UNPROTECTED CHILDREN in the USA

PROTECTION, not Advocacy

 

Born under the designation, "Negro" in the United States in 1939.  I was blessed to be protected and educated until I had adequate capabilities to make it on my own  in this country.  I credit my parents (mother through age 6; and father, on  through age 18); they were aided throughout by a grandmother until age 12; and a grandfather through age 19).  My seven surviving brothers and sisters, likewise, were protected and achieved highly productive lives. 

 

My mother graduated from college in 1929; my father left school in the 6th grade to become the family wage-earner; to support a sick mother and his brothers and sisters.  All of my surviving brothers and sisters achieved college degrees, except for one, who was partially blind.

 

This was accomplished in spite of state and federal segregation laws, and segregated labor laws that imposed peonage.   The peonage system was in effect from the collapse of Reconstruction.  I was born and raised in a former slave state.

 

I relate this, because, in 2012, children, in increasing numbers do not make it safely from birth to adulthood, or become adequately prepared for self-sufficiency.  This is the case in spite of improvements in state and federal laws, and the expenditure of astronomical sums in public funds.  On this date, a teacher's union in Chicago is in the streets, on strike, while children suffer without education.  This is no mark of progress!

 

Ever-increasing numbers of youth of color fill our "for-profit" prisons.  Failures in the protection and preparation of these children are a mark of shame for parents, community members, clergy,  public officials, and "experts" in education, social-work.  An elaborate, indifferent and/or hostile "system"   awaits those children in the womb of a poor or non-white mother today; as they face being born into the United States.

 

Dysfunction is what we're dealing with. Financial and other resources abound in churches and "foundations" in this country that reap large tax benefits for promises to eradicate these conditions.  Close examination is needed to explain their monumental failure.

 

Trayvon Martin represents a child born into this "system".  His parents struggled  toprotect and prepare him.  The "system" worked its way on him.  He died trying to defend himself!

 

Stay Vigilant!  We all need to think long and hard about this!

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