by Olivia Emisar

Created on: August 26, 2010

Racism is like crime, we will never be able to eradicate it, but we can certainly diminish it by leaps and bounds.  It all starts with each one of us denouncing it for what it is: Unacceptable and illogical. 

According to the census bureau, the population of Iowa is 93.9% white/Caucasian and they overwhelmingly voted for Barrack Obama.  Why is it that we fail to acknowledge the fact that millions of people are not racist? The answer may be that it is not sexy or controversial enough to generate viewership, but it is definitely important enough to merit a balanced perspective and give credit where credit is due. 

The racist rhetoric has been exploited by political pundits by stoking the fires among extremely conservative and, often, ill-educated citizens.  Racism is a tool that is used to dehumanize the perceived opponents, racism requires fear to engender blind hatred.  In order to generate hatred, the vilification must be relentless. 

All this fear and hatred creates attention which pays handsome dividends in news coverage and gains political contributions valued at millions of dollars.  People and their money are very easy to separate when they are fearful and looking for a savior and as long as hatred is profitable, the merchants of fear and hatred will continue to ply their craft regardless of who the target de jour might be. 

The list of hate mongers in talk radio and television is endless and they will not be dignified here with a mention.  What should bother us is the monopoly of airwaves that effectively insulate pockets of our population against any other points of view.  People are held hostage by this barrage of degrading diatribe while driving to and from work.  The stress of their daily lives is compounded by the assault on their fears while reviving feelings and beliefs that bring the comfort, yes comfort, of familiarity and unity of others “like us”.  We have all been taught to hate “others” and fear does this beautifully. 

The new race and 2nd class citizens we must hate now are Muslims because of the deliberate confusion between the attacks on 9/11, Iraq and Osama Bin Laden, all these combined, make Muslims a perfect target of indistinct, garden variety, evil people. 

Politically, it is being tried daily by attempting to wrap “black”, “Muslim”, and “Obama” into a nice little package of hatred and bigotry.  Facts are irrelevant when stocking the fires of fear and hatred, what matters is the desired results to control the only color that really matters, and so far, that color is green and it can buy votes, commercials, buildings and the control of a fearful population. 

Fear is what keeps people silent when they see oppression.  It is the reason we have heroes in our collective history whose commonality was to stand up and be heard among the pollution of noise and discord that is hatred.  These men and women looked and identified themselves as White, Black, Hispanic, Muslim, Asian, multi-racial, or bi-racial.  The one common denominator was confronting the fear and standing up for what they knew was right. 

There is a hero in all of us yearning to get out and when those heroes come out, they will realize that they are not alone.  All the other heroes have been waiting for the one that will step up and scream: “ENOUGH!”.

These heroes will never end racism, but will diminish it by showing it for what it is:  unacceptable and illogical. 

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