I think I must have missed it. The slow build and change in the world. I don’t remember it from when I was a child in the 90′s but I might have been too involved in my small world of school then. I remember growing up in the bay area and never worrying about race or flags or anything like that. I didn’t worry about that because it made no difference on my life.
I still don’t worry about them. For the same reason; they still don’t make a difference in my life. I’m not worried about a reasonable person in my life seeing a Rebel flag and turning into a mad killer bent on white power domination. I don’t think owning a gun will make you go out and shoot anyone that rubs me wrong on that day. I also think that trying to hide our past of slave ownership and moonshine running and shady business deals that built this country will only have us repeating all our mistakes. Wasn’t that a saying at one point? “To forget the past is to repeat it”. We as a country have been through some really screwed up shit. We have been through wars and famine, droughts and floods, swarms and riots. If we try to cover up all the bad things that happened in the past then we also take away all the struggles we have overcome. I don’t want to forget our past. I want to embrace it. I want everyone to be proud of who we are as a people. Stop apologizing. Stop hiding. I am American, I am proud, I am ethnic, I am female and I will not ashamed of any of that.