Out of Many ... One

E Pluribus Unum 

From grade school and up, we have always been taught that our country, the United States of America, is a diverse country founded on "Freedom of Religion" and "All Men Are Created Equal"; in 1972 an amendment was added calling for "Equal Rights for All" (men and women). And in more recent years, there have been calls and laws for inclusivity: acceptance and tolerance of all genders and personal gender identities, acceptance of ethnicities, and respect for all religious beliefs.

So where have we gone wrong? While racial persecution, religious prejudice, and gender stereotypes have, sadly, existed in our country since its inception, it has become a loud-mouthed blight in more recent years. Instead of the acceptance of our common bonds of being Americans and HUMANS, there has been anger and hatred acted all too often. And in a country invaded and founded by immigrants, too many have forgotten our own past journeys and the ancestors that fought their way to our shores.

In 2022, 245 years after the "Founding Fathers" wrote the United States Declaration of Independence and founded our country, we are still fighting many of the prejudices and injustices that our ancestors fled from. All too often we see reminders that the UNITED States of America is not nearly as "united" as, allegedly, it was intended.

It has been said that those who resent and criticize other religions are insecure in their own. While every faith has zealots that spout hate and evil, those are actually the minority, and often those who have limited knowledge of their teachings. The teachings of almost every deity and higher power espouse love of fellow human beings and kindness to all living beings. Hatred of others does not defend your religious beliefs, more often it ignores those teachings.

In the United States, just in the months between December 2022 and March 2023, just one-third of the year, we (collectively) observe at least 17 religious observances:

Feast of the Immaculate Conception  December 8    Christianity

Bodhi Day/Rohatsu (Japan)       December 8 Buddhism

Our Lady of Guadalupe   December 12           Christianity

Hanukkah     December 19-26*  Judaism

Winter Solstice/Yule   December 21  (northern hemisphere)  Native Americans/Pagan

Christmas     December 25           Christianity

Kwanzaa       December 26–January 1  African American

Feast of the Holy Family December 30           Christianity

****2023

Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary January 1     Christianity

Christmas     January 7      Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Lunar New Year     January 22     Confucianism/Taoism/Buddhism

Maha Shivaratri     February 18 Hinduism

Ash Wednesday     February 22 Christianity

Orthodox Great Lent begins       February 27 Eastern Orthodox Christianity

Purim March 7*      Judaism

Holi    March 8        Hinduism

Ramadan begins (30 days) March 23* Islam (dates dependent on the sighting of the new moon crescent)

In America, we have multiple religions and beliefs observed including Agnostic, Atheist, Buddhist, Druid, Hindu, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox, Latter-Day Saints, Pagan, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Scientology, Sikh, Taoist, Wiccan, and more. 

Frederick Douglass once said, "Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Others have said it, simply, "Can't we all just get along?"

Wishing you all a happy and healthy Holiday Season (no matter which way you say it), with warmth, friendship, and love by your side. Here's to hoping for a more unified, peaceful, loving, and accepting 2023... and beyond.

WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT…

...and in many ways, we are all the same. So why is there so much hate these days? Why does looking or being “different” create so much suspicion and animosity?

 

In school kids make fun of other children who “look” different, it can be a child with prophylactics, who wears glasses, or even who comes to school in tattered clothes because of family finances. Maybe the child comes from a different culture which has a unique clothing style, or even wears a pendant of their faith. Some can make fun of children who may have a different skin color, or are overweight, or can’t speak fluent English, or anything that is different from “the cool kids”. Parents and teachers need to teach children about diversity in both culture, lifestyle and economic means.

 

Anti-bias education, at home and in the school, is a crucial step to opening children’s minds to acceptance. Things like teaching children that occupations are not gender-specific will help to bridge the gender gap, knowing that a little girl can grow up to lead a construction crew, or a little boy can study to be nurse (as examples) are ways to help children live up to their own personal potentials despite societal norms. Encouraging children to take personal pride in their cultural traditions AND accepting others who do the same will help them as they grow up and are exposed to diversity.

 

Exposing children to anti-bias books (appropriate for their age) will help to open their minds to peoples’ differences and humanity. It’s important not to stay quiet or discourage conversation — if the child questions how a girl can grow up to be the President for example, don’t admonish them. Encourage conversation and help them, through subtle questions and discussion starters, see all the things they are capable of and that no profession is specific to one gender. Ask them about hobbies and dreams. Maybe a young boy will tell others he likes to sew or crochet and the other children giggle, don’t admonish but tell them about fashion designers like Michael Kors or the tailor down the street. Help to foster interest in other children’s cultures and traditions by giving an opportunity to share fun customs and possibly sample cuisines.

