A Long Time

 

A Change is Gonna Come

It's been too hard living
But I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there
Beyond the sky

It's been a long
A long time coming
But I know a change gonna come
Oh, yes it will 

Is 40 years too long? 

The lessons we earn from our parents may be those that they learned from their parents. Thus inbred actions that are not necessarily our fault, or our parent’s fault, but may be due to what our grandparents experienced. It is not just the sins of the fathers, but the sins of the grandfathers that are important

This means that what seems like a long time to us, is not so long at all. Saying that we as individuals are not actively racists, does not mean that our grandparents, whom we may not have even met, weren’t racists. My story. My paternal grandmother died in 1941, ten years before I was even born. My paternal grandfather died in 1950, the year before I was born. My father was born in 1925, after the Spanish Flu. My father’s mother and father, my paternal grandparents, lost two children to the Spanish Flu. They passed along to him a bias against common spaces and shared items, which I realize I have and has effected my actions. I realize now that it was because of his upbringing, which was affected by his parent’s experiences and attitudes.

An action against racism in society, and while you are a member of society, might still have nothing to do with you as an individual. You may not be racist. But that does not mean that your grandparents, or their grandparents, were not racist and that is why Critical, Race Theory, CRT, is taught (in GRADUATE SCHOOL!  Little children may not even realize that their parents were once little children to their grandparents, and this is why little children are NOT taught CRT)

This also has a bearing on, IMHO, the mistaken ruling by the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act, that actions of the states from 40 years ago are no longer relevant. Given in 2022, I am talking about actions that my paternal grandparents experienced in 1922, 40 years is a drop in the bucket. 40 years is long to me as an individual. 40 years is a brief period of time to states. Never mind asking African-Americans about slavery which ended in 1865. Ask an Armenian about the Turkish genocide, or an Irishman about the marches to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. These things happened more than 40 years ago and still affect actions and attitudes today.