Prejudice – Marilyn R. Gardner

On Viruses

Published on March 30, 2020April 16, 2020 by Marilyn5 Comments

“There’s really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”
Arundhati Roy

I opened my email this morning to find a message from a friend who I’ve known and worked with for over ten years. The message was asking me to weigh in on a public service announcement (PSA). The subject of the email said just this:

“Anti-racism campaign PSA ideas – need your feedback by the end of today.”

In the body of the email were three scenarios. My job was to read them and comment on which one I thought would be most effective in reaching the public. She had asked for a quick turn around time so before I did anything else, I responded.

It was after I responded that the weight of the email hit me. My friend is from Taiwan. She has lived here for years and is an amazing community member and activist for Asian women’s health. We’ve worked on some extraordinary projects together through the years, projects that don’t make the news but have a powerful effect on the community.

In the midst of a pandemic crisis, my friend is having to worry about and work on an anti-racism campaign. She holds the dual burden of protecting her family and community’s health along with the weighty burden of protecting their safety

I know the excuses. I know the fear that is gripping people. I know what I do when I fear, when I’m insecure, when I want to blame – and I’m quite sure that what I feel is symptomatic of the rest of us. But it is so wrong.

I appeal to all of us, but especially those of us who are white and may have friends that are crafting and spreading memes and messages that spread laughter and racism. We must open our mouths, our keyboards, and whatever other ways we communicate to speak up and out against this racism.

The focus on anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment comes from the myth that the corona virus is a Chinese virus.

Here are the facts: This corona virus was unknown until an outbreak in Wuhan, China in late 2019. “Shortly after the epidemic began, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and made the data available to researchers worldwide. The resulting genomic sequence data has shown that Chinese authorities rapidly detected the epidemic and that the number of COVID-19 cases have been increasing because of human to human transmission after a single introduction into the human population.” [Source: Scripps Research Institute]

Rather than blaming China, we need to begin thanking them for identifying the virus and going to massive lengths to quarantine a huge population. Yes, their government had missteps (just as most governments did and are daily facing the consequences of those missteps.) This piece is not about government action or inaction. It’s about the wrongs that are being committed against a group of people under the guise of a virus.

Here are some truths about racism: It is a virus. It has to find a host. It cannot be spread without people -it lacks the ability to thrive and reproduce outside of a host body. Racism can mutate. It takes root in a willing host, then it mutates and changes, depending on the particular issue or people group. The racism virus is also like other viruses in that it is unsophisticated. It lacks the ability to live independently. It can be invisible, but it manifests itself in outward, visible symptoms.

The outward symptoms we are seeing of this virus are many. Spitting on people, physical violence, racial slurs, yelling ‘there’s a corona’ as they pass by someone who appears to be Asian, memes that attack a specific group, hate mail, invisible blame that comes out in subtle ways are a few of this disease.

And here’s the thing – Corona virus will eventually go away. But the virus of racism? That’s a lot harder. It takes root and stays in its host a long, long time. It can’t be treated with traditional cures and medicine. Instead, it needs to be rooted out with repentance and healed in relationship.

So here is my plea to all of us: May we not be willing hosts to this virus. May we see it before it takes root and run far away. May we examine our hearts and souls. May we refuse to pass on memes and cartoons that can damage others. May we learn the facts about the illness. May we call or email our friends who are from Chinese or other Asian families and check up on them because let’s face it – the American public are not good at distinguishing where people are from – right now, if you even look remotely Asian, you can be a target. May we always be ready to speak up and speak out in support of someone who is facing racism in a store, on a street, or in a public place.

Most of all, may our inner examination of heart and soul continue – where does racism find a willing host and what am I going to do about it?

