Racism

    Racism is almost always a sensitive subject when there are 'white' people involved. To me it seems that discrimination itself is what causes this sensitivity. I never saw the difference between myself and someone with a different skin complexion until other people began to point it out. To this day I still do not see the difference, save for hereditary levels of melanin and facial features, yet I've been called a white racist bitch in the past. Is that not stereotyping in which I was placed under a malicious category because of my own European descent?
    The Caucasian people do, indeed, have a history of bigotry and hateful acts towards other ethnicities. In fact, a few months ago I became physically ill after discovering a website devoted to a community of people who are convinced that the other 'races' are warring against the white race. At first I thought it was a joke, a forum created to poke fun at people who really are like that. I kept scrolling through all the different parts of the website, becoming more and more sickened. They hailed Hitler, saying his ideas about extinguishing certain people were genius. It was a website so full of hate that it gave me a headache.
    Yes, these people are white supremacist bigots, but that does not mean that I am, too. People should not assume that I am ignorant and narrow-minded because I have a sort of peachy-pink skin tone. And I am not saying that I am perfect and that I never discriminate or anything like that. I wish that stereotyping was not a part of daily life, but it seems to have burrowed its way into the media, into our society, like a nasty virus spreading from one person to the next. I think everyone has that little monster in the back of their mind, that tiny whisper.
    Personally, I think hatred has become a universal emotion. I do not know a single person who does not hate someone else. This hatred is easily morphed into racism, sexism, and other prejudices. These prejudices lead to misunderstandings and ignorance, which only leads to even more unnecessary hatred. On the website mentioned above I read a story in the 'Youth' section in which the kid felt he was being racially discriminated against because the 'negro' librarian told him to get off the computer so that someone else could go on. Because of his original mindset where he believed that other races are purposefully being discriminatory and making the white race into a minority, he automatically believed that the librarian was racist against him. He said later on in the story that he never went back to that library because he was so disgusted.
    But like I said, not all 'white' people are like that. It's like two sides of a hate fest: on one side is the white supremacists, and on the other side is everyone who has been discriminated against or treated badly because they have a different pigment to their skin. In the middle is all the people who really just wish everyone would stop caring so much about religion, 'race', ethnicity, nationality, and all the other things that, in the end, don't actually matter.
    So I often find myself not only angered with racist bigots who live in small worlds, but also angered by those that take the bait, that accept the challenge, that participate in the fight instead of just shaking their heads and walking away. It is why I believe that hate is universal. It is not just a one sided ordeal. There are many sides to every conflict, and everyone must take responsibility for anything they say or do. Even I must take responsibility sometimes for my mistakes because even mistakes may sometimes cause horrible things to happen.
    Maybe if everyone took responsibility for their actions, even the fundamentalist basket cases that use God to justify murdering 'witches' or the white nationalists that use their ethnicity to justify treating all other races with utmost disrespect, there would not be quite so much hate.
    Sometimes even that seems like too much of a farfetched idea.