Written by Jason Harden

I feel the roots of racism can basically be attributed to a lack of knowledge and education in regards to other cultural and ethnic origins. This lack of knowledge gives birth to fear, fear of the unknown. Fear can furthermore breed anger, resentment, anxiety, curiosity. Fear can drive one to commit acts which one would never think or imagine committing under so called normal circumstances.

Many have heard hearsay or even have had personal experience with someone from a different cultural and ethnic heritage and the tendency in some but not all cases is to qualify this hearsay as knowing a people. I've met some hard working, honest, dilgent, kind hearted people who are black, white, latino, asian, indian, etc. On the other hand I've met ill minded people of black, white, latino, asian and indian decent, etc. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best when he urged mankind to judge a man not by the color of his skin rather the content of his character. This reasoning can be applied to other matters that unfortunately separate us as people, i.e. religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, etc. Given the technology of the 21st century there is absolutely no excuse for not knowing your neighbors cultural and ethnic history. By neighbors I mean the man from Kazakhstan, the woman from Estonia or the child from Uganda. At the stroke of a few buttons said information can appear before our eyes by way of a powerful tool called THE INTERNET.

Many of us know and like / love / are addicted to the internet. If you feel an ounce of fear (anger, resentment.....) towards someone who is "DIFFERENT" minimize myspace, youtube, msn for about five minutes or less and you can have information in front of you to tell you about that person from Uruguay, Thailand, Denmark, etc. Next time you see someone "DIFFERENT" walking down the street and you have a few minutes to spare stop them and chat a minute. You will see that there are some good and some bad or at least what we in our own minds consider good and bad.