“We’ve all been exposed. Not necessarily to the virus (maybe…who even knows). We’ve all been exposed BY the virus. Corona is exposing us. Exposing our weak sides. Exposing our dark sides. Exposing what normally lays far beneath the surface of our souls, hidden by the invisible masks we wear. Now exposed by the paper masks we can’t hide far enough behind. Corona is exposing our addiction to comfort. Our obsession with control. Our compulsion to hoard. Our protection of self. Corona is peeling back our layers. Tearing down our walls. Revealing our illusions. Leveling our best-laid plans. Corona is exposing the gods we worship: Our health Our hurry Our sense of security. Our favorite lies. Our secret lusts. Our misplaced trust. Corona is calling everything into question: What is the church without a building? What is my worth without an income? How do we plan without certainty? How do we love despite risk? Corona is exposing me. My mindless numbing. My endless scrolling. My careless words. My fragile nerves. We’ve all been exposed. Our junk laid bare. Our fears made known. The band-aid torn. The masquerade done. So what now? What’s left? “

Clean hands Clear eyes Tender hearts. What Corona reveals, God can heal. Come Lord Jesus. Have mercy on us. As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.”

*I do not know the author of what I have printed. If any of you do, please contact me and I will give credit where credit is due.

A Life Overseas – “But they aren’t as smart as I am”….

Published on January 8, 2018January 8, 2018 by Marilyn4 Comments

As a public health nurse working with underserved communities in Massachusetts in cancer prevention, I’ve been greatly challenged as we look at racism and inequality in communities that we serve. We are doing this because the evidence of health disparities in non-white communities is overwhelming. One of the ways to begin to address this is by seeing our programs and communities through the lens of racial equity, looking at why, historically, these communities have had worse health outcomes. Studies show that much of this is a result of prejudice and bias on the part of health care professionals; some of it conscious, but much of it unconscious.

It is hard, hard work. Like looking into a mirror and seeing the flaws on my skin, I come face to face with my own prejudices and my own wrong beliefs. I have continually had to confront my deep need for forgiveness and healing.

In every area of life, racism, prejudice, and bias exist – and that includes missions. We are an incomplete body when all we see is white leadership; when our missions conferences are overwhelmingly led by speakers who look like we do. We are a crippled group if we are only led by those who look like us, think like us, and act like us. And we are desperately in need of grace and forgiveness if we think this is okay.

In writing about racism and prejudice, I must first acknowledge my own inadequacy in talking about these things; there are far better and wiser voices, but in obedience I’m opening the door to a conversation that I pray will lead to something good. I also must admit that it is not an easy conversation to have, but it is too important to avoid.

I grew up as a privileged, little white girl in a country where people had varying shades of brown skin. It took me a long time to recognize my prejudice and even longer to be aware of my privilege. Some of my recognition of this came when I began to write. The more I wrote, the more I articulated my perspective, the more I was reminded that that’s what it was – my perspective. I viewed the world through a particular lens and that lens affected all my experiences.

As I moved on to writing Passages Through Pakistan, I realized how my childhood was affected by growing up in a land that had been colonized not many years before I came into the world.

“There was a darker side to high tea I would only confront much later. This pleasure that so delighted me as a little girl was a survival of Pakistan’s colonial past. The “British Raj” era, or the era of British rule, lasted for almost 100 years. It included the entire Indian subcontinent. Pakistan was born in 1948, and my parents arrived only five years later. I was completely blind to my privilege as a little, white, English-speaking girl. I cringe now at what I took for granted.

Those who were white and English-speaking went to the head of the line. Those who were white and English-speaking could casually criticize Pakistanis without thought. We traveled where we pleased, we went first class or third class on trains –it was our choice. We were educated and would have a world of opportunity. I thank God for parents that had the conscience and determination to discipline me and teach me in various ways that I was not better than those around me. Still, with a strong personality and ego to match, those lessons sometimes fell on ears unwilling to listen and a heart that would need continual reminders that privilege is not something I earned or deserved.”*

When I went back overseas, I was no longer a child. As an adult I had to confront some of my ugly and just plain wrong thoughts. Among them were these subtle, and deeply dangerous thoughts….

Read the rest here at A Life Overseas.

Exploring Third Culture Kid Bigotry – A Repost

Published on September 13, 2016September 13, 2016 by Marilyn6 Comments

“It’s one thing to criticize a culture. It’s another to see that the culture being criticized is formed partly in response to other cultures, and that those cultures are, in turn, worth criticizing. This is why explaining human behavior is so difficult: the buck never stops. The explanations don’t come to an obvious, final resting place.” The Lives of Poor White People, The New Yorker, September 12, 2016

Three years ago I wrote a piece called Exploring TCK Bigotry. It was an effort to better understand my own prejudice as well as some of the prejudices I have encountered in other third culture kids. I am reposting today with some changes.

