This world is a complicated place, made ever more so by our natural compulsion as parents to shield our children from it's uglier manifestations. In this season of peace, wars rage, and civil unrest and violence preoccupy the media as much as its victims and perpetrators. Poverty, the ugliest of all violence, for it denies generations their hope and rightful place in society, hides in plain sight. These interferences are background noise in the time of tinsel and sparkly lights. We gift wrap our way beyond this reality, and close ourselves behind our gates. The bubble is the illusion.
We can live in a place our whole lives and never see it for what it is; only what we wish it to be. Worse still, we may consciously ignore those problems most in need of a permanent solution. Ferguson, Missouri is the type of place that is easily and willfully forgotten. Not unlike its analog across the river, East Saint Louis, or countless other "wrong sides" of the tracks, such as the part of Viejo San Juan we don't walk through, Ferguson is an ugly reminder of inequality and the American dream deferred. Police thuggery, which would never be tolerated by the gentile classes and "accepted" minorities, is a norm. Discrimination, the type we declare solved, is obvious and disruptive and commonplace and expected.
When events like those that continue to unfold in Ferguson disrupt our regularly scheduled malaise, we feign shock and outrage and disgust. We blame victims, lampoon behaviors, and pass judgment from our satellite courtrooms. Truth is, racism is alive and well in the United States, despite the contrary rhetoric. Classism is alive and well. Sexism is alive and well. The same is true here in our beloved Puerto Rico. We are in need of an open dialogue on these subjects to get us continuing forward towards a more perfect union.
I have lived and traveled all over the world. Yes, I've experienced discomfort, and some social mockery as a Gaijin, Haole, and Gringo. I have never been made to feel I don't or can't belong: never been willfully excluded because of the color of my skin. I'm lucky enough to be Caucasian, male, large, and well educated. I was born with a broader set of societal assumptions and expectations that favor me, privilege me.
As the brother of mixed-ethnicity siblings, I know this has not always been their experience. As an educator, I witnessed first hand in Hawai'i that every shade of "brown" was acceptable but black. I was there when our African American expat students, who assumed that Hawai'i's multiethnic society would provide them a very different experience, a fairer experience, struggled to be accepted because of pervasive negative stereotypes and derogatory cultural assumptions. No child should ever be made to feel a stranger in their own land.
Around the United States, considerable effort is being made by conservative Boards of Education to rewrite the American narrative so as to remove the sins of our collective past. A little more than a half-century ago, Nazis did the same. They make the case for American exceptionalism, and their actions undermine constructive dialogue. America's exceptionalism is, unfortunately, that in spite of its immense wealth and a Constitution that is the model of individual rights, it has never granted equal access, equal opportunity to all its citizens.
If we would have the world be a different kind of place, have Puerto Rico be a different kind of place, we must first look to our own actions and attitudes, and to the lessons we teach, intentionally and unintentionally, to our children. Are we the role models our children deserve and need, especially in how we treat and speak about others in public and private? Do we ensure they understand the importance of respect and equality? I was raised to believe we are all equal before the eyes of God, which is a powerful and transformative idea. Imagine a world we didn't have to hide from our children. Sounds like a pretty cool place to me.
See you around campus.