Prejudice

Growing up white and Jewish in mostly black South Los Angeles, 50's and 60's, I remember understanding at a very early age how differently people experience this very same world, based on our respective family influence, and our own personal history.

I am again reminded of that difference in perception today, as our enduring culture seems nearly cleaved apart, more divided and quarreling, with irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric coming from the highest places.

America, 2017, is an increasingly insecure, disunited family of 330 million individuals. 

The country was essentially assaulted and bruised by a viscerally soul-wrenching presidential election, with an unlikely, incompetent, and disasterously unstable Vanity Queen crowned the winner.

Since January, it's been a nightmare of nightly news and daily embarrasments from the White House. Americans are already weary of the whiplash, and it's just been 200 days. 

But thinking back, as a young boy and man, over half a century ago, I realized exactly how folks exist together, yet in almost opposite  universes of beliefs and opinions. 

Today's conflicts involving offending monuments and statues are also a microcosm of our different understandings. 

Specifically, I cannot ever actually know what a black person may feel, seeing a statue that recalls slavery. But I can certainly imagine. And isn't THAT really the uniquely American challenge: ideally, each of us at least being willing to imagine or consider how other folks see things?

The Narcissist-in-Chief has only divided us more, there will be no leadership from him. Hopefully, he will tweet himself right out of the job, very soon.

But in the meantime, yes, please, more of that, more imagining each others reality.

 

It's the only way out of this maze of national malaise. Understanding...is the only way "up".