Racism is both a tragic and fascinating human phenomena that, despite the improved liberal tolerances of our new global village, continues to thrive in societies the world over. As RELATIVTY has discussed at length before, East and West, Third or First world, racism is always there; sometimes beneath the surface and sometimes in our faces.

For some, a critical and forthright discussion of race is much more acceptable when it comes from an often maligned and marginalized slice of a society’s minority. But what if you are a member of the majority? What if you a member of a racial group whose history includes ugly acts of racism and prejudice?  Are there boundaries to respect? Are there certain issues too sensitive to approach? 

RELATIVTY Online staff came across the above video of a young American asking these very questions and more. With its history entrenched in slavery, The United States has always been a hotbed of racial tension, ready to burst into flame at any given moment. Watch a rather frank discussion of one man’s perspevtive of such an atmosphere and see if you agree.  

Geopoliticus by Salvador Dali

From David Anthony Hohol…

We are all different, but we are all the same. It’s hard for many of us to fathom the self-image born from being a member of what society calls a minority.  Standing amidst the towering forest of the status quo, showered with the seeds of conditioning, we don’t understand the enveloping sense of judgment that surrounds those who stand outside it.

The gay community makes up a small, but consistent percentage of societies the world over. The lifestyle and those within it produce a sub-culture to which most of society’s membership is never fully exposed. My liberal minded parents playing a huge role in the construction of my own set of values, the notion of where somebody stuck it or who did what to who was never a huge issue with me. Both my mother and father, although willing to joke about things, clearly emphasized there was never any need to condemn. Whenever the topic arose, my parents stressed there were far more important factors to consider when defining character than that of one’s sexual orientation.

I’d be a liar if I said I never got that uncomfortable feeling most straight males experience, when it comes to the topic of homosexuality, most espeically when I was young. There’s no doubt, it was just plain bizarre to think about two men being together. As a teenager, the simple thought of gay sex irked us horribly. As a result, the phrases you faggot or don’t be gay were common expressions from the beginnings of grade school onward. It was base level vernacular, especially when we wanted to insult someone. Simply put, from my earliest of memories, the world I lived in saw the gay man as a weak and depraved form of humanity.  

I was Johnny Joe Jock boy with three capital Js throughout my teens. Machismo, testosterone, and masculinity were everywhere, and more often than not, I was the leader. I was one of those off the hook, over the top lunatics, who specialized in athletically sanctioned battery and assault.  By extension, I was also extremely adept at whipping an entire room of young men, oozing socially prescribed maleness, into an absolute frenzy.

While in the locker room before hockey games, there were times I would pound my head into a steel cage that held the team’s equipment, while screaming war cries like some kind of madman, until my teammates frothed at the mouth. During the pre-game warm up, I skated out onto the ice without my helmet, so the opposing team could see the steel grating of the cage imprinted on my forehead. All the while, I stared down my opponents with a look that seemed to suggest I was planning on drowning their kittens or shooting their dogs after the game. 

One can easily imagine the social construction of male identity that unfolded in such an atmosphere and how to a group of manly young men, nothing was more pussy than a being a pillow biting faggot. For me and most of my friends, this meant colorful insults directed towards anyone who came off the least bit effeminate. We even directed such insults at one another from time to time, as nothing got a teammate’s goat more than calling them an ass pirate or a but stabber in the locker room. With some, it was easy to tell it went beyond jokes, as their hatred towards gay men was obvious. I found the look in their eyes, the tones in their voices, and the seriousness of their words a little difficult to understand, but didn’t say anything. More often than not, I simply nodded my head in agreement and said something highly intelligent like yah, man in response. Coaches also talked as if the gay man was the disgrace of the human species and in so many words, announced it was perfectly natural to hate them. Although I never witnessed it myself, from time to time, teammates talked of how they roughed up some fudge packer over the weekend. Simply put, in the world I was raised in misunderstanding, intolerance, fear, and hatred of the homosexual was standard fare – and then came AIDS.

