The people your God created?
To the Editor:
Calling Ken Burns! Calling Ken Burns! We need you to get busy on a new documentary. It should cover two current movements in America.
One: What is the prevalence of interracial families in America today? We dwell on events as though they are clearly black or white. But, the faces and skin we see on TV are seldom predominantly black. Most are light brown, tan or almost white. Show us what happens inside the families where one parent is black and one is white. Or other races. What do relatives feel? What do they say? Is there some chance that racial tolerance is progressing in spite of daily stories of prejudice and hatred? What effect are contemporary interracial commercials having on people’s attitudes toward race?
Two: What is happening to wealth in America as a function of interracial children? Please show us that love trumps racial prejudice when people die and leave money to their mixed-race descendants!
Your documentary, Ken, will help people see that America is rapidly becoming a country unlike any other in history.
Most Americans will understand. Most will embrace our new destiny.
In John Steinbeck’s 1952 classic novel East of Eden, we are reminded of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. As told, Cain may have felt rejected by God and in anger killed his brother Abel. In the novel Adam Trask’s Cantonese servant Lee said this to him: “The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.”
Is Lee’s statement not just as true for those who are born in America and yet must bear the weight of knowing that some people believe they are superior to them simply because they have a different set of genes (over which they had no control)? Is prejudice not actually a form of rejection like that which Cain felt?
For those who profess to be Christians are you sure you want to take part in the rejection of some of the people your God created?
Get on it, Ken!
Dave Waldrop
Webster
