An Apology to the Young

[cmdr_zoom]

On behalf of my generation, to those that have come after us:
I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that we taught you that homosexuality was something so offensive and wrong that it was okay to use it as a synonym for "stupid."
I'm sorry that we thought it was funny to imitate the uncoordinated motions and speech of those we called "retarded", in order to mock those born that way or anyone we wanted to brand as inferior. I'm sorry that we carelessly conflated those same disabilities with our own lapses of concentration or judgment ("duhhh, I must be retarded today"), to the point that some of you now mouth the words with no idea of the history or hurt behind them.
I'm sorry we taught you to hate and fear people whose skin or church or language was different.

You learned these lessons well, even the ones we did not deliberately teach. You slurped up this poison with your milk and cereal, most of you never questioning it, until it became part of you.
And why should you question it? Why should you not trust us? We were your parents, your aunts and uncles, your older siblings. We were supposed to know better. We were supposed to teach you right from wrong and to be good people. We were supposed to learn from our mistakes and help you to avoid repeating them. We were supposed to make a better world for you to inherit and grow up in.

We failed.
And I am very, very sorry.

Comments

[irielle.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I'm sorry. I know I'm probably being too much of a literalist tonight.

That said:

I don't understand why you're apologizing on behalf of society when I don't think you're literally a part of what you're apologizing for. And as someone presumably from your generation, I kind of resent what you're saying because I'm a mom right now, and I'm working hard to raise a child who knows better. Yes, he's been called gay on the schoolbus but he knows it's wrong, and he knows that he'd be in more trouble if I ever heard him using the word gay as an insult than if I caught him saying "F*&^." When one of his fellow students gauged out a chunk of his cheek on the playground, and I found out that kid had autism, we looked up autism via reputable sources on the Internet, and worked on strategies for relating positively to that kid. I have tons of failings, but I'm doing my best to teach my child that prejudice is wrong, and I don't like being called a failure already! You're indicting our generation before we've finished with our chance to make the world a better place. We may not succeed. We may only make a tiny difference. We may even screw things up even worse. But it's too early to be apologizing, and saying we failed already.

Sorry if I'm being too annoyingly literal about all this. I don't know what inspired your post so I'm probably missing something.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

No, you're right. There's a lot of rhetoric and feeling in this post, and surely not everyone shares responsibility equally. I'm just disheartened at the state of the world (so what else is new?)

The particular petty incident that set it off this time (as compared to all the much more horrible things going on around the world, as they have for centuries and probably will continue as long as we are human, that I have to blot out entirely lest I succumb to suicidal despair) was a bunch of (mostly) young male My Little Pony fans getting very upset that their "beloved" fan mascot had been reworked to be less of a stereotype of the developmentally disabled. They insist, whether out of ignorance or prejudice so deeply internalized they don't register it, that they never meant "derp" that way (something that I, remembering the playgrounds of the 70s, can only stare at) and rage against that great oppressor, Political Correctness. And then, in the name of a show that promotes love and tolerance, harass and issue death threats against those they consider responsible.

Someone, somewhere, has screwed up badly if this is considered "okay."