Seeds And Weeds

Since the age of five, I wondered why people hate. In April of 1968 I heard a man had been killed because he was black and believed everyone was equal. I’d never heard of Martin Luther King Jr. before that day, at least not that I was aware of, but suddenly everyone was talking about him. I did not know many black people, but the one family I did know seemed no different from anyone else to me. Though I do recall when I first met them, just one year earlier when I was four, having a perplexed first impression.

While riding past their house on my tricycle, I saw a girl about two or three years older than me on the front porch. I stopped to look at her and asked her what was wrong with her. She didn’t seem to know what I meant and asked me what I was talking about. I asked her if she had been burned in a fire and she told me she hadn't, so I asked her why her skin was black. She told me that was just the way she was born and that was how her whole family looked.

At four years old and growing up in a small town with very few black families, I wasn’t sure what to think, but in many ways that was a good thing.

No one had yet infected my mind with prejudice, so my sense of curiosity took over and I decided to get to know this girl. Later I met her parents, found them to be nice people, though not particularly sociable, and got to know her pretty well. So when I heard that Martin Luther King had been killed because he was black and many white people hated blacks, I did not understand why. I wondered what I couldn’t see. Was there some mysterious evil lurking beneath the skin of my friend?

In all of the years since, I have watched people’s behavior, listened to the public and private comments of white people who carried this hate within them and drew many conclusions. Those conclusions have lead me to form a philosophy on hatred that has evolved into what I refer to as “Three Seeds”. I have wanted to get to the heart of the matter and find a way to weed out these seeds so that they could never take root. But what to do about those who have already allowed the seeds to grow and who nourish them with their fear, their greed and their pride.

How can people who already hate, be taught to let go of their prejudice? If only it were as easy as pointing it out to them and explaining what generated these feelings, but it isn’t so simple. You can point out every dandelion in the yard, but some people think they look nice. You can pull out every last one, but if you don’t get the root, they grow back and spread to the neighbors yard and their neighbors yard until they are everywhere. No one can weed every garden and lawn. But if we work together as one, with one great lawn, there will be no other side to appear greener.

Throughout my youth I realized all sorts of hatred existed right there in my little neighborhood. I noticed how my white friends didn’t really want to hang around with my black friend and it bothered me very much. But I found it went beyond color, as I had many white friends who would not play together. It wasn’t a religious thing, since most of them were Catholics and we all went to the same church. It wasn’t long before I realized that my friends, who lived in the rich neighborhood, only two blocks in one direction from my house, really didn’t like the kids who lived in the poor neighborhood, only one block away in the other direction.

Keep in mind this is a small town and a block is only about a hundred yards long, maybe two hundred in the rich neighborhood. So it’s not like we are talking about people on opposite sides of town. And there I was, in the middle, in a nice house, though not big, on a nice street where both wealthy kids and poor kids didn’t feel too far out of place, at least so long as kids from the opposite end of the financial spectrum didn’t happen to be hanging out together.

There were rebels of course, as there are in all societies. But for the most part, I could see the division very clearly and often tried to get them to play together in football and baseball games and a nighttime hind-and-go-seek game we called “chase”. I was not always successful and the teams always wound up divided into neighborhoods. There would be arguments on every play and it usually wound up breaking down before the game was over. So most of the games ended up as financially segregated events with smaller teams but more fun. If I had been able to see more clearly what I can see now, I would have made greater efforts to mix things up more often and pick players from the opposite ends of the neighborhood for my team.

But I knew that if kids wound up on a team they didn’t want to be on, they would threaten to quit and go home, and at that age I more worried about having fun playing ball than worrying about who was from which neighborhood. And since I was usually the one making all the phone calls to get everyone together, I often wound up as Captain of one team. I knew who the best players were and I knew who would get along, so I picked my players to get the happy medium. I don’t remember who won more and who lost more, but having fun was the ultimate goal and more often than not, it was fun.

I still didn’t understand why this atmosphere of hatred existed between my friends. Why was I accepted in both neighborhoods without a second thought? Was it simply because I was in the middle, in more ways than one, or was it something else? Did I project a feeling of equality to everyone that made them comfortable to be around? Or maybe it was some combination of factors, that made it possible for me to have friends of all kinds, to make friends with pretty much everyone I met?

What I find most difficult to understand is, if I have this ability, if I can be friends in all of these circles, isn’t it possible for everyone to do the same? Am I some special human that has a gift others do not, some vision that allows me to see the intangible? I hope not. I want to believe that everyone has it, that there is something that turns others away from it. Maybe it is something we are taught, maybe it is something genetic, but why do people hate?

