WILL YOU BE BETTER?

When my wife asked the seven year-old girl in her intervention class today who killed her aunt, the girl responded, “The Niggers.” My wife asked her twice to be sure she had heard her correctly. The little girl’s aunt had been the victim of a drive-by shooting in Pomona days ago and apparently had been caught in the crossfire. It’s the type of horror kids from low-income areas know all to well unfortunately. And you thought by ‘incident’ I was referring to the murder. That’s the no-brainer. What you may not consider horrific is the seven year-old being programmed to utter the epithet “Nigger” as an explanation of who took her aunt’s life.

To clarify, by “Nigger” the little girl may or may not have meant that the assailant was black. I question because when my wife, who is black, asked her if all blacks were niggers, the little girl said, “No.” Such an innocent soul she is. She’s a blank slate being vandalized with the indoctrination of racism and it’s not her fault. It was an example of how at some point your influence on young people will be realized. With all that you grew up ‘knowing,’ there may come a time to be MORE than what you’ve always known for the sake of generations to come. Can a seven year-old be a racist? I doubt it. But she can be molded into one without question.

I had a conversation the other day with someone who was surprised at the racist undertones found in schools. I assured the person that racism is alive and well so long as it is perpetuated. Perhaps the most sound relay in history is that of racist ideology. The baton is seldom dropped because the motives to exchange it are so strong. Fear, convenient scapegoating and the like make racist programming attractive. But nothing is sadder than to see a child learn to vilify entire people groups as the arbiters of evil. I remember being taught to appreciate people beyond my own racial prejudices and I emphasize that I am talking purely of bigotry associated with skin color/ethnic identity. For that little girl, she’s got enough odds stacked against her without the impediment of racism.