Monday, January 21, 2013

Everyday Should be MLK Day when raising kids

Pin It Now! Everyday Should be MLK Day when raising kids.  Teaching your kids equality and love for their friends of all colors, religions and sexes is your duty as a parent.  

I am raising my 2 little Bears with a strong Jewish religious background, but that does not mean that they will not have friends of other religious or colors.   They will learn to love everyone.  I am so proud that they will grow up in a world that has made it possible for them to have friends with 2 mommies or 2 daddies and never know that this was not always possible.

I am ashamed to admit that my own family was at one point torn apart by racism by my own Maternal Grandmother who would not let her sister-in-laws bi-racial children be part of the family.  I am so glad that my own children will grow up to know and love their cousins and not ever look at their skin color as different then their own.  We were so disgusted by what my Grandmother did, we did not name Baby Bear or Mini Bear after her (a tradition done to honor a deceased family member).  

I really hate even to use the word different colors, because that is further pointing out the difference between you and me.  When I look at other people, I try to see just that 'people' and not a label of what that person.  I know that I too am guilty of not always doing this, but I try very hard.  

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, bearded at Left, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1968 antiwar protest.

I think that Martin Luther King Jrs 'I had a Dream' also should be a battle cry for the Anti Bullying movement.  If we all saw one another as people then we would not bully. 

My favorite statement shirt is one by Defeat the Label

 Sadly, we still have to DREAM about equality and MLK's speech is not yet a reality.

I have a Dream
{part of a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr in 1963}

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.

photo from examiner.com

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