Our Children Need Us to Bring the Truth to Light

by Ernie McCray

It sometimes seems like our country is overwhelmed by lies, a mixture of little white lies and innocent lies, all the way up to the infamous “Big Lie!”

Now the Supreme Court has joined in, acting as though their plot to deprive women of the right to terminate a pregnancy, is protecting children, children yet born, by the way.

The lie here, another big one, is the implication that we, as a society, hold children dear while millions of them live among us in despair:

caught up in foster care;
lacking access to affordable health or child-care,
as their parents struggle to feed them
and house them,
with large numbers of them
having no idea when or where
they will lay their heads down at night,
hoping that it will be inside
rather than outside
and that the heater or the cooler
is bona fide,
their empty bellies crying out
for food, any food,
hamburger, hotdogs, fries,
a bowl of rice…

Anything would be nice.

Not to mention that too many of them,
at an early age,
die
while other young ones
are criminalized.

And now soon mothers could be criminalized, absent from their children’s lives, in the “Big House” like they’re modern-day Bonnie and Clydes, leaving their children with ever flowing tears in their eyes – for making a decision that should be nobody’s business, other than theirs, as to the reason why.

So, what about this is evidence that children in this country are prized?

Oh, we need to cease living lies so our children can engage in the long fight to right our country’s wrongs, a struggle they can’t take on if they, like so many generations in the past, look at the truth like it’s a chunk of kryptonite, like it’s a bad dream in the middle of the night.

But we often seem to not want them to know the truth as we ban best-selling books about Black and LGBTQ folks and other novels with far reaching ideas and twists and turns and plots and subplots that can lead them to think critically and creatively so they can best resist lies.

In some places the word “gay” can’t be used in schools as though they don’t exist, depriving students of opportunities to learn the truths about their fellow human beings who might be different than them – or like them.

And how ridiculous is it to rebuff theories that let our children in on how racism has taken such a hold in our country over centuries?

I mean don’t we want our children to know their true history so they can transform our country into the kind of nation it should be, the kind of free-thinking public we claim to be?

Have we not thought about how they will soon take the baton in making this a reality and that that’s not likely to happen if misinformation, rather than truth, is their guide?

So, we need, if we’re going to help them in this, to find a way to reconnect with the truth ourselves, since there’s ample proof showing we’ve forgotten what it looks like.

In short, our children will need us to bring truth to light.

So, they will know what it looks like.

Spoiler alert: It’s a beautiful sight.