Last week I saw a tweet from Bilal Zuberi that really caught my attention. He was talking about the theory of Samuel Huntington about the “Clash of Civilizations”
With Martin Luther King Jr’s day coming up I thought I could tell a short story that happened in the school where my fiancé teaches.
This is the story as it happened (you can also find it on twitter).
The school where my fiancé teaches is in the district of Menlo Park (more commonly known as East Palo Alto). Here the kids are mostly of Hispanic or African American race (there are also a small percentage of Pacific Islanders).
When explained about what happened with M.L.K they are usually surprised and angry. How could it be possible?
They can’t understand the concept of race or discrimination. All of them are what we called minorities. Different minorities.
They know they look different but they treat each others as equals. The only difference they perceive is language (Spanish) but even some of the black kids are learning it!
To explain what happened my fiance used an example:
Imagine there were two schools. One with all white kids and one with all black kids. They were always separated from each other. The one with all white kids will always get all the good crayons and markers. The school with only black kids would never get any crayons or markers.
She later asked them to write how did they feel and thought about this and one of the kids said:
“I think all schools should have all colors of crayons, color books and pencils.”
This are the days were you understand how everyone started and how we choose and decide who we want to be. We are born equals.
As Nelson Mandel said “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Let’s us in this day not forget about this and let us be a little more like kids.