As the seventies unfolded, sex seemingly managed to entirely remove itself from any binding association with morality and sexual freedom thrived. Shortly thereafter, things very much changed and so did the world. Those of my generation were the very first to grow up in a world that has AIDS, as prior to the 1980s virtually no one ever heard of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. We were the first to pass through puberty with the ominous threat of death waiting for us on the other end of our newfound desires. The whipping boy for our fear and ignorance of this new and mysterious disease became the gay community. During its social infancy, the disease was often referred to as the gay plague, and an already banished out-group became enveloped in a tragically heightened sense of fear and hatred. Gays were soon blamed for what a sensationalistic media called the most horrific disease ever to curse the human species. Suddenly, not using a condom didn’t simply lend itself to an unwanted pregnancy or an annoying case of crabs, but allowed for the possibility of outright death. Commercials soon hit the airwaves, boldly announcing we don’t just have sex with the person we’re with when we don’t use a condom, but with every single person he or she had sex with in the past, as well as all those they had sex with… and so on, and so on, and so on.  I can remember one commercial in particular with a guy holding a condom in his hand, as he stood in front of a coffin and asked, “Now… which would you rather be inside of?”

That’s a huge thing for an entire generation of young people to have suddenly thrust upon them, but that’s how things were and we simply had to deal with it. The mid-eighties saw the AIDS scare become a full blown panic. The media keenly manipulated both science and morality and began the process of selling the idea that the AIDS was fast becoming an all out epidemic that could wipe out the entire planet. The media and the masses alike were all so naïve in beginning that conspiracy theories and urban legends raged out of control. One story I heard several times over was how men and women infected with the disease were purposely going out and having unprotected sex in order to spread it. To make the story even more dramatic, it was often announced to the unsuspecting partner the next day, with a miniature coffin and a note saying “welcome to the AIDS club” left on pillows or in mailboxes. Whether it was a form of poverty population control or an attempt to infect the black community, some claimed the government experimentally released the disease upon the public. The higher power conspiracy theory I heard most often claimed that AIDS was no less than a wet dream for Catholicism. The story claimed the Vatican unleashed AIDS upon the world in order to once again sexually inhibit humanity, at long last striking vengeance against the splintering ideals of Martin Luther that had destroyed the monolithic power of the Church forever.

There has never before or since been a disease that inspired more crazed paranoia and conspiracy madness, and this was very much due to the fact that AIDS attached itself to sex. The disease became synonymous with the very concept of morality. Thoughts of good and evil, and even freedom and control became commonplace in any discussion of the disease. The 20^th century’s Moral Majority soon attached politics and morality to a biological disease in a way never seen before. No one ever politicized cancer or wondered if the CIA was responsible for Parkinson’s; we never equated Alzheimer’s with the Wrath of God or claimed Leukemia was a secret government experiment. Things got out of control for a while, as a powerful wave of fear gripped us all and according to many, it was all because of those Goddamn faggots.

Sanctioned prejudice, the value of masculinity, physical prowess, and a new fear of the so-called gay plague meant that for me and my peers, growing up to be a man in contemporary Western society was to be homophobic. Whether it was subtle or obvious, the conditioning was constant and produced immeasurable ignorance. Although I was not fully conscious of it at the time, one of the most palpable memories I have of all out homophobia occurred during my teens and once again came from within the ever masculine realm of athletics. As it was being talked about by everyone at the time, the topic of Rock Hudson contracting AIDS came up during an early morning hockey practice at the Vancouver Island Oak Bay Recreation Center, in what would have been the fall of 1985. After a few of my teammates gave their opinions on the matter, our head coach offered his influential thoughts to a large group of impressionable young men. “Well guys… Let me tell ya… that’s what you get for fucking guys in the ass. Goddamn faggots are like a buncha animals… and that fuckin’ butt stabber got what was comin’ to him,” he snarled.

