Little Black Sambo & Licorice Candy

I grew up in the North. Fort Wayne, Indiana, if you're interested. My childhood involved running free: out the door in the morning, home by the time the street-lights came on. Wherever we were at noon-time, that Mom made us lunch. We were busy, we were active, we didn't stop until the "cows came home". We also shared a certain history.

I remember "Little Black Sambo". A simple story about a little boy from India. He tamed some lions while making pancakes. I never thought a thing about it. It was a story.

When I was a teenager, I remember a restaurant chain called "Sambo's" that was based on that story. It was a kind of "Denny's" that specialized in pancakes. The menu talked about the story from my youth. It had changed the name from "Little Black Sambo" to "Sambo's". I never thought a thing about it.

There was a point in my childhood where I accompanied my Chicago buddy to a candy store while visting him in Kenilworth, IL. You know the place. Do you remember when candy stores had all sorts of things in bins? I bought something and my buddy bought something else. He bought "Nigger Babies". They were black licorice candies shaped like a baby. I had never heard of them before. Being that my buddy was from the big city, he knew the best candy to buy. I was used to buying "Good 'n Plenty" at the movies, so I was on board for licorice. I never thought a thing about it. It was candy.

My Lord, tell me I wasn't a racist! I didn't even know what that word meant when I was a kid. We dealt in reality back then. We didn't look at candy and think about the evils of racism, we thought about our sweet tooth. We didn't look at a menu and think about the evils of racism, we thought about pancakes. The racist phrases meant nothing to us, we were kids. We didn't realize that we'd be tainted for life by virtue of our childhood. Am I no longer entitled to criticize a politician?

I remember when "Sambo's" went out of business. It's name was not appropriate. I understood why, but liked the menu. After all, I had never thought a thing about it. It was just pancakes.

I never saw another "Nigger Baby" after my trip to Chicago. I was horrified years later when I thought about it. I never thought of being racist, but felt guilty for eating candy with a "racist" name.

I've learned about the misadventures of my youth. I've dismissed those episodes and learned accordingly. I am not a racist. I wasn't back then. I was just growing up in a culture that was insensitive to certain things. Things that became much more important as I grew older...and wiser.

40-some odd years later, I'm confronted with my youth. I'm called a racist for disagreeing with a man in the White House...just because he's black. I've already learned that prejudice is wrong and I've labored to dismiss the events of my youth. I am not ready to dismiss my beliefs in God and country, although those were there in my youth as well. Things like the Boy Scouts, being an Altar Boy and praying at Church.

I am not a racist, so don't try to label me as such. My overriding concern is whether or not you are. Have you not learned anything in the past 40 years? Instead of empowering the idea of racism, you should be defusing it! I think I speak for the majority of Tea Party protesters when I say our protest is NOT about race, it's about POLICY!

Generational Dysfunction 2

Writing my first blog entry was an interesting experience. What started out as a type of "diary" entry began to morph as I realized that I was really writing to an audience, however small. You're probably thinking "Duh, what do you think a blog is?" But you see, I am not a trained writer. My background is mainly in accounting. What I usually write is very technical in nature and directed toward a specific audience in accounting. Now I am choosing to delve into something that is quite different in nature. Not only am I committed to improving my writing efforts, I am going to take on an examination of the current political and economic environment. I was going to delete my first blog, but have left it up for perspective.

I really believe something that Rush Limbaugh said: "Most people's historical perspective starts the day they were born." Learning history always seemed like drudgery when I was in school. Learning all those events and dates seemed like an exercise in torture. It's only been since I've gotten older that I've learned that history teaches us a lot that can be applied to today. Taken within the context of what Rush said, my history is certainly gaining in perspective with each passing year. What follows is a little bit of that perspective.

I was looking at 2000 Census data (I know that sounds stupid, but I get drawn to countless things while perusing the Internet) and decided to do some analysis. Approximately 61% of the current voting population was not old enough to vote for Ronald Reagan. 25% were probably not old enough to be aware of his performance in office. 42% were probably not old enough to be aware of Jimmy Carter's performance in office. In other words, an awful lot of voters in last year's election did not really have a historical perspective of life under Ronald Reagan or any other President before him.

Given that I hated learning history, let's assume that the above 42% probably didn't much enjoy learning history either. (To be honest, I'm sure a certain portion of that population did enjoy learning history, but what did they really learn in today's classroom?) The only thing that they truly "know" is what their personal, historical perspective has taught them. Think about our political and economic climate after Reagan. The Cold War ended, and our economy was booming. To extend that historical perspective even more, let's look at some other statistics.

