Hate Lima Beans! Essay, Research Paper

I Hate Lima Beans!

“I hate lima beans! Mom, please don’t make me eat those, they’re soo gross!” kids say things like this all the time. Hate, it rolls off the tongue with ease; yet, we do not feel the power it brings. We learn hate at a young age, no matter what background we grow up in. From children of Klansmen to intercity father-less poor kids, and yes even to our seemly protected clean suburbs. Children are so impressionable; if mommy tells you to hate the niggers b/c they’re bringing our society down or if daddy says to hate the white man for he’s the one holding us down and keeping us moneyless, children will listen and imitate the hatred we portray. It is not only Klansmen and gangbangers than breed hate; it is middle America. Kids see and absorb more than we may give them credit for. The screaming fight between mom and dad that wakes them up at night, even though they stay in bed holding tightly to their stuffed leopard -it too is absorbed and cataloged in their vast mind, only to be pulled up later validating their hatred for whomever they choose to project it onto.

Hate, the word it so commonly used that everyday its meaning is lost a little; but the repercussions of its power are seen. From the 12 year old shot at school just blocks from here, to the child who goes home crying because they were called nigger for the first time today (little do they know it is sure not to be the last). The killings in our country have grown exponentially with the age of the murders decreasing rapidly. “School shooting” is now not a shocking phrase to hear on the news –besides the fact that Columbine should not have been such a freaking shock, as that’s been going on in the back streets of D.C. and I’m sure other big cities that also have a plethora of black kids and poor public schools, hidden in the dirty corner. And as Eminem (I know, your favorite) said, “When the dude’s gettin bullied and shoots up the school, they blame it on Marilyn . . . Where were the parents at? Oh look where it’s at, middle America. Now it’s a tragedy, now it’s so sad to see an upper class havin’ this happen” Our society did not pay attention to and grieve over the unnecessary deaths sprung from the excessive hatred in our country, until it manifested itself in our affluent white suburbs.

Hate presents itself in our everyday activities. It matures our children too quickly and taints their innocent minds. From Arnold Swarsinager to the X men, right and left we see violence glorified in front of us. The sight of a gun loses it’s shocking effect, the fact that it can take away our precious life slips into the very back of our mind. The sight of a handgun or two on the coffee table became regular as did the knowledge of the semi-automatics in the first closet.

The hatred blanketing us becomes normal, we see it everyday so why not? There’s too much it around, what could I do? Hell, I got lucky and am white with money; I emphasize, but *censored* I don’t wanna get shot. These statements sound so selfish and despicable, but almost every semi-affluent Caucasian in this country, either consciously or unconsciously, has these very thoughts run through there mind. especially kids attending a school like ours. They don’t understand that look of resentment tossed from the cashier at Bruff Stuff or from that basketball player from Harlem. Some things can not be learned through books, but as Mills theorizes, must be gained experientially not merely intellectually. Going to bed at night worrying about not waking up in the morning because maybe one of those bullets flying around outside comes through your wall and into your head, while you dream your last dream –this is not a thought of the kids growing up in Potomac, no only the ones in southeast. This feeling can not be taught, neither can the condescending tone you receive from waiters, cashiers, secretaries -no that naked, degraded feeling is not something we learn in our 150 dollar books.

It is so atrocious and overwhelming that we do nothing, as the Germans stood by in WWII. I mean it wasn’t me who stomped the boy’s already smashed up jar into the curb; no for me, it was my ex-boyfriend. We dated for a while, do not get me wrong I love him to death, which is a very appropriate phrase. I ignored the guns lying around the apartment, and I rolled over and went back to sleep when they got up in the night and went out dressed in black. I didn’t ask, it’s more comfortable to live in a bubble of fuzzy denial. Our American society takes the same route I did -it’s hella easier.

I do not have any great answers, obviously I did not take some great individual stand. America History X definitively hit a little close to home on some points, all relating to the hatred emanating in all aspects of our culture. My exboyfriend was not racist, to the contrary many of his good friends were black, but their drug dealing rational is just as disturbing as the color of one’s skin. We are taught to fight in sports; hey, it is the tough ones who win. Even Darwin said the weak are weeded out. We humans believe that we are so innately soupier to animals; yet we kill and waste needlessly, while animals kill for food, which they require to live. We kill because someone made fun of our hairstyle, or we didn’t feel like we fit in with the popular crowd.

I know what it feels like to suffer from deep depression, to feel like no one in the world would gives a damn whether you lived or died. Yeah, I know what it feels like slash open your own skin with scissors and watch the deep red pour out into your own lap. We all repress so much hatred inside our soul, then we release it on the poor victim who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see the rage blazing strongly in the eyes of the boys who raped me. I didn’t do anything to them. I didn’t scream at them or backhand them when they were little. No I didn’t throw their favorite blankie out the window on a family trip, or wing the empty vodka bottle across the room because you knocked on the door too late. No, I don’t know who or what incited their hate; however, I now carry a piece of it around with me everyday.

This diffusion of hatred is why it will never die. We simply take it out and pass it on to others, like a hot potato. Only this potato will always be hot, for there is nothing coming to cool it off. It simply lights the next person and they the next. There is no end in sight. Our government is not productive; they think that making some new gun control laws is their sole responsibility (even though there are already a sufficient amount made, that are just not enforced.) Then they may stand back and say they did their job, or blame the republicans, whatever they think will please their public. There is no one group or person to blame for the infiltration of this hatred into our culture, thus there is no simple cure. All of us have a part of it; we all pass it on to our co-workers, our siblings, and people we see just once at the store. It might be the Jewish joke you made, or laughed at that cause the woman standing by you to flinch and curse under her breath.

Nigger, kiek, faggot – theses words do not phase me. I was racist for the first fourteen years of my life and like Ed Norton in American History X, I passed it on to my brother. It’s hard to change his mind when he feeds me the words I fed him, like ice cream to a small child, he gobbled it up. Man with a man, well that makes no sense, – I hate those homos! Shooting in northeast, those f***ing niggers! I could blame my sources, my grandfather, who is still on the board of a country club, actively blocking non-whites and non-Christens from being allowed to become members or Sidwell who accepting blacks with lower records than I solely to maintain their percentage of colored students and look good compared to the other rich D.C. private schools. I can at least give myself credit for accepting my blame, but most of us in our society love to toss it around, dodging it like the bullets from that old mustang. Movies, TV, and celebrities have been chosen as scapegoats; it is certainly nicer to go to bed blaming them for our problems than accepting our piece of the gigantic pie. Until the day come where many individuals from that old black janitor to the young Latino serving you french fries to even the white lawyer getting paid three hundred dollars for his “working lunch”, until they all step up; then our society has yet to see the beginning of the end of the repercussions of human hatred.