Reading in the Park
Yesterday I was reading a story book about Ruby Bridges while sitting in the park with some new friends. Brother and sister they are of mixed race and had just finished 2nd and 4th grades. They had not heard the story about the first African-American child to attend an all-white school in the South. Although I tried to explain to them that there was a time in the history of the United States that children were segregated they told me they just couldn’t understand it… they quickly followed up to tell me it was not the story they didn’t understand, but the motivations.
When asked if their public school classrooms had children with different skin colors and different ethnicities they told they did and that they enjoyed seeing the mix. In their suburb of a medium-sized Midwestern city, they had already encountered much diversity in race, culture and language. What struck me the most was when the older of the two commented that he felt bad for the children who had to live through segregation—but it was not for the black children, who were not allowed to go to school with the white children, rather he felt sorry for the white children whose parents denied them the opportunity to have children of other races in their classroom. I found this to be a very interesting and very mature stance to take from such a young man. If only more people had such a responsible attitude towards segregation and prejudice today, perhaps we could be one step closer towards unity in this world.