An Open Letter to My Daughter

Yeah, Mom is crying.  Again.  You're right that it's been a week since the election and I really should be over all this emotionalism by now.  This past week you have learned that tears don't always mean sadness or anger or pain.  Sometimes, we cry because we are so full of joy and hope that we can hardly contain it.  That's how I feel about the election.

Remember when you were five and you had that horrible abscess on your knee?  When you had it drained, you looked utterly shocked that there could be such a thing as a male doctor, like you didn't believe men could be real doctors.  It occurred to your dad and me that you had never had a male doctor, never seen a male dentist.  I was astonished, because I don't recall knowing any female doctors growing up.  The entire world has changed in one short generation.

And that's just the thing.  You totally don't get why this election is historic because you take it completely for granted that of course an African-American could do anything he or she wanted to do.  Of course racism is a thing of the past, and we are "over it" already.  That is the world you have grown up in.  At your public school, about two-thirds of your teachers have been black or biracial; your principal is an empowered, kick-butt African-American woman; your fellow students are every color of the rainbow; your textbooks encourage diversity; you study Native Americans and black history and women's history and have a holiday for Martin Luther King.  The entire world has changed in one short generation.

Here is what I remember from being a kid in a small Midwestern town in the 1970s and 80s: in the fifth grade, we had a U.S. history textbook that downplayed slavery by saying that most masters were kind to their slaves, didn't work them all that hard, gave them new clothes every Christmas, and let them have Sunday picnics.  That was "history."  In literature, we didn't study black writers until my junior year of high school, when some wonderful teachers introduced me to Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. There were no African-Americans in real leadership positions in education, town government, or the professions. In high school choir, the director (otherwise a lovely person) told one of the African-American singers that she stuck out because of the "color of her voice." The schools were technically integrated, but de facto segregated, and the worst thing is I didn't really even think about this as wrong until I was older. 

I took that world for granted growing up.  We all want something better for our children, and what I want you to take for granted is what's already happening: you assume outright that anyone can do anything, that race is not a barrier, that everyone is equal until their individual actions prove them worthy or unworthy.  So, yeah, I'm allowed a few tears of joy.  One thing I was taught in US history was that America is supposed to be a beacon of light to the world, a city on a hill.  Last week that dream came true for me.  I pray it is always true for you.

Love, Mom

Comments

[SteveP]

Jana, That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing it.

[Phyllis Riess]

This brought tears of quiet joy to me, too. Thanks.

Love,
Mom