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Racism, prejudice, is the quintessence of ignorance and produces the most potentially violent and dangerous visions of deception: other' people are different from us' people.

Merriam-Webster's (10th edition);

RACISM: n

1: Belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

2: racial prejudice or discrimination.

That word doesn't get its ugly sound from its spelling and that belief doesn't get into someone's mind through a process of logic or reasoning, it has to be put there.

With one hard smack prejudice cracks a person's vision of life into meaningless divisions that can send heated words and bullets flying. But long before the action starts this groundless view of others has to be planted and allowed to take root in our minds before flourishing to potent dimensions in adulthood.

Racism is prejudice and the word itself tells you something: Pre-Judge' is not an act of reason or logic and no innocent child's mind will produce it. Pre-judging' is a reaction, not a response and for a child [or young adult] to form the basis of such reactions there has to be two factors involved:

1.A thorough lack of education and constructive experience with other races; i.e. ignorance.
2.Someone who is prejudiced must share and instill these thoughts in, malleable mind.

I was lucky to have had the opportunity as a child to gain the experience needed to avoid the void' of ignorance about people beginning on a Santa Cruz, California beach as a five year-old in 1956. Our family was sitting on the piece of sand we had staked out for the day when a man wearing only a bathing suit walked past us. On his forearm was a string of tattooed numbers and this unusual sight set my young mind and mouth in motion as my mother tried to shush me quiet. Undaunted I jumped up and sprinted to where he had stopped, hearing my commotion, and turned around to face me.

Assuring my mother it was quite alright, that children needed to hear what he had to say, he then explained to me what Nazi concentration camps were and what had happened to him and his family. My child's mind was only able to comprehend the meanness' and wrongness' done to people by a bad government' but that encounter is still clear in my mind today and I'm convinced it was the basis for solid and reasonable views of

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