......"Racism"

Whether we like it or not, racism has established itself in our society, and its roots are so deep that there is surely not one person in this room who hasn't encountered it at least once in a lifetime. I know I have. For example, the other day, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend about a mutual acquaintance who was in the hospital. She was telling me how worried she was about the doctor who would be performing the surgery that our sick friend needed. She mentioned that she was so worried that when the doctor came in she was ready to a ask a bazillion questions about where he got his degree, what his grades were like in med school, and if anybody had died under his knife. I was laughing while she said something that caught my attention, she said, "I stopped worrying when I saw that he was Chinese". How odd, I thought to myself, what does being a Chinese have to do with one's ability to perform surgery? So I asked her and she promptly informed me of the fact that all Chinese people were smart. As that memory returned to the clutter of my thoughts, another took its place. I remembered yet another person from my past, she was a very nice girl with a passion for classy fashion, drama and the loudest laugh I've ever heard. Actually, when she opened her mouth she sounded very much like a valley girl, snapping pink bubble gum included. The one time when she wasn't laughing was on the day that she told me about an encounter she had with a girl from our school. Apparently she was told by that girl, that she should act her colour, that she just simply wasn't black enough.

I want to pose a question to you. It is one which I am hoping you will consider in your heart and answer honestly with your mind '"What does someone who has racist views look like?" I'll give you a few seconds. OK, times up. It's hard to put a face on racism, isn't it? A lot of times people tend to picture it with a pointy white hat and a burning cross in the background, but that is simply another stereotype. Racism can have a face of any colour and can be expressed with a few words or through the cruelest of actions. Unfortunately, it is usually the cruelest of actions which gets the most media coverage and this leaves those few words to be ignored, unchanged and being absorbed by the future of the people, the youth.

The people I've mentioned were not figments of my imagination, they were real people whom I had known and still do, and none of them had a bald head, tightly laced leather boots and a swastika on their clothes. But then do any of those things make a person racist? Of course not, maybe one simply doesn't feel comfortable with hair and running shoes. The reason I referred to the persons I spoke of was because they had expressed or encountered racist views. Views that did not come packaged in certain clothes but existed because of the lessons which they had learned in their past. One was entirely unaffected by her own words, while the other was deeply hurt by the few words of others. "Why would they say these things to me?" she asked. "Do I truly deserve those words"?

Consider this, what happens most often when we encounter a person who shatters our own stereotype of their race? Well, we usually let them know that they simply don't fit in the box which have built so nicely for their ancestors. The box whose foundation was laid by the people who are most often closest to us, family and friends. After all, when a child is born it does not see the borders which we have created amongst ourselves. It is usually God who teaches that child to speak and understand all that is being said. So, if all that is being said is racist, then what chance does that one child have of growing up and becoming an accepting, tolerant and respectful adult? I'd say, very little. The same person can nearly destroy the world with such views, history has shown us that, and history always repeats itself. So, if each of us goes out into the world ready to see and hear no evil then we are just laying the foundation for our own destruction. If each of us is constantly choosing to ignore -- then what hope is there for our children. I am not saying that we should scream and shout each time a few words are said, but that we should not ignore, be silent and intentionally blind just because we'd rather avoid the hassle of trying to eliminate racism. Because a few whispered words added to those few whispered words of others will create an earth-trembling shout. A shout which can either destroy a people or create the world which Martin Luther King spoke of when he said, "I have a dream...."

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