I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker, aka: The Gypsy Mama, today for the 5-minute Friday word prompt!<\/p>\n
Todays prompt is: Race<\/p>\n
Race<\/p>\n
The obvious comes to mind- running a race, race around the block, water racing, etc. But the first thing that came to my \u00a0mind was race of a different color. The world I grew up in was full of signs in the deep south- you know the ones. They are always shown in the documentaries on civil rights. But as a child, though I knew what they meant on the surface, that’s just where they lay- on the surface. They had no meaning for me where my heart lived.<\/p>\n
My favorite song to sing when i was little was Jesus Loves the Little Children. To me it meant that all of us children were loved by Him. I grew up as an Air Force Brat, so in my world the race lines were not so evident as they were when I went to Tennessee to visit relatives. Race just wasn’t important on any level to me. We were all His children. How different it became as I grew up with the Civil Rights Movement and the integration of schools in the news daily for a while.<\/p>\n
As a child our neighbors in San Antonio were Hispanic- they were my across-the-street friends and we played together all the time. In third grade, I learned what birthday celebrations really were meant to be like when I went to a Hispanic classmate’s party. All day, games, music, grilling and eating. Wow! I wanted to be in her family!<\/p>\n
When we lived in Germany, my upstairs neighbors were African American- I ate dinner with them a lot since their daughter was my friend.They were the ones I ran to when the grandmother\/mother was in the hospital and the grandfather\/father was passed out from drinking.<\/p>\n
My best friend in 10th grade-back in San Antoni-was an African American young man in my German Class. His name was Reginald. I will never forget him.<\/p>\n
When I was a junior in high school moved to Deep East Texas where race suddenly had meaning. There, the schools were still segregated for the most part. There were only 5 african american young people in the high school I went to- and they were students because their parents were employed there as teachers. The schools were not totally de-segregated until after I graduated. It happened the same year girls were first allowed to wear pants to school- not jeans- just pants- nice pants.<\/p>\n
That fall, as I was away in college, my family sent me cuttings of the local newspaper showing pictures of the first day of school at the high school- there were the deacons of our church with shotguns standing outside- lining the sidewalk in front of the school- that’s when I realized that race had become a four-letter word. \u00a0How sad for all of them. I just didn’t understand what all the comotion was about.<\/p>\n
I still sing Jesus loves the Little Children- and I mean every word of it. He loves all of us, as broken and biased we stumble through this world of prejudice, elete-ism, exclusive-ism, and race-ism. Maybe race should be a four-letter word. Then we could ban it.<\/p>\n
We are all His children. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.<\/p>\n
Ding.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker, aka: The Gypsy Mama, today for the 5-minute Friday word prompt! Todays prompt is: Race Race The obvious comes to mind- running a race, race around the block, water racing, etc. But the first thing that came to my \u00a0mind was race of a different color. The world I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[86,84,148,122,11,289],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-five-minute-fridays","tag-5-minute-fridays","tag-fmf","tag-gods-grace","tag-gods-love","tag-jesus","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsfromthehomefront.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}