Those people I’m talking about are hate-groups. The Free Expression Tunnel was painted with racial slurs this morning. A white supremacist group paid a visit to the Bell Tower last night, just as President-elect Barack Obama’s victory celebration was getting underway. Klu Klux Klan fliers were dumped on lawns in Fayetteville Tuesday.
On Wednesday a friend of mine overheard three women talking in the lobby at Poe Hall. In not-so-hushed voices they were talking about their displeasure with the election, referring to Obama as a “n*****.”
Sadly, I’m not completely shocked that these instances are cropping up, but it still blows my mind how these people can rationalize their racist opinions. So, I thought about it.
Is it skin color? Well, maybe you can’t tell by that black and white mugshot of me up there, but I have olive toned skin in the medium color range. I am of European descent. I have friends who are many shades lighter than me who are of European decent. I have friends who are lighter than me who are of African, Asian, Middle Eastern and South and Central American descent.
One of my little sister’s friends, who is racially identified as “Caucasian,” is darker than most Asian and Hispanic people I see. Indian people can have very light or extremely dark skin. Same goes for people of African descent.
So, it really can’t be color, right? I mean, I met a girl of African descent last night who was several shades lighter than myself. If white racists were rational, I should be the subject of hate speech. But my “white” label gets in their way.
So maybe it’s descent. Hate-mongers hate based on country of genetic origin. So these KKK types hate African people. But I’m willing to bet that most racists have never taken the time to speak to a citizen of any African country, so how would they know what to hate about African descendents, not to mention descendents of any other country.
So it has to be culture then. Maybe racists are actually basing their prejudice on culture. And anyone who sits down for a second and thinks about what culture means, will quickly realize that they, themselves don’t belong to any one “culture,” but rather many overlapping cultures: American culture, Western culture, African-American culture, Southern culture, Deaf culture, Youth culture, Chinese culture, Counter-culture and Corporate culture.
A single person can represent every single one of these at once.
Reverse that and every single one of these can mean any number of things to any number of people. People who hate others based on culture are going to find themselves either hating absolutely everyone or unable to pick out those different enough to hate.
Which leads me to only one conclusion: these bigots are lazy, uneducated people with a severe lack of critical thinking skills. As much as their actions upset me and the thousands of other people on campus who have seen their hate and been shocked or hurt by it, I’m at least a bit comforted that their way of thinking has no logical basis.
And a message to those people who were referring to Obama in such a despicable way: take a look at yourselves. I’ve got plenty of words to describe you –- and you actually deserve it.
Send Taylor your thoughts on hate speech to [email protected].
