The horror of living among racial hatred


I'm a white guy, who lives in the United States, and it horrifies me to see so much casual racial hatred, just strolling by. And I still see a lot of it today.

I saw this photo yesterday on my Pinterest feed, and while I don't know anything about it, I can tell what it is, a couple of members of the Klu Klux Klan just casually strolling down a main street somewhere in the United States. Looks like the 1950s to me.

The Klu Klux Klan began during the Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War, in the United States. Laws were changing, especially Federal ones, but many people resisted those laws. And in addition to lynching people, and burning crosses on front lawns, the people of the Klan just generally did whatever they could to make life difficult for people that they didn't like. And that list included not just black people, but a whole range of people whose ethnicity or religion the Klan wanted to suppress.

I live in Arizona, and while you don't see people strolling down main street dressed in Klu Klux Klan hoods nowadays, you are aware of them. And something that didn't really occur to me until this year (it's 2021 as I write this) is that if you live somewhere with them, you just gotta interact with these people. They run businesses, and unless you never have to go the grocery store, or get the oil changed on your car, you will have to get right up close to them, talk to them, give them money.

I wish that I could just wave a magic wand and make them all just disappear, but I can't. These people are convinced that they're doing the right thing, standing up for themselves, defending their way of life. And the sense of horror I get after interacting with them leaves my nerves vibrating for a long time, and makes me sick to my stomach. But I can dream of a day when this won't happen.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

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