What Kind Pt. 2

Nigger, it is a hateful word, with a terrible history, but when I heard it, I was rushed headlong into a time not so long ago. Where people who were separated by something as trivial as skin color, and persecuted because of it. It made me feel helpless and hopeless. It made me believe that nothing had changed at all.

Then as quickly as it had gathered, my anger was gone. I could almost laugh. I thought about the white people that I had known in my life. Not all were kind, not all were nice, but still not all were mean. Then I thought of all the black people that I had known in my life. Not all were kind, not all friendly, and certainly not all were looking out for other blacks. I thought of my friends from different ethnicities and cultures. I thought of one of my best friends, Lauren, whose family has practically adopted me, whose mother has always treated me just like one of her own, and who happens to be white. There are plenty of experiences in my life where I’ve met helpful and evil people, of all races. Sure, not all of our problems will be solved, and of course race has separated us, not only visually, but culturally. Sure, I could take this one guy hanging out of his car, and make a decision to never interact with a white person for the rest of my life, and hate those people, and work against anything they have in mind. Or, I could just hate one bozo, who hung his juvenile head out of his friend’s car and said some really, really hateful things. I think I’ll stick with the latter.