Lives Matter

A couple of years ago my daughter was offered an opportunity to travel to Europe with a group of students and one of her teachers.  This teacher had been leading groups of high school students to Europe for several years so I had no issue with her going on a trip with him.  I knew she would be safe.  This trip would be different from his usual tours though.  He was only inviting a small number of kids, all from her grade, and they would be attending a human rights conference at The Hague.  This would also be a much shorter trip for him; only ten days as opposed to his usual twenty one or twenty eight day tours.  We thought long and hard about sending her, even questioning if she would prefer one of the longer trips but eventually we said yes and signed her up.  Sometimes I forget that I was travelling the world at 17 without my parents along.  I think it is an important step in a young person’s life to have the experience of travelling the world with peers.

We were looking forward to this trip and then the horrible attacks in Paris and Brussels happened last year.  Those just happened to be two of the destinations on her itinerary.  The bombings were in November and she was not set to leave until June so we waited and watched assured that the itinerary could be changed at any moment if needed.  We started realizing that the amount of increased security in Paris and Brussels meant they would probably be much safer than they would have been the previous summer.  Gradually travel warnings changed to travel advisories and in June of this year ten other families and I left our children at the airport to head to Amsterdam.  To say I wasn’t nervous would be a lie.  But honestly I’m nervous when my children travel anywhere without me.  I can’t say I was any more nervous than for any other trip.  Family members learned she was going and one made a comment about not being sure she would feel safe doing sending her.  I was so pleased when my husband quickly responded” it’s not safe to go into a nightclub in Florida; travel to these countries is probably safer than a lot of things.”

She was in The Hague when Brexit happened.  I wasn’t too worried about her safety due to that.  She was in Paris when the Turkish airport was bombed.  Well now I was a little more nervous but she would soon be in Geneva and everybody loves the Swiss!  To say I was happy to have her home would be an understatement but to say I was anymore afraid for her safety than I would be on a trip in the United States would be an exaggeration.  Unfortunately terrorists’ acts are becoming frequent enough on our own soil that oversees travel is no longer less safe than an evening out at home may be.

Fast forward to this week.  My daughter was going to a Texas FFA convention in Dallas.  Dallas is still reeling from the deadly shootings of police officers last week at a rally.  I didn’t give too much thought to the tragedy in regards to her travel until I received a text from her that the school might not be going.  I was confused.  I hadn’t thought that there had been any new threats in the area and if there were I did not think FFA kids would be the primary target.  Later in the day I received an email from the teachers, forwarded from the principal, forwarded from the state convention.  Suddenly I wondered if I should be concerned.  The e-mail talked about the understanding of concern for the safety of conference attendees and the effort that has been put into to increasing security at the convention center and the hotels by the Dallas police department.  I was starting to understand the reason for concern as the convention and hotels were in downtown Dallas.  I still felt confident that she would be ok until my husband came home that evening and asked me if we were still going to let her go.  He would never ask a question like that unless he thought there was a legitimate reason to do ask it.  Now I was worried, especially when he told me that President Obama would be there when she was for a memorial service for the slain officers.  This was all happening far too close to Dealey Plaza for comfort and what if some whack job decided to make a statement by trying to assassinate the president in the same place that Kennedy was shot.  Add to this the fact that the vice president as well as George and Laura Bush would be there and now the convention was taking on a whole new look for me.  And to put icing on the cake my husband said the Dallas police chief had told the president that his force was too taxed mentally and physically to be part of his security detail.  Now I reread the email and was concerned because these mentally exhausted officers would be in charge of my child’s safety.  I was so sad.  I never thought there would be a day that I would be more worried about sending my child to Dallas, TX than halfway across the world.  I grew up in Dallas; this is the hometown of my youth and I still love it.  How could this be happening?

We debated back and forth.  The mom in me wanted to say no way, she can’t go.  The rational adult fighting terrorism said if we don’t send her the bad guys win.  We rationalized again that Dallas would have more security than probably any place on the planet now and sent her on her way.  She is safely on her way home now.

While I was doing my research on if I should send my daughter to Dallas I ran across a travel warning the Bahamas put out for their citizens regarding travel to the U.S.  The next day may husband saw that Bahrain and the U.A.E. also had advisories.  I know there is more to these advisories than meets the eye on first glance but here is the only question I really care about – when did we become the country people would be afraid to visit?

I don’t understand all of this racial strife existing in our country.  It’s just stupid. Who came up with the Black Lives Matters and also Blue Lives Matter movement?  There is the problem. When did life become about anything except life?  Why do we have to decide which lives matter – black, white, red, yellow, blue, gay, straight, unborn – they all have one thing in common – life.

