The Prejudice Within Us All

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Tiller

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Two weeks ago pro-choice and abortion providing doctor, George Tiller was fatally shot in his Wichita Church by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist who felt he was doing God's work by assasinating Tiller. A week later, a man from Salt Lake City Utah, Daniel James Murray is taken into custody by the FBI after making a withdrawal of $72000 and then proceeding to inform the bank teller that "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States." And yesterday, a white supremacist and anti-Semite named James Von Brunn opens fire at a Holocaust Museum in Washington DC killing one security guard. Now, it would be easy for me to begin going on rant about racism and regurgitating that "blame whitey" dogma we often hear and sometimes whisper to each other but I won't because the evidence seems to allign itself to conveniently with our need to always portray ourselves as the victim; instead it is my intention to stimulate your minds with a more complex but yet thought provoking twist in our ongoing struggle to grapple with the idea of Race and Identity.

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Shep Smith: DHS Report Was A Warning To Us All, But The Right Went Absolutely Bonkers

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Thomas Hobbes argued that humans will always act in their own self-interest by design. And so I would think that self-interest feeds into the whole idea of self-preservation and the feeling of Entitlement. As we start to feel more and more Entitled to "something" we start to feel threatened by anything that we feel may be trying to take that "something" away from us much like Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings'. This fear can be seen in that boyfriend that feels he has a right to control his girlfriend but the day she stands up for herself he beats her because deep down inside he begins to feel as though she is trying to take away the control he is Entitled to. And thus this premise can applied to a plethora of examples ranging from Race and Religion to Gay Rights and Immigration; from the genocide in Rwanda to the girl that wants to fight her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. My point is simply this; no single individual/race/religion/gender has a monopoly on Prejudice; Prejudice is not a white thing, republican thing, Muslim thing; its a human thing, its that moment when the feeling of Entitlement begins to consume and control us or those around us. Its easy to wag our fingers at the people that brought us those catchy racial slurs like the n-word but in all honesty Prejudice is closer to us minorities than we choose to acknowledge; simply put, some of us minorities can be some of the most prejudice people out there. Prejudice is that minority friend you hang out with that always has something deregatory to say underneath his breath as someone of Middle Eastern descent walks by; Prejudice is that member of the family that always frowns in disgust at the idea of a Black president named Barack Hussein Obama every time they turn on to one the news channels; Prejudice is that minority person that complains about Mexicans everytime they can't find a job or its that person at church that hides behind God to validate their disdain for the homosexual.