Our country is beautiful but has an ugly past and often an ugly present. Equality, slavery, racism, and profiling are difficult topics to address to our children. As an African American mother and teacher, I often find myself struggling with "the how and when" to introduce these topics to my own children. I have 2 little boys and it is my goal to instill in them a positive view of society but I must also prepare them for the realities that may occur in society. Overall, I have not experience many encounters of overt racism but I can remember my first. My paternal grandmother is an Irish, Caucasian women while my grandfather is African American. I used to go to the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade every year when I was little. I stopped going after an incident occurred at the parade where I felt left out because I am African American. I won't go into the details because I feel its irrelevant but my take away from that day is that everyone has different beliefs and they ...