Growing up in Coleridge, the other children of the world were only seen in pictures. We depended on National Geographic to show and tell us about other people and peoples. Reader’s Digest brought us new words each month. We tried to guess their meaning and in the process we learned some new words too.
I can remember when one of those words was prejudice. I had never heard the word. I learned its meaning when I saw black people having to go around to the back entrance of a restaurant to be served. When I asked Mom about it, she told me what they were doing. Of course, “why” came next. Why did they have to do that? She said that was just the way it was.
We rarely ever went to a restaurant. You called them cafes then. And when we did go we sat in the car and Dad went in. He’d get eight hotdogs. There were seven of us in the family – that meant two hotdogs for him and one each for Mom and the rest of us kids. Those were probably the best hotdogs in the world. Somehow even though I was just a little girl I knew that those people going to the back entrance of the café was different than us having to sit in the car, “‘cause that was the way it was.” I can remember thinking that it didn’t seem right.
It wasn’t long after that when the kids that met the bus at the crossroads, the black kids, rode the same bus I rode to school. Integration was another new word I learned. It brought with it the idea that being created equal, we could share the ride home, the classroom, the same hopes and aspirations. While the nation and the south in particular experienced turbulence at that time, it wasn’t a big deal at Coleridge School.
Recently I heard someone tell a Sunday School class that Jesus Loves the Little Children should go like this: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red, yellow, black, brown and white, they are precious in his sight. The teacher went on to say that in the original version a whole group of people was being left out.
Can we afford to leave anyone out? I think not! Did I realize as a child when I sang that that I was leaving anyone out. No, I didn’t but I do now. With Reader’s Digest I increased my word power, and I learned a lot about life and living. The word tolerance, used as a noun describes how I want to be. It means a fair objective and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, politics is different than my own.
The question again – can we afford to leave anyone out? No, a thousand times no. I do think sometimes it’s not the race of a person that is disagreeable but maybe the person themselves. Who’s to say that there hasn’t been times when I’ve rubbed someone the wrong way or I’ve been cantankerous. You can’t blame all Caucasians (which aren’t really white) for my bad attitude.
People – it’s the way we are, not always pleasing in God’s sight or to our fellow man. While there is room for improvement we would all have to admit that we have come a long way. In today’s world we see red, yellow, brown, black and white people and mixes of each. They are the colors of us and we all matter!
Simply Sandy is written by Sandy Jarrell and appears the first Wednesday of each month. Simply put, it’s Sandy waxing wordy once a month about life as she knows it. Jarrell is a native and life-long resident of Coleridge and a librarian at Ramseur Public Library. She can be reached by e-mail at wjarrell@rtmc.net
