In my South Side Chicago Summer Camp we have just wrapped up for eight weeks of pure, unfiltered youth. Children splash in water parks, explored the countryside, learned financial literacy and made speeches to build trust. Not once, politics crawls into the picture. That is how it should be – a refuge where children can be children, free from the division of adult agendas.
So imagine my shock about the summer camp about the summer camp where my friend’s daughter was present. Nestled in an age-old mountain paradise of trees and lakes, it looked like the All-American Camp to that it was not.
On July 4, my friend’s 12-year-old daughter proudly wore an American flag shirt, a nod to the journey of her family of slavery and segregation for freedom and opportunities. They are a family who knows the mistakes of America, but still sees her as the greatest nation on earth.
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At breakfast, another camper confronted her over the flag shirt. “How can you believe in a country that your people have done terrible things?” The girl demanded. She then parroted fashion words for social justice about “white privilege” and “systemic racism and called the fourth pointless celebration until” true equality “is achieved.
My friend’s daughter, a smart girl herself, pushed back and pointed to the progress of her family as proof of America’s promise. But she stood against a brick wall of bad faithfulness anti-Americanism, fed by rehearsed lines over colonized land and Indian atrocities and oppression rights. The exchange left her empty and her excitement for a day of more pleasure, s’mores and patriotic singing around the campfire, faded.
It didn’t stop there. Days later the camp forced the children in a ‘privilege walk’. They were hand in hand, only to be shared by questions such as: “Step ahead if you are racially profiled in a store”, or “If your parents have taught you how to deal around the police.” My friend’s daughter, pointing past her years, refused to play this game that children burned like oppressors or victims. Good for her.
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This story cooked my blood. Summer camp is not a place for political crusades. Children are born innocently – let them stay as long as possible. That does not mean that they are shielded against reality; It means that they do not poison their mind with toxic stories that America paint as inherently poorly. What is the point of giving a 12-year-old because he loves her country?
Our children deserve camps full of joy and discovery, no lectures about why they should be ashamed of their nation. (Jacob Hamilton/The Bay City Times via AP.)
This obsession with politicizing our children must stop. They deserve the freedom to grow into independent thinkers, no pawns in someone’s ideological war.
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They deserve camps full of joy and discovery, no lectures about why they should be ashamed of their nation.
It is time for us to let children be children again. And it’s time for us to fight for this kind of completely American existence before it’s too late.
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