Good Morning.
This wretched, despicable hatred seems to lurk in every nook and cranny in this country. Every time there's another tragedy, the mayor or the governor extends thoughts and prayers for the victims and to their survivors but add that they never thought it could happen in their city or state. It can happen anywhere. All it takes is one person who has an axe to grind about something or more frequently, a group of people viewed as inconvenient or dispensable.
People aren't born hating other human beings. They learn it from their parents, their grandparents, and their other relatives. Hate is passed along just as surely as blue eyes and flat feet, and so is indifference, its insidious cousin. Americans, too many of them, seem unimpressed that we had slavery in this country not so very long ago, that we bought and sold human beings and treated them atrociously. Americans, too many of them, seem pathetically unmoved that there was something called The Holocaust where six million people were systematically slaughtered, most of them because of their faith in God. Too many are unconcerned that white supremacist groups have flourished throughout the history of this country and are still up and running today.
Here are some instances of hate that I have personally observed:
I was repeatedly told by the nuns that anyone who wasn't Catholic would burn in hell. Yes, that's a form of hate.
I heard a woman declare that she wouldn't move into a certain neighborhood because there were too many Catholics and she didn't want to be around them, and yes, that's also a form of hate
An Army captain who also was a flight instructor and a graduate of West Point and his wife, a graduate of NYU with a degree in English, were relegated to unimaginable living conditions in a southern town because they were black.
I heard a Catholic priest tell my children's non-Catholic father to wait outside the room while his son was being baptized.
I heard weekend guests declared in extremely unfortunate language that they would not eat the toast I served them for breakfast because they saw me buy the loaf of bread from a black clerk.
The woman who wouldn't live in the neighborhood with Catholics called one evening all in a dither because the house next door had been sold to a Jewish family. They had to get their house on the market so they wouldn't lose their equity. I told her she sounded like a damn Nazi and to shut up and bring the family a casserole when they moved in. She did, became friends
with the family, and attended the Bar Mitzvahs of the two kids. God almighty, that was a good day for me.
I was present at a meeting in a church basement where two dozen people publicly declared their disdain for gay people. One woman actually stated that God creates straight people and Satan creates gay people whereupon almost the entire room stood up and cheered as if their team has just won the game or their candidate an election.
I was at a dinner party where a woman stated that it was just terrible that a black family was living in the White House. At the same party a man said that his church should abandon its ministry to the Native Americans and take care of "their own." Another guy incorrectly claimed that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a Mexican and we can't let any more of those people into the country.
I know a woman who called her three grown children on the night before the 2008 election to tell them that if they were going to vote for the Muslim terrorist she didn't want them voting at all. (All three voted for the "Muslim terrorist".)
I was having my hair cut one day when a woman said that Obama had been planted here to overthrow the United States government. I heard a version of that comment until the president was safely out of office.
I was in a church community room one Sunday when a man at my table declared that Treyvon Martin deserved to be shot because he was black and all those people do is steal from white people.
All these people claimed to be card-carrying Christians so something clearly is not working. On a more inspired note, a young minister started a church in Rapid City, South Dakota a few years ago and told his small flock that if they harbored any ill will towards Native Americans, black people, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, gay individuals or anyone else that they had no business being in his church and to get out. Word got around about this guy and today the membership is so large that they hire off-duty cops to get people in and out of the parking lot. The members are expected to take a week off and do good stuff for people who need assistance, like yard work, house painting, and meal preparation. This makes sense to me. I've long thought that every able-bodied citizen should be required to do weekly volunteer work that connects them to people they'd rather ignore or dismiss or get shipped to an iceberg for an attitude adjustment. Political work doesn't count, and the big shots can't beg off because they're too busy. This means the governor reads to the blind, the Secretary of Defense makes sandwiches at a soup kitchen, the CEO plays games with the cancer patients at a children's hospital, and the archbishop does the dishes at a women's shelter.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
P.S. And the president hosts Cinco de Mayo for the dreamers at the White House and teaches a nice variety of inner city kids how to play golf. And hopes that some wonderful family invites
him to a Seder and he learns something about God.
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