Why I take Racism and the Like Personally
Though what happened in Charlottesville last weekend did not have a direct effect on me, it is still something I take personally.
Crossing the Bridges is where I get the most personal, and this week in particular I need to address what I am seeing in this country.
I was born and raised Jewish. Though I don’t practice the religion at this time, I DO culturally consider myself a Jew. I am proud of my heritage, and it means a lot to me to be a part of the tribe.
The marchers in Charlottesville represent hate towards me for no reason other than the culture I was born into. Full stop, that’s the simplicity of this. And I am not the only one that their message is targeting.
My brother-in-law is black. My niece is thus bi-racial. I do not want to see her suffer because she is Jewish, black, and female. The haters who marched and those who support them will not look too kindly upon her.
That’s the reality of this situation. The so-called “alt-right”, and their allies in the KKK and neo-Nazis want to watch my family burn because we are not like them. That is the ugly, unvarnished truth of this matter. And I cannot help but take this personally.
Five to six million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust. That is a fact. I will not stand idly by and watch this happen again, not to anyone. That is why I am writing these words today.
Take a stand.
The United States of America is a land of freedom. The first amendment protects the right to free speech. As such, these haters can march and they can protest. They can assemble and do everything in their power to make people like me fear them.
Yet free speech applies to all of us so-called minorities, too. We can march and we can protest. We can assemble and do everything in our power to show these terrible people they will not make us live in fear.
The white supremacists and their allies are NOT the majority. They are loud, they have monetary sources, and many of them are armed. Yet the rest of us are the actual majority. Those of us they stand against – black, Jew, Muslim, Hispanic, Indian, female, transgendered – we are the majority.
Non-violent protest has been proven effective time and again. So we need to take our stand and unite against this angry, bitter, fearful foe. We need to counter their protests with sit-ins, non-violent marches, peaceful rallies, and messages such as this empowering us.
We cannot just allow what is happening to continue and to snowball into something darker and more dangerous. It is up to each and every one of us to express how we feel, and stand up for our rights. We cannot meet their hate with hate, we need to meet it instead with honor and respect for ourselves. We need to be empowered to tell them we will not tolerate their intolerance.
If we need to take to the streets and shout them down, together we should do this. We need to put out more blog posts expressing ourselves and our rights to not be persecuted by these intolerant, self-righteous persons.
Come together.
All of us who are targets of these hate groups need to work together to build better. We need to come together to show them they cannot take our nation away from us, that it belongs to us ALL, and not just their narrow belief system. We need to stay strong, we need to work together to educate those who do not understand the danger this represents.
Today I am standing up and saying I am not afraid of you. I will not be intimidated by your hate. I am not alone, and my allies and I will show you that we cannot be silenced. Let’s work together and stop these angry, fearful, intolerant people from doing more harm to our country.
It does not matter if you are male, female, black, white, brown, straight, gay, transgendered, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, Buddhist, atheist, Satanist, American, Canadian, Russian, insert-label-of-choice-here – this world belongs to us ALL. The laws apply to all of us, and we cannot allow them to be usurped and twisted by loud minority groups intent on erasing us. We have to speak up, and we have to express that we do not accept intolerance.
The blame does not fall on both sides of this argument.
Last, and certainly not least – you cannot equivocate one side with the other. The “alt-right”, white supremacists, KKK and neo-Nazis have made it very clear that their goal is to eliminate the rest of us in whatever fashion they can do that. They want to disempower us in every way they can, up to and including murdering us. We who stand opposite them are not calling for their destruction, which is why one is not the same as the other.
The President is wrong about this, there is not blame on both sides when one side’s stated goal is to destroy the other. I identify as part of the side that these people want to destroy, and I take that personally. I will not accept this, and I know that I am not alone.
Join me. Take a stand. Be heard. Let’s show them that hate is not the answer, and we will not live in fear of their intolerance.
As always, thank you for crossing the bridges with me.
GOAL LOG – Week 33:
The goal log has not yet been restarted following the Pennsic War.
This is the forty-seventh entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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