It is so ingrained in our history, not just American history, but all of human existence, that it must be some left over cave-mannish behavior that allowed us to endure when Neanderthals were becoming extinct. Humans are as savage as any animal species on Earth when their survival is at stake. But what I find so hard to understand is why we still behave like savages when no such circumstance is at hand. Are we that afraid, or just that greedy? Perhaps we love ourselves so much that it’s just easier to take from those who are not prepared to protect themselves from our aggression.

Meanwhile, we can still hate, so long as we live to fight another day (he said sarcastically). And God bless America, we will need all the blessings we can get for the atrocities of our own government. Not just in other countries, but right here in America, where the soil is soaked in the blood of the native people and the African slaves. Was it necessary for Africans to be stolen from their land for this one to gain freedom? I don’t see much difference in our history with the Native American Indians. Did they need to be slaughtered and have their land stolen from them for us to have a new place to live? The only reason they weren’t made slaves is because they were considered too savage to tame.

Feeling that discrimination is justified will never bring an end to hate, conversely it will fill people with more revulsion. No matter the reason for hatred or who is being suppressed, it makes people have an aversion to being near people of the “other kind”, whatever that other kind happens to be. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, the poor, people with disabilities, religions, homosexuals, short people, fat people, homeless people and whoever else might happen to be different in some way that they can be separated from the ones who have the upper hand in a petty system that has afforded them power over others, are victims of bigotry. Even if our survival didn’t depend on it, we must be free of it.

It may be that we are born with some instinct to hate or a desire for power over others, and at some point we learn who to turn that instinct against. I think fear is the first instinct, the survival instinct. Fear makes us run from predators and perhaps the reason we are here at all is because we find it so hard to let it go. If fear is instinct, greed is learned and pride is taught, but all three lead to the same result. Hatred is the enemy.

Until we can let go of our fear, our pride and our want for more, we will never be equal to those we believe are lesser than ourselves. The mountain of equality is a high one to climb, but there is a plateau at the top big enough for everyone. It’s just so hard to teach the high and mighty how to climb when they think they are already at the top. If they took the time to stop looking down on others, they could see that they are at the top of nothing but their feet.

The manager of a store I worked in as a sales person was a woman whose grandfather had been a Nazi during WWII. She was a deeply hateful person who only accepted me after learning I am part German. One thing she did that I found annoying was play old records of German music, which I not only couldn’t understand a word of, but didn’t like the music either. She even told me how she had her grandfather’s war uniforms and medals hanging on the walls of her home. She seemed to think that because I was part of the Arian Race, I would feel the same way she did and she could tell me all sorts of things about her grandfather’s war heroics and how much she hated Jews and blacks, using the “N” word. She told me in an accusatory tone of voice that she would never hire a “N’r” because they would rob the store blind.

During the Christmas sales season, we needed another salesperson to help with the larger volume of customers. When the District Manager sent a black guy from one of the other stores to help us, she went in the back office and stayed there the entire time he was working with us. Not only was it an obvious show of disrespect, but it completely defeated the purpose of having another salesperson on duty. After the sales slowed down later in the week, he returned to his regular store and she came out of hiding, pretending as though nothing had happened. If not for her obvious lingering anger over the situation, you would have thought she had just taken a vacation for a week.

Knowing how much she loved money and selling things to people that they didn’t really need, it must have been an excruciatingly painful time for her. Missing out on so many sales must have put a major dent in her paycheck, which I found mildly satisfying. But having a guy she hated for the color of his skin, working in her store for an entire week, had to feel like being locked in a jail cell to her. That wasn’t enough for me though, I was moved to write the poem “Segregation” for her after witnessing the debacle.

The day after writing “Segregation” I was riding on the bus and couldn’t help but notice that as people got on the bus they would sit next to “like” individuals. By that I mean women would sit next to other women, men would sit next to men, blacks next to other blacks and whites next to whites. As usual, the bus filled up rather quickly and seemed as segregated to me as if someone had turned back time to when blacks had to sit in the back of the bus. As more people got on the bus and there was standing room only, people were actually squeezing into areas near others of “their kind”, not wanting to even be near someone of a different race or sex. Everyone seemed to have a place on the bus, like a chessboard, with the black pieces lined up against the white pieces and the pawns all stood in a row.

Eventually, the bus got so packed that there was no more room for people to stand and the bus driver wasn’t stopping where people were waiting to get on. It was interesting to watch the faces of the people, scowling at each other if someone rubbed up against them who was of the opposite sex or another color. There was tension and anger everywhere and I started thinking about the poem I had written the day before. It wasn’t just one white person, it wasn’t just white people, it was everybody. At that moment, I could see disgust in the eyes of nearly everyone I looked at on the bus that day. I had seen it before, but on that day, it was all around me. Although I knew anyone was capable of hate, I hadn’t seen it like that before.

