[mrmacey]

RACISM
MICHAEL J. QUISH

Racism in America. How the subject hurts when spoken because it brings me back to the most repugnant times in my life. Racism has been around me all my life. I consider myself an expert on the subject having lived with this ugly situation through my young childhood, school years, military life, and I watch it happen around me now every day.

We stare at racism everyday in ways that we don’t even see. We are so used to hate and discrimination in our lives the bad feelings that over come us just pass us by. I feel each and everyone us discriminate or dislike some group or party because of their affiliation, culture or because of their oppression. If you are capable of being totally open and honest you will see some racisms in your self that can be looked at and changed, but only if your willing to go deep within and work on the issues that affect you.

Black, white, yellow, tan, or whatever your color is, that part of racism will be here and never go away. It’s the discrimination against groups that I see growing and have become more of a concern to me. It is the hate crimes against gays, the discriminations against woman with children on welfare, the stereo-typing of felons who have served there time to society and not given a chance to have a good job cause of there title felon. Let us look at the aids issue. How can one not feel something knowing there could be a man or woman with an infectious disease sitting beside you? The list goes on and on and I feel each and every one of us has to take a look at our lives to really feel what racism is. Or are these feelings only within myself?

Racism is not the black and white issue that everyone thinks it is. Racism in our lives is everything, which causes us to form an opinion about someone with out empathy or putting ourselves in those person’s shoes. I look at the rich donating a little help thinking they are doing good then they turn around and walk by a homeless man knowing damn well they don’t want to be in his shoes. Most of us see a homeless person as one who cannot and will not stand on his or her own two feet. Not really understanding about the issues behind homelessness; drug addiction, mental illness, etc…

This essay is only my opinion. It is the way I see racism and discrimination. The whole heart felt feeling I get when I hear people say, “I am not a racist”. It is those that I am weary of and would bet they cannot look me in the eye and say that. If you don’t run in those groups of the sick, oppressed and color then you are different and can’t see or feel what the group as a whole is feeling. You need the compassion to be able to put yourself in their place. It is then you will know racism as they see it. If you have never lived the life of a racist, how do you know what a racist is? Do you derive your answers from what a book told you? Well I have black friends, that statement is a racist remark. Welfare mothers is a racist remark, anytime we have to put a name in front of a class of people to distinguish them from one another that’s racism.