Free Radicals, page 1

Attack of another free radical!

The question that I have is so difficult to put into words that I am afraid I am going to do a really poor job of explaining it but I am going to try.

I was talking to a girl at work that just happens to be from the islands. She made the statement that there were too many Chinese and that they should not be allowed to have any more children for a while.

I looked at her in shock. I asked her how could she make such a statement and it was obvious that she had not thought what she said through. She informed that she had thought it through and that there were too many people on the planet. She said it was three times the number of them to the rest of the people on the planet and they were the biggest polluters of the planet and causing global warming.

I asked her if she had ever heard anyone say something negative and really stupid about her home country the people here in America that originated in her country? She said yes, all the time. I asked how it made her feel. She said that it made her angry because the things that were often said are not true and the people saying them were just bigots and liars.

I told her yet you just sat here and told me half truths and lies about another group of people so how are you any different?

The point I am trying to make is really hard to make clear.

I am “not” asking why people are bigots and racist. That is an argument that I do not think will ever have an end. What puzzles me is how people that are frequently the most impacted by hate, unfair treatment and lies, can then turn around without thought and do the same thing to someone else.

Okay I am not putting it right. Let me try again.

A man that looks Hispanic is walking down the street. A group of white males see him, stop the car and beat him because he has no business in this country. He is taking their jobs, he is probably here illegally and a Hispanic male raped the sister of a friend of his a long time ago. You can’t trust them so you have to get rid of them.

The man is outraged because his family has lived in this country for just as many generations as the people that attacked him and he has never hurt anyone. It makes no sense. The people are racist bigots, ignorant, intolerant and they need to be prevented from breeding.

The man that had been attack returns home to find that a Black family has moved into the house next door. He is upset and tells his wife that they will have to find another place to live because he has enough trouble in his life. He does not need the added trouble of living next to these black people that are probably on drugs, are probably thieves, lazy and on welfare. He warns her to make sure she locks up the house tight when he is not home because you can’t trust those people. He knows someone whose sister was raped by a black guy so be careful.

I am using these little vignettes to make my question a bit clearer. I don’t understand why people don’t see that the same things that affect them affect others as well.

I don’t understand how people expect others to treat them a different way then they treat people.

Okay let me try again. A lady is driving in traffic and she is so angry that it is taking so long to get through the toll that she pulls to the side and drives up to the entrance of the toll forcing the cars to let her in. This delays the procession of the cars through the toll even more. People that have witnessed this is now incensed so a few of them do the same thing delaying the process more and more.

No one stops to think that they have been inconvenienced by someone that was selfish and impatient. That the person made them feel angry and taken advantaged of and that it was just plain wrong. They become angry, copy the offensive behavior and inflict the same offense on another.

Why?

Why don’t we see and understand if it is wrong when someone does it to me; it is wrong when I do it to someone else?