Month: March 2010

A growing fever of racial hatred has been spreading across America.  While some try to stop to the spread of this disease, others continue to live in denial of the sickness, arguing that racial hate is needed to address new realities and changing circumstances.  They try to make such hate more palatable by arguing that they are only trying to view America in the lens of “racial realism,” or state their only goal is “nationalism” for their given race.  The fever of hate allows them to rationalize calls for dividing up our country into racial segments, or to rationalize calls to roll back the progress that America has finally made over the past 40 years in achieving equal opportunities and rights that were shamefully denied for generations.

It is painful and pitiful to watch our fellow Americans struggling with a new outbreak of the disease of racial hatred and the growth of racial hatred organizations.  The disease of racial hatred provides an unnatural burden on our hearts and seeks to enslave our minds and our conscience.  The disease spreads most actively in times of social change and uncertainty and is fueled by fear, hopelessness, and desperation.

People burdened by the fever of racial hate instinctively know something is wrong, but instead of looking at healing themselves, they point at “the other” for the blame.  Once they have found a scapegoat for their denial, they find companions who share this sickness of racial hate, for acceptance of their unacceptable views, no matter how irrational such alliance with “partners of hate” may be.  In an angry “white” America, Confederates ally with Nazis, “race realists” with “white nationalists,” including both angry Gentiles and Jews — united against people of color.  The fever of racial hatred makes them crave acceptance of hate so much, that no alliance among haters seems irrational, no hate seems too shameful.

If any group in America understands the historical imperative of rejecting such hate, it is the American Jewish population.  But too often, some have chosen to believe that such hate is “realistic” or necessary to ensure a tranquil nation.  We all know better.  We can all do better.  As Americans whose national identity is based on the truths that we hold self evident that all human beings are created equal, we must expect better.  We can find a way out of dark fever of racial hate by using our conscience as our compass.

We don’t have to be slaves to racial fear and hate.  We don’t have to be so blind as to only see our differences.  We can stand as free human beings and remember that our few differences are dwarfed by the many things that we share.  We can choose to remember that the only race that matters is the human race.  Most of all, we can decide that “race reality” begins with embracing our fellow human beings in all of their differences as our brothers and sisters in humanity.

Choose Love, Not Hate.  Love Wins.