Today we will start up the week by including the selection from Friday and continuing on in that paragraph - from "The Strength to Love" by Martin Luther King,Jr.
Soft mindedness is one of the basic causes of race prejudice. The tough minded person always examines the facts before he reaches conclusions: in short, he prejudges. The tender minded person reaches conclusions before he had examined the first fact; in short, he prejudges and is prejudiced. Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings. There are those who are sufficiently soft-minded to believe in the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of the Negro race in spite of the tough minded research of anthropologists who reveal the falsity of such a notion.... With insidious zeal, they make inflammatory statements and disseminate distortions and half-truths which arouse abnormal fears and morbid antipathies within the minds of uneducated and underprivileged whites, leaving them so confused that they are led to acts of meanness and violence which no normal person commits.
Oh I would not want to use only "uneducated and underprivileged" when speaking of such people who become afraid and act out of their fears. It is also the well-educated who know of ways - well-worked ways - to keep the world as it is best for them. "Best for them" may mean the oppression and the brutalization of others. Though King does a masterful job at drawing a picture of the racial prejudice and bigotry of his day, we must also take this kind of rich imagery to look at ourselves and how similar "inflammatory statements and disseminate distortions and half-truths" are being used even today whenever we find others who are not like us and need to be removed so that we can have the world as we want it. This same kind of language and imagery can be used against various people in the Islamic world and against GLBT people here in the U.S. These words can be whipped up by regular folk who are so convinced of their own opinions and understandings and views that others outside of their world can quite literally "go to hell." The goal of some folks is to make life now like "hell" for people who are not like them. In reality it is hell for all.
Connection: Normal folk can do some ugly things to one another - everyday. How do we help one another not step into that territory of ugly fear and hatred?!?
Your word among us, O God, is a grand 'YES' that is the creative force of all life. Open our ears that we will hear that word of refreshment and in that hearing become such refreshment and life for those who long for such creativity. Amen.
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