To the non third culture kid – let me explain: Our life circumstances have gifted us with many things — a love of travel, flexibility, a strong identification with others who have lived abroad for extended periods of time, and a world view that extends miles, nations, and borders past our passport countries.

But along with that we struggle with being invisible immigrants – we may look like those around us but we think so differently that we feel like chickens in the midst of humans, or aliens in the midst of natives. We are those who feel ‘other.’ We don’t know the rules and make massive mistakes in our passport countries. We can be arrogant about what we know and insecure about what we don’t know. We are the ones without a driver’s license, without the understanding of the hidden rules of a culture, without the common language of idioms and pop culture.

And though it’s difficult to admit, we are prone to prejudice and bigotry in our passport countries. This is ironic. We who are marked by flexibility, adaptability, maturity and fun suddenly display disdain and inability to relate to those around us. What causes the disconnect? What causes the dissonance?

Mark Twain wrote these words years ago:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Those of us who are third culture kids love the quote. “That’s right!” we loudly proclaim. “That’s what’s wrong with other people!” “That’s what’s wrong with Trump supporters.”

We forget that people, that human behavior is much more complex than the quote. We forget that we have met travelers who display extreme prejudice and others who haven’t traveled who love learning about the one who is ‘other.’

So the quote turns on us — rather like pointing the finger at someone, suddenly realizing the other fingers point back in our faces? What happens when we take all that life experience — travel, cultural humility established through many years of negotiating cross-cultural interactions, our ability to understand dual causality and be capable of complexity — and turn it into a weapon against those who have not traveled?

We become that which we dislike. We become snobs. We become narrow-minded in a reverse way. We become the dictionary definition of a bigot “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.”

My faith tradition comes down hard on prejudice and arrogance. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.”*

“That’s simplistic” I want to cry out “It doesn’t take into consideration that this is hard for me, that I struggle with feeling ‘other’ and so out of step with those around me, that this is all I have.” The words above from the Holy Scriptures dance in my head but they need to be imprinted on my heart.

In a piece I wrote a couple of years ago, my brother Stan responded with this:

“So my problem is this and more – I find myself alternating among prejudices depending on where I am geographically. Sometimes I find myself feeling prejudice against my passport countrymen; then against my birth nation; then against my fellow TCK generation and, not surprisingly, mostly then against myself for feeling this way. Thankfully the opposite happens more and more where I find myself rejoicing in the diversity of cultures, appreciation for my passport country, and, again not surprisingly, at peace with myself.”

And hear this for it is critically important to the discussion:

“The degree of my prejudice seems directly related to the amount of direct and personal interaction I have with people of a variety of cultures (listening, learning) or, on the other hand, how much time I spend avoiding such interaction, leading to introspection and bigotry.”

When you sit down and learn about someone, see them as a person and get to know them, it changes the dynamic.

I learn that the person who has lived in the same town since childhood went to a Catholic school in a poor area of Boston and tells amazing and humorous stories about the priests and nuns. I learn that a friend with an Irish background grew up in an all Italian neighborhood and learned early on, as she went from house to house eating pasta before finally heading home to her mom’s boiled cabbage dinners, that she liked Italian food better. I learn that someone who has lived in the same town her whole life is a voracious reader and can talk about all kinds of places that I’ve never been with a knowledge far beyond mine.

I remember that this is all about relationship. It was the key to loving my adopted countries, it continues to be the key to living in my passport country. As an Adult Third Culture Kid, I’ve had to re-learn the value of relationships, of give and take, of knowing and being known as a fundamental antidote to my TCK bigotry.

The antidote can be summed up like this: When I learn the story of another, when I’m willing to be in relationship, it’s hard to remain a bigot. When I hear someone’s story, I see them as a complex human being who is shaped by culture, background, and external forces.

I still have a lot to learn – this is a process and my habits of dismissing people don’t die easily. But as my brother said: Thankfully the opposite happens more and more where I find myself rejoicing in the diversity of cultures, appreciation for my passport country, and, again not surprisingly, at peace with myself.

What about you? No matter who you are or where you live, prejudice and bigotry can be subtle. Do you struggle with prejudice and if so, what is your antidote?

