When I sought a modern day, colloquial definition of “snowflake,” I found none. It’s been around far longer than any of us realizes as an insult for every attitude. Today, it’s used to describe people who are totally empathetic and inclusive to those who prefer separating out the groups.
Regardless of titles, we need more empathy today in America. Too many are growing comfortable with a sense of superiority by color, birth, wealth, religion and various other accidental entitlements. There comes a time in every nation’s history when hard words need to be spoken, when hard truths need to be faced, and when hard solutions are the only ones that work.
What hairy old chestnuts these issues are. If we look at what some Americans did and some still do, what’s been supported, legislated, closeted and covered, we know that liberty and justice for all wasn’t happening, and many didn’t intend it to – immediately, or ever. It was and is the proverbial carrot and recruitment pitch.
Much history is disturbing, despite that it has been glossed over, rewritten, modified, romanticized, redacted or distracted from. We, too often, haven’t gotten the truth, the whole truth, or even anything based in truth. In a place, right now, where so much of our nation’s focus is on editing news and history and kept from those most entitled to it and in need of it, we should be shouting, reporting, teaching, iterating and reiterating it, accurately. We are owed this, owe ourselves this, and owe our youth this; it will provide light even in shadowed form.
In a country we touted as free and equal, many of us realize that continued discrimination was tolerated, based on religion, skin color, national origin, birth entitlement, gender, economics and much else, even after legislative victories. We defend ourselves with success stories, and there are many but, most often, they exist despite the odds and not due to the opportunities.
Even today, small minds and fearful people advocate segregation, promulgate inferiority via sheer genetics, but any time anyone is minimized, everyone is vulnerable. Position, even for those who suppose they have it, can be altered on a whim, without warning. Any of us can be next; history doesn’t lie.
Being a snowflake is a compliment when used to describe people who believe that the attributes of all must be harvested for everyone to benefit, and that all individuals must have an equal chance at greatness through comparable education, safe environments, and the opportunity to work and earn fair wages.
Today’s resurgence in safely, openly stating a belief that there are preferred, primary, or superior races or religions anywhere, especially in America where that seems to be gaining momentum, is regressive and dangerous. All such propaganda is the absolute antithesis of anything ever preached by the bastions of any religious intention, tainted and promulgated only by those seeking entitlement.
We understand that immense change takes time, but the violence in worldwide history, including ours, was brutal. To now go backwards, trying to silence or modify the truth of history’s teachings – whether by obliterating the past or legislating the future – costs everyone what we’ve fought and sacrificed for, and vulnerable to repeating history’s errors. Erasure will close only the book of knowledge. Nothing will close the subjects. The history books we can still open teach us that – definitively.
We’re supposed to be going forward, achieving what’s best for the world and America. Let’s benefit from an effort to benefit from the free, great mind and achievement of every individual. We will benefit completely only from the achievements of all people when they are free to learn, free to pursue pure knowledge, and free to become accomplished in any talent, trade or dedication.
Any of us who doubts the dangerous waters we are suggesting Americans swim in, must answer this question: Is the past what I want for the future of those I love? That answer is indisputable and undeniable. We can’t surrender all that we’ve achieved or learned through great hardship and at the cost of many lives.
True knowledge is power and our history is clear: people will not suffer persecution, subjugation or dehumanization quietly. We must accept that truth, or we are destined to relive it, with all its fury and suffering. The real question is, will we ever learn?
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