Day 11

I'm over here in my adult world, living with some guys, going to work with them, coming home with them. I see so few children. Sometimes when we're at lunch someone will be there with their kids. I see a few school buses in the morning, kids all sitting behind the bus windows in their uniforms. I haven't been anywhere where there would be a lot of kids. Yesterday at lunch there was a woman with two kids sitting at a table behind a partition, kids running around, she scolding them and then one of them pealed with laughter. What a beautiful sound.

My wife told me last night that my daughter has recently been through a controversy. She is an officer in a group called the Campus Nerds. They put on two haunted houses, one for kids and one for adults. Well, apparently they had a noose in the haunted house. Someone took a picture of it and made a big stink. I've been told that it made the local paper. The end result is that the Campus Nerds had to go make a formal apology to a black fraternity on campus.

The Campus Nerds is not a racist organization - it's a bunch of kids who like anime, computer gaming, etc. You know, geeks. They created a haunted house using images that have been a part of halloween since before my time. This isn't Jena. No one was trying to keep black students out. But someone got all PC on these kids and made a huge stink over nothing. I am sensitive to the legacy of slavery and the racism born of it, I grew up in an area where black people were farm hands, house maids, common laborers and were constantly reminded of their place. I understand the legacy of the KKK and the murders they committed. What I don't understand is why something so obviously not meant to be racist was deliberately made out be so. Ghosts hanging in effigy have long been a staple halloween decoration all over this country. It isn't as if hanging was solely inflicted upon black people. Hanging was the primary means of capital punishment in this country until well into the middle of this century. It was the means of execution for Saddaam Hussein. So now my daughter has been initiated into this world where speech is monitored for fear of offending someone, constantly worried that a look or a gesture will be misinterpreted as a leer or an insult. She isn't out of college yet. She's in, what was for me at least, the last insulated world she'll live in. She should be making good friends and happy memories that'll last her a lifetime, not be dumped slap into the middle of the real world where intentions don't matter and victimization rules the day.

I wish she were back at the age where all she had to worry about was if mommy was going to let her have a piece of candy before supper.