multiculturalism

So I harp again on the fact that I grew up in Mississippi when schools were trying to integrate. I had parents who had been taught that blacks were literally biologically different than whites. My mother is still very rude and condescending toward people of other races although she thinks she is now very liberal because she will let a black nurse help her or go to a non-American doctor. She is also seventy nine years old. Her family share cropped land and constantly moved around. She picked her first two hundred pounds of cotton in one day at the age of seven for twenty-five cents. She missed many of her compulsory days of school because she was needed to work to support her nine brothers and sisters. Her family was treated worse than African Americans in many ways because her ancestors were Irish indentured servants who married into the Iroquois Indian Tribe. To add insult to injury her father was in prison. School was not a place she wanted to be. She was made fun of because her clothes can from the church poor box. She did not have a slate or chalk. I think when we focus on history we forget about the groups of "whites" that were not considered good enough or clean until the depression equalized much of society. I think we have presented a one sided view of history and lumped people together by skin color together for so long much of the true cultural struggle for many groups has been lost. Children today have never really known a world where people could not overcome their background. It is hard for older people who fought so hard for so much to watch things change so quickly. As the younger generation takes the reins and leads the nation into new beginnings, we must be patient and remember that many resisting changes remember a time when electricity was not in every home, television and computers did not exist, and business was conducted in cash.