There is a lot of ugly in America, and it isn't new. It has been here since the beginning and only grown somewhat louder beneath the threats of its demise. The country is moving, slowly, toward progress, and with every step forward those who live in fear of it try to push the proverbial two steps back. It is an unwanted dance, a hand too heavy, the constant groping of those that place themselves above common sense, courtesy or decency.
There are churches burning and grown-ass adults draped in ignorance and bed sheets shouting in the streets with hate on their tongues and more in their pockets. They are zealots of idiocy, tying the wrongs of yesterday to the promise of tomorrow, like simpletons hoping to make a kite take wind from only those things that they wish would fly.
They will not.
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Tomorrow floats on a higher breeze than the stink of injustice that they exhale like whiffs of smoke from the love they set to smolder. Tomorrow wants nothing to do with them, nor does today. They hide their faces in cowardice and to spare the shame of those unfortunate enough to know them. They are fools and far too dangerous.
The drunk, white uncles of the Internet think them patriots. The uncles are a big part of the problemโespecially the white part.
Don't let the drunk uncles ruin Thanksgiving for everyone. Tell them to shut the fuck up and hold them to it.
The victims of racism are the targets of it, but the real problem lies with those who perpetrate such thought and the actions that follow. To say that racism is a black problem, as so many would have us believe, is to say that those committing crimes of hate are not responsible for their own deeds, but rather under the influence of those they unjustly despise.
Just watch FOX News for 20 minutes. It will come around again.
Racism is alive and well in America and not just in the South, despite their corner on the market. It is everywhere, and those who swear themselves unaware or unaffected are lying to the mirror and through every window of their dirty glass house. They are letting the status quo march to its own beat, and it is marching in Charleston, where nine African-Americans were shot by a lone white male, and throughout the South, where black churches are being burnt to the ground in the name of stupidity, and in every city, every town, where people of color are profiled, feared, doubted, mocked and attacked due to the tint of their pigment. It is marching across Facebook and Twitter, insolent and insubordinate, crazed on a righteousness that never existed, and fueled by an anger that is far from justified.
Don't allow hate to grow and prosper and think itself proper. If we see it, we are affected.
My boys see it because I want them to. It would be fairly easy to shield them from the world, trapped as they are within the confines of a Minecraft video. But ignorance is a slippery slope. It doesn't take long before not knowing becomes not seeing, not understanding, and it builds itself a cocoon of privilege, leaving yet another generation more apathetic than ally, allowing evil to fester as only evil can do.
And this is where we all come in, specifically white peopleโwe cannot stand idly by and proclaim ourselves removed from those idiots in bed sheets. We need to show them that we will not stand for their campaign of terror. Racism is not a battle for other ethnicities to win, it is a war we need not instigate. Don't allow hate to grow and prosper and think itself proper. If we see it, we are affected. We are aware.
Don't let the drunk uncles ruin Thanksgiving for everyone. Tell them to shut the fuck up and hold them to it. Explain racism to childrenโkids are smart and the only thing they won't understand is how anyone could be so stupid as to carry anger in their heart, raw and unfounded.
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Be a friend, family, an ally and an example. Help make tomorrow a day worth fighting for and all of America the better for it.
