I Don’t Understand Racism
I just don’t. It’s that simple.
When I was in high school, I got a chance to visit Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. For a youth fascinated by government and politics, it was a real delight, but the best part wasn’t the city itself. No, it was the people. By the midpoint of the first day, with nothing behind me except the subway ride between Maryland and D.C. and a brief walking tour, I’d already heard north of a half-dozen languages, many of them tongues I couldn’t begin to identify.
The diversity of the populace stuck with me in a way that nothing else has. Coming from a small town in western Kansas, I’d certainly never encountered anything like it. This blending of varied ideas and backgrounds was something I’d always desired, even if I couldn’t have articulated it before that day.
In the years that followed, I pursued a study of other cultures both formally and informally. And, less willingly, I found myself making a study of bigotry — racism and xenophobia.
I learned that many people didn’t think like me. For these people, the sound of another language or even an unusual accent would kindle a grisly fire in their heads, an anger miles out of proportion to what they had just encountered. Most of them would hide that fire, to vent their heat later with people who they assumed shared their opinions. Some of them…
