This Country Is Killing Our Children (2019 Holy Innocents Day Thought)

In all the things going on there was a story that probably passed you by.

A new study* from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows suicide rates for African American children ages 13-19 nearly doubled between 2001 and 2017 (numbers are higher for Black girls) . And for children ages 5-12, African American boys have the highest suicide rate of any group of children.

Racism already makes it hard for Black children to survive being born and making it to their first birthday (I’ve talked about that on this blog many times). And we know that racism in all its forms makes it hard for Black people to live healthy lives.

It’s Holy Innocents Day. I try to always say something on this day, but today I’m mostly out of words.

This country is killing our Black children.

The Holy Innocents were slaughtered by decree from a rabid leader. Black children are dying because the whole system is set up to destroy us; physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

This country is killing our Black children.

 

*- The study from the American Academy of Pediatrics is here

 

Author’s note 1/02/20: I knew there was the possibility that someone would come to the comments and “well actually…” this post. It happened today. That comment will never appear as I deleted it. You are welcome to “well actually…” the numbers all you want, but you will not do that here. Nor will you make the focus of this the rise in suicide among grown white men. Do that on your own blog or wherever you write.

 

 

Mamas Don’t Let Their Babies Grow Up To Have Their Weddings At Plantations

Well…I do declare…I didn’t know that there were so many unreconstructed Confederates in Unitarian Universalism. I know there are quite a number of race scientists, but the unreconstructed Confederates are a surprise.

Because there can be no other reason that there are so many Unitarian Universalists who don’t see why there shouldn’t be weddings at southern plantations (or, in less romantic terms, forced labor camps). Or are saying that Color of Change was wrong for trying to get entities like The Knot to no longer carry advertisements for plantations.

What I do no understand is why anyone would want to have their wedding at a place that only exists because of forced labor, mass rape, and forced pregnancy and birth? Or why some Unitarian Universalists, who purport to believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, are trying to “both sides” this.

Yet…I really shouldn’t be surprised. Most studies show that whites, including those who call themselves liberal or progressive, think that the Civil War was about states’ right, not slavery. If one looks at the textbooks schoolchildren read, slavery is glossed over, the Civil War happened for every reason besides the real reason (the real reason is slavery, by the way), and Reconstruction gets a paragraph–if it’s mentioned at all. And, with few exceptions, U.S. popular culture doesn’t show how brutal chattel slavery was.

But, back to some of my co-religionists. This shouldn’t be that hard, friends. There are many problematic places in the U.S. (and let’s not forget that the U.S. itself is stolen land), yet none are as romanticized as the forced labor, mass rape, and forced pregnancy and birth places known as plantations. The only reason those places exist is because chattel slavery happened there.

So…unless you are Scarlet O’Hara, do not have your wedding at Tara. And, if you are a Unitarian Universalist, stop supporting people who think that forced labor, mass rape, and forced pregnancy and birth camps are just pretty and “historic.”

 

articles about the Color of Change campaign can be found here, here, here, here