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It's a difficult and painful process to examine one’s own childhood conditioning, but it's necessary as a parent in today's world with so many voices tearing us apart. My son is now old enough to vote in a US election, but in '08 he was only 8 as we watched Barack Obama become President.
When I was 5, I met a new playmate in a Los Angeles playground. He had very brown, shiny skin, a huge toothy smile and a head of close-cropped, curly black hair. I was fascinated. I remember that he giggled when I reached up and rubbed his head. The next thing I knew, I was dragged across the playground to a washroom where my hands were scrubbed in ice cold water while I was scolded for touching things that could make me sick.
It was America in the late 1950s. Facebook was a woman’s magazine, a skateboard was a foot-long piece of wood with a broken rollerskate nailed on the bottom, kids sat on neighborhood street corners and sold kool-aid for 5 cents a cup, dads worked, moms cooked, and we all hunted for commies in the closets. At night we watched Walter Cronkite deliver the news on washing-machine-sized TV sets. I was at an age when memories are purely emotional in nature.
Today, I live in Copenhagen, am married to an Iranian nurse who grew up with memories of Iraqi bombs and the weight of an oppressive government. We travel often and have friends and family of various faiths and races in Europe, the US, and the Middle East. We have a boy with an active mind and we worry about what we see happening today around the world, but specially in my home country. The United States of America. The bad manners on public media coupled with a sort of collective social amnesia of what happened over the last century seem to prevent many from looking at the past or in the mirror.
In 2008, While watching the presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama, my son, then 6 years old, told me that he wanted to go and live in the US when he grows up. When I asked why, he said that he wanted to meet Obama because he liked his head! I stifled a laugh and my thoughts of telling him that Mr. Obama would be far too busy and almost impossible to meet. Instead, I just answered, "You know what? I like his head too!"
For a realistic look at a 2016 version of "Choosing A President" please read this New York Times Editorial by Nobel Prize winning economist Mr. Paul Krugman:
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