 

When parents and teachers have open minds and accept the differences EVERYONE has, it is easier to teach and help children to learn anti-bias behavior. It’s not too late to start. Watch the words you use, avoid stereotypes, open yourself to learning about others and offering knowledge about your own background. Stress the similarities, but don’t ignore the variety of things others can bring to any conversation or experience. Let’s work on being humans first and accept those around us without prejudice.

 

 

 

 

 

Land of the Free and Brave???

In many ways I grew up a bit sheltered — not sheltered from some of the ugliness in the world, but sheltered in that my folks told me that mankind was ultimately good and that things in this country were improving.

While I would never think that the prejudices I did experience in my formative and young adult years were as much as other minorities, I was always aware of the different ways we were treated because our dad was Puerto Rican (raised in PR and NYC) and our mom was a southern white girl who was transplanted to New York. By the way, we were also a Jewish family.

We frequently traveled to the south to visit mommy’s family and we’d laugh because my dad always had her drive through some of the southern states (now I realize it wasn’t so funny, he was genuinely scared of being stopped by a southern state trooper with his dark skin). I remember walking into a diner when I was young and noticing that none of the black families were seated in the same areas as the white families; I also know how heavy my mom laid on her thick southern drawl when the wait staff looked at my dad with questions. My parents agreed that things were improving, everyone was at least allowed to come in and have a meal. I was happy to hear my parents talk so positively. Then, I was just ten years old when a church in Mississippi was bombed and four young black girls were killed, one of them was only a year older than me.

When I was in Junior High School I met my first real boyfriend, Steve, he was blonde haired and blue eyed and oh so cute. We walked to a local bowling alley for our first date and on our way home again we saw his mom on the street. She frowned when she saw me and when my boyfriend proudly introduced me by name, she looked angry when she heard my last name, Cordero. That evening I got a phone call from him, he sounded upset when he told me that he couldn’t see me anymore. I didn’t know why and he wouldn’t tell me. A fellow classmate explained it to me a few days later, Steve wasn’t allowed to go out with a Hispanic (although that was not the term that was used).

As I grew into my teen years my parents were more open about prejudice, its ugliness and the injustices people suffered. And I had become more aware of the tensions in my school when students from other schools were bussed in all in the name of integration. There were a lot of people who weren’t happy and a lot of the new students kept to themselves. Meanwhile I was beginning to feel the way others viewed my ethnicity and who I was. As a (half) Hispanic, “white” Jewish teenage girl I found myself being ostracized my many of the other groups — I wasn’t Spanish enough, I was too white, I was too non-white, I was Jewish and the local parochial schools where teaching that the Jews killed Christ, and being a girl I was excluded from many sports activities at school.

In 1968 when so many cities were rioting, I visited my grandmother living in Miami, I enjoyed sun tanning on the beach. On the way back to NY we visited family in South Carolina. My cousin and I were walking down the street when suddenly there was a huge fuss. I couldn’t understand why I was being called ugly names, we hadn’t done anything. Cops were called and my cousin and I were forcefully separated. A black police officer pushed me into the street while I heard my cousin yelling (in her thick southern accent) “But she’s white!” Suddenly my cousin broke through and pulled on my T-shirt to expose the tan lines from the bathing suit straps.

The black police officer literally fell to his knees and apologized telling me over and over again he needed his job. (The Kennedy-era Civil Rights movement enabled the hiring of black officers, but this small southern town restricted them from laying hands on any white person.) I shrugged and told the cop I was okay and he actually thanked me. I was in shock, because of my darker skin, partially due to the sun tan, and my naturally curly, kinky hair I was mistaken as being black. I had an insight into the prejudice many blacks suffered… and that was only for a few minutes of my life. I thank the good Lord every day for giving me that experience.