*Philippians 2:3

The Anatomy of a Hate

Published on July 23, 2015July 23, 2015 by Marilyn11 Comments

It is as I am reading Unbroken that I suddenly feel a rage toward a people group I don’t even know.

Unbroken, a book by Laura Hillenbrand, is an epic story of the Pacific side of World War II. It is a tribute to brilliant writing and detailed research. The story focuses on the life of Louis Zamperini and his experience during World War II. Zamperini is an Olympic runner and a war hero and the book took seven years to write. The result is extraordinary.

It’s while I am reading about the horrors of the POW camps where Zamperini was held captive that I begin to feel the stirrings of hate.

The documented evil perpetrated on prisoners of war is indescribable, and yet the author describes it. The inhumane treatment at the hands of prison guards, the worst being a lower level officer of discipline, strips the prisoners of all dignity as they are starved, beaten, and forced into submission.

But what is fascinating is what I see happening in my own heart. None of this was done to me, none of this was done to family members, yet, I find myself hating these men. I hate the prison guards. I hate their arrogance. I hate their treatment of fellow man. I hate the starvation, exhaustion, and disease that was rampant in the camps and perpetrated by evil guards.

The frightening reality is that I begin judging an entire people group by the actions of prison guards, who – themselves humiliated and degraded – were inflicting the same on these prisoners.

I find myself condemning all Japanese people because I am reading a book that describes the awful realities of war. I forget about my friend Lara, whose father is Japanese. I forget about the many Japanese friends we made in Chicago during our first year of marriage. I forget that the civilian population of Japan suffered greatly during the war, two of their cities bombed into oblivion. I forget all that. My heart is lost in hate and rage.

I toss and turn in my anger and rage and halfway through the night, I realize I am a perfect example of the anatomy of a hate. And is this not what I am troubled about with Franklin Graham’s public statement about Muslims? That he has judged a billion people based on the actions of a few? As I point my finger at him, I feel fingers pointing back at me and I hate it. This was not the intent of the author. This was the result of my reaction to the words I was reading. The intent of the author was to show the extraordinary power of the human spirit, the resilience of the human will to live and to forgive.

I think about the human heart and how it can be influenced. I think about stories that come down through generations of people – stories that cause hate and bitterness to breed or offer the opportunity to show forgiveness and resilience. Stories of slavery; of the Armenian genocide; of the Nazi death camps; of the Spanish Inquisition; of partition between India and Pakistan. They all have the same thing in common – violence and evil perpetrated to large groups of people. And as the stories are told they can breed prejudice and hate. Prejudice and hate left unchecked, unforgiven, lead into years of conflict.

Ultimately this is all about the human heart and its ability to be deceived and influenced. We cannot hope to rid ourselves and our world of prejudice and hate without a change in the human heart. Education can only take us so far – ultimately its about the heart. And no one can change the human heart but the God whose image we bear.

So I stop myself and I ask for forgiveness, for allowing hate to breed in me through the pages of a book. I pray for grace. I pray that I will immediately respond to the voice that offers Truth and Grace, the voice that reminds me we are made in the image of God. And though that image is sometimes distorted beyond recognition, it can be restored to beauty through a God who redeems.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” CS Lewis

Exploring TCK Bigotry

Published on May 21, 2013March 19, 2015 by Marilyn58 Comments

With thanks to Stan Brown for the topic and the wisdom of his response to yesterday’s post….

This one may hurt; may pack a punch and result in a bruise. But bruises heal and scars show that our hearts are alive to pain and growth.

My post yesterday hit several of my nerves – I regretted posting it as soon as I hit publish. But as is often the case when we are honest, others come forward with the same struggles and share wisdom.

It was my brother Stan’s comment that challenged me to look further at prejudice and bigotry in the third culture kid: “There’s a series topic here for you Marilyn: Exploring TCK bigotry……”

Full disclaimer: In this area, among sinners I am chief.

But along with that we struggle with being invisible immigrants – people who look like those who surround them but think so differently that they feel like chickens in the midst of humans, or aliens in the midst of natives. We are those who feel ‘other’. We don’t know the rules and make massive mistakes in our passport countries. We can be arrogant about what we know and insecure about what we don’t know. We are the only ones without a license, without a sense of fashion, without the common language of idioms and pop culture.

