“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is harder than to understand him” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
I am deeply disturbed by the continuing presence of racism in our country today. In particular, I am concerned about the pervasive presence of white supremacist hate reaction to Donald Trump’s Presidency via right wing media, “hostile” Twitter rants and at raucous political rallies. Looking over my Kindle book collection last week, I thus discovered “ The Opposite Of Hate” by Sally Kohn as a captivating reading on this subject. With strong research provided in her book, she presents a stunning picture of America’s current political climate where white racial resentment runs rampant among Trump supporters.
Yet according to these findings, many “Trumpies” surprisingly either reject viewing themselves as explicitly biased about race matters in extreme, Ku Klux Klan fashion or are simply unaware of their own hate spewing ways. A logical conclusion surfaces then that as many Trump fanatics fail to “own up” to their own prejudicial views about race, they accordingly deny their responsibility to reject partisan, race-hate propaganda spewed by their President. Thus in response to America’s hate mongering problem concerning race today, I became motivated to write the following poem.
LOVE ABOVE HATE
Hate
How Much Do We See
Blinded In Fight
By Society’s Ils
When White Scorns Black
Only Paralysis Waits
You and I
To Taste Together
Where We Forgive
There I Am With You
Minds Cool As We Go
To Wander As One
Whether We’re Rich
Or Poor, We Are
Vanquishing Weary Walls
My Favorite Foe
When Will We Love Again?
You might also be interested then to find out more about how humans prejudge white/black race with bad/good sensations. If so, click on the Implicit Association Test and TED lecture link in capital letters below.
Source:
Kohn, Sally. (2018). “The Opposite Of Hate”. Workman Publishing. Kindle Version
Snippets of a Traveling Mind 