9/23/2001 12:35 PM

There are times when I am ashamed to be a human being.  After the trade towers were destroyed, racism in the United States has intensified.  It has grown past the level of slanderous insults; it has become discriminatingly violent.  How human are those that discriminate based upon the color of one’s skin, one’s ancestry?  We are all the same species for goodness sake. 

How did we sink this low?  People have given into their fears, their insecurities, their hatred.  These people are weak; they are horrible.  What have they done?

These people have attempted to torch restaurants and mosques.  They have given Arabs death threats; they spit in the faces of those who had nothing to do with the recent tragedies.  They are harassed simply because they share a common heritage.  You probably have no idea how terrible this feels.

I can say that I have an honest understanding at how deeply this scars you.  Being half-Korean didn’t exactly make me the most popular kid growing up.  I didn’t exactly fit in with the Korean crowd, and I didn’t fit in anywhere else really.  I’ve been called things like ‘Jap’ and ‘Chink’.  These people can’t even seem to get the racial slur for my heritage right.  Being made fun of for something that is at the very core of you scars you forever… you become ultra-sensitive to it.  During my years on this earth, I have been friends with Indians, Japanese, Armenians, Germans, etc…  and even… <sigh> roundeyes like Matt.  J  Diversity is good.

It enraged me to hear about those three Arabs that were kicked off an airplane by the passengers.  Also, there was an incident where an Arab passenger was asked to leave by the captain… it had something to do with the captain not believing that he really belonged in first class.  That captain deserves to be fined and fired.  There was also a senator (I think) that said that anybody wearing a “diaper” on their head needs to be pulled over and interrogated.  I saw this one on America’s Most Wanted:  Shortly after the trade center was attacked, a Pakistani-American kid had his face spat in.  He was insulted:  “You fucking Arab.”

I heard this one on the news recently… some guy was going around to houses in Sugarhouse, handing out anti-Arab hate literature.  If this guy would have come to my house, I would have slugged him.  His face would have become one bruised lump of flesh.  I know our constitution protects free speech, it should also protect the statement I’d make with my fists.

What are you people thinking?  You are sewing the very seeds of hatred that bring about this kind of terrorism in the first place.  When you stop treating others as fellow human beings, how soon is it going to be before they act the same way towards you?  Your hatred of them gets reflected back at you, after all, they are just as human as you are.

Treat others the way you want to be treated yourself.