Some of the guys laughed and a variety of similar statements surged through the group of ultra-masculine young bucks. Finally, one of my teammates suggested, “Those shit-packers should be shipped out to some island and then nuked… it even says so in the Bible.”

Someone then suggested the guy who just spoke should be the one shipped out to the aforementioned island, and the entire team broke into uproarious laughter. To accuse someone of being a gay, by this point in my life, was already a time-honored tradition. As a result, a variety of colorful insults went back and forth amongst us, until the coach put an end to the topic and clearly made his point one last time. “Settle down guys… that’s enough. Save it for the game on Saturday. I’m tired of talking about queers anyway, but before you start doing your lines just remember… it’s not me who says being a faggot is wrong. God himself says every last one of them should die. Go ahead and check the Bible and you’ll see… now that’s enough of that. Move your asses! Let’s go!” he yelled and then blew hard into his whistle, the shrill sound echoing throughout the empty arena.

As we stumble towards the ecstasy of a life fulfilled, revelation and acquiescence will often play intricate roles; our grandiose journey towards an exit to forgiveness revealing the paradoxical relationship of acceptance and discovery.  It would be years before I realized the blind ignorance that had surrounded me as a young man and the extreme prejudice that surrounds certain minority groups in our society. The seeds of acceptance planted by my parents and a crazy thing called fate (a story unto itself) eventually grew into towering oaks of clarity, allowing me to clearly see and for that I am grateful. To shed to skin of our youths and grow into something more is amongst the most important things we will ever do. The social construction of identity – be it sexual, social or religious – starts from the time we come into being.  It makes it so very hard to see from perspectives other than our own, but try we must to do just that. Embracing the humanity of all of us who scatter the globe is what makes us most human, most capable of raising the levels of our own being to a plane of existence most worth living.   

Throughout human history, race has been our most defining characteristic. By extension, race has consistently produced powerful forms of judgment and continues to do so today. Although the concept of race scientifically does not exist and is purely a social phenomenon, the social reality of race permeates every part of human life. More than anything, visible immediacy perpetuates its superiority as a master status and the lines of racial division are systemically ingrained within our thought patterns from the moment we join the empirical rabble of humankind. RELATIVITY OnLine’s Indonesian correspondent Rezwan, starkly recounts his past’s perspective of being a Bangladeshi living in Germany – a country with dark past of xenophobia and fear. His words remind us all that although we have come so very far in terms of race relations, we are still a long way from home.  

I wrote earlier about how Roland Koch, the governor of the western state of Hesse in Germany stirred an uproar with his anti-immigrant rhetorics possibly as an election strategy (from 2008).

The Spiegel Online International recently did a soul searching on “Germany’s homegrown intolerance“. Spiegel Online editor David Crossland, who was born in Bonn to English parents argued, “rather than rail against ‘criminal young foreigners,’ the country ought to be doing more to welcome its minorities“.

He cited the racial discriminationshe faced for speaking in English in U-Bahn (underground) although being a white person and opines:

“Maybe it’s the Germans’ romantic yearning for purity and cleanliness, for a “Heile Welt,” a “Perfect World,” that renders them prone to a collective xenophobia. This nation of dog lovers goes for pure breeds.”
….
“So instead of telling its immigrants not to slaughter sheep in their kitchens, Germany would be well advised to be nicer to its immigrants. Like it or not, they’re here to stay.”

It sparked a lot of reactions. In the same article the Spiegel Online International announced that they are collecting the experiences of foreigners living in Germany — both good and bad. And here a Pandora’s box was opened. More and more readers talk of Germany’s invisible Xenophobia and it ain’t pretty.

Spiegel’s first batch of readers opinions revealed horrid portrayals of silent xenophobia and some questions which the Germans probably have never thought of this way. We also look at some examples of foreigners living without such discrimination and how Germans view it.

