Run out of words

I am a substitute teacher. I am in three schools: Haven Drive Middle School in Arvin, Sunset Middle School in Weedpatch, and Lakeside School in south Bakersfield. Ninety percent of my students are Latino. I have been going to these schools for more than 12 years. As l look at the photos of those beautiful children who had their lives so cruelly taken from them on May 23, I see the faces of my students. Faces that l see every day.

Faces of children who mean so very much to me. Faces that other people here in Kern County and California have come to hate. They hate them for the color of their skin. They hate them for the country that their parents and grandparents came from. They hate them because they are different.

I cannot tell you how many times l have had to look into pleading brown eyes and have tried to answer their questions.

“Why do they hate us ?” “How come they don’t like us ?” “What did we do ?” “We were born here, we’re Americans too!”

I have no answers. How do you explain racism and bigotry to a 12-year-old child? How do I try and explain that there are people in this Land of Liberty who will simply hate you because of the color of your skin? When my children hear someone like the former president refer to their parents and grandparents as “rapists, murderers, drug dealers and the worst criminals,” what am I supposed to say?

Then we see what happened in El Paso and Uvalde, Texas. My kids ask why. And I have no answer.

Please! Someone tell me what to say. How do l help these great kids come to love and respect a country that does not love and respect them. How do I convince them to pledge allegiance to a country that tells them that they are undeserving and worthless? I’ve run out of words. And, my children are running out of hope.