After all the tragic events that happen every day in this country, people want someone to blame. They pick cops or Muslims or black people or guns. There are problems everywhere, in any group of people, there will be bad eggs. But we need to stop blaming the majority for the actions of the minority. But that isn’t what I see as the biggest problem. What I see the problem as is the sensationalism of news.
While it may seem minor, really think about it. Why is it that when a Muslim person commits murder it is considered terrorism, but when a white guy shoots up a church or planned parenthood or movie theater they are just some nutcase? Because that’s what the news says. For some reason, only white men don’t represent their group with every mistake they make.
It’s easy to fall into the idea that all cops are out to get every black person, or that every Muslim wants to kill every american that has ever lived because what do we hear from the news? We hear that there has been another terrorist attack perpetrated by a Muslim or another cop shot an unarmed black man. It’s easy to group people when the only thing you hear about that group is hate and violence. You know what we never hear about on the news? A police officer successfully de-escalating a situation or when a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. It happens every day but many people would never know it. We don’t hear the good because good doesn’t get ratings. We don’t hear about the majority of a group who are peace loving and just want to live their lives, because that isn’t news. And when you only hear the bad it becomes really easy to only see the bad.
There are problems within any group of people. There is hate and there is suffering, and we all want something easy to blame because accepting that isn’t just one thing, it means we have to do work as a society.
Erecting a wall on the border or halting Muslims coming into the country are easy target ideas that may make people feel safe because if you're able to just blame one or two groups of people then there is an easy solution. But if those happen all that we as a nation will learn is that IT WONT FIX ANYTHING.
Last week cops were killed in Dallas while protecting activists. How could that possibly do any good? These cops were good ones, protecting citizens and their rights to protest. They were protesting police while being protected by police and someone was so mad at the system that they killed and injured good people. They believed every cop is bad and they need to be taken care of.
But it’s not true. Take a step back and you can see that such a huge majority of police just want to help people, or that Muslims in america just want to live their lives. We need to stop reacting with hate and violence because some people are violent towards us and those around us. Stop only believing what the news says, do your own research, meet people and try to understand their point of view. As long as we trust whatever we hear just because its from a news station, there will only be generalizations. Generalizations lead to hate, and hate will never beat hate, it only grows it.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If we want to end the violence there must be love and acceptance.
