Enlightening Takes Time And Persistence
As teenagers, my friends and I were going to instantly change the world. There would be no more wars or hatred, no more oppressed farm workers and no racial prejudice.
By the time we were through, not only would all wrongs be righted but there also would be no more poverty or hunger.
It never occured to us that our quest was too large or unattainable. We were young in the decade now described as the turbulent ‘60s.
Lately, I have read that some of the people who are working to end prejudice and hatred are disappointed in having not been successful. Ending these devastating diseases is as large a challenge as were my teenage goals.
People should rejoice in their successes, in each small step taken and for every seed planted, for this is how such aged convictions and conditions will change.
Take a look at an extremely condensed history of racial prejudices and hatred between European-Americans and African-Americans.
Africa was once made up of highly advanced, very civilized states and empires. Europe and Africa traded goods, resources and ideas until the enslavement of Africans in the New World. This slavery was unique because it was based on profit and on skin color, and because of the brutality of the system.
To try to justify the massive enslavement of Africans, Europeans decided that the same people whom they had once shared and traded equally with were now uncivilized, unintelligent, child-like and subhuman. As a matter of fact, “races” did not exist until the mid-1800s, when slaveowners continued to try to rationalize the enslavement of people of African descent.
After this slave system had been in place for more than 300 years, emancipation could not change many of the racial beliefs that were in place. Remember that lynching of African-American men and women took place for more than 100 years after slavery. The Ku Klux Klan rode freely through black neighborhoods and towns, leaving fires, destruction and death.
Segregation laws were not overturned until the late 1950s and the 1960s, less than 40 years ago.
The thinking that took hundreds of years to develop, unfortunately, will take generations to undo. Perhaps with the work of dedicated people we can cut down on the amount of time.
My teenage dreams and goals have not been abandoned. What I now strive to do is to plant a seed and then water and care for it. From one tiny seed grows a magnificent tree.