This morning, on the Facebook page that’s just for parents in my town, someone posted an opinion piece from the local newspaper. The piece was written by a local mother whose opinion is that the children of “H1-B1” workers from India are ruining her son’s education. It was wrong in just about every way. I was steaming about it all morning, and so was my husband.
I started to draft a rebuttal, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I don’t want to antagonize any of my neighbors, but at the same time, I couldn’t just let that kind of naked bigotry pass. Luckily for me, by the time I checked back on the post, many of my neighbors had already stated on no uncertain terms that they don’t agree with bigotry or hate speech. One of them said that she’d already sent a rebuttal to the paper.
Whew! I was so relieved. I still had my own obligation to speak out, which I discharged by voting up their comments and thanking them for their wonderful messages of inclusion and tolerance. But what really made me feel relieved was knowing that there are still plenty of decent people around, and today I’m feeling just a little bit more optimistic about the future of the human race.