“I was exposed to a subtle yet stubborn kind of racism on a daily basis. This mostly takes the form of social exclusion — I always felt that I am not and will never be allowed to become a normal member of society, despite holding a promising academic record and decent linguistic skills.” – A Chinese scholar from Munich.

“I have a German name, I have a German passport, but I look Asian, and therefore am a foreigner.” – Veronica

“One more issue that I feel is a barrier to any kind of integration is the fact that almost no Germans that I knew had friends of a different culture or skin color — the exception being North Americans, North Europeans and Australians, etc. Even so-called liberal, ‘tolerant’ people simply did not have foreigners in their circles of acquaintance. Friendships and relationships are essential to any type of integration, and as long as the Germans keep immigrants at arm’s length, the immigrants will never feel like they belong.” Yvonne Jacoby from Ireland

“I have come across some of the finest individuals in Germany, and the opposite too. It’s extremely hard for a foreigner to find out whether a German likes him/her or not. I hope most of the foreigners would agree if I say life for a foreigner is like that of Satan in heaven — you have been admitted into the country but not actually into the society.” – Madhu Balan from India

“I do have German friends and a German wife and a lot of Germans are kind and nice people. But I never feel like I belong to this place because of my skin color. And even the nicest Germans will often ask, when I say I am American: “But what are you really?” – Mike Silva from USA

“In some parts of Germany I would not like to have dark skin — sad, don’t you think?” – An ex-British soldier.

“If my friend, who is white, crosses a street when the light is red, she is in a hurry. And if I do the same, someone is waiting to say “schwarze Schlampe” (“black slut”) or something similar.” – An Indian Student in Berlin

On the other hand some foreigners said that Germans were helpful to them and the extent of racism and xenophobia in Germany is often exaggerated. Some opined that Germany is not perfect and there are more hate crimes reported in many countries whereas only few Germany.

A German man with a Polish wife shared the treatment his wife and a South African friend faced and opined:

“The only chance I see for success is the integration of our society into a European society as a whole where immigration, cross-border movements and ‘foreignness’ are considered to be assets for a functioning society.“

An Indian scholar defends Germans and suggests:

“They just expect that people should at least speak and understand their language and culture. Germany needs to do more to have the best brains from around the world. This is where the future lies.“

Read the Spiegel Online article for details.

In the second batch of reader opinionsin Spiegel a discovery comes from a German who is living outside of Germany for five years:

“The kind of discrimination that immigrants in Germany face is already deeply rooted in the system and accepted as the norm to such an extent that most people will not notice it. This discrimination may not be apparent to someone who is living in Germany and surrounded by it every day, yet not affected by it.“

In my town there are a lot of immigrant children of my age, from Turkey, Russia, Italy and many other countries. Yet how many of them went to a “Gymnasium” (university-track high school — Ed.) like I did? The sad answer is not a single one. My entire high school class consisted of German, white, middle-class kids who were, like me, oblivious to the diversity of people living around them.

It happens all around us — it is just a matter of opening your eyes to it.

Here are some examples confirming it:

“I discovered, while procuring my residency papers, a higher benchmark was set for my documents than those of my white American friends who were kind enough to compare their experience with mine.” – A Haitian American

“My wife, in spite of being a European citizen, was given a permit as if she was an Indian wife and she was not allowed to work any more. When we inquired to the Ausländerbehörde (foreigners’ office) about her getting a Freizügigkeitsbescheinigung (‘freedom of movement’ permit, issued to EU citizens living in Germany) we were told that she had lost all rights as an EU citizen by marrying a third-country national and she would now be considered as an alien’s wife, not as an EU citizen.” – An Indian scholar married to a Lithuanian girl (working in Germany).

