Current AffairsLeadershipAugust 16, 20170Racism Is Evil

Be a beacon of light against darkness.

I’m shocked to be hav­ing to say this in the Unit­ed States in 2017.  But sad­ly, this state­ment now seems to be in ques­tion, most dis­turbing­ly from the White House.

Racism is evil. And just to be com­plete­ly clear, I use the word evil as it’s defined in Mer­ri­am-Web­ster: “pro­found­ly immoral and malev­o­lent.” Hat­ing peo­ple, incit­ing vio­lence toward peo­ple, com­mit­ting vio­lence against peo­ple because of the col­or of their skin, because of their reli­gion, because of their place of ori­gin, is com­plete­ly evil and unjus­ti­fi­able. It has no place in the Amer­i­ca I believe we can be. No place in the hearts and actions of good and moral people.

I am pro­found­ly ashamed that the per­son speak­ing to all of us as the pres­i­dent does not acknowl­edge the dif­fer­ence between those who incite and com­mit vio­lence in sup­port of their beliefs that Amer­i­ca should be a “white nation,” and those who resist and reject those beliefs. That he does­n’t acknowl­edge a dif­fer­ence between Robert E. Lee and George Wash­ing­ton. That he believes white men who march with lit torch­es — long a sym­bol of black oppres­sion of the most hor­rif­ic kind — shout­ing “Blood and Soil,” “You will not replace us,” and “Jews will not replace us” are, or could be, “very fine people.”

We must fight against the dark­ness, and we must not be dark­ened by it.  If we hate racism, we must offer an alter­na­tive to it in how we live every day, and we must call out when those who gov­ern us con­done or sup­port it.  In the words of Desmond Tutu: “If you are neu­tral in sit­u­a­tions of injus­tice, you have cho­sen the side of the oppressor.”

To sup­port you in your per­son­al stand against racist hatred, here from the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter is Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Com­mu­ni­ty Response Guide.

And here’s an excel­lent arti­cle from The Nation about what you can do to fight against hatred.

And always, feel and share as much joy, hope, clar­i­ty and love as you pos­si­bly can.

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