My 13 year old son wrote this for his speech class in a deeply southern, radically Republican state known as Texas. He told me that he was scared as he stood in front of the class and read this. To say I am proud of him doesn't even come close. I am so beyond proud of him and wanted him to share this with the world. I hope you enjoy it as well.
America's people are threatened, I know that. We as a country are threatened by disease, terrorists, and a struggling economy. However, I feel that we are also threatened by racists and bigots. Especially the far right-wing Americans that believe deeply in their fantasy of a world inhabited only by Republican whites. "One race in the world?" This is something that some people struggle to believe. They wonder why anybody would want a single race of people on Earth. They think, "How could this even begin to happen?" Then they remember the Holocaust.
The fact that some people believe in such things like "black people shouldn't have rights" and "gays should just go to hell" just simply sickens me. I mean, why is a Jewish Hispanic person any less human than a Christian white? Why is a Muslim foreigner any less human than a Catholic Mexican?
The thing though is this, politics have as much to do with racism, as avocados have to do with guacamole. Democrats are more interested with helping the less fortunate, while Republicans would rather help the rich get richer. Most if not all bigots are Republican. And no, I'm not saying all Republicans are bigots.
You would think there is a reason that some people watch others be mean to another. The reason is, they have been, along with most of us, desensitized. We as people have been desensitized in a way that we stand by someone calling a homosexual person a "fag." Things like racial slurs and hateful language are the iniquitous effects of desensitization.
The reason that America, or rather the right-wing part of America (or mainly The South), should become tolerant is because of the fact that if we continue on the downhill road full of radical Republicans hating Democrats, we could be hit with another Civil War. This one being even more dangerous because of the gun wielding right-wing nut jobs full of hatred for anybody that is, well, not them. This would be what the news would call, a deadly head-on collision.
By Mark Garrison Jr.