Friday, September 9, 2011

Solace

The news has left me paranoid and depressed. There is too much redundancy with the ten year anniversary and the stories are only of grief. I have lost people close to me and I will grieve forever but I find solace in our good memories. One of my greatest friend's parents chose to have a memorial for her instead of a funeral. The memorial was held on her birthday and her friends and family could celebrate her life and move on with her still in their hearts, versus focusing on our loss and feeling the void that she left. I think that fear is dangerous. I am naturally timorous but sometimes the news exacerbates my stress to levels of delusions. No, I will not seek medication, the way that the media frames circumstances makes the fear logical and inevitable. I hope that everyone is safe and remains that way.

It should come as no surprise that Jackie Onassis made remarks about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that were derogatory. I have always thought of her as having class but it appears that was only on the surface. These are the history lessons that should be taught in learning institutions because it reveals why racism was allowed to survive--legally--until 1965. Every African-American in the United States was a second class citizen until 1965 and that is me being brutally honest. That Obama became President only 40 plus years after African-Americans becoming citizens is amazing. For that reason alone, I believe it is a historical presidency--not because he is "Black", which he is as much White as he is Black, but because of the huge amount of progress that the U.S. has made since using the National Guard and unfair laws against Blacks to the Presidency. We are still not extending our equality to homosexuals. I will not believe that I live in a fair country until homosexuals are granted the rights to distribute their property as they please and to marry whoever they love.

As a teacher, I would find it very difficult to ever sugar coat the harsh realities of our history. We need new history books to be written that are the antithesis of traditional history. Howard Zinn's book, "A People's History of the United States" is one of the few books that tell history from a different perspective. 

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