{"id":1414,"date":"2008-11-13T17:55:11","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T17:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/13\/a-dear-friend-s\/"},"modified":"2014-03-03T18:11:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-03T18:11:54","slug":"a-dear-friend-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/13\/a-dear-friend-s\/","title":{"rendered":"BARACK OBAMA, JUDITH WARNER, EXPLAINING HISTORY TO KIDS: MRS. HAMER AND JACKIE ROBINSON"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Obamas_election_night_1\"<\/a>
\nA dear friend sent me this New York Time column <\/a> by the sometimes controversial Judith Warner<\/a>.\u00a0 In it, Warner muses about the cosmic change we all know came last Tuesday, and her young daughters’ seeming inability to understand the magnitude of what has happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook,\u201d we said, pointing to the headline \u201cRacial Barrier Falls.\u201d \u201cThis is <\/em>huge.\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

We labored to make them understand that their world \u2014 art that day,
\nand orchestra, and Baked Potato Bar at lunch \u2014 had irrevocably changed.<\/em><\/p>\n

But how can you understand change when you\u2019ve only known one way of being?<\/em><\/p>\n

They were happy because we were happy. They rose to the occasion in
\nthat bemused way children do when adults tell them what they should
\nfeel. They were glad to be rid of George W. Bush and to be saved \u2013 for
\nnow \u2013 from the specter of Sarah Palin.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course one of the reasons for this is that, for younger people, unless they’re well-briefed, it is less of an earthquake.\u00a0 They know we believe that they are part of something wonderful, but they don’t know as viscerally as we do the terribleness that came before.\u00a0 It was easier, 30 years ago, with my own children.\u00a0 They went to a pretty progressive elementary school where Martin Luther King Day<\/a> was a cornerstone of the winter curriculum.\u00a0 In the first grade they learned about the kid across the street who wouldn’t play with him, and of the pain that caused.\u00a0 They watched Eyes on the Prize<\/a> more than once in class.\u00a0 When we settled on annual giving, their vote was for the United Negro College Fund<\/a>.\u00a0 Their babysitter told them stories about not being able to go into\u00a0Virginia smoke shops to buy a candy bar, about the scary cruelty that\u00a0was her childhood.\u00a0 It came from someone they knew.\u00a0 It wasn’t history,\u00a0it was their friend’s life.<\/p>\n

But they’re a generation or more older than Warner’s girls and, growing up in Manhattan they knew more, and heard more, from people for whom it was more immediate.\u00a0 There are fewer of those people now, as Selma and Montgomery fade farther into history.\u00a0 \u00a0It will take more work, more commitment by schools as well as parents, to help\u00a0<\/em>these small people understand what has happened.\u00a0 Work worth doing though, I think.<\/p>\n

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve recalled that my parents never completely described to me the impact of the Depression on their lives<\/a>.\u00a0 They were, I later learned, enormously affected <\/a>but there really wasn’t a way to explain it – at least for them.\u00a0 They had suffered too much.\u00a0 It drove me to study Depression history in college, when much of what I’d wondered about became clear.\u00a0 \u00a0That was a sad landmark instead of a proud one, but it’s also about troubled experiences difficult to communicate.\u00a0 A challenge either met or avoided.<\/p>\n

I agree that one way to help younger people understand the wonder of what has happened is just as Warner described it.\u00a0 Let them be “happy because we’re happy.” Explain as best we can.\u00a0 Personally though, I’m not against a little indoctrination: the story of Dr. King’s lost playmate, or Jackie Robinson<\/a> or Fannie Lou Hamer<\/a> or Rosa Parks<\/a> (there’s a kids’ song “When Rosa Parks Sat Down, the Whole World Stood Up”) or Charlayne Hunter-Gault.<\/a>\u00a0 And the question I used so often:\u00a0 “How do you think you would feel if that happened to you?”\u00a0 From the known to the unknown, the familiar to the unfamiliar, just like any other lesson.\u00a0 Allow the natural compassion of a loving child to emerge, and their sense of justice and wonder will not be far behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dear friend sent me this New York Time column by the sometimes controversial Judith Warner.\u00a0 In it, Warner muses about the cosmic change we all know came last Tuesday, and her young daughters’ seeming inability to understand the magnitude of what has happened. \u201cLook,\u201d we said, pointing to the headline \u201cRacial Barrier Falls.\u201d \u201cThis … Continue reading BARACK OBAMA, JUDITH WARNER, EXPLAINING HISTORY TO KIDS: MRS. HAMER AND JACKIE ROBINSON<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,4,27,42,7,9],"tags":[279,1023,232,49,282,1022,285,21,1026,1024,1025],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-family","category-life","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-charlayne-hunter","tag-depression","tag-education","tag-election","tag-jackie-robinson","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-politics-2","tag-racism","tag-rosa-parks","tag-segregation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-mO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1836,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions\/1836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}