Constantly, I am amazed me how people can have a way of thinking that is a complete opposite of mine. I was watching something on the National Geographic Channel yesterday that inspired me to write this. It is not something I hadn't seen before but yesterday it just made me think a second of what I consider the "stupidity" of people sometimes.
The program was called "Inside: American Nazis". I have seen programs like this before and I am drawn in as a black man who choses to be with white women. Nazi, Skinhead, Aryan Nation, Ku Klux Klan - it is all the same to me whether they think their ideologies are different.
What I can't understand is how someone can come to hate someone they have never met? I know it is not right to hate someone but at least the people that I dislike with a passion are people who I have met before. How can someone generalize one group of people as being evil? I will concede that some of my bruthas may not always be on the up and up but they same can be said about the white race (and for that matter, any other race that is out there). Every race has their own "black sheep". My personal opinion is that it is weak minded indivduals who get sucked into these groups. They want to blame their "problems", lack of initiative or achievement, or just plain laziness on other people who worked for what is theirs.
As I have said before, I grew up with a father in the military and with that I admit that I was sheltered from "hate" like that while living on military bases. When I had to live or go to school off base (especially high school), I was rudely surprised on how the color of my skin seemed to be a small factor in things. I am not one of these sensitively militant bruthas but it was not always subtle. It was very strange to me. It is not as though I didn't know it ever existed because I was a history junkie growing up. I read about it and saw pictures and film of it but to actually experience underlying "racism" was very new to me.
After I graduated from high school and started dating outside of my race again - yes you heard right - i actually noticed the looks when I was with a white female in what I now refer to sometimes as "the real world". The real world being anything outside the confines of a military base. It was almost always older white people who more than likely lived in the time when things were segregated and just couldnt let that sh!t go. There were young people who you could tell did not particularly care for the "swirl". For a time there, I was so cautious of my safety and that of the person I was with that I would carry my weapon with me for fear of a confrontation with an idiot.
Everybody believes in something and has the right to their opinion. Whether I think it is right or wrong, who am I to tell someone how they are supposed to feel. All I can do is present my side of an "argument" (if they are even interested in listening) so they see where I am coming from. But with your belief in something, you shouldn't have to hide yourself to stand up to your beliefs. I am referring to the people that "belong" to these extremeists groups that choose to hide their faces. If it is something that you truly believe in - be all out there and show yourself. This goes from the white sepremacists to the radical Islamic groups that chose to speak their rhetoric and at times create mayhem from cover.
So the question is, how can you justify the hate that you speak and you cannot show the true face behind that that hate? Also if you are one who proudly will be open about your beliefs, why put yourself on the outside of the mainstream and ostracize yourself?
You're right. Why do you have to hide if this is your belief? And as a person that grew up with grandparents that were always making little comments about the minority race, I cannot for the life of me understand how you can have an opinion about a group of people or person that you don't even know.
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