“When I first got pregnant, I couldn’t believe the look on one of the nurses’ face when she looked at my insurance card and saw that we were not Germans. She immediately started hinting to my face that we were here making a great living and stealing their jobs away, while they were struggling with recession.” -Andreaa Sepi from Romania

And some reality the Germans perhaps do not consider:

“Even the most cosmopolitan of my German friends could not conceive that I might plan to stay in the country after graduation. For them, it was unthinkable that a foreigner would come to study in Germany and legally stay on to work. (After graduation I moved to the United States and use my German education to make money from an American company. Too bad for the German tax-payer.)” – A Brazilian

“Germans probably travel more than any other nationalities, and yet in their own country they act as if they’ve never seen people of color.” – name withheld

My suggestion to Germans who really want to see integration work, is simple: Talk to a foreigner! Wherever you are, on the bus, walking down the street, don’t hesitate to talk to a foreigner. Make us feel welcome, just a little nod and a short hello would suffice.

“Immigration has always been part of Germany’s history, in one way or another — be it the Huguenots in the 17th century or Russian Jews after the pogroms in Russia in the 19th century — only that a lot of Germans aren’t aware of it. I blame the politicians and the media in Germany for doing so little to promote immigration and integration, to show how society can benefit from immigration — where are, for instance, the Turkish TV presenters?” – Martin Sauter, a German

While we also see some counterpoints:

“Germans have the right to model their own country and culture. The same is true for Saudi Arabia with its non-tolerance of Christians, and India with its discriminatory caste system or Japan with its homogeneous ethnicity.” – An American

“There is always one option for those who do not like it: Go home. No one is keeping them here or in any country where they do not feel wanted.” – Paul Sanders

“Maybe Germany, including the SPIEGEL, should realize that Germany is not a special country but average, and that the phenomena you discuss here are not specifically German but human. It’s called in-group-preference and out-group-avoidance. I’m afraid we’re not going to get totally rid of that anywhere in the world.” – A German living in Canada.

“The emphasis (in the debate on “foreign” criminals (more…)) should not be on the word “foreign”; rather, it should be on the word “criminal.” If the criminal element — regardless of age — chooses not to respect the laws of their country of adoption, then they should be deported, pure and simple. The tax payer should not support this ilk.” – Vera Gottlieb.

My view to this debate is that any criminal foreign or local should be tried under law. So why the fuss about deporting foreigners? What do you do with the local criminals? I think Ms. Vera do not know the asylum laws in Germany which grants political asylums to people from other countries. Some of those granted are fugitives from the rule of law of their own countries. Perhaps the issue of human rights come into question then. What an oxymoron!

I like to end this roundup with an American’s words:

“Here in the States, the history of prejudice is different, the effects just as constant, but the origin similar: fear of that which is different. This fear breeds hatred and violence, sometimes planned and carried out over time, at other times opportunistic and random. Passively and actively, it is then passed to the next generation.“

Xenophobia, racism, and extreme nationalism or regionalism, are all so ugly because the potential for these exists in all our hearts.

From Nora Fakim…

During these past ten years, there has been a growing media campaign aimed at inciting prejudice against Muslims. Since 9/11, and especially since the London Tube bombing in July 2005, many Asians and Muslims have been harassed and racially attacked because of the negative image Islam has.  

 But the question is does Islamophobia actually exist? The trouble with the idea is that it confuses hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims on the one hand with criticism of Islam on the other. The connotation of “Islamophobia” is all too often used not to highlight racism but to silence critics of Islam, or even Muslims fighting for reform of their communities.

With Channel 4 being the first station public-service television broadcaster in the United Kingdom to win favourable support from the British ethnic minorities, does this also mean that it is more Islam friendly compared to other media stations?

According to the  School of Journalism in Cardiff, the fact remains that the reason as to why the  media coverage on British Muslims has significantly increased, is due to 36% of stories on British Muslims is in relation to terrorism. Furthermore, in many newspapers like the Sun, they are known to use negative language when referring to Islam.

But what is extraordinary about Channel 4, is that it seems to show Islam in a different light. One in which it aims to reach out to everybody no matter what ethnicity or religion and tries to make people aware that British Muslims are suffering too. With the negative image of Islam in the U.K, many Muslims live in fear of practicing their own religion and find that the negative stigma around their religion creates a barrier between them and the rest of the British community.