The difference was in the way it was expressed, almost secretly, but no one was really trying to hide it. It was more like everyone was afraid to let it out. And I was thinking the only change people made was becoming aware they had to hide their feelings rather than stop the hate. The hate that blacks have for whites almost seems justified, almost. Not because of slavery, because that was a long time ago and no one alive today has experience it. It seemed to me, after what I had witnessed at work, not only in the fiasco during the previous week, but in other jobs all during my adult life, that blacks were still being discriminated against on a daily basis in all manner of situations. Not just work, but when they go shopping, being watched by security, getting help from sales people, going out to eat, getting seated in segregated patterns, usually in the less desirable areas. But it’s not enough to see it, hatred has to be outed to show those who refuse to see it, that they are not immune.

At what point is a person’s sexuality determined? If a man or woman never has sex, each dies a virgin. But if a virgin dies in love with someone of the same sex, is that person considered homosexual in the eyes of God? If a virgin dies while in love with someone of the opposite sex, is that person a heterosexual in God’s judgment? Does the physical act of sex dictate if an individual is heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual? All three spring from the emotions people feel in their heart. If it were just a sexual thing, they could do it with anyone and be happy. Love and sex are not the same thing. Perhaps we should study homo-emotional, hetero-emotional and bi-emotional areas of the brain instead.

How do you know one celibate from another? You don’t. If it is the case that a sin is committed at the moment it is thought, then celibacy counts for nothing. It would seem that God designed people who have no choice other than to fall in love with people of the same sex, only to be punished for it. If people are made to pay for sins while still alive, what’s the point of forgiveness? Why did Jesus die for us if God is going to circumvent the Passion and make us suffer anyway? If any are judged one moment before death, they have not been afforded the opportunity to repent for their sins and, consequently, the covenant is broken by God.

Some suggest that AIDES is God’s way of making homosexuals pay for their sins. If this were the case, God would not allow the innocent to contract HIV. Hemophiliacs would not get AIDS, nor heterosexuals or their newborn children if God designed the HIV virus. AIDES does not bend to God’s will and apparently, neither does hatred. AIDS appears to afflict gay men more frequently than others simply because men in general, gay or straight, are more promiscuous than women. Do the math, fall in love, AIDS will die.

Jesus never gives any guidance on homosexuality, which was common in his day. Why no mention if he considered it a sin? Homosexuality is mentioned in five passages in the Bible: Genesis 18, Genesis 19:6, Judges 19, Romans 1:26, Romans 1:27. In all five, the Bible refers specifically to lustful acts of homosexuality, not to those acts shared in love. Allowing gay couples to marry would silence the claims of lust and objections to pre-marital sex.

The Separation of Church and State
On Gay Marriage:
It seems to me there are two legal issues that opponents of gay marriage are ignoring. One is the separation of church and state, the other is equal rights, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", granted to all Americans.
First, let me make the point about marriage as a legal ceremony. How did it become a law that marriage certificates are needed to get married in a religious ceremony? Marriage has been performed by churches since long before there was an America. Since we have laws for the separation of church and state, why should the government have the right to interfere in any religious ceremony conducted by a minister of a church?
I can see how a mayor could be arrested for breaking laws that are on the books, even unjust laws that discriminate. After all, a mayor is an elected government official not acting as a representative of a church. Ministers, however, should not be held to those same laws when they infringe on the churches right to perform marriages between two people in a loving relationship. Breaking laws that are unjust has long been a method of getting them changed, so I am happy to see people fighting for the rights of others. Laws which discriminate, for any reason, must be struck down. These are not liberal judges changing the law, these are judges who are compelled by the Constitution to uphold the law, and they have. All citizens must be treated equally under the law.
I have to laugh when people say that gays will destroy the sanctity of marriage, as if gays have any influence over heterosexuals who get married. I think heterosexuals are doing a fine job of bringing down the institution of marriage. Look at the divorce rate, which is now over 50% in America. Look at the level of domestic violence, child abuse and parents who kill their own children. Is this the wonderful institution they are trying to protect? Something tells me their real fears are that gays will have better, longer lasting marriages than they have had themselves.
As a single heterosexual male who wants to be married someday, I do not feel threatened in the least by anyone else who wants to get married. At 40 years old, I am not rushing into marriage. I don't want to make a mockery of an institution I hold so high that I won't enter it until I am certain that I am both in love, and with the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I admire those who are able to make a lifetime commitment to love and to one another. I believe in allowing everyone the equal opportunity to join together to that end.

Erase the Hate Ring Owner: ju cream Site: Erase The Hate 2001