I think my biggest disappointment in President Obama is that he had the ability to be great.  Whether you voted for him or not I believe he had the potential to be great when he was entrusted to become president of this once great nation and he blew it.  It started at the very beginning when he made history and became our first “black” president.  Even he seemed to forget that he was only half black.  His mother was white and he was raised in large part by his white grandparents.  Right from the beginning he should have used his mixed race as a unifier for our country.  Instead we seem to have reverted to the racial relations that existed in the 1960’s.

I guess I am fortunate that I have always been somewhat colorblind in that regard.  I grew up with older parents who had been raised in a time and place that segregated races.  It was normal to hear my grandmother refer to her n….. neighbors in conversation when we visited.  It always bothered me but I was taught that that was the name that black people used to be called and she just still did that.  It was clear there was no malice in the way she spoke and many of these people were her friends or someone she admired.

When my daughters were young I took them on a trip to Dallas to see where their mother had grown up.  Sitting at the ice skating rink at the Galleria I looked around and suddenly realized what they had been missing – it was diversity.  I grew up with friends of so many different ethnicities.  My groups of friends usually consisted of white, black, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Hispanic, Jewish, Iranian, and Arabic.  The only time I really noticed a difference was when I would call a friend’s house and the grandmother would answer the phone.  The grandmothers never spoke English!  My mother admitted to me one day that it used to take her aback to come into the living room during a sleep over and see a dark face in the room.  What a good job my parents did of never sharing that with me and the prejudices they were raised with.  The cycle can be broken.

I remember a black friend taking me to her house one day.  I knew her brother and was always a little confused.  Then I met the rest of her family.  Everyone was white expect for her.  It took a while for me to realize she had been adopted. Fast forward many years to a friend whose son was in preschool with my daughter.  He was very fair with red hair and a last name of Rodriguez.  He looked just like his mother to me.  Then I met his sister.  She looked Hispanic.  Well that made sense, she must take after dad.  Once again I never thought about adoption because those are their kids.  No I’m not stupid; the color just didn’t matter to me.

I don’t see any easy answers in our future.  I was appalled when I graduated and moved to East Texas in 1991 to see bigotry alive and well.  I was picked up from work and taken to a Kiwanis club meeting by two respected businessmen in town.  On the way to lunch they told several off color jokes about a man describing him with the “N” word.  I had no idea that people really spoke that way and thought it was ok.

I moved from this town to southeast Texas.  We moved about an hour and a half from Jasper, Texas where a black man had been drug to death behind a pickup truck the year before.  I still wanted to believe this was an isolated incident.  Our town was a good place to be.  Even our neighborhood proved very diverse.  We had black neighbors on one side and Asian on the other.  However my education in racial discrimination was far from done.  Vidor, Texas was well known for stories of racial strife.  It was 1999 so I couldn’t believe these stories were anything more than rumor.  We would occasionally have clients who would be interested in having their dog’s ears cropped.  This was not a service that we performed so we would refer them to either a clinic in Vidor which was twenty minutes away or to a clinic in Louisiana that was about an hour’s drive.  I heard and saw more than one black client with fear in their eyes ask how far into Vidor they would have to travel to see this veterinarian.  The technician would assure them that this clinic would treat them well and they would be safe.  Many of them chose the longer drive.  My daughter went to preschool in Bridge City.  While not as well publicized Bridge City had an equal reputation.  There were no children of color at that preschool.  My technician told me she used to work for a payroll company and she would meet oil workers in Bridge City to hand out their pay.  The black workers would refuse to meet her there because they were afraid to cross the bridge.  Is this 1870?  I decided it must be when the local news aired a story one night about a Baptist church in Vidor.  A white teenage boy had started a friendship with a black boy and had invited him to attend church with him.  The black boy had been attending the church and decided he wanted to be baptized.  The church refused because he was black.  There’s some good Christianity at work for you!  At that point we knew we would not raise our children in that area.  I was so excited when my daughter introduced me to a new friend in kindergarten.  She wasn’t blonde and blue eyed.

Do I believe that major changes have happened in attitudes in that area of our country since the year 2000?  As much as I would like to say yes I know the answer is no. I pray that change will happen. We must break the cycle.  We must stop labeling ourselves and dividing us.  There is a transgender comedian on America’s Got Talent right now.  She was asked by a judge if her act is ever about “you know – the thing – it.”  She took a minute and said, “It?  Oh sure but only occasionally because that is just a small part of who I am.”  Thank you.  Finally someone who doesn’t make their race, gender, or sexuality all that they are.  If we can do that we can come together.  If we can change our rallies to “Lives matter” maybe we stand a chance.  We can all stand in unity and spread love.  Let’s make that our chant and let’s heal this nation.