bullies & haters

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because some day in life you will have been all of these.  

George Washington Carver

i've been putting off writing about this with it being so close to thanksgiving and all, but i just need to get it out.  i'm amazed and ashamed at the way our generation, as parents, teachers & citizens, are continuing to accept the intolerance and ignorance of the younger generation.  and please dont take this is as a tooting of my own horn of any kind.  because i ASSUMED everyone was talking to their kids the way i do.  and i hope i'm more right than i think.....i realize its the negative that always gets the limelight, so take this with a grain of salt AND maybe as a cautionary tale.

when we were kids "the bad news bears" was a PG rated movie.  in it the words spic, fag, nigger and retard are used without thought or concern.  and we thought nothing of it....i mean i'm sure it registered somewhere that those words weren't good, but it wasnt UNACCEPTABLE like it is today.  or like it should be.  now i know i espouse the right to free speech, etc. and I DO.....BUT i am amazed at how many kids TODAY think those words are okay.  its not that i dont understand that there are biased and bigoted, or even narrow minded people out there  i understand that in certain religions, gay is not okay (although i cant even TOUCH that here).  but TOLERANCE should be and must be the priority.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.  

Mohandas K. Gandhi

as i talk with my 6th grader, more and more i'm realizing that the same stupid slurs are still being tossed around.  and im shocked.  i know i shouldnt be.  but with the somewhat recent focus on bullying in schools, i thought MAYBE the kids were being taught something different.  instead what they are being taught is secrecy.  no one wants to be the one to tell the teacher or the parent.  which certainly hasnt changed, but today the very real fear is social annihilation.  between facebook, twitter, and texting you have no defense against the bullies.  and because we arent hearing about it everyday, we think the problem is getting better.  let me tell you, its not.

tumbler just put a site together listing names and contact info for every teenager they could find that spewed racist - and i mean truly disturbing - commentary regarding the election.  and if you havent seen it, you should.  if it doesnt make you want to call every one of those kids AND their parents then i dont know what will.  but it is getting any publicity? no.  has anyone heard about it? nope.  and why not??  are we so worried about making waves that we stay determined to ignore our issues?  these kids are the future generation of workers, educators, leaders and parents.  where does this vicious cycle stop??  and what are you doing about it at home?

i know in high school, the words get a bit different, but in middle school, especially with boys, the big thing is still FAG.  GAY.  HOMO.  and its been a serious battle for me, with each of my kids to get them to understand what those words MEAN.  and just how powerful words are.  sure maybe they sound funny....haha, all fun and games.  until you destroy someone who may be questioning their sexuality.  i honestly dont care what your religion tells you.  you can pray for whomever you want.  but no one has the right to tell anyone who to love.  love is never bad.  in any form.  why would we want to teach our kids that it is? 

you dont get to choose a lot of things in this life.  your skin color.  your sexual preference.  your intelligence level.  people are BORN different from each other.  we are born to different societies, different religions, different races, different cultures, different families. no one better or worse than the other.  we are born with different abilities and different desires. and its only in attempting to accept our differences that we can begin to find common ground.  but i just dont know where it will start.  tolerance has to be TAUGHT.  instead we continue to let our kids ridicule each other for being stupid or gay or black or white even.  everyone experiences it differently, but its still there.  i could go on forever with this, but just this week i've had 2 things that made me stop and think:

jake's basketball coach referred one of the kids struggling with grades to him for help and told him jake had a 5.0. his response was "damn jake, i didn't even know that was possible....where you trying to go to school?"  jake said princeton.  and this kid's response was "my parents would kill me if i tried to go there - that's a white people school".  think about that......do you think michelle obama thinks that?  why are we not talking about THAT.  we can talk equality all we want.  but our kids need to believe it for it to be real.

and josh is taking some abuse at school.....mostly on the bus.  and i'm not going to say my kid is perfect by any means.  he is a pretty normal 11 year old boy.  but he has been taught to turn the other cheek, not rise to the bait, ignore when possible.  sometimes its just not possible. and i have to say it takes everything in me to NOT call the parents of these kids who hurl this kind of garbage and ask them if they BELIEVE it?  or are they just turning a blind eye?  do we think our kids just outgrow bad behavior? do we think they just magically stop discriminating?  do they even realize they are?  would they be surprised to think that their children are capable of tormenting a fellow classmate to the point of tears?  or would they just not care.  boys will be boys after all, right?

im sick of it.  just downright pissed actually.  are we making any progress at all?  

you DONT get to choose your skin color, or your sexual preference, or your intelligence level.  but you DO get to choose your attitude about all of those things.  you DO get to decide whether  to be nice or be an ass.  you DO get to decide to part of the problem or part of the solution.  THESE are the things we should be discussing.  if you want to give someone a hard time about being a dick, or lazy, or mean, go for it.  they are choosing to be those things. but how can we not learn to see past our innate differences?  we have to.  or at some point we will literally implode as a society.

how hard can it be to teach your kids to BE NICE for fucks sake.