Racism 101: Are you a Racist?

This is a commonly used phrase to try and squelch any form of retaliation or revenge. 

This is a lovely thought when used in the abstract. The problem with the reality of this phrase is that in order for us to use this in the real world, the “Bad guy” would have already made me half blind.

This thinking only works if we all agree BEFORE the fight breaks out. This thinking only works if we are going to avoid hurting one another BEFORE we hurt one another. 

Once you’ve caused me to lose an eye, your asking me to let it go in the name of being the “Better” or the “Bigger person” is an unfair request. In order to comply, I would have to live my entire life, my entire existence with only half of the eye sight of my enemy. My enemy on the other hand, is seeing things as they always have.

No, I am not saying let’s go kill people or incite riots. What I AM saying is that when someone says something horrible and then the offended party replies in kind, no one should EVER show up to say something like “Don’t fight hate with hate.” Whether intentional or not, you are taking the side of the horrible person. The person that has already cut out my eye, is not the person who will be hurt by your “Call for love.” It will be me, the one eyed victim. Your call of love might make the oppressor change their ways. That’s great but I still only have one eye. Why would you stand beside the guy holding my eye and ask ME not to “Hate?”

This is unreasonable and more importantly, it’s cruel.

I saw this in it’s most horrid form when someone wrote a post saying that it was not okay to “Fight hate with hate” when talking about Trayvon Martin’s murderer.

The thing that infuriated me about this was that the person the post was directed to was NOT calling for the death of the murderer. The person in question was saying things like “Trayvon Martin’s murder is a piece of shit.”

How dare you call for “Love” at that moment. In one dirty swipe, you have tried to silence someone who was angry and grieving, you’ve made the murderer the victim, you’ve made the mourning person the aggressor, you’ve belittled the pain of the mourning person and you’ve made MURDER equal to an ANGRY STATEMENT. 

What are you thinking? 

In any instance where I could see this phrase being useful in real life, I would think you would need something FAR BETTER to say than this. 

If someone killed my child and I was planning to kill them in return, your concern for me making my life worse would be a genuine worry. In theory, this would be a time to bring this phrase into the conversation. In reality, if I am at a place where I am sincerely plotting someone’s death, you’d better damn sure have something better to say than “An eye for an eye blah blah blah.”

In real life situations, whether verbal or physical, there is likely never going to be a GOOD time to use this phrase without you siding with evil.