Here’s a story of a remarkable woman, Eudocia Tomas Pulido, also known as Lola. She was the Filipino house slave of a Filipino immigrant family, in the late 20th century. She was given to the family as a gift by a local warlord in the aftermath of WWII, and was brought along when they emigrated to the US; they didn’t pay her a salary, didn’t even give her a room of her own, and she cooked and cleaned and raised their kids for practically her entire life. The author of the story is one of those kids, and was trying to make amends for the injustice, but still…she never went to school, had little money of her own, spoke English poorly, and was stranded in America. Even with the best intentions in the world, it’s hard to overcome the deficits imposed by an impoverished upbringing and adulthood.
The only answer is to treat every child as deserving of opportunity and autonomy, and raise them without those shackles. It’s a disgrace that a major American political party seems to be in the business of making new improved coffles for everyone.
Humanity needs to seriously revise its idea of parents rights over their children – body autonomy and mental autonomy. Stop raising kids as ignorant followers of religions, stop snipping bits of them off, stop filling their heads with nationalistic bullshit – the list goes on way too long.
F!ck. This made my eyes wet. And it also gave me bad memories of the class society that Indonesia still is.
@1 I agree with the bodily autonomy one because it’s a little more clean cut(vaccines=good no vaccines=bad). My 3 year old got whooping cough the other day because of a science denying parent didn’t do their job. I’m just thankful that my wife who is a nurse knew what it was right away and got it sorted out with the pediatrician before our 6 month old caught it. Mental autonomy is a little more complicated. What happens when a bunch of crazies like, say, Donald trump and the Republicans get into power and decide that they have different ideas about what kids should be taught by their parents. Thats reason why most of these limits on power exist. Not that the constitution means a damn thing if people don’t enforce it. The 4th amendment has been largely ignored by the federal Gov’t for 16 years.
Clearly she refused to pull herself up by her bootstraps and become a millionaire like the rest of us.
Well said, PZ.
(and shouldn’t the last word be “shackles” rather than “coffles” or is there something I’m missing?)