Dreamer’s World June 28 2015 - How Do We Explain?

I was wondering, with all the news that has happened in the last week, how will we explain these actions to our children or their children’s children? How will we ever explain that it took nearly 250 years for some Americans to be recognized as full citizens? How will we explain how it took 150 years for a symbol of hatred, division and racism to finally be dragged into the light for all to see?
LGBTQ Americans have finally been recognized under the law with the ability to marry. This has been a generational shift in thinking, to be sure. It remains how the future will judge this generation for finally taking the proper action on this issue. Will we be judged as courageous for righting the wrongs of the past, or will we be seen as the ones who simply realized that things could not continue as they had been? The same question applies to the acceptance of the confederate flag.
I know that we are all congratulating ourselves and patting ourselves on the back for the actions. We do deserve time to rejoice in these actions that are long overdue. We also have to realize that our actions also have to be balanced against our inactions of the recent past. Unless you were born on this day, these things that were wrong were accepted, and for that we who remember will be judged. We can only take solace in the hope that our efforts to overcome these injustices will be sufficient to guarantee a favorable footnote in history, but that is far from certain.
Having said that, how will we move on the other vital issues that are affecting this country? We still stand accused as the generation who allowed a lunatic to murder 20 children in a school and do nothing about it for fear of upsetting some people. It is a shame that those 20 children will never have the chance to grow up and make their own contributions to society. Our silence and inability to act condemn us on that account. As of now, nothing has changed. Protests have been organized, voices have been raised, but we have allowed those in power to maintain their grip of fear over us. This has allowed the evil to go unchecked.
We are the generation that has witnessed the horrors of police brutality, again nothing has been done about it. What will future generations think when they overcome this horror? What will they think about us and our lack of real action on this issue?
What about the MURDER of 9 people in a church? Everyone reacts in the expected way, with shock and outrage, but what will we actually DO about this? We already see the tendency to bury our heads in the sand and hope that the problem goes away rather than addressing the injustices and hatred that spawned this attack head on. When we try the tired excuse that “this is a complicated problem that won’t be solved overnight” what will be the response of the future generations? Silence = complicity in cases like this. We have no justification for inaction other than an acceptance of guilt and refusal to act.
I like to think that the future will be better than the present. I like to think that the problems we have today will be gone in the near future. Then I realize that the “near future” is the length of time that I have spent writing this blog post, and yet nothing has changed. Nothing will change unless a catalyst is introduced. That catalyst has to be each and every one of us!