
Imagine if the World Went Blind
“Imagine all the people living life in peace” John Lennon
One of the most prolific artists and song writers of any generation was John Lennon. He was a pop star who grew up watching the world change in the opposite direction he wanted it to become and wrote about it with eloquence and maximizing polarity. I remember discovering his solo album Imagine after watching an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati when I was a teenager and hearing the lyrics of the tile song being spoken over the air ways. I went to the record store the day after school to pick up the album to play the song over and over again until the lyrics were memorized and easily repeated. It was a time in my life that was peaceful, I had experienced bigotry, sure but that was when I was a kid. I did not know anyone, other than people from Mexico that were different than me based on skin color. They mostly looked like me with a better tan.
I remember the day I met the first person from an African heritage. I was in the sixth grade, for the second time, and instead of being in an all-white, privileged, school, I found myself in a public school with people of all types and shapes. Her name was Michelle and she was as dark skinned as the night and tall. She was in fact the tallest kid in our school at the time and she was amazing. She stood up to my sarcasm well and she got me, she just got me. When we first met I told her that her skin was so beautifully tan and asked her how much time she spent outdoors to get such a deep color. I remember her words to me, “what the hell is wrong with you? Haven’t you ever met a black person before?” I indeed had not, up until this point, had ever met a black person. When I told her this she smiled, man that smile, and said, “Ok then, your just ignorant then!” she then laughed an infectious laugh that I can still hear echoing in my head as I write this. We became great friends after that her and I.
Can Blind People be Racist?
Other than the fact that she was a girl, and indeed black, there was nothing to make me fear her, chastise her, or wish ill will on her. Nothing at all. She sounded like me, laughed like me, hurt like me there was simply no difference other than she was a girl and had more melatonin in her body than me. I look back and wonder now that if I were blind when I met her for the first time would I have asked her that opening question. I suppose I would not have as I could not see her physically and if I had done a facial touch it wouldn’t have told me anything about her ethnicity. She spoke English, laughed, told jokes, and had stories, just like me.
Racism is taught, period. No child is born with preconceived notions of race or religion. They witness the actions around them and too them that is what reality is, a notion handed down from those around them. They may not even get it from their actual parents as exposure from the anger and hatred are coming from multiple sources and the internet has just exacerbated it, fueled it even. I am positive that the founders of Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter never intended that, it was high jacked by political ideologists, bigots, racists and liars.
The cat pictures and kids going back to school lost.
So, did us, the need to be right, the need to change people’s minds based on a story written by a blogger with no definitive proof or facts but it stoked the fires of our Mythos. You are seeing it now in all its glorious contempt and bitterness.
The Sounds of Silence
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. MLK
The sides, the left, the right, are both wrong. Both side will listens to the other and that is a truth. BLM, which started as a movement of peace and education quickly, spiraled out of control calling for police officers to be murdered. They carried it out. The KKK, rose to protect what white people in the south felt that they were losing their way of life calling for murdering blacks. They carried it out. The Nazis rose to power in Germany on the backs of lies about Jews, Gays, and Gypsies calling on the so called final solution. They carried it out. We have Aftifa, standing with ball bats and nail protruding boards armed to the teeth ready to attack, the police. They carried that out.
So much hatred, venom, and bile are filling the air. When will we have a fair not a protest? When will we all come together calmly, rationally, those that are the majority that want peace meet? Would it not be amazing for us to all come together and stare down hate, make it so overwhelming unacceptable so unpalatable that the very idea of turns the stomach in knots. That the world is safer, kinder, and accepting of each other is the normal not the surprised. In order to do so will take the swallowing of pride, ending the profiteering of hatred, being silent no more and educating each other and our young, changing the voice. We need to stop being silent and for every voice that communicates hate a thousand present peace.
Imagine that world then say I want that world only then will it happen. #peaceinourtime.
