Just a thought

Today I was in class, I thought it would be appropriate to speak with my fellow classmates. Be social like our universities want. I immediately regretted that decision after making conversation with a boy in my class. Getting back to my previous post, I also think ignorance is a problem in our society. Ignorance of being open-minded to others, ignorant of learning and adapting. I see this a major problem; from my own view point you cannot judge another culture that you do not know about. Mind you, now if you do not want to hear me rant about my own views please click away. I do not want to offend anyone and I am doing this solely as a way to vent.

 I myself am very open minded and liberal to many topics, which I can tell can and will piss off a person of conservative values. The boy I spoke with today told me how the Black Lives Matter movement is causing more violence and killed people more than the KKK. I did not mean to communicate politics with this kid, all I wanted to say was hello and I was greeted with that.

Comparing the Black Lives Matter group and the Ku Klux Klan was a really bold thing to say, especially in a class filled with various amount of races, includes those of Latino and African descents. None of which spoke up to this kid, who I can say did damage my eardrums with his voice. The Black Lives Matter group is relatively new to the organized group movement as far as I can remember; I couldn’t find any statistics showing members of the movement killing people, not as much as the KKK. Whereas our history is filled with white on black killings predominately in the South, being lynched and killed. I myself didn’t want to start a political debate in class, let him go on about what he knows, while he read news articles on Reddit. 

Many believe the Black Lives Matter group is also a racist group, like the KKK. I have no idea where this perception came from. I feel as though the Black Lives Matter movement is a group of minorities who are trying to put emphasis that they matter AS WELL, not more than another. Why is it racist when a group of black people march down the street and scream to considered equal to a race that has always been dominant in America. I see it as people who are trying to gain a seat the table of America that was predominately white. Trying to break the whites’ supremacy is scary to those who have survived and lived on the supremacy and they see the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat. Does anyone remember the Tulsa Race Riots that occurred in 1921? No? Well a group of whites, went to a wealthy black community and burned the city down, leaving over 10,000 black homeless and killed between 30-500 people, the exact number is unknown. The reason, they suspected a black man attacked a white woman on an elevator. The uproar happened because of the thought of a white woman being touched by a black man. The thought of a black man touching a white woman caused a section of the city to burn down. When the people believed the blacks in the community started firing back, WWI pilots fired and dropped bombs on the neighborhood. Why don’t we talk about that in our history book? Why do we look at the riots of the Black Lives Matter group as a negative when they are screaming their voices of frustration. 

People also claim the Black Lives Matter is anti-police, why?

Police are people, there are many men and women who are of African and Latino descent who are also police. The Black Lives Matter group is not anti-police; I believe they are anti-militarization of the police, as am I. As well as being against police brutality, the best example is the beating of Rodney King. As a person who had a very rough childhood, the police to me never seemed like the heroes. I have seen police point guns at my family’s home while I am outside playing, I have seen them come into my house and kick my bed and ask to flip it while I was sleeping on it, I have seen police call themselves crackers, those who whipped the slaves, as a form of intimidation to my friends of African descent. I never saw the police as heroes, I always saw them as a bully to people of my economic standpoint.

Don’t get me wrong, not every police officer is like that. I had friend who became police officers as well as befriended police officers as well. But should they be given military assault rifles and tanks as they perform their lines of duty, I don’t believe so. Growing up in a bad neighborhood, I always seen a gun around me whether it was my parent’s own legally obtained or a cop’s gun pointed at me. I have no fear of guns; I don’t believe every child in America should have this perception of a deadly weapon, there should be some cautious feeling towards the weapon of such power.

Now, many police stations are coming into military assault rifles and even tanks. I remember going to a seminar about militarization of police, and they mentioned something along those lines. How these men and women in the police do not know how wield such weapons of power. Regardless of the training of those weapons, as American do you really want to see police use such excessive weaponry here? Tanks rolling down the street, cops pointing AK rifles at people, I didn’t know we were war stricken country. I see weapons and tanks like that in societies where war is present, like Syria. Do you as a person want to give children the idea that war will erupt in this country?

The boy in my class went on to discuss how those of Muslim religions should stay in their own countries and we should leave the Middle East. I agree to the last part of his saying, we should have pulled out of the Middle East, but we are too late now. We are in too deep now to leave, if we do we let the terror group get what they want over in the Middle East. I do not agree on restricting immigrants from coming to America based off their religion. Being a country founded of the freedom of religion, not just the Christian religion, I believe everyone should have an attempt of the pursuit of happiness here in America. Maybe exercise caution to those who do come from war stricken countries, but not have a ban on Muslims and bug the Mosques that are presently here. Majority of those who are Muslim and live here in America are westernized, not everyone has the extremist views as those in ISIS. Hell ISIS isn’t even following the Islamic followings; they are killing other Muslims, there are constant violence breaking out in places like Bangladesh and Baghdad. They even attacked during one of the Islamic holidays.

But not everyone looks at things the way I do. I am one person and not everyone thinks like me, I respect that. I don’t push my own thoughts onto a person. I explain myself for my reason of thinking, mainly because everyone deserves a reason why. He didn’t give me a reason for his way of thinking, just that “It’s true.” Then again I shouldn’t hate on the kid for not knowing, or just repeated thing he heard on certain biased media, maybe if we taught more of the struggles, not just of white America, but everyone in America, we would be more open and understanding of others. Just showing empathy can go a long way. 

Just a thought.