It’s Time…

Working with bullying intervention and prevention, can be an eye opening experience. At the least it forces you to look at issues in society through different lenses. One of the least considered issues is that of prejudice. Often we use the term racism, but never consider it bullying behavior. It is, prejudicial bullying. In speaking on prejudicial bullying, I began to look through history through different lenses and one thing that caught my eye was the practice of “passing”. Throughout history there have been amazing people of color who, haven’t been acknowledged as such. People simply assumed they were of completely European origin. Often this impression was sadly deliberately cultivated. It was cultivated from the atrocities of one human being to another, from the feeling of inadequacy, from the desire to be accepted, and from the desire to be safe.
The practice, known as “passing,” was controversial among African-Americans as well as the white majority. In fact, in the past it was often illegal and often resulted in death. For those that made the choice to “pass” it was often a way to freedom, freedom of education, freedom to pursue careers, freedom to love, freedom from stigma and harassment and freedom from injury and death. However, it came with a terrible price: they had to deny their families, their history and their true identities. 
Fast forward to 2016… Prejudice of all kinds based on social class, religion, and skin color is rampant. People of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, religions and sexual orientation are still faced with prejudical stigma and bullying, and its still for the same basic reasons, ignorance, intolerance, and lack of respect and empathy for another human being. We validate it because it was the way we were raised, where we are from, how our ancestors were treated, and lack of being educated in the truth. What ever the case we all need to wake up and accept the truth, the history of the human race has been violent, cruel and oppressive. Many things have and do happen which violate human rights and that was and is UNACCEPTABLE, regardless of the era of history. One thing that is quite evident to me is that prejudice is still being deliberately cultivated. But we allow it, condone it, and encourage it by seperating and segregating ourselves from our human brothers and sisters, under the guise of standing up and speaking out. Truly we all should speak up and speak out not about injustice to one particular segment, but stand united and stand up and speak out against the injustices of all. We should stop feeding into negativity, chaos, and the one sided truth we have been fed. We are all a product of history, we all have suffered, yes some more than others, but we are all one. We are the human race and its time to stop being bullys, its time to stop judging a book by its cover and not its content, its time to stop hiding the truth, its time to stop blaming the past for our present, and holding hate in our heart for each other because of the way our ancestors behaved. We should all be learning from history not re-living it. Its time to realize hurt people, hurt people. Its time to put Love in the Air and stop doing the very same prejudicial bullying behaviors we spend a great majority of our lives fighting against. Be the light you would like to see in the world, not the darkness that surrounds you. Just sayin — —