Hello boys and girls. Gommy's blog today is asking about why people hate other people just because of their skin color, religion, their culture or their beliefs. There were two instances this week where Gommy was very uncomfortable in situations where the people I was with seemed like your every day normal person and everything was going along just hunky-dory and then BAM....the color of someones skin crept into the conversation in a manner that made Goms squirm inside.
The first person Gommy ran into this week that made for an uncomfortable feeling said something unflattering about President Obama, and then tried to cover it up that they weren't referring to his skin color....DUH...but Gommy got the ugly, unspoken intent behind it. Then just today, someone said something about some African Americans who were playing golf and asked if they were going to have fried chicken and watermelon at the luncheon afterwards. How small minded do you have to be to think that a whole class of people only like a certain food? That is like saying, at a while persons' buffet..."Are they going to have mashed potatoes and gravy?" ha,ha,ha...We whiteys must all only eat mashed potatoes and gravy, right? And even if that was the case....why is that supposed to be so funny? Gommy doesn't get it.
I have heard people say that they don't like African Americans because they are lazy. Geesh, I've never met a lazy white person, have you? And someone else has said that they don't like a certain group of people because they steal.....same analogy applies here. I guess they don't know that there are several white prisoners in our penitentiaries.
What it really boils down to is that bigotry is a learned emotion. Just as child abusers are often 'victims of victims' the same holds true for racism..... people who hate someone just because of their skin color are normally 'haters from haters'.
The other thing that really gets Gommy is that I can't tell you how many Christians Goms knows who say that disgusting "N" word.....Don't they know that true Christians are supposed to teach and live in love? And not just with people of their same color. How ironic is that? Doesn't the Bible supposedly say..."God so loved the world......." I don't think it said, "God so loved only the white people."
I bet you are wondering how Gommy reacted when these people were so nasty-talking about other fellow human beings? Without going into a lecture or preaching, where it would probably just make the other people get defensive......Gommy didn't answer them at ALL. The silence spoke volumes and was quite deafening, because they had to sit there with those ugly words that just came out of their mouths and become uncomfortable themselves with the knowledge that Gommy didn't agree with them and was just letting them sit in it and stew. Sometimes we have to gag on what we want to say because we are in situations that could make matters worse, i.e. it could be our boss, our customer, our extended family who say unkind things about a group of people. In those instances, the very best answer is no answer at all and to just sit there and look them squarely in the eye and let the foulness just linger and hopefully they will feel like the ones squirming, which is how they should feel.
So, the next time you feel you just have to say something nasty about someone to someone else....put a filter on it and think that not everyone else in the world thinks the way you do. And the very next question you should ask yourself, is why do you have such a terrible feeling about a whole group of people. If you go back far enough, you may just find that you 'inherited' that feeling. Some things just aren't worth that kind of inheritance. Many people deny being called a racist but don't mind acting like one. Try to be better than that. There are all types of people in every group of nationalities, ethnicity's, religions or cultures. Wake up peeps. You don't have to repeat history if it was BAD history. Remember that God loves you.....and He loves EVERYBODY ELSE TOO! Hugs & Mush, Gommy
