Ben Jealous: America’s healing can start with family around the holidays

Getty Images & (TriceEdneyWire.com) – With the hol­iday season approaching, it seems that our country could not be more divided. That division has been perhaps the main overarching topic of our national conversation in recent years. And it has taken root within many of our own families. Blood may be thicker than water, but for many American families it seems like it is not as thick as politics. Or, if not politics specifically, then the cul­tural rifts that have been widened and inflamed within our political debate. Maybe our national healing can start with our families, around the holiday table. There are mixed views within my own family, just like there are in mil­lions of American families. And within my family there are stories of division and stories of healing. My family traces its roots in America on my dad’s side back 400 years to Massachusetts – the home of the first Thanksgiving. My mom’s family has also been here the better part of 400 years, but in Virginia and Maryland, tracing back to that area’s earliest White settlers and their African slaves. When my parents fell in love as young civil rights activists in Bal­timore and got married, their...