According to the 2003 Communication Act, ‘Channel 4 is a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society.’ This is the reason as to why the channel was efficient at tackling the problems of Islamophobia by being aware that it was and still is a serious matter and so they made every effort to help decrease tensions between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities.

In 2008’s most watch interviews, Jon Snow challenges Salman Rushide about the Western and Easter conflicts. Although Salman Rushdie is talking about his new book which describes similarities between Eastern and Western cultures, Jon Snow questions him further about the modern day issues of Western and Eastern cultural conflicts.

He states to Rushdie that the ‘West needs to also be involved in building a bridge with the East.’ Mr Rushdie is unable to even answer some of Snows questions because many are questions which the British media refuses to acknowledge and which the public would never dare to bring up as they are questions which give the Western World a negative image such as; ‘Many people think of the East that we think nothing of their culture… the West has no culture… the East has culture’ (Snow). Although Salam Rushdie is trying to refer each time to his book which is set in the past, Jon Snow is trying to put this cultural conflict at forefront in our present day society, which is highly important in making people understand the Western and Eastern cultural conflicts whether it being in Britain and the rest of the world.                                                 

Channel 4’s dispatches showed the documentary which was presented by Peter Oborne; ‘It should not even happen to a Muslim’. This documentary aimed to make people aware of the difficulties many British Muslims face; whilst living and growing up in Great Britain. 

The documentary found that 61 % of hostility increased towards the Muslim community since the 2005 London bombings. Mr Oborne even managed to interview the Muslim MP Shahid Malik; about his life as a British Muslim. Malik quoted that he often receives ‘hate mail’ about being Muslim and anger towards the Muslim community.

He also said in the interview that the media play a role in misinterpreting issues dealing with people of his religion. Another programme on channel 4 which was targeted in educating the non-Muslim community about Islam was the weekly programme; ‘Make me a Muslim’. The idea was to give non-Muslims an idea of what it was like to live as a Muslim in Britain. After the series, all the contestants had a more positive image about the Islamic faith then when they first arrived at the beginning of the show. This show was another effective way of trying to build an understanding between both cultures.

 Channel 4’s website publicises several Muslim organistations such as, ‘The Muslim Association of Britain’ and ‘F.A.I.R.’ Whilst interviewing Karima Sbitri, who is a member of F.A.I.R she confessed that Channel 4 was the ‘best un-biased channel’ when it came to talking about Islam. I interviewed several Muslims from City University and I asked them what their favourite British channel was and eight out of ten replied Channel 4.

From this article we can see that there have been many showings on Channel 4 to tackle the problem of Islamophobia in Britain and this is a reason as to why it is favoured by many Muslims and ethnic minorities living here in the U.K. Its recent multicultural diversity statement was that, ‘Multicultural programmes remain at the heart of Channel 4’.

Let us hope that it carries on helping to resolve the problems of Islamophobia and other cultural issues here in Great Britain!

Despite the liberal tolerance of our New World, racism still thrives in societies the world over. East and West, Third or First world, it’s always there; sometimes beneath the surface and sometimes in our faces. With that said, when the black son of an African Muslim, Barrack Hussein Obama, becomes the President of the United States, we can at least say we’re headed in the right direction. RELATIVTY OnLine’s David Anthony Hohol talks racism, straight forward and to the point. 

Many of us will live out our entire lives without ever truly experiencing being unlike all those with which we surround ourselves. It’s hard for many to understand what it’s like to walk into a room and have everyone take notice of our presence simply for being the only one. To fathom the self-image born from being a member of what society calls a minority can be very complicated for those standing amidst the towering forest of the status quo. Perhaps most importantly, it’s difficult to comprehend the enveloping sense of judgment and conversely, the tremendous feeling of solidarity amongst the membership of a societal out-group.