I grew up and got married to a really super guy, his family came from northern Europe and a few folks snidely remarked that he was marrying a non-white. It didn’t bother him and I really never thought of myself as being “white” or not. Recently I’ve been delving into my family genealogy and found several documents including both my dad’s and my father-in-law’s WW2 military records; my fil is listed as White and my dad is listed as Non-White. I also submitted a DNA test; I am a mixture of northern European, Ashkenazi Jew, Spanish, African and Native American. I am damn proud of everything I am. I would imagine that most of us have quite an unexpected mix as well. In America there are too many people who don’t want to accept differences and I would find it amusing to know the DNA background of some of our bigots.

But I will never find it amusing that someone of color is looked down simply for their skin color. And I find it tremendously sad that black parents have to teach their children the seven words (yes sir, no sir, thank you sir) and pray that they will be able to come home every night. Prejudice has no place in “the land of the free”.

RIP George Floyd

Welcome to Banned Book Week ~ #MondayBlogs

While the subject isn’t very welcoming, the very fact that many of us live in a society where we are able to challenge the banning of books and even be able to get our hands on most on the list and actually read them is good news. So long as there are people who get angry over the censorship, readers who devour the words, and writers who continue to produce new books — it’s good. There are some countries where certain books are actually forbidden by law! In several free countries while specific books are removed from libraries and some book stores, it is not against the law to actually read these titles. It’s just more difficult to get our hands on them.

One of my favorite books has been banned in previous years; ironically the story is about book censorship, book burning, and the control of free thought. Fahrenheit 451 was about a futuristic world where free thinking was not only discouraged but punishable. The idea was that if no one was allowed to think for themselves there would be no disagreements and with no disagreements everyone would get along. And yet even in this world there were “Firemen” because there were people who were defiant and those books “needed to be burnt.” Fahrenheit 451 is allegedly the temperature at which the paper in the books would ignite.

A few books previously banned by governments are: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (China); American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (Queensland, Australia); Animal Farm by George Orwell (USSR, North Korea, United Arab Emirates); Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (Strongsville, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Snoqualmie, Washington); The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Lebanon); Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (California); The Lottery (1948) by Shirley Jackson (South Africa); Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (Canada); The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Iran, Kenya, Kuwait, Liberia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Senegal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand); Sophie's Choice by William Styron (Lebanon); Spycatcher by Peter Wright (UK); and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (US, South Africa). There are so many more.

In recent years according to the American Library Association many books are being listed as banned because of diversity, homosexuality, explicit sex, religious viewpoints and offensive language. As a writer I began to think of my own works and which (if I only had more prominence) of my books might be banned by these standards. I definitely have explicit sex and some foul language in several of my novels. One book centers on a Pakistani Muslim immigrant married to an American Christian. Another books deal with the trauma of rape. One of my short stories involves an interracial love affair. And while they are not the main characters I do have a Lesbian couple in a book.

I guess I am just one of those defiant writers. 

Be defiant — read a Banned Book today.

             9/25-10/1/2016

...

Children Learn From Their Parents ~ #MondayBlogs

Many… many years ago I got a Summer Stock gig in upstate New York. It was the summer of 1974 and I was excited. It was my first time living away from my parents’ home and on my own.

I met a lot of new people that summer, they came from all over the country and to a kid who grew up in “da Bronx”, NYC, it was interesting to meet so many and hear about all of their experiences. There was no shortage of fun times and parties and we each formed our own circle of pals.

I hung out with the light and sound crew (I was there as a lighting technician), I was the only female in this small group. One of the guys, I’ll call him Howard to protect his identity, came from a small town in Vermont. It was Howard’s first time away from home as well, his first time meeting people who didn’t live in his small town.

The first day we met I was wearing a Star of David pendent and I noticed that he was staring at me whenever he thought I didn’t see. Finally I asked him what was up. He apologized and a few minutes later he sat next to me at the dimmer board and asked me if I really was Jewish. I said yes and asked him why he wanted to know. He pointed to my necklace.

I was not expecting his next words. They were innocent and knocked the breath out of me.

“I never met a Jewish person before. I was always told Jews had horns.” And he quickly apologized. Howard told me that his parents, aunts and uncles all lived in that small town and went to the one church that everyone went to. Everyone was the same where he grew up and they all said that Jews had horns.

I laughed nervously and said, “Well we don’t.”

He asked a lot of innocent questions about my religion, my Spanish surname, growing up in a big city and more. In Judaism it’s a mitzvah (commandment) to teach and so I was happy to answer his questions, questions which came from pure curiosity — he was seeing the world outside of his small home town for the first time.

