I admit it. I’m shameless about my politics around my children. For example my older daughter knows why we don’t take advantage of Colombus Day sales and why if I even see a millisecond of time given to revisionist history in her classroom, I march my ass and over with pages of real history for teachers to teach (ask some la Mapu’s teachers. It’s true). Pero my hija doesn’t know who I am endorsing for president. Not that I don’t talk about my dislike for McCain/Palin and the issues that keep me from jumping up and down about Obama. Pero my conversations with my hija reveal that her classmates’ parents are talking about the election too.

11 year old Mapu asked me the other day, ” Mami, is it true that Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein?”

When I asked where she heard that from, she told me: “My classmate E. said that Obama’s middle name is Hussein and that he’s Muslim and that if he becomes president he’s going to bomb Israel,”.

We went through the people we knew named Hussein, including the son of a dear amiga. We went through out Muslim friends and neighbors. We discussed the power of names and their roots and how that was twisted by some people to promote their own racist and imperial ideals. How “white, Christian” is made the norm and everything else is foreign and deemed scary and threatening. We talked about power.

Last night, before I went to bed, La Mapu was switching between news channels and looking at online news sites. When I asked what she was doing she told me” ” I’m deciding who I should vote for. You know I really don’t like McCain but I’m not happy with Obama on immigration”.

Me either MapucheRican, me either.

Via / Culture Kitchen, Pam’s House Blend