On June 12, 2016, a man walked into a Orlando Nightclub and killed 49 people. A 29 year old security guard walked into Pulse, a large nightclub hosting Latin night, with an automatic assault rifle and a hand gun. He laughed before he fired into a toilet stall where people were hiding. 49 dead, 53 injured (1/3 of the people there, dead or injured!). This became the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter, and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people, in US history.
As then President Obama reacted with love and sadness, calling it an act of terror and an act of hate, Donald Trump reacted with hatred, calling on the president to resign for not using the words "Islamic terrorism" and called again for a total ban on all Muslims entering the United States.
Yesterday in Portland, Oregon, an angry man was verbally abusing two women on a bus, women who looked middle eastern with one wearing a head cover. Some men stood up to defend them, these innocent women, and the abuser slashed their throats, killing them dead.
In the first month after Donald Trump's election, the SPLC catalogued 1051 instances of hatred-racist taunts, swastikas at schools and other hate fueled attacks and intimidations (at least 26 perpetrated AGAINST Trump supporters).
On April 17, 2017, a woman was walking home from morning prayers at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee about 6 a.m. Monday when a car pulled up next to her. A man got out of the car and demanded she remove her hijab. When she refused, he pulled her to the ground, stomped on her head and slashed her clothing with a knife.
Jewish Community Centers Nationwide (including the lovely one my non-Jewish children love and where they attend summer camp) have received hate inspired bomb threats and Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated.
Donald Trump blames the Jewish people for these attacks, saying Jewish people are calling in the threats and vandalizing the cemeteries.
In March in Kent, Washington, a Sikh man was shot in his own driveway by a man shouting, “Go back to your own country.”
In February, 2 Indian immigrant engineers were shot, 1 killed, in Kansas because they “don’t belong in this country.”
The list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
Yesterday, I was reviewing my recorded files on my phone when I found a very weepy message from myself. I’ve transcribed it below.
"I'm having a hard time today. I'm feeling weepy. Really weepy. Tears keep streaming down my face. And it's strange. I realize that hate is a word that is used so commonly, so easily in our society. It's a word I use. It's a word I try to teach my children not to use and they call me on it when I use it, which is why I know I do. I hate broccoli. I hate how I feel right now. I hate that you're hurting. I think I'm right to teach my children that hate is a bad word, that it is not a word to use in any way that is simple or easy. Ive come to discover, as more and more events occur that I'm aware of, that come from some sort of real hatred, that I don't understand hatred. I can't even fathom it. I can't grasp it. I can't...It's a concept that from a distance I know what it means intellectually, but I don't think I'm capable of hatred. I cannot understand it. I truly don't think it's in me, and I don't know why that makes me so sad today. It's a good thing. I think what's not a good things is that it seems to be becoming natural for so many people. And I don't understand that. I don't know what's broken in their lives, in their selves, in their families, in their cultures to have them hate. Someone has to be teaching the hatred, and also I think something has to be broken to make someone hate. And my heart kind of breaks for these people, these horrible people who hate, because something has to be broken. I don't think this kind of hatred could come about if it weren't. So my heart breaks today, and many other days, and it has, I suppose, my whole life. But I will continue to love, and to think optimistically, and to believe in hope. For my children, for the future, for my country, for humanity. And I will continue to try every day to live my life with grace and to hope that those who encounter me feel that grace, and can take a piece of it with them and spread it. I can't do much, but the little things I can do are to be kind, to try to really listen, to try to imagine myself in someone else's shoes even when I cannot truly grasp what it could possibly be like, to try. So I commit today, again, to live my life with grace, to the best of my ability."
Please, everyone, try. Do everything you can. Love each other. Support each other. Honor your differences. Celebrate your differences.
If you find yourself hating a race, a gender, a religion, a disabled person, a foreigner, a political ideal - please, be brave. Challenge yourself. I'm asking a lot. It's scary and painful and hard. But please, make a real, concerted effort to meet someone from that group. Get to know them. Break bread with them. Have a beer with them. Know their life, meet their children, listen to their fears and dreams and aspirations.
If you truly do this with an open mind, and still hate them and who the they represent to you, I'm sorry. But I won't hate you. I won't understand you. I won't support you. But I will respect you for trying, for truly making an effort. And I will love you. because love conquers hate. I may be sad, but I will continue to try (and sometimes fail) to live my life with grace, and to spread that grace everywhere I can.
I still believe that hatred means something is broken, but broken can be fixed.
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| Differences-they are so beautiful. |
