INDIVIDUALITY, SLAVERY AND FEAR
4/4/07
I am seldom personally confronted by racial or religious discrimination. I am not of a racial minority in my country and I have no religion. I have seen racial discrimination and I have seen religious discrimination. Black and Jewish people have received most of the discrimination around the world. Now Middle Eastern races are experiencing the brunt of world hatred.
Discrimination is a touchy subject for most people. It is a deep held belief taught by one’s own intolerant parents, friends and religious upbringing. No one can blame a very young child for shouting out racial or religious slurs, but everyone can blame adults for teaching their own prejudice and hatred to their children. Unfortunately Jews , Christians, Blacks , Whites, Hispanics, Arabs, Indians, Asians, Methodists, Calvinists, Mormons, Fundamentalists, and every religious sect on earth all practice racial and religious discrimination. Liberals and Conservatives call each other names. The Right and Left and in between, all have hatred for one another. It is a human thing brought about by our evolving nature. Most animals have this instinct to preserve their species and to survive. Every carnivore has it’s favorite prey. Almost every flower and tree naturally repels the seed of other species. Some have adapted through cross pollination , but nature has maintained strict enforcement against the practice. So is it in human relations. Cross cultural , or bi racial marriages are still frowned upon and discouraged in most societies. Integration of schools and assimilation of cultures always leads to conflicts.
It has always amazed me how easily the human mind can be swayed to believe anything. So many people seem to have been created without a moral compass. As a child I witnessed many prejudicial acts and heard many cruel and ignorant statements made against other children, elderly people, disabled people, retarded people, and people of all minorities and religions. I would often ask the slanderers why they said those hateful words about other people. I would ask them if what they said was true. The slanderers and bigots would all answer by stating virtually the same things . “If you know one, you know them all.” “Don’t play with them they are not your kind.” “They are all stupid.” They are evil.” They’re animals.” They should all be killed.” “Hitler was white and right.” ” They are all devils.” “They are the Axis Of Evil.” I think I have made my point.
Americans are far more sensitive to their own prejudice and will often deny that they are prejudice. This is because we must all live amongst many cultures and races. America is a melting pot of peoples and prejudices. Christian communities, walled communities, ethnic communities all abound in the United States. Stereotypes R US. Profiling is law enforcement’s way of categorizing and prioritizing the local, regional and national prejudices. What races of people are more harmful to the homogeneity of an area? Institutions continually deny and redline applicants for employment or home mortgages, insurance and healthcare based on race and religions and communites. Private schools and many state colleges and prestigious universities all have racial, religious, sexual and economic prejudices implied in their application processes. Country clubs, secret societies and even churches are still permitted to discriminate. Laws have greatly helped breakdown the walls of exclusion. However, less visible and more impenetrable walls have been erected in their place.
Fear is the greatest of these walls of exclusion. Fear of someone different, fear of other cultures, fear of competition, fear of loss of employment, fear of loss of privilege, fear of the unknown, fear of retribution. I fear only one thing. The fear of being afraid. It sounds silly, but I have never wanted to be afraid. I have fought this fear my entire life. I refuse to be afraid of anyone or anything. I will go to great lengths to try and understand something before I resign myself to fear it. I consider fear with these absolutes. If it is man made it is fallible. If it is God made it is infallible and unexplainable.
I realized after losing many close relatives and friends, that there was nothing I could do to prevent the loss. There was nothing I could do to stop them from dying. There was nothing I could do or say to prevent them from leaving my life, even if they hadn’t died. Divorce, separation, insult or injury may have been preventable, but the solutions were not evident to me at the time. I still face the present and future unsure of the outcomes, but I never fear anyone’s prejudice against me because I never accept a stature of inferiority. This is the divine and inalienable right of a human being. A person’s willingness to exercise this right is all that separates the individual from the slave.
L.A. STEEL
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