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My wife and I attended a “Jackie and Jill” about 4 years ago, and I had a whole blog post written in my head about how great that is. Every high school now seems to have support groups or LGBT clubs to help kids be comfortable with who they are. Kayla has several gay friends and thinks absolutely nothing of it.
When I was her age I knew homosexual people, but I didn’t know it. It was something they hid out of fear of persecution or mockery. To our collective shame, they were probably right. I don’t know for sure how my fifteen-year-old self would have responded to somebody in our small community coming out, but I’m not naive enough to think it would have been with the same nonchalance shown by the teenagers I observe now.
I was going to write about how multi-racial both kids’ classes are. Alaina may yet embarrass me with an inappropriate question at an inopportune time, but she seems to accept that some of her friends have different skin tones the same as she accepts that we have several different hair colors in the family.
It was a nice little optimistic observation about how far we’ve come in the years between my childhood and those of my children.
But then Baltimore went up in flames before I had a chance to put those thoughts to paper and I realized we still have a long ways to go.
What amazed me the most was how quickly and tribally everybody seemed to “take sides”, each blaming the other. Depending on who you listened to either racist white cops are randomly targeting black teens for execution or inner-city youths will use any excuse possible to riot and loot. I’ve seen comments about liquor and cigarette shops being among the first to be “protested”. I’ve seen rebuttal comments about the 4.2 million dollars in damage that mostly white rioters caused after the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver. There is endless nonsense about what “white people” and “black people” do differently and which “side” is at fault. Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly throw gasoline on the fire of a burning city, gleefully spouting nonsense rhetoric aimed at their respective audiences.
I’m a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-minded white guy that grew up in a small cow town in Connecticut. I have no idea what it is like to be either a policeman or resident of an inner-city. People come to my website for humorous stories about my children, not social-political commentary.
But I’m proud of how accepting my teenager daughter is of other people and I hope to raise the toddler the same. We really have come a long way in my lifetime and feel confident that my children will one day be able to say the same.
I also want to congratulate whoever is raising this little boy.
You’re doing it right.
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This post was previously published on thirstydaddy.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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