The sun burns brightly across the white panel door in the room indicating a bright but bitterly cold day. Huddled up with a second cup of coffee outside is lite ablaze with the promise of anther day. After a confusing rough night, my body is still getting used to the central heat and ceiling fans giving me confusing notes of hot and cold. Not so much at the sacredness of the day, but of the approaching winter we are about to receive.
A preacher man once told us to judge each other by the conduct of our character. Yet some 60 years later we still judge each other by everything but. Age, race, religion, sex, and more are still all excuses to hate and discriminate in this enlightened world. I grew up in a time of open warfare between long held prejudices of the South and the rights of the black minority. I saw an effigy of that same preacher man being hung from a tree in front of my elementary school. At my small primary school in Bloomingdale Georgia on the west end of Chatham County. I had always attended school with the small population of black kids that lived in the segregated parts of our town, and this was before court ordered school desegregation.
As we all rode the bus to our new school in the next school year. I felt fear in my heart seeing that effigy hanging there, but I could only imagine the fear the black kids felt that morning. Watching those white parents protesting just beyond the school grounds. On the day we honor that preacher man, we are about to swear in a new leader for this country. He’s promised us the moon and the stars, while using words I frankly found offensive. But I’m trying to get him the benefit of the doubt, but we’ve already witnessed his words and actions before. Maybe I am a unicorn being from the deep south yet leaning towards more liberal ideals. But I think of myself still as that little kid that seeing the raw hatred I saw all those years ago. Judge them by what they do, not by what they say.
A preacher man once told us to judge each other by the conduct of our character. Yet some 60 years later we still judge each other by everything but. Age, race, religion, sex, and more are still all excuses to hate and discriminate in this enlightened world. I grew up in a time of open warfare between long held prejudices of the South and the rights of the black minority. I saw an effigy of that same preacher man being hung from a tree in front of my elementary school. At my small primary school in Bloomingdale Georgia on the west end of Chatham County. I had always attended school with the small population of black kids that lived in the segregated parts of our town, and this was before court ordered school desegregation.
As we all rode the bus to our new school in the next school year. I felt fear in my heart seeing that effigy hanging there, but I could only imagine the fear the black kids felt that morning. Watching those white parents protesting just beyond the school grounds. On the day we honor that preacher man, we are about to swear in a new leader for this country. He’s promised us the moon and the stars, while using words I frankly found offensive. But I’m trying to get him the benefit of the doubt, but we’ve already witnessed his words and actions before. Maybe I am a unicorn being from the deep south yet leaning towards more liberal ideals. But I think of myself still as that little kid that seeing the raw hatred I saw all those years ago. Judge them by what they do, not by what they say.
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