Suffer the Children

The next time you hear someone talking about morality, and about how people should get what they deserve, think about these images.

What do children deserve?

These kids grew up only a few miles away from me, when I was a white child, growing up across the Potomac River from them, the other side of the railroad tracks. It was white, segregated Arlington, Virginia for me. My neighborhood looked a lot different. I guess I "deserved" better, because, after all, I was 7 and white and living on the right side of the tracks (or, in this case, the river.)

On the other hand, these white kids in New York City, weren't much better off, not because they were white, or Irish or Jewish, but because they were impoverished.  Poverty does not always cleave to race or ancestry; sometimes it's just the luck of the draw in a system which does not care.

These kids were made homeless by Adolf Hitler, who had nothing against them personally, but he was making a point.

The feet dangling above this group of happy white men belonged to a 16 year old Black child who was lynched for some offense--possibly whistling at a white woman. Look at the faces of these upright citizens. Don't they look virtuous? They have imposed their moral outlook on the Black boy.  Any time you hear people talking about the land of the free, home of the brave think of this lovely image. Look at the smiles, and the general look of satisfaction on these (admittedly Southern) Americans. 

The New South is likely different. Enough people from the North have diluted out the hate in places like the Research Triangle in North Carolina, in Georgia and New Orleans, maybe even in Birmingham and Baton Rouge, but get out beyond the sparkling urban towers in the South and it's Easy Rider country. This, too, is America.

These photos are courtesy of the wonderful website "Historyporn."

It brings to mind the world adults provide their children, and the children of others.

They eat their young.