Throughout human history race has been our most defining characteristic. By extension, race has consistently produced powerful forms of judgment and continues to do so today. Although the concept of race scientifically does not exist and is purely a social phenomenon, the social reality of race permeates every part of human life. More than anything, visible immediacy perpetuates its superiority as a master status and the lines of racial division are systemically ingrained within our thought patterns from the moment we join the empirical rabble of humankind.

Whether it’s been random or evolutionary adjustments to the environment, the fact is that the physical disparity amongst us is due to genetic mutation. In the days before global or even continental travel, isolated gene pools created common ancestries with similar traits, and even communal diseases, but never has there been a sub-species to the human race. Nevertheless, race is unquestionably a very significant part of our lives and is repeatedly used to explain such cultural nuances as skin color, ethnicity, values, traditions, or ancestry.

Pre-conceived notions and socially conditioned images of race are downloaded onto the human psyche via television, music, film, and the ever-manipulative mass media. By the time children reach their tenth birthdays, the socially constructed images of Black, White, Indian, Asian, or Arabic have been fully installed and are an integral part of the massive hard drive that is our subconscious mind. With the music and film industries working as system engineers for the youth of every generation passed, one can begin to see the fateful stereotypes that shape the minds of today’s youth in preparation for adulthood within the walls of the Western World and beyond. Whether it’s the White angry banger bands or the even whiter super-hero, the Black pimp daddy hip-hop bands or the blacker still foul mouthed criminal, ideas of what it means to be Black or White are ingested constantly. Further still, whether it’s the cerebral Asian computer geek, the scheming Arab terrorist, or the money loving Jew, a pre-determined and entirely misleading range of archetypal racial images rain down upon us from all sides. Whether pejorative in nature or not, these images can thus be defined as a fundamental part of our societal matrix from which all thought stems.

The differences amongst the human race and the significance attached to them have been the cause of conflict throughout our long and arduous existence. Simultaneously, we must take care not to subscribe to the flawed belief that recognizing the differences amongst us is synonymous with the proliferation and sanctioning of inequality.  Many like to claim that the recognition of differences is integrally linked to discrimination. This kind of naïve fear-mongering is wrong, but has unfortunately become a knee-jerk reaction in the hypersensitive, politically correct minefield of today’s world. We are often made to feel as though we are not supposed to overtly recognize the differences amongst the human race. In other words, many of us have been conditioned to withhold thoughts and ideas about the differences amongst us for fear of being labeled a bigot or a racist; an accusation, whether true or not, that permanently stains an individual’s character. At times, we even catch ourselves questioning our own thoughts – I know I have.

Come on now, be honest; how do you really perceive Blacks, Whites, Indians, Arabs, Asians, or any other so-called race different than your own?  Look into the mirror and be completely honest with yourself… no one else has to know. 

There are many differences amongst us and there are no absolutes, this much I know to be true. Contrarily, we are more alike than different, no matter how difficult it may be to initially recognize the similarities. It’s in our nature to see the differences amongst us before we see that which is the same, but when given the chance to truly see, like a blind man regaining his sight, what was always right in front of us can become an emancipating vision of truth.

Experience – tangible, first hand experience with that which we don’t know makes all the difference. It is then when we feel the comforting cloak of legitimacy. Behind every fallen lie within our intricate puzzle of existence will stand a piece of magnanimous truth, and when put together they will create a picture of clarity and conviction. It’s a process to which I have become addicted and it continues to this day.

We all need to shine a light upon that which makes us feel uncomfortable, odd, hurt, or even angry, so that we can see inside ourselves and begin to understand. The result will be the inspiration to learn more, to experience more, to understand that which we do not, and see that which we have never seen. By extension, people all around us, regardless of who they are become more like the person we see in the mirror each day. In the end, exposure and experience bring understanding and hope, and the further we reach into the bottomless depths of empiricism, the smaller our majestic world becomes.

From David Anthony Hohol…