When I started this assignment I decided to ask a few of my elderly family member about racism when they were a child. Majority of my family is from the South and I always heard them tell stories about the way their lives were as kids. My grandmother told me that the things there were not allowed to do because of their color became a normal for them. She said, "Yes it wasn't fair but that is all they knew." She stated that the town she lived in was majority Black but the stores in town were owned by White people. She told me about a water spring that was in town that they were not allowed to go get water from. She informed me about not being allowed to sit in certain places in stores and the buses. She also shared that at the movie theater they had to sit at the top they were not allowed to sit downstairs and their were two bathrooms separating the races. As a child she had to always show respect by answering yes mam, yes sir and no mam and no sir to white people. My godfather describe picking cotton in Georgia. He said he would get soars on his hands from the bulbs. He showed me how he would hold his hand so he could pick faster. One time my grandparents told me about the Confederate Flag. That if they saw the flag on cars in town they knew to stay away. They shared that as they got older they wanted to move up North to get away from the South to get better jobs. They did move up North and received better paying factory jobs but the lives that they lived followed them. I noticed that a lot of my elders mannerisms are still like the way they were as a child. For instance, my grandfather did not want to be referred to as an Afro-American. He would state that he is Colored.
I also read an article about the lasting effects of war towards children.
The article talks about the children from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. That the war has destroyed thousands of families forcing them into poverty. The children live on the streets as beggars, thugs and drug addicts. In one case a 34 year old mother of five has been struggling to make a living since her husband was killed in military crossfire ten years ago. She sleeps with her children on a straw mat on the mud floor of her shack. She makes money by washing clothes but the income is not enough to feed her children or pay for them to go to school. Two of her older children ran away from home and became thieves on the street of Goma. "Those street children have become a danger to the whole society," is how one woman explains the plight of this nation. Goma is a region that has been severely affected by the years of fighting. According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, nearly 80% of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. The streets of Goma is filled with thousands of street children and reintegrating them into society is not an easy task. The children are violent and steel from the others. At this time efforts are made to try and help the children but aid from different nations is to far in between.
Thank you for sharing a part of your families history. This time in our country has always intrigued me and I have done a great deal of research into slavery and the civil rights movement. As a Christian who strongly believes that the good Lord gifted to each human being with innate value, I could never undertand the ideas surrounding hate based soely on race. In my reseach I have tried to understand why we as humans could be so crule to one another based on our differences. What I have learned over the years is that I don't want to know or understand how people who feel this way actually rationalize their thinking. I no longer want to know because I don't want to become like them. Behaviorists have said that that we are a product of those ideas and people that we let into our lives. Wanting to stay true to my ideas and morals I choose to remember and learn from the past with an eye to the future and what can be.
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