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50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education - let freedom ring!
She's a little dolly who will soon be entering kindergarten. Fifty years ago, she would have been classified as 'Negroid' because of her skin pigmentation or - worse - called a mulatto [as may have her father] for I had once married a Puerto Rican woman who bore me a gorgeous son.
Subsequently, my beautiful grandbaby is - hold onto your hats! - Irish, Scot, Polish, Kashubish [yes, Kashubish], German as well as Spanish and native Puerto Rican not to mention African-American [From Kenya? Nigeria? Rwanda? Uganda?] whose specific ancestry may never be known due to the practice some 150 years ago in the United States of those with white pigmentation being allowed to enslave those of whom had a darker one.
On my father's side of the family, my granddaughter is descended from four kings who once ruled England [the first James having been the son of Mary Queen of Scots.] On my mother's? Well, one of her brothers visited some of our distant cousins years ago in the hinterlands of Poland and found them to be as much a group of hard-drinking hillbillies as our ancestors had been.
Of course, on the other hand, archaeologists have long ago produced evidence - from the hominid fossilized remains of Australopithecus [which means 'Southern Ape', incidentally, and has nothing to do with Australia] and such humanoid ancestors as Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus - that our own Homo Sapiens Sapiens [meaning 'Very Wise Man'] line had its origins in South Africa. A claim which has been further substantiated by various studies regarding our mitochondrial DNA.
FOR WE ARE ALL AFRICAN.
AS WE ARE ALL HUMAN.
For these reasons, whether you are a Christian as am I [and believe it is imperative we all love one another as we do ourselves], Muslim [and follow the teachings of Muhammad which underscore a similar importance], Buddhist [who regards an universe in which all should be one yet not one, alone] or other religious or philosophical persuasion, you must surely realize the education of our children is vitally important. It is our strength. For knowledge is the main impetus that has allowed our species to conquer many obstacles.
Well-educated people - not only in America but all over the world - are the neurons in our human body, so to speak, which reach from the intellectual centers in our collective forebrain to a nerve in a wiggling toe.
Let us not forget our children.
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