The torch HAS been passed..

[SoCalDem]

I wrote this months ago..when it was only wishful thinking..


Has the torch been passed? I am getting hopeful here..
Posted by SoCalDem in General Discussion
Tue Feb 12th 2008, 04:33 PM

That said, I am a white 58 year old woman, so maybe I am missing something.

I saw it with my own kids, but I attributed it to the color-blind upbringing we gave them..

My youngest son's first real girlfriend was a young girl with a Black Mother and a Japanese Dad.. In May he is marrying a girl whose Father was born in Mexico and who picked cotton as a young man in the San Joaquin Valley. His future mother in law did not learn English until she was a teenager.


All I see in the "parsing" of politics, is the "groups" and who they support, or who they do not support.

Some people (there's that phrase again ..) say that white men will not vote for a black man or that Hispanic people will not vote for a black person or that "older women" will only vote for this one or that one.

If what we are seeing is what I think we are seeing, just maybe people have moved beyond that narrowminded groupthink.

There will always be a hardcore bigoted bunch of yahoos scattered here and there who will not see what is happening, but for the most part, I think we may be getting somewhere.

What made it happen?

I hate to think this might be it, but it just MAY be sports..

Think about it..

Kids idolize sports people..no matter what color they are..no matter what language they speak, no matter where they were born..

Young kids play on sports teams with kids of every ethnic group.

Technically, school integration started the ball rolling, but until kids accepted each other as true equals (often as teammates who counted on each other to win games), there was still resistance.

When kids play together and make friends, they hang out together, their parents sit on the sidelines and cheer for each other's kids..

They shop together, they travel together, meet each other's families...and once the "otherness" barriers come down, they date and marry each other.

A natural consequence of this is the fact that MANY white people of my age group have mixed-race grandchildren. It takes a cold hearted person to continue to hate and fear, when they transfer those feelings to THEIR grand children and sons & daughters-in-law.

When people only think ONE way for a long time, it's hard to see a gradual change, but I find it deliciously ironic, that those little kids who had to have the military to help them even get inside of a "white school" were just the bud, of a flower that seems to be in full bloom...

I'm happy to be around to see it..no matter how much "fertilizer" it took to grow that thing