Yeah, it’s been a while since I last blogged. It always
seems that I struggle to find time as of late.
That and I always hem and haw about which topic I want to talk about.
I’ve come to the realization that I see the world a hell of
a lot differently than others. I don’t allow myths and cultural prejudice
dictate what I think of someone, nor do I allow some invisible super being do
to the same. And now, I don’t pay much attention to a somewhat rambling book
written thousands of years ago, a book that has more plot holes than a Tom
Cruise action movie.
However, when I look at our media, I see that there is this
little game they like to play. I use the TV show Cops as my prime example. I used to watch this show in my teens, until
something suddenly dawned on me. Why, unless they are living in a trailer park,
are there hardly any white people being arrested on that show. And before
someone tries to say “there were a few.” Let me point out that the overwhelming
majority were either hot heads who hit their wives, drunks behind the wheel, or
someone who looked like they just walked out of a Tim McGraw concert. Not to
mention the occasional prostitute. However, any time there was a robbery, a B
& E; it was usually a black man or a Latino man committing the crime. So
after a while, I began to watch the show on more or less of an anthropological
basis. It then occurred to me that a few weeks had gone by, and there wasn’t a
single non-white shown committing a crime like Grand Theft, Breaking and Enter,
or plain simple Robbery. I began to think about what type of cultural image
this was projecting to those in the suburbs who may or may not, interact with
Latinos or Blacks on a daily basis. And I came to the conclusion, stating the obvious,
that it would create a negative one.
As I got older, I began to pay more and more attention to
the nightly news, and the stories they covered. Once again, the only whites they seemed to
focus on would be those who decided to drive drunk, crash their car, and
possibly kill someone. However, it seemed to me that there was a purposed focus
on reporting inner city crimes, and once again, shifting then those in the
suburbs to have a negative view point about other cultures.
Why do we do this? Do we do it because we have some stunted
emotional and intellectual growth that we don’t seem to be able to grasp? Could
it be in out DNA to consistently focus on what makes us different from others? Maybe, perhaps, despite all of the
technological advances our intellect has help to create, we still can’t simply
before the mental task of understanding that we are, quite simply, all the
same. Unless we were created in some test tub in a lab, we all arrived here in
the same fashion. We all bleed the same color, need oxygen to live, and we all
enter this world the same way.
Could it be that the answers that we seek are for a more complex
question that we haven’t evolved to rationally ask yet? Or is the complexity of
our species going to prevent us from asking those needed questions until we
remove some security blank we cling to, like Linus from Peanuts?
What inspired this was my reading of an article on how gays
now finally have the same marriage rights as far as taxes are concerned. Here is an entire culture of people, who are
show prejudice in a different way. It’s not because of the color of their skin,
no, it’s because of some text written in some book. I can’t fathom the logic of
not liking someone simply because of what a book that many hold sacred says.
I’m glad that over the last few years, gays have rapidly
obtained the rights that we all take for granted way too much. And before those
of you who learn towards the right complain that our rights are being taken
away, ponder this. As you sit there, either reading this blog in the comfort of
your home, sitting in some café using their Wi-Fi for your internet connection,
there are people who don’t have it so good. There are cultures in which women
are not allowed to be educated, and little girls who attend school are
murdered. There are cultures in which simply writing a song to protest your
government gets you thrown in jail. Not stalked, like the FBI did to John Lennon,
I’m talking actual jail. Ponder that next time you complain that “Obama is
taking away my freedom.”
This leads me back to my opening paragraph of this blog. In
my 37 years on this planet, I have never seen a president attack like President
Obama has been. Yeah, there was muckraking with Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush JR,
but it all now just seems to have grown. Could it be that we have a black
president, could his heritage be what is causing all of this? Think back to
before, the images that we have been force fed through TV shows like cops, and
what is usually reported on the nightly newscast. Could this spoon fed cultural
damning be causing all of these attacks? When Bush JR was happily wiping away
peoples freedoms in the name of keeping them safe, no one trembled. However,
President Obama tries curbing violence by enforcing tougher guns laws, and
people lose their collective minds.
I’ve tried not to draw any conclusions, I simply try to
observe. However, it keeps gnawing at me, the one conclusion I’m not ready to
face. Maybe, many of us just don’t want to live harmoniously with other
cultures. Maybe it is a genetic flaw in our make-up, who knows. It might take generations if this question is
ever answered, if ever at all. Maybe we’ve relied on prejudice to create our
entertainment for too long, just type casted once too often.
We need to figure something out, because until we do, there’s
going to be more bloodshed, tears shed, and lives lost. Maybe we can do that by
not living up to some predisposed image of what some of us are supposed to
be. That just might be the first step,
in the right direction.