Howard called his parents that night to ask if they had ever seen a Jew with horns and they admitted that they never did. When he asked why they told him that there were horns they said that’s what they had been told by their parents as they grew up in that same small town. They expressed nervousness when he said he had a Jewish friend but at his insistence they decided to let him decide for himself who he could be friends with.

I did meet them later in the summer and they were actually very nice people. I don’t know what happened to Howard and his family when the summer was over, I went home to plan my wedding and we never really stayed in touch. But I would like to think that just maybe they stopped telling people the stereotype they were raised with. Just maybe they were a little bit more accepting of people who were different than them and maybe there was a little less prejudice in that small Vermont town.

Don’t teach your children prejudice because they like to believe that Mommy and Daddy are always right. Children learn from their parents.

The American Predilection to Prejudice ~ #MondayBlogs

I recently watched the movie "Black or White" starring Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer; it's a movie about a recently widowed white grandfather who is drawn into a custody dispute over his biracial granddaughter who he has raised all of her life. Overall the movie was, in my opinion, terrific. Admittedly the story does include some stereotyping: a wealthy white grandfather with a drinking problem, a crack addicted and absent black father, and a loving black grandmother who lives with her large extended family in an unsavory part of town. Personally I think those stereotypes were used to emphasize that no side is perfect or better than the other

During one of several poignant courtroom scenes where the father's family lawyer Jeremiah (played by Anthony Mackie) tries to make Elliot (played by Costner) out to be a bigot, Elliot makes a very dramatic and thought-provoking argument:

Jeremiah: Do you have a problem with racial prejudice?
Elliot: Is that what you want to make this about, Jeremiah? Really? Well then let's do it them. You've wanted to ever since Rowena first dragged you into this. So yes, we're different, you and I. You want to submit that? Submit it. We have different skin color. Is that the first thing I notice when I see a black man, the color of his skin? Yes. Submit Away. Because I can go ahead and submit that it's the first thing you see when you see a white guy. Now I don't know why that is any more than I know why when I see a good-looking woman, the first thing I notice are her breasts, because I do. But if I move on to my next thought quick enough, I'm not a pervert... I'm not a bad guy. I'm just mildly flawed. It's the same thing with race. It's not my first thought that counts, it's my second, third and fourth thought. And each and every case I'm in it comes down to the same thing, the action and the interaction with the person I'm interacting with. 

Noticing a person's physical description whether they are black or white, male or female, fat or thin, tall or short doesn't make a person a bigot. The meaning of PREJUDICE according to Google is a "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience". Prejudice is when we allow that first look, that first impression, to make a difference in how we view an individual. We teach our children to notice the things around them, we ask our police officers to note a person's description, we hope drivers are observant about the people and places they pass. If you look with your eyes open you will see differences in our appearances. I am a short olive-toned, plumper than should be female and if you notice any of that you are simply looking AT me... BUT if you allow any of that to think that I am less or more worthy of fair treatment than any one else simply based on my appearance, then that is prejudice.

We are all raised with some preconceived notions... a white picket fence around a suburban house means a happy family... an eccentrically dressed older woman sitting on a park bench is crazy... a well dressed white man driving an expensive car is highly respected... a young black child with a torn and dirty shirt has an irresponsible single mother. We've been exposed to many of these stereotypes in our childhood homes, on TV, through single incidents. As "Elliot" said though, move on to your next thought; think of the possibilities, learn more.

As a society we've become lazy. Too many people don't want to take the time to learn about a person and about their character. Meet me, talk with me; read my resume if I am looking for a job instead of tossing it onto the rejection pile when you see the Spanish surname. Don't assume when you see the Star of David I sometimes wear that I fit every negative ethnic joke you ever heard about Jews. And if you decide I have the qualifications for the job don't pay me less than you would a man working the same position.

Yes, we have differences. Even people of the same ethnic group, gender, age range, religion have differences. And yet we are all alike, we all feel pain and joy, we all enjoy being loved, we all need sustenance, and we all need air to breathe. Even identical twins can have very different personalities, skills and desires. 

Prejudice is stopping at that first look or that first impression. Prejudice is not thinking past stereotypes. Prejudice is allowing bias to dictate how you treat someone simply because you can't or won't take the time to move on to your second, third and fourth thoughts.

Respect people for WHO they are and not for WHAT they appear to be.

Make time to learn their traditions, cultures and language.

Give meaning to the words Brotherhood and Humanity.