Clinton accepts award named in racist’s honor

Last night Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood. The award is the organizations “top honor” and is named after their founder.

I find some irony that the Secretary of State serving the first black U.S. President is accepting an award named in honor of Margaret Sanger considering her racist views.

“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The mostsuccessful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if
it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
— Margaret Sanger’s December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America . New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.

“Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
— Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review , October 1921, page 5.

Sanger advocated forced sterilization of African-Americans (among others). She believed African-Americans were “unfit”. Not only would she have not voted for Barack Obama, she believed he should not have even been born. Yet President Obama’s Secretary of State accepted an award in honor of her.

Why there is no outcry over this racist award is scandalous.

Standing in…

For the last four days, my wife and I took care of the three daughters of a friend of ours – a 9-year old and 5-year old twins. Adding our own 2-year old daughter into the mix and we had a house full of girls. I was quite out numbered.

I wasn’t looking forward to the weekend. Adding three children who aren’t your own can be a test. On top of that, these girls are going through the roughest time of their young lives. This family is recently divided and in the process of divorce. The father was unfaithful and is now apparently living with another woman (he won’t even give the mother his residential address and claims he is living with a “friend”).

We volunteered to watch the girls because their grandfather is dying and their mother went out-of-state to see him before he passes. The girls’ father lives in another state and has had little contact with them since they moved. No letters or cards, no phone calls – just a text message or two to the oldest.

It turned out their stay was the opposite of what I expected. These are three beautiful girls and, in spite of their troubles, they were well behaved. Oh, there were a few little tiffs here and there as young sisters will have, but they all showed great hearts in helping each other when we asked (and even without asking sometimes) and helping my daughter when they could (who loved playing with the older girls).

I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and was blessed by my time with them. I ended up putting out a twitter joking that my wife should know better than to volunteer for these things because every time we watch someone else’s children, it makes me want more of our own. I even got hugs from all three girls when I left for work today.

Here is the part the gets me. As I was reading a story to the girls last night, I was thinking how great it was to have them sitting around me on the couch. The twins on either side of me especially seemed to need the attention and I enjoyed reading to them all. The thing is, it shouldn’t have been me. I shouldn’t be the one getting their hugs before work. My complaint isn’t about being with them. It’s that they have a father but he isn’t providing financially or emotionally for his children.

It is beyond me how a father can abandon his children. It is just so far outside of my experience that I can only believe the man who does is dead inside. Shoot, these three girls aren’t even mine and I want do what I can do to protect them and let them know they are loved for who they are. When they are under my roof, they are.

Maybe this one hits too close to home. My own father left my mother and me when I was about the age my daughter is now. I know first hand how it affects kids. Everyone knows that mothers are important. When I see what I saw this weekend, it reminds me how important fathers are too.

Racquetball practice

I take Bailey to her Tiny Tots gym class on Friday mornings. The rec center’s racquetball courts line the hallway that leads to the gym. Bailey likes to look in the windows while we pass and watch people play.

This afternoon we were killing time at home. She picked up her big green ball and a stick then asked me to play racquetball with her. I switched out her stick for an actual racket. We did this for over a half-hour. Here’s a taste. Good times.

She doesn’t know it yet but it will be tennis for her before racquetball. Promising forehand though, don’t you think?