Racism rant

Sunday, a skin-head Neo-Nazi walked into a Sikh temple and opened fire, killing 6. 

This is incomprehensible to me.  Not just the violence, but the hate.  I just wasn't raised like that.  In fact, the only time I ever threatened violence upon another individual was because I heard a friend of mine say the "n" word.

I love the movie Remember the Titans, but in truth that's impossible for me to imagine as well.  I just wasn't raised to notice differences.  My mother told me this past week a story I had not heard.  When my parents married, and later had my sister, they lived on the Wind River Indian Reservation.  Mom told me that sometime after we moved from there, they moved in next door to a black family.  They sent my sister to the yard to play.  They watched her curiously, as she had never seen a black person while on the Indian Reservation.  They wanted to see how she reacted.  All she knew was they had a daughter about her age, so she made a friend. 

So many of these differences are imagined.  They are taught to us by others.  I don't know who taught this particular skin-head to hate (though most learn from their parents).  But I never learned that.  In fact, I hate it when people point it out.  When they said on the news that Obama was the first black president, I didn't believe them until I looked it up.  I never noticed.  I never thought about it.  He's the president of the US.  That's an amazing feat.  Why does it matter that he's black?

I thought the same when they said Tony Dungy was the first black head coach to win a Super Bowl (Go Colts!).  It's an amazing feat.  Why does it matter that he's black?  When they asked Dungy about it, I loved his response.  "Lovie (Lovie Smith, coach of the Chicago Bears) and I were talking about that before the game.  We said that that was an amazing thing, but it means so much more to us that we are both Christians who proved that you could win God's way."  He ignored the race issue and chose instead to give glory to God.

I'm tired of all the racist crap.  I'm tired of Neo-Nazis and others who think that everyone should treat anyone different than them badly (look at Rwanda).  I'm also tired of racists pretending to be good people, like the moron on the news a few weeks ago who claimed that Republicans make voter ID laws because they are racist.  His reasoning?  Blacks and Hispanics can't read well enough to get an ID.  I'm sorry, did you just say that other races are too stupid to read?  Then you call the other people racist for reasoning that all men are created equal and not pitying the inferior people?  I hate to tell you, but it's still racism if you believe others are less than you and therefore need your help.

I want to contrast this with another event from Sunday.  Our community put on a "Family Day" at one of the local parks.  It wasn't about race.  It was about people getting together instead of separate.  There was no consideration about the ethnicity of the person in line before you at the concession stand.  It was just about people having a good time.

Why can't we all just get along?  We can.  We do, all the time.  So let's all join together to tell the politicians from both sides of the aisle who get on a power trip from this crap to shut up and leave the rest of us alone.