racism

W.E.B Du Bois said that the problem of the 20th century – continuing into our present – was the problem of the color line. He was wrong. It’s not a line; it’s a web, entangling us all, as we voluntarily cleave to our positions, oblivious to our eventual demise.

When I was five or six living in Oregon, my mom helped me write a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., thanking him for his work against racism. I enclosed my pennies.

In 1969 (those tumultuous sixties) when I was ten, my family moved to Arlington, Virginia, two miles outside of Washington, D.C. What a shock suddenly to find myself in a school where racial tensions ran high. Still, I had both black and white friends.

Growing up in a small town in the deep South, racisim was not a word I knew or a concept I often thought about, but rather it was like the water I swam around in.  Most of the time I could go about my swimming without noticing it or realizing it was there, but every now and then someone would make a splash and I would see it in all its ugliness as it attempted to drown me and everyone else in it.

We're thinking about having a baby. We're not nursery-painting or buying monogrammed burp cloths or anything. We did rescue a friendly, abandoned puppy as a first step in practicing consistent responsibility.