Hope and Reality

Hope and Reality

Racism is a powerful word in our society. Regardless of place, nationality, religion, beliefs and race, everyone uses racism in both good and bad ways, good and bad defined as the American society in general defines it. But the truth is that no one has an answer for racism. Black, yellow, white, brown, red: are these words racist? No, not at their root, since they simply describe a color, but people have learned to use them as part of the racist dilemma. After seeing the movie American History X, my views toward immigrant people and people that are part of minority groups have changed. This movie describes the history of the United States as an image through the life of one man. Because its images are powerful and even choking, it makes the meaning of the word "racism" become clear to me. This movie talks about a group of white extremist in the United States, called "skin heads", that is against non-white people who live in "their city, their streets", and live equal lives. Racism should be stop in order to create more peaceful unified society. No matter nationalities, it will be hard and difficult for people to not be racist toward other because of the past history of racism, and because people refused to evolve to become a more accepting and understanding society.

History is the main reason why people are racist today. We have to go back at the time where Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and when the Europeans conquered what was known as the "New World" at that time. They almost exterminated the Native Americas other civilizations. After that, they went to Africa and forced the black colored people to go to America to be turned into slave and Europeans are responsible for millions of deaths.

In the 1920s at the time of the French Revolution, the creation of the myth of an "international Jewish conspiracy" was invented. That myth, over the years, evolved and expanded in Europe and was even more popularized in America. At this time, Henry Ford, a Jewish man, came up with the idea of the Ku Klux Klan, the anti-black and anti-Catholic terror (Ridgeway 35). Many far-right movements can be traced to the tumultuous world politics in the 1930s. Gerald L.K. Smith provided the connecting link between pre-World War II movement of the far right organizations such as the Posse Comitatus, the Aryan Nations, and the KKK, which stood for racism on into the 1980s.

Since its creation, the Klan has lived successive periods of expansion and decline. The First Era was during post-Civil War, then in the 1920s a political phase that attracted millions of members. The third one was a violent rear-guard battle against the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the fourth Era, in the 1970s, was a public relations campaign. Ten years later the fifth Era involves both an armed underground and an aggressive above-board political movement. The KKK was attacking all kinds of nationalities and religions other than white and Catholic (Ridgeway 38).

The Posse Comitatus is based on the idea that the local sheriff is the supreme governmental figure and that he should exercise authority in his territory. The Posse is one of many organizations in the history of racism. In the 1960s, the American Nazi Party was created, and twenty years later the skin heads movement was growing as an international phenomenon. The skin heads are not people who dress up in sheets or Nazi uniforms at nights; in fact, they wear their heavy-work boots and shaved head uniforms all day long, to show to people their beliefs.

Finally, Ronald Reagan accelerated the movement of violence with the Aryan Nations (Ridgeway 38-42). In the book, Blood in the Face, Bob Miles, a person who encourages diverse racist organizations, said to the FBI: "It's too late. We've done the work and you can't reverse it. And out there these seeds we know will grow into apple trees and they'll bear fruit."(Ridgeway 42).

During the Twentieth century groups of people created many organizations against certain races, certain kinds of people, and certain religions. Some of the groups were doing awful things such as killing, hanging, rapping, beating, destroying, and burning people and properties. Many other smaller organizations, that had less impact, were also created, such as the Invisible Empire, the Order, Populist Party, John Birch Society, Silver Shirts and many others. The United States was not alone in its growth past racist organization; Europe had also many diverse hate organizations. The biggest one was the Nazi party, led by Adolphe Hitler in World War II, which was against all kinds of people except for the Aryan race, which were white people with blond hair. The Jewish and dark skinned people were the most affected by this movement.

In the Middle East, a hundred years war was an ongoing process between people of different religions. For example, since 1945 approximately, the war between the Palestinians and the Israelis began and is still continuing today, and I hope will end one day since they do not even know the real reasons why they are fighting today. In this war, children are born and educated in a wrong way; the first thing that the parents teach their child is to hate the others and to kill them all. What will the child do when he will be able to carry a weapon? He will hate and kill because he was taught that by his parents, and he or she will do it without a reason or motive. And the child, later, will educate his future children the same way his parents taught him and this will carry on for several generations.

However, some people in history have tried to stop these racist movements. For example, Martin Luther King, all his life was devoted to the freedom and respect of black people. He put the life of his family and himself in danger for others. I read an article in the book edit by Trager, that the famous speech "I Have a Dream" of King had changed some important facts in the black history. On August 28, 1963, blacks demanded equality of jobs and Civil Rights by doing a peaceful demonstration, and they won (58). Unfortunately, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Another good example was Gandhi, as he also was against racism and poverty and was also assassinated. Many other people stood up and struck out against racism. Did it change anything? Of course, but there still is a lot of racism in the world today. I think it's not the color that brings people to be racist, but rather the behavior. Today some people fight, kill, hate destroy for no reason. These actions become as ordinary as walking in the street or even laughing.

As a personal experience, when I was in Belgium I knew some people who were against immigrants. In Belgium the main immigration population, by a large number, was the Moroccans.