…. And I am more than delighted.
Picture if you will young, sheltered 13-year-old american girl, living in Puerto Rico. It was about 1961, life was simple, the usual worries about school & friends. I was lying on my bed (as usual) reading a book. In walks my brother Rob, throws a book next to me with "Read this!!" OK, why not.
I think it was called The Freedom Riders. I believe it was about Montgomery bus boycott, not sure. This book introduced me to the fact that some people actually disliked people that had different colored skin. Huh, that’s stupid. They even got violent about it. Unbelievable !!! I learned about PREJUDICE.
There was this young man who was teaching "passive resistance", kinda like Ghandi. You guessed it; his name was Martin Luther King. This was way before he was famous.
I thought about the society that I lived in and saw that there was no such thing in Puerto Rico. I was totally confused, but I started to pay attention to the news from the United States and was incredulous. Why did anybody care more about the color of someone’s skin anymore than the color of hair or eyes? I decided that Continentals (Americans) were kinda weird & dumb.
As I started to learn more about this thing called PREJUDICE, I learned that black & white kids went to different schools, What is wrong with these people !!! They had separate bathrooms, drinking fountains and could not even eat at the same restaurants. Then I learned about the beatings and lynchings, I WANT ABSOLUTLY NOTHING TO DO WITH THESE PEOPLE !!!! I looked upon the United States as the country of my parents, but NOT MINE !!!. I was as outraged as a 13-year-old can get.
Time went on, I watched Martin Luther King become famous (rightfully so) and I too was growing up and was greatly influenced by this man, his words and courage. I watched integration of the schools, voter registration and general equal rights as they were met with violence. But wait, something else was happening. I saw that little by little, ever so slowly, things start getting better (not fast enough for me, after all I equated prejudice with ignorance).
I married and came to the United States and saw that prejudice was still around but more and more people (the young) were rejecting it. Little by little by little it was getting ever so slooowly better.
Today there is still prejudice but compared to the 60’s like night and dawn (not quite day yet). Last Tuesday the American People elected Barrack Obama, not because of his race, but because of his brains, heart and soul. I still consider myself more Boriqueña than American but I am proud of my American brothers and sisters. This would never have happened when I was 13.
BOUT DAMN TIME !!
2 comments:
I have to say, it amazes me still. I am proud of my countrymen for looking past the skin, past the outer shell of the candidates and finding one whom they feel can embody the hope that our country represents. Perhaps it will once again become a country that the world can look to as a beacon of freedom. We can hope.
As the old saying says "The proof is in the pudding".
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