Hate in America
It's getting worse.
I was watching a fictional show this week where the character (a journalist) wanted to do a story on something that was more than four days old. The character producer said, “That’s not news, that’s a blog story.”
This is a blog story...
I was standing outside of a poolside restroom in Jamaica waiting for Christopher when a Jamaican cleaning lady asked me, “Weh ya fram? USEh?”
I didn’t say, “Yeh mon, me from...”
I nodded, “I’m from North Carolina.”
She stretched her eyes and said, “Kerrlina?”
I thought she might tell me about someone she knew from there. But she proceeded to tell me about a shooting in one of the "Kerrlinas".
I hadn’t heard a thing. We weren’t using our cellphones and hadn’t had the television on. I am from South Carolina and live in North Carolina. In mild panic, I went down a mental list of whom I might know that went to church somewhere on Wednesday night.
The next morning I remembered to turn on CNN. She had told me a man went into a church and killed nine people. It didn’t even register in my mind as a hate crime until I saw the coverage.
Charleston.
I felt detached being outside of the country and disconnected from social media. What were people saying? What was the full story?
Arriving stateside we stayed in a hotel for the night. Upon check-in I took a USA Today from the front desk and it all became very real.
It seems like there's been one thing after another lately.
“There’s no closure or justice for one hate crime before another one occurs. ”
This is sick. This hate going around shouldn't be our norm.
Hate in America is not just about crime. If you read any of the comments to news articles online, you'll see how insensitive people are. It spells H-A-T-E to me.
There's been a lot going on this week and I just had to vent somewhere.
I wrote an article on the Medium platform, somewhere that I could just put it out there. At the time I wrote it, I just didn't feel like posting it here.
Click here to read Freedom of Stupid Speech. If you read it and agree, I'd love for you to recommend it.
#thatisall
PEACE Out,