And though it’s difficult to voice, we are prone to prejudice and bigotry in our passport countries. This is ironic. That which makes its mark on us with indelible ink and shouts flexibility, adaptability, maturity and fun is suddenly hidden under disdain and inability to relate to those around us. Mark Twain wrote these words years ago – and those of us who are third culture kids love these words:

Yet what happens when that quote we love turns on us? Like pointing the finger at someone, and suddenly realizing the other fingers point back in our faces? What happens when we take all that life experience — travel, cultural humility established through many years of negotiating cross-cultural interactions, our ability to understand dual causality and be capable of complexity — and turn it into weapons against those who have not traveled?

We become that which we dislike. We become narrow-minded in a reverse way. We become the dictionary definition of a bigot “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices”.

My faith tradition comes down hard on prejudice and arrogance. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,”*

Stan’s comment from above didn’t end there. It goes on and challenges me further:

And hear this for it is critically important to the discussion:

When you sit down and learn about someone, see them as a person and get to know them, it changes the dynamic. I learn that the person who has lived in the same town since childhood went to a Catholic school in a poor area of Boston and tells amazing and humorous stories about the priests and nuns. I learn that a friend with an Irish background grew up in an all Italian neighborhood and learned early on, as she went from house to house eating pasta before finally heading home to her mom’s boiled cabbage dinners, that she liked Italian food better. I learn that someone who has lived in the same town her whole life is a voracious reader and can talk about all kinds of places where I’ve never been with a knowledge far beyond mine.

And I begin to remember – it’s all about relationship. It was the key to loving my adopted countries, it continues to be the key to living in my passport country. As an Adult Third Culture Kid, I’ve had to re-learn the value of relationships, of give and take, of knowing and being known as a fundamental antidote to my TCK bigotry.

The antidote can be summed up like this: When I learn the story of another, when I’m willing to be in relationship, it’s hard to remain a bigot.

What about you? No matter who you are or where you live, prejudice and bigotry can be subtle. Do you struggle with prejudice and if so, what is your antidote?

Take a look at this piece, published in Between Worlds – Essays on Culture and Belonging called “Saudade” – a Word for the Third Culture Kid

*Philippians 2:3

When Prejudice Looks Back from the Mirror

Published on May 20, 2013April 1, 2014 by Marilyn25 Comments

mirror - quote 2

I took a test recently that showed I was biased towards patients from the Middle East and prejudiced against those from North America — specifically the Northeast.

“That’s ridiculous!” I thought. I am one – how can I be prejudiced against myself, against my family, against all my white American friends? But the way I answered the questions was overwhelmingly in favor of the final result.

When I look in the mirror, prejudice looks back at me.

I will forgive someone from the Middle East almost anything and people who were born and raised in America have to work to earn my trust and respect. And I realize that this is what I rail against in other people. It’s prejudice. It is treating one as valuable and the other as not. It is believing that one can do no wrong, while the other has all sorts of flaws that are irreconcilable.

When prejudice looks back at you from the mirror it’s ugly, and the face that looked back at me had prejudice written all over it.

But there was more that I caught sight of in that mirror, mirror on the wall.

Because she was there again with that slightly scoffing look on her face. I vacillate between wanting to kill her, being completely ashamed of her, and worst of all – being just a tad proud of her.

‘She’ was the pharisee I see in the mirror. The one who judges silently even as she extends a hand to the one in need. The one who thinks she’s better than others.

What do you do when what looks back at you from the mirror is so in need of an attitude change, a cleansing of the heart?

I fall on my knees and pray the ‘Jesus Prayer’ “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, A Sinner”. And I go forward in Grace with a prayer on my lips that the power of the cross to transform can redeem and radically change that person looking back at me from the mirror.

Because that’s the Gospel message that I believe and proclaim with all my heart.

Martin Luther King Day – Not on the List

Published on January 23, 2012January 19, 2015 by Marilyn10 Comments

Robynn wrote this piece three years ago. Today I am re-posting in honor of Martin Luther King Day. This day is critically important – to remember, to honor, and to think about what needs to change in our world.

Robynn’s post is an insightful look at prejudice and exclusion. Read on and join in the conversation in the comment section.

