Foot Soldier

I am the first to say I am privileged to be a white middle-class young woman. As I am quick to remind people, I have never been called an acceptation to my race, though I have kindly been called a “ball buster” as well as other derogatory terms not suitable for print. I have had every advantage other young women my age have enjoyed with the personal freedoms of all other white middle-class heterosexual Americans. It all hit me the other day during a conversation with my parents about their recollections of the Jim Crow South, something I never had to experience. In a way I am glad I never saw the swimming pools labeled “white” or “colored”; but sometimes I wish it were my memory. Maybe I would appreciate how far we’ve come more.
Around the age of nine or so, after learning about the atrocities of Selma and the Civil Rights Movement, I swore to my parents I would have been a Freedom Rider. Last year I revisited the scene of the crime and the victory to remember Bloody Sunday against the wishes of my parents. It was there I met many of the Foot Soldiers. My body had chills all day, from the moment I shook Barack Obama’s hand, to the moment I spoke with one of the original Foot Soldiers. Though a few members of my family tried to keep many of the people I encountered from obtaining their freedoms, there I was nearly half a century later, part of it.
While I often glamorize the passion and politics of the 1960s, I have come to the realization that we are fighting our own battle now. From being savagely attacked on September 11th, to people still being denied their fundamental rights; we are in the thick of it, folks.
During that conversation with my parents about the segregated South I realized while much has changed, much still awaits reform. Whether you agree with homosexuality or not, it is not going away. Homosexual couples still, in the 21st century, lack the legal right to marry and in many states, adopt. The argument against this: that homosexuals will breed homosexual children. All the homosexuals I know have heterosexual (and most of the time married) parents! Nonetheless, they are treated as freaks, just as people who were considered different nearly half a century ago.
But it isn’t just same sex couples that lives their lives tainted by society. I have forever had a crush on the R&B singer Usher Raymond and will never forget that day in middle school when I was called out for having his picture in my locker. I went home crying to my mother, only to learn that some people would rather white and black people not date. It never made sense to me, but I will always hear the justification in the back of my head: “It would be hard on the children.” To be quite honest I sometimes envy darker skin, and obviously others do too because most people I know visit the tanning salon on a regular basis. We are obviously trying to make ourselves darker, what could be wrong with a biological tan?
I often imagine the conversation I may have with my children years from now when they cannot even fathom the idea of people with darker skin being oppressed and confused with the notion that all couples and genders didn’t always have the same rights. Maybe they’ll be foot soldiers, too.