Excuses for Inequality are Not Reasons

I can't get it out of my head.

This week, between reading articles about a black teen shot by a police officer for the color of his skin, the hatred of people toward homosexuals wanting to honor a commitment to another person in marriage, and a few jokes I heard outside of 7-11 while I was returning a movie, I can't help but think about how wrong and crazy it all is.

People blame all kinds of things for these discrepancies. White people deserve this. God believes that man and woman should be together. The Mexicans are taking our jobs and living off our hard earned taxes. And quite frankly, it's all bullshit.

I think I was lucky to be brought up the way I was. I didn't realize until I was in college that deep-seeded racism and bigotry was something that existed in America. It was the land of the free, everyone had equal opportunity, and I never noticed skin color or sexual orientation any more than I did brown hair or green eyes. They were individual qualities. I liked or disliked people based on their treatment of me, whether I enjoyed spending time with them, and I never felt like there was an expectation I should be treating them differently.

I truly wish more people had grown up the way that I did. Does it give me uncharacteristically high expectations of people? Yes. Do I where rose colored glasses and believe that people all get along and can accept one another? Not really, not anymore.

I do think that the affect of prejudice on my life has been minimal. Aside from dealing with small groups of people who bullied me for being adopted and now for being a single mother, I feel that the impact isn't as measurable as those things I read about and try to understand.

I will never wrap my head around the idea that the way another person looks or feels has anything to do with a person making a judgment from afar.

When I see a black person, my first thought is not he's going to steal my stereo, but if any person starts messing with the door handle of my car, no matter the color of his or her skin, I'm going to think that they're trying to break into my car. How it is that actions are not the measurable unit of value in our world?

It isn't about God or facts or statistics. It's about people being assholes and finding ways to create their superiority over a whole group of people for no other reason than there's something they're not satisfied with in their own lives. Prejudice is a lifestyle and a thinking choice.

We allow racist, prejudiced, and bigoted remarks to flow from others freely, we even make excuses for them. Their parents talked that way so it was how they learned. They take the Bible seriously so we should cut them some slack. Why?

Why should I cut a small-minded person some slack while they hurt, make remarks, and bully other people?

I'm not saying every joke or stereotype is an automatic red flag that should be pounced upon, but we need to more closely examine where these remarks come from. If they're coming from a place of fear, hate, and lack of self worth, it needs to change.

We need to replace excuses for a bad behavior with reasons to stop those behaviors.

Actions speak louder than words or sex, race, sexual orientation, creed, hair color, body type, tattoo, or favorite band. I'm sick of people having stupid reasons to be small minded. I'll get off my soap box now...