This picture SUCKS!

I have to write a paper this week. A paper on a theme relating
to the book A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Actually,
for those who haven't read it, it is a play/screenplay.

It's good.
Not a hard read.
But a hard read.
Only not at first.

I just do not know how to explain
what is in my heart.
My essay needs to be on
the government's policy toward
racial inequality
back then
and what it is now.
And has our government
made amends to
what happened.

I know that if I had read this book
when I was 20, it would not have
really had much of an impact on me.
You know the world was all about me.
But now I read it,
and I think,
I have a family,
I have a house,
I have to provide,
My kids need an education.
What if my family
was going through
today, what
the Younger Family
went through in the book?
Which is what many/most
African-American families
went through back then.
Only for many it was worse.

So as I began my research,
I happened upon this book.
And bought it.
And read it.
And there is just so much more
disturbing information in it.
Not just about African-Americans,
but Asian, American Indians,
even the Irish.
(Really none of this is new information to me)
It's just I am seeing it through different eyes.
I am seeing it as a parent,
who cannot imagine
explaining to my kids why
they have to use a different drinking fountain than a white person,
or why they have to use a different entrance to the theater,
or why they have to sit in a different train car, or bus,
or why they cannot play at the same park or go
to the same school.

The above picture just saddens me.
Our government saddens me.
I know that progress has been made.
After all on the democratic ticket is an
African-American candidate.
And really that is amazing.
But the history of our laws,
and our history of ignoring our laws,
and our history of re-writing our laws
just to support white supremacy.
Well it SUCKS!

And then - oh God, there is the whole
slavery thing. But fortunately that is not
part of this essay.
Or I would be writing a book instead of a paper.

History sucks. Really. Man is mean.