on here in my office, will pop his head in just to tell me he loves me.  I can’t tell you the last time I disciplined him.  I’ve had to ask him to repeat himself in a more respectful manner, or to point out that something he said was rude, but that is normal teenage boy stuff, and I recognize that.

It's not about us.  It is about our kids, and I will tell you from experience, it is the most rewarding thing you will ever do to accept that.  This isn't limited to parents of kids with disabilities, this is relevant for everyone.

That’s why they have wine, a toast to the parents who all work so hard to have great kids!

Life, LIBERTY, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Freedom.  It’s what the second word in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” means.  It’s supposed to be what America stands for, but is it?

I was mocked the other day for holding a certain opinion, not just because I had the opinion, but specifically because my opinion was that the option was what did not impede the freedom of Americans.  It was the freedom part that was mocked.  At first, all I could think was ”Was my nap today really decades instead of minutes, is freedom no longer important in America?” but then I came to realize that we have been slowly losing that concept for a while.

Bring up about any controversial topic, and what you will here is people talking about if it should be legal or not, how the government should deal with it.  We’ve become a country that no longer cares about the freedom for everyone to make their own choices, we want the only choices to be the ones we agree with, and we want the government to tell them so.  Every time we do this, that word liberty loses more of its meaning, and it affects the life and pursuit of happiness of millions of people in this country.

Many people can’t even fathom anymore that just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is right, or because it is illegal that it is wrong.  It’s the law, so “fact.”  We let the government tell us what we should think.

Drinking soda is not the healthiest choice we can make, but we’ve gotten to the point that instead of letting people make decisions about how much they want to consume, we allow laws to be made to regulate what size cups can be sold at convenience stores in various places. 

Making laws that take away freedom of choice does nothing to change people’s minds about what is right to do, what is good for them, or is even going to change their behavior.  The soda drinker who can’t buy a 20 oz cup can still buy two 10 oz cups.  Sometimes taking away that choice can be harmful to some, such as when we make marijuana illegal so that we can pretend that people then can’t use it recreationally, and in the process keep a useful medication from people such as cancer patients.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having opinions on matters, feeling that something is right or wrong, is good for you.  As long as something does not infringe upon the rights of another or causes another harm, it shouldn’t be something that gets legislated, something that the government decides. Influence people with mature, reasonable discussions of matters (though the erosion of that ability could be a whole other blog post), that is how beliefs and behaviors will change.

Many times, trying to specify legalities to issues takes away our ability to use common sense.  The whole which-bathroom-does-a-transgender-person-use comes to mind.  We never really had a big problem with this, didn’t even notice who was in the bathroom with us, until we tried to decide this as a black and white matter.  It’s not black and white, it’s a great big, giant gray, a gray that can only be navigated with common sense on an individual basis.

I personally believe abortion outside of medical necessity is wrong, I feel that infringes on the rights of life of the child.  However, my goal is not to make it illegal, and it is also not a black and white matter.  My goal is to try to show people options and find ways to facilitate those options, to highlight the value of life, and to express my opinion on the correlation between the acceptance of abortion and the decline of the respect for life, in the hopes that maybe I can convince just one person to make a different decision.  Looking for the easy way of having the government say “No” isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, it’s just a way to hand over the responsibility of speaking what I feel to someone else.

Gay marriage, marijuana use, sodas, birth control, breast feeding, motorcycle helmets, and on and on and on are things that affect only the people who make those choices or not, let people make their choices instead of the government.

Freedom.  I hope that maybe I influenced at least one person to find that important again.

That’s why they have wine.