Jonathots Daily Blog
(2530)
Dear Grandkids:
I saw something beautiful.
I don’t like to miss beautiful things or ignore them because there are so many ugly things crowding them out of the picture.
Yet in the midst of Ferguson, Missouri, erupting once again in racial violence and some Okie frat boys singing racial slurs in a drunken stupor, I thought it was essential for me to step in and point out something progressive.
I saw a picture of former President George W. Bush and First Lady Michelle Obama sitting and laughing. They found themselves together at the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma march for freedom in Alabama. They are an unlikely pair to be in the same region, let alone enjoying one another’s company.
When the first march occurred in Selma some fifty years ago, former President Bush was a young man of eighteen years. Michelle was a one-year-old baby.
George, being raised in Texas, would have been surrounded by a community which basically believed that black people–including little Baby Michelle–were inferior.
She would have been born into a racially confused and angry society which promised her very little potential beyond minimum-wage manual labor.
As much as we need to be aware of the need for change, sometimes we need to stare at a picture and see the evidence of growth.
These two people–former President Bush and First Lady Michelle–have very little in common. When you include the racial differences, a minefield of political conflicts, and also that one is a man and the other a woman (which we tout to be an insurmountable barrier), you end up with what can only be considered a couple with irreconcilable difference.
But there they were.
The eighteen-year-old boy, raised in a bigoted South, and the one-year-old girl, limited by her color, who are now joined together, sharing similar opportunities, treasuring each other’s company and commemorating an event which has obviously changed both of their lives.
I am so glad that I am apolitical. It enables me to enjoy everybody.
Thank you, President Bush, for walking away from your early childhood training and growing more each day into the complete human being you desire to be.
And thank you, First Lady Michelle Obama, for overcoming society’s limitations and acquiring the very best you could to place you in a position where you have a voice that affects millions.
Grandkids, this is a great country–partially due to the fact that we air our faults freely in the press. But mostly because people born in different times and different worlds, come to the same conclusion:
“Let’s get along with each other.”
Love,
G-Pop
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