Young Writers Society

I wish I could ignore or better yet, not understand that racist joke that one kid told on the bus. I wish I could sit idly by while someone makes an ignorant remark about a minority or an oppressed group, but I can't, and I won't. I used to be ignorant on a lot of social issues, I still am, but I cannot stand the ones who choose to ignore factual information and go on from logical fallacies, media misrepresentations, false stereotypes, and plain hate. Some people practice willful ignorance, they ignore anything that doesn't compromise with what they believe. They twist and turn facts until it looks like their own opinions. Some people are so set in their ways because of the times that the lived in. They have lived to see the world become less oppressed of blacks, gays, women, atheists and so forth. They are behind the reason that these group of people and alike have not been liberated from prejudice views and acts of violence entirely. They are too comfortable in their own little world, their own little bubble, that not only do they hate change but they hate the people that the change has been made for. But they can't go around beating whoever they don't like all the time, or making nasty remarks on the internet because they haven't vent enough about whomever, so they teach lies and hate to their own children. Children like me who then in turn have a harder time being untaught racism, homophobia, and overall xenophobia.

Children, on their own, hate innocent things for innocent reasons like broccoli, or bed time, but when you see a kid who hates all blacks, all gays, all Muslims, all atheists, and he doesn't know why other than because his parents said so, he is a product of a generation that didn't accept good change. Please do not hate these children, or his parents, actually please do not hate anyone. I feel nothing but sympathy to the man who couldn't do anything but hate, who decided that instead of living in a better world, that he will live in the same one that he has known. Changing the older generation's minds, is a hard task, it takes compromise and patience. My focus, however, is set with my generation, with the new generation and those to come. With jokes and media coverage and everyday happenings that go past us, unnoticed, even though xenophobic. Educate us, teachers, older kids, parents, anyone, tell us and teach us to identify social injustice. Some may think it would result in cynical or sensitive kids, I beg to differ, it would result in understanding, educated, loving individuals.

I dream to live a day in which the black man is not judged by the color of his skin, but his heart. Where a man with a god, another with two and one with none can have peaceful relationships with one another.

Not to set aside our differences but to learn how to understand and appreciate. To live in a world where no one is taught to hate.