I’m an idealist. I go to church and sing of peace and tolerance; I come home and get teary-eyed every Memorial Day and Fourth of July reading about American ideals.
How then do I wrap my brain around the fact that there are people in this world who would throw acid in a child’s face because she has the same gorgeous cappuccino-colored skin as my daughter?
I’ve been reading Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High, by Melba Patillo Beals, a journalist who was one of the “Little Rock Nine” who were the first African-American students to attend Little Rock Central High School in the late 1950s. There was a year-long campaign by other students to drive the African-American students to give up. Beals tells of nearly losing her eyesight when another student threw acid in her face. The soldier assigned to guard her rinsed her eyes in the bathroom sink over and over, which the doctor said probably saved most of her eyesight.
How do I believe that a child would do this? How do I believe that someone would teach their child to do this? And this isn’t the Civil War-era, either. The people who did this and the people who taught them to are still alive.
It seems hopeless not knowing who to blame. The kids were doing what their parents told them. I’d like to believe that the parents were some kind of victims of society, warped from an early age…but it’s pretty impossible to believe that any kind of upbringing would lead you to teach your child to throw acid in another child’s face. That’s a confrontation with real evil. Sometimes I think, “in spite of all the people who’ve tried, it’s still with us. Maybe it always will be.”
Then I remember the words of an old Christmas carol, “The Carol of the Bells”.
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
“And in despair I bowed my head.
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said.
‘For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.’
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.’”
Please see these related blogs:
Would They Have Done That to Me?
A Memorial Day Thank-You to Those Who Served