Hate (A Reflection)

[Ylanne Abdul Saleeb]

Hate

A word that is the opposite of love
we hear it all the time

It is carelessly tossed around by our children
"I hate that kid Joey he's so mean to me"
"I hate homework it's so boring"
"I hate that rock star his music is horrible"

What is hate really?

Hate is nigger bastard spic whore
Hate is crusades terrorism genocide war
Hate is all those things and so much more

Hate is something we feel deep down inside
It's a kind of emotion that grabs at our hearts and won't let go
It takes a hold on you it takes a hold of you
It takes all of you the whole of you
Ripping into your heart until it breaks
Ripping so hard your world shakes

It's burning in the air,
a slow smothering blanket
suffocating life right out of you

It's a tidal wave of misery
bitter like the blackest sea
drowning you in its bigotry

It's the bile that rises up in your throat
When you hear words coming from the lips of those
Whom you know are wrong and damned to hell
Because you see everything in black and white
Crisp clear dividing lines, you see it so well

Hate

is more than a word

Hate is something a word can't adequately describe
Maybe it's better that way too,
Who wants to speak a language
That can put something as strong as what 'hate' represents
into the words we speak
the words that leave these lips?

***

I was watching a movie entitled The Color of Friendship, hosted by Disney Channel. The movie itself was released several years ago and is based on a real experience by a real congressman, Ron Dellums, an outspoken black activist who called for an end to apartheid in South Africa. The story is of his family receiving an exchange student from South Africa, whom they assume will be black, and of that exchange student, Mahree, a white girl who assumes that her host family will be white.

At the conclusion of the movie (which did have a happy ending), the producers noted that Congressman Ron Dellums was present at the first free elections held in South Africa. This was in the year 1994.

1994

I bet everyone, or virtually everyone, reading this post, was alive at that time. I know I was. And when I read that year, I was deeply disturbed. We think of racial tensions in America as present, but almost bubbling under the surface. Except for certain occasions, we don't have these kinds of racial conflicts that we have now relegated to history, the 1960s and the 1950s and even earlier than that.

I've always thought of South African apartheid as a thing of the past. I've known about it, even briefly studied it before. I once wrote an essay on Nelson Mandela, the nation's first black president, elected after his released from serving 27 years of a life sentence for insurrection against the white racist government oppressing his country and his people.

But the past, my friends, was yesterday. Hatred is a part of life. In America, in South Africa, in Israel and Palestine. You need only to glance in your history book, glance at your newspapers, turn on the TV, and you can feel hate rising the way yeast does, slowly, but surely. You look once and it's flat, and you look again and BA-BAM, it's there.

Hatred is not something that goes away.

We created hatred. Hatred, and its products of suffering and pain, was only one more result of the Fall. One more attribute to a broken, imperfect humanity.

Hate is something we can overcome. Not in a day, a second, an hour. Not tomorrow or even today. Not everywhere, from all peoples, all faiths, all colors.

But we created it. We can erase it from our painful history.

HATE:

The Holocaust of World War II. Adolf Hitler murdered 9 million people.

Slavery in America, and "Separate but Equal", Jim Crow laws. The Whites trumped the Blacks.

Apartheid: South Africa.

The Taliban: Afghanistan. Pashtun nationalism at the expense of the Hazara and other minorities.

Saddam Hussein: Iraq. Gassed the Kurds.

You. Me.

Yesterday.

Today.

It is time to stop this hate. The products of hate are suffering, pain, and death.

No God wants to change the world that way.

No man should live with hate.

Jesus loved. He said to love your enemies. Love those who persecute you, who torment you. One of the most impossible things to do. We hear it all the time, from our parents, our teachers, our pulpits. Even from our own lips.

But do we hear it? Do we practice it? Practice what you preach. It's another cliche, but it rings true.

Like overcoming hatred, loving those who hate us is no easy task and it's not something that happens overnight.

But it's a first step.

And with one step, the journey begins.

[Adrius Frostglare]

Hatred is a poison that reaches out. Hatred cannot overcome you if you do not let it. It is true, it is something people inevitably feel, but people have free will. You can choose to act on hatred, to listen... or you can choose not to.

Hatred is a poison.

Love is the cure.

And it is your choice to live poisoned or healthy.