Thank you from a Borderlander in South Texas to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu for his efforts to "make straight a wrong turn" by removing four Confederate Era monuments from his city.
Mayor Landrieu's speech, I pray lives in our hearts, minds and most importantly, the textbooks of our nation's school children for generations to come.
"A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them" stated former U.S. president George W. Bush at the opening of the African American museum in Washington D.C. less than a year ago.
Facing the legacy of a difficult war like the Civil War, its foundations and its aftermath from all perspectives is hard work. Landrieu's speech was surgically precise in exposing the cancer of slavery in the Confederacy. He is correct. The Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
Thank you from a former school child in South Texas who I once was. I sang the national anthem, while wondering how "Jose" climbed up on the flagpole to see "by the star's early light." Even in my comical confusion, I felt the swell of connection and pride in being American. My second grader's imagination heard in the patriotic songs a rooting for her to learn her numbers and spelling because the future had a place just for her in this nation on whose soil she stood.
The sense of knowing my country accepted and took me into account was underscored by President Kennedy's words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
The roles of family, church and school are important in a child's development. My cultural inheritance was rich living on the U.S. border. It was informed by what I learned at the knee of my mother, who was reared in Mexico, the media I watched and listened to, and what I learned from books and in school. In my case, tamales and mariachis marched beside Benjamin Franklin, Paul Bunyan, Tom Sawyer and Brenda Starr, the newspaper comic strip woman-reporter in whom I saw my own star's guidance to a career in journalism. My parade of pioneers were inventors, makers and people who ask why.
I admired our founding fathers in the Northeast U.S. and also the settlers of the Americas and Southwest U.S. who came from España, leaving the old world for a chance to farm and prosper. If my ancestors could cross the ocean for a better life, could grow crops and raise cattle with the scant benefit of 17 inches of annual rainfall in the hardscrabble Chihuahuan desert, then I would proudly carry forward in whatever way I could contribute.
Would I become a nun like my teachers? Would I become a public servant in government like JFK? Would I write the great Mexican American novel? Whatever I decided, I knew from living on the border with Mexico that I had a strong advantage in being a U.S. citizen. With so much effort and belief behind me, I felt encouraged
to use my education to explore the opportunities it offered.
I had a wealth of resources in my education and the cultural treasures of my family's Mexican and American cultures, but there was also another force powering my progress which I had not understood until watching Landrieu's speech.
My identity itself of being an American was the fourth leg to complete my table of family, faith and education. I now understand my 'luck of the draw' in being born a U.S. citizen, whose founders saw a place for me in the peace and prosperity of this country and its future. I finally see the role played by America's education systems, colleges and universities, health protections, environmental safeguards, banking regulations, anti-monopoly laws and policies that protect and serve all Americans, including "hyphenated" ones like me.
This inheritance was an invisible hand that rested on my shoulder, pushing and sustaining me to completion of high school and college, successful careers, and engagement in society.
Landau's speech reminds me that the narrative that I believed, that I was being lifted and carried by a movement in humanity's timeline much stronger than race, culture, history or personal wealth, truly fueled my life's journey through difficult times. Here is the evidence: My father's work union protected our family of five when he was killed in a smelter accident. Social Security provided for our family until we five siblings entered college or the military. There were grants, loans and scholarships that paid the way for multiple academic degrees for my family including a nursing degree, two doctorates, one brother's excelling in real estate and another becoming the state's second Texas Ranger of Mexican American descent.
What would it feel like not have that gentle push on your shoulder, not having a sense of the backing of your country and its founders? What would it matter if the lift and support I felt ever present in my personal story had never been there?
Living
on the border, I knew a little of what that might feel like from
first-hand knowledge. The elite and racist old-Europe strain had taken
hold in colonial Mexico and lived on along the border where I lived. I saw it in my own
family, which favored light skin and male privilege. I saw it in school where children from the orphanage were treated differently than the daughters of lawyers and doctors. I saw it in corrupt local police, judges, media and politics.
Later
I experienced the different "Texas" strain of racism first hand in East Texas visiting family, and in
Austin where I studied. But as an antidote, I also benefited from Great
Society initiatives like my mother's evening Adult Education classes, my
low interest college loans and grants and FCC employment rules that for
a brief time opened doors for women and minorities in radio and
television stations.
Landrieu's speech prompts me to ask what national narrative would I have had I had been born African-American? True, my family, faith and education might provide the backing for my journey as a young person, but I would most likely lack my fourth leg of support, my sense of being accepted and taken into account as an American.
The removal of monuments of the Confederate era in New Orleans may or may not prove pivotal in rectifying errors in our nation's history. It's only one step in a long journey, after all. The only way to know for certain is to wait and to see how the next generation of Americans hailing from diverse backgrounds perceives their country as either supporting their humanity and progress, or being on the wrong side of humanity by
celebrating their enslavement.
celebrating their enslavement.
