Support Life

 We have been watching a program called This Is Us.  In many ways it is the most amazing family drama we have ever seen.  The casting, the acting, and the writing are all superb.  It is a show about . . . LIFE.  The show is all about a family, in which two of the family members are white twins, and one is a Black person who was adopted at the same age and timing as the two white twins.  So, the kids are triplets, with the Black baby replacing one of the three White babies who failed to remain alive after birth.  So, the family still essentially has triplets, but one of them happens to be Black.  Kind of an amazing story line that follows the kids and the rest of the family as they all age into adults and old folks.

The Black baby is treated throughout as just one of the family triplets. The kids seem to get along fine and the parent-child relationships seem to remain fine pretty much throughout.

But, as the kids age, that Black baby becomes a highly successful Black man, who marries and creates his own family. Now, largely, the Black thing only begins to intervene as the young Black man ages into adulthood and then confronts the world, wherein Black humans are in fact treated differently.

So, as the story progresses, we get the first touches of what it is like to grow up as a Black Human being in America.  Now, I am approaching 90 and grew up in Manhattan, but then traveled to several parts of the US and that larger world out there.  When I was growing up in Manhattan, I had no real sense of Black Humans. I lived on Second Avenue, near 71^st Street. So far as I know, during the 1930s and 1940s, Black Humans lived in Manhattan, but above 125th Street, in that place known as Harlem. I remember no Blacks in PS 82, where I attended school. And, when we played stickball, marbles and hide and seek on 71^st Street with my gang, all my buds were White.  I would take the subway up to the Bronx to have Sunday dinner with my Grandma and Aunties, but again I came across no Blacks.

And so I continued maturing, entering high school up in Rockland County, Spring Valley by name.  My Mother was afraid we (my bro and me) would get killed playing on the streets in Manhattan, so she moved us across the river. And still, an all-white neighborhood and a largely (but not completely) White high school.

And then I traveled more, going to Stanford out in California, moving about a bit in California as an aerospace engineer, and then moving for four years to India, to help that Indian government use more advanced planning technology managing its booming economy. Now, that was interesting. I did in fact meet some Blacks there, but more, I met and became friends with India’s wide array of people covering the entire spectrum of human skin coloring.  The folks who lived in the north were every bit as white as me, where the folks who lived in the South tended to be even darker than many African folks.  Oh, and they all spoke different languages, although most also spoke English.

So, there I acquired an understanding of multi-colored human gatherings without serious problems. Oh, skin coloration in India is a bit of an issue, but it lacked the dynamic seen here, where Black skin implied a heritage of slavery.

Still, I managed to gain a better understanding of Life as a person of color. Still, this program we watch brought back to me an understanding that Black folks lead different lives, even if they are as educated and commercially successful as their White counterparts.  They are treated differently by many people, and We Whites tend not to even notice.

And so, this program, This Is Us, has brought back to me another view of what being Black and living in America means.

And then I am being besieged with news about Israel and Gaza, where first the HAMAS Arabs launched an attack killing hundreds of innocent Israelis, followed by the inevitable return attack by Israel, killing thousands of innocent Palestinians.  And that mess brings home to me what it might be like to live as an Arab, or an Israeli in that place called The Middle East.

See, when I go out into our town, shopping or meeting people, I am treated as just another old white dude, or maybe, just another member of our Concord/North Carolina community.  So, see, I don’t stand out. Were I Black, or in some way demonstrably Arab, people might well treat me differently.  

And this all makes me think that Life should be the same for all folks, but it isn’t.  I understand that your own personal approach to life will change how that thing called Life treats you. But I also know that, regardless of your own personal best approach, your own Life will be different if you are a person of color, or now, even an Arab. We all need to be aware of this Life approach. So, try to treat folks you meet fairly and try to be pleasant, regardless of the physical differences between you and the folks you meet. It might make their lives a bit nicer, and wouldn’t that be a good thing?