I bought my first house when I was 26 years old. Let's assume that the same life-event holds true for the population we identified above. During the Clinton years, the housing boom took off when the Justice Department placed a certain "emphasis" [sic] on banks participating in the Carter-initiated "Community Reinvestment Act." Of the current voting population, 42% were 26 years old or younger when Clinton took office in 1992 . Basically, they have never known an environment where you were required to put 20% down before you bought a house. That's what I had to do when I bought my first house. Those were the rules we had to live by and, so-be-it, it worked.

Now, consider the economic and political environment at the beginning of last year. A huge chunk of the voting population (33%) was in the age range of first-time home buyers that had never known a mortgage requirement of 20% down. The housing industry had been booming for almost 20 years. 42% of the voting population had no personal awareness of the economic OR political environment prior to Reagan's re-election. The economy had been on an upward trajectory ever since he left office, barring the aftermath of 911. (Unfortunately, his economic policies never did manifest themselves again on the Presidential stage.) The concepts of political conservatism became bogged down in populism and were continuously degraded in every venue imaginable (except talk radio and conservative blogs, but that's another post). What we had was a perfect storm leading into the 2008 elections and one that did not favor conservatism.

The daily derision of conservatism in the mainstream media and their vilification of Bush, McCain-Palin and the Republican Party had a stunning effect. 42% of the voting population had no understanding of an alternative approach to the economic "crisis". Liberal economic policies relating to the mortgage industry were completely embedded in the psyche of all those potential voters. Liberal ideology became the "defacto" choice of a fawning mainstream media. McCain was doomed the second he won the Republican nomination. A huge chunk of the voting population had no historical perspective to evaluate an alternative direction to what they were being force-fed by the mainstream media. And McCain was deemed "stale".

What happened has, well, happened. We now have to look at what caused this mess. I truly believe that because we are not teaching the principles of our Constitution in school, we are destroying the principles on which that Constitution was based. We do not teach American history in a way that allows our youth to truly understand what this country's collective experience has been. We do not allow our youth to extend their historical perspective beyond the date of their birth. There is a reason that we are the most prosperous country in the history of man. There is a reason that the framers of the Constitution incorporated the belief in God in all their deliberations.

We have to demand that our children are educated in history. In addition, we have to take responsibility to educate those that have already passed through our pathetic educational system. Our lives and those of our children are slowly being degraded by an ideology that our country was not founded on. That ideology is know by any number of descriptions: Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Humanism, Atheism, etc. It must be eliminated from our culture if we are to ever become the country that our Founders dreamed of: one that was committed to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...".

You can learn more about the Constitution here:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html

It is certainly worth the read.

Generational Dysfunction

I'm often amazed at the huge differences between my life growing up and that of my now 16-year-old son and daughter (not twins, separate mothers). I remember getting up on a summer morning and heading out the door by 10am (I slept longer than my friends, they were waiting for me at 9am). I was 10 years old. My orders were thus: "Be home when the street lights come on". What simple freedom. We played all day, went on expeditions, ate whatever the nearest mom would make us for lunch and didn't stop until the street lights came on.

Fast forward to 2002. My son can play outside as long as his mother or I (I adapted to this strategy after our divorce in 2000) can walk out the front door and see him before getting to the curb. It was only after he was older that he could leave my general sight line. Even then, he had to take a walkie-talkie along in case I got worried. The walkie-talkie would usually get abused in that I would get strange, foreign-sounding messages from he and his friends. I don't think they were tormenting me, just being playful and totally oblivious to the purpose of the walkie-talkie.

We live in a culture of instant news. We have all grown accustomed to the horrors of child abduction in distant communities and have responded by restricting the freedom of our own youngsters. We have nationalized our feers. They are no longer based on those of our immediate community. Our kids are learning that what happens in a New York burrough could just as easily happen at home. We have denied our kids the freedom to enjoy the liberty of living in a "chosen" community, one that we purposely chose because of the schools, safety from crime, ease of getting to friend's houses, etc. Why have we gone to the trouble?

Our kids don't know the true freedom of having liberty. They only know the cautions that we expound to them every time they walk out the door. In other words, they may as well live in a New York burrough for all the freedom that they can enjoy.

We have contributed to a break-down of the sense of community in our children by our own fears. These fears have been bred by the nightly newcasts which sensationalize every single dread that we can dream of. But it gets worse. By hammering our kids with all these worries, which may or may not be well-founded, we have degraded their own sense of community.

It is time to rebuild our communities on a level of trust. We trust that our concerns mirror our neighbors' concerns. Our local banks reinforce that, our local government reinforces that and our schools reinforce that. We go about our lives with a sense of true liberty and freedom. Freedom to not worry about our kids every minute of the waking day when they are out of our sight. Freedom to believe that they will learn everything in school that we were once told was important. And the freedom to create their own lives in their own communities with the very same support system.

We have nationalized our news, we have nationalized our banks, we have nationalized the support structure that every community needs to thrive. It's time to take our communities back and demand local support. It worked when I was 10 years old.