I was born in 1959. Making me 9 years old in 1968, during the time of the riots happening across the country, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the beginning of the Vietnam war protests (which means I was 12-13 in 1971-72).
Being nine yours old, a kid of that age is still quite innocent, and not at all knowledgable or caring about anything happening outside his elementary school neighborhood in a 100% white suburb of Detroit (called Saint Clair Shores).
Even at age 12 or 13, I don’t think I knew much about Vietnam, or race relations – other than knowing my dad was totally against “desegregation” (whatever that was), and completely against allowing any “blacks” to move into our local neighborhoods of the Lakeview school district.
I’m pretty sure it was during that horrible period when so many young individuals (both “whites”, and “blacks”) took to burning our nation’s flag.
My dad, in that same period, was around the age of 44-48, and I know for a fact, he wasn’t part of the hippie crowd, he was “white collared”, wore his hair short, and worked in an office, a “management type”. He probably was considered to be part of “The establishment”.
I do not have any specific memories of him during that period, of anything he might have said about people burning the flag, but I think he probably was a bit upset about it. He served in the army – not sure exactly which years, probably around 1946-1952(?), and I’m guessing he was proud of his country.
I started writing this post because I had erroneously thought I’m now the same age that he was, when “kids” started burning the flag, in 1968. But, based on the above, it seems I’m now about 10-15 years older than he was during the traumatic time in our country’s history.
I bet he shook his head and shook his fist at the TV screen showing video of “kids” doing that to our country’s flag,
This year, we are seeing this type of behavior again – lots of violence, lots of protests, some flag burning, etc.
I shake my head. Like my dad probably did.
I don’t shake my fist – I’m not ambivalent – I’m just unsure what to do or how to go about making my voice heard, during this period of national unrest.
My dad knew how to respect our country, he knew how to respect our flag.
Somehow, either he, or my mom, or my public school teachers, or my brother, or my “Sunday School” (church) teachers, or maybe even my friends taught me to respect the flag, to respect this great country we live in.
On the other hand, there were “many” (read: a few) of my junior high school classmates who did this type of thing (disrespected our nation’s flag), they did “drugs”, they drank “Boone’s Farm” while hanging out at nighttime, behind the school, they wore military dress coats, thinking that that was such a cool thing to do (not as a show of respect to our military, but as a way to show disrespect to the uniform, on purpose), because they were against the war in South Eastern Asia.
Anyway, I saw someone burning our country’s flag a few moments ago, and I wonder why no one is teaching our kids to respect our flag, to respect our country, to respect people of color or “race”, to respect people of different religions, of different sexualities / gender types, or just to respect people in general.
This “wonder” (of mine) is rhetorical and also way too generalized. I know that the majority of people, in this great nation of ours – the parents, the teachers, are teaching the majority of our children these things…it’s those that don’t teach their kids this kind of thing (values, morals, respect, etc.) that truly scares me.
I wonder if my father wondered about that too.
I wonder if my dad was scared too, during 1968 to 1971-1972, during that period of national civil unrest, as I am now, during this current period of unrest.
Thanks for listening.
Please feel free to share your thoughts, feelings and opinions below.