Two weeks ago our middle school daughter, Adelaide, came home from school troubled. The first week of every quarter they are allowed to sit where they like at lunch time. However, after that, on a specific day of Principal Hoyt’s choosing, they are forced to lock into one seat where they’ll sit at lunch for the rest of that quarter. This is a painful process. And it’s especially painful for our quiet child Adelaide. Adelaide takes her lunch from home and so while her best friend goes through the lunch line Adelaide must bear the weight of the responsibility of deciding where they should sit. It usually works out just fine and if Jessica doesn’t agree with the spot Adelaide has chosen, they move. On this particular day two weeks ago, Adelaide approached a half empty table. She was told there was no room there. She asked if she could sit at the end of the table. The girls smiled, shook their heads, apologized and said there was no room. She then went and sat with Lindsey and Emily.

“Oh you weren’t on the list either,” Lindsey said.

Adelaide was puzzled, “What list?”

“We asked if we could sit there too but they said we weren’t on the list,” Lindsey explained.

“There’s a list?” Adelaide was slightly shocked, “Was I on it?”

“I guess not,” Lindsey said, “Since they didn’t let you sit there!”

Martin Luther King Day has just passed and Lowell and I just finished watching the PBS Eyes on the Prize six part documentary outlining as the subtitle indicates, America’s Civil Rights Years. The back jacket describes the series: “Rare reflections open the door to understanding America’s struggle for equality…key witnesses describe the extraordinary role ordinary people played in shaping the civil rights movement….”

Just down the road from where we live is Topeka, Kansas. Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education as a Supreme Court ruling set the final scene in the Civil Rights drama in motion. The NAACP chose Topeka because Topeka was already on the road to full integration. They were ready. The NAACP was certain of a victory. The Topeka high schools were already integrated. At the elementary school level they had taken the “Separate but Equal” motto to heart. Their segregated elementary schools were all designed by the same architect and were exact replications of one another. Black children and white children had access to the same buildings and the same text books. Topeka was ready. In fact they went ahead and integrated the schools before the case was even closed.

It continues to astound me, a guest in this country– a guest who has lived most of her life in foreign countries surrounded by people marvelously different from me– it continues to astound me how long racial segregation and prejudice had its grip on this nation. The United States of America is known for scientific discovery, technological advancement, religious and personal freedoms and her broad- sweeping noble constitution which declares unashamedly the equality of all. How is it possible that early constitution writers didn’t see the natural outworking of their words into everyday life? How is it possible that this document which in its introduction declares, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” could be written in 1787 and yet slaves not be emancipated until 1863? How is it further possible that here, in the US, whites were kept separate from blacks long after the federal government had mandated the application of that same constitution? It mystifies me.

And yet it probably shouldn’t. As Adelaide’s experience in the lunch room shows, we all carry the seeds of prejudice, judgement, unkindness, discrimination inside our souls. We make lists. We divide people. We show disdain. We label. We say, “you’re not sitting at my table”. We even say it with an apology and a smile,
“Sorry, there’s no room …for you …here… at our table”. And so it begins.

When Adelaide was in fifth grade we had her tested, at the strong encouragement from her teachers, for the “gifted” program. She missed it by 2 points. When Adelaide was in sixth grade she was participating in the gifted program even though, technically, she didn’t qualify. There was only one other boy in the program and they needed a second child for Cooper to compete against, play games with, do research together etc. We understood. That was fine. Besides Adelaide benefitted from it and enjoyed it.

However, it came time for the gifted participants to go on a field trip. Adelaide could go but she wouldn’t be able to ride on the bus. Policy was policy. She hadn’t technically qualified so she wasn’t technically gifted and wouldn’t technically be allowed to ride the bus. (I suspect it was insurance coverage that kept her off the bus!)

Irony of ironies, the field trip was to Topeka to visit the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education National Historical Site. And Adelaide couldn’t ride the bus. Lowell and Adelaide talked on the drive down about labels and false divisions we place on people. He told her about the other groups of students who weren’t allowed to ride the buses either, but for other reasons. It was a profound lesson for our whole family.

As long as we continue to label people, as long as we continue to identify people by anything other than their character or their spirits, as long as we qualify our stories with colour, as long as we keep people off our bus and away from our tables, as long as all that continues to happen, we will continue to see the seeds of prejudice and discrimination grow up into weeds of division.