Weighing in on Racism and Prejudice

Love 

That's the first step---you demonize people and pretty soon they're not people anymore, they're meant to be despised. It's exactly what happened in Nazi Germany.                Peter Mathiessen

In 2014 when I started to write about racism, I realized that it was being encouraged by social media. For example: I'd get posts on Facebook supporting some aspect of the President Obama's desires for a policy change, something as innocent as the minimum wage issue and I'd read about that. Then I'd go into the comments section and there I'd be subjected to other people's reprehensible statements, filled with hatred and mean spirited remarks about Obama himself. All of these remarks were untrue and sadly, some of these racists would hide behind anonymous posts, we now know some were Russian trolls and sling dung. This was childish at best and hate mongering or criminal at worst [eg. threats, duplicity]. The vitriol was repulsive, and with all of the gun nuts out there, frankly scary.  Was this just because our politics descended to a new low or was this truly raw racism rearing its ugly head? In retrospect, both. Hatred breeds hatred folks. One of the outcomes was the election of a racist, misogynistic President who currently holds the highest office in our country.

Another warning sign: the ridiculous racist rants of Donald Sterling against Magic Johnson and then the now defunct sheriff in New Hampshire who slammed President Obama[not once but twice] made me, and I had hoped all of us, think about how prevalent racism is in our country. Perhaps both of these old white men were suffering from senility. It's true, some people become more fearful and paranoid with a case of dementia. So I was trying to be understanding. 

I tried with the second term of the Reagan's presidency to be understanding. He clearly had dementia and yet no one openly denigrated him, bullied him or called him names publicly. Proof of this: he finally died of his Alzheimer's disease years later, but the signs were all there that he had Alzheimer's while in office.

Lord knows Reagan should have been removed from office when he was stating that he was in battles in WWII [fact: he never was in the war] or when he'd forget where he was or what he was speaking about and Nancy would shout from the sidelines "tell them we're doing the best we can". But no one attacked him viciously. If anything he was deified.  It was all polite concern but no one mentioned an impeachment process, no one issued embarrassing press attacks [Fox wasn't even born then] it was all respectful concern. 

There were daily, relentless attacks against President Obama, by Fox news and on the FB pages, most of them with veiled and not so veiled racism. To deflect their racism the people who used these hateful remarks labeled any opposition to their racism as  'using the race card' as though they were innocent. They obviously were not innocent and we needed to call it as we saw and heard it. 

Be the light of the world, not the darkness

Something that still baffles me is that many of the hate mongers are so called "religious" types. They demonize and even urge killing anyone who is not of their faith or belief. How is this possible? One of my relatives who is gay and has suffered at the hands of gross prejudice aimed at him for over fifty years and he puts it this way: "they spew hatred and encourage their children in their disgusting misguided notions of us [gays, people of color etc.] and then they go to church!!!!" I'm with him, how is it possible to be religious/spiritual and to be so filled with hate toward people? The obvious answer is they are missing the common theme of the best of religions, "honor God and love your neighbor as yourself." Perhaps they weren't taught to be reasonable, kind and loving? Do they so hate themselves? Perhaps they weren't taught to do unto others?  

To turn yourself away and ignore the remarks when hatred is being directed at someone is an act of cowardice--- pure and simple. This happened with President Obama and now look what we have as our supposed leader: a person who conned his way to office, spews hatred every day, separates families, refused to support world wide breast feeding, is a continual name caller and groped his way around women. Why is he supported? My guess is that he's supported by people who apparently are morally, ethically bankrupt. People who are told they should be terrified by liberals. Read the dictionary folks. A liberal is________________________. 

The resolution to all of the hate out there is to go forth and be loving and when you see or hear a wrong, confront it. It not only feels great and good---it is much easier to live your life that way.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2018 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved