Hate and Hope

Somewhere along the way I think some of us may have missed the point. In the fuss over Obama’s mentioning that if he has a son he would look like Trayvon Martin a bigger truth was lost: to some bigot, every son looks like Trayvon. Not the color or the dress, but the stereotyped image of whomever they hate. Young white kids, yellow kids, red kids, brown kids, queer kids, different kids of all kinds; it doesn’t matter to the “eye of the beholder”. If you hate a group you hate their kids too. And kids make an easy target.
So don’t think your kids are immune because they aren’t exactly like Trayvon: they are not. All our kids are at risk in a society that tolerates the levels of hatred we seem to tolerate. At the core of hatred there is fear. And I must admit I fear for my kids every day. And I hate the people that hate them. Not enough to kill them, though. That probably distinguishes us from “them”. They hate and kill, we just hate and hope.
It may be that using the term “hate” is not quite what I mean. What I don’t mean is being consumed by hatred. What I do mean I don’t quite know. When I think of homophobes, anti-Semites and retardophobes (maybe just coined a new word, not PC but understandable) and all the other -phoebes in the world I feel pity for them because of the wonderful people they will never really know, and I feel sorry for the hatred that burns within them, and I feel afraid that they will strike an innocent. So maybe hatred isn’t the right word. Revulsion? Disgust? Maybe just plain hate would be easier. Another sad truth is that some of us also look like Zimmerman sometimes.
Image: http://newsone.com/files/2012/03/million-hoody-march-trayvon-martin.jpg