Hatred thrives, fails to shock
Hate. It’s a popular word these
days.
The Omaha African-American
community claims the police will
retaliate out of hatred for those who
killed Officer Jimmy Wilson Jr.
O.J. Simpson’s attorneys say
Mark Fuhrman manufactured
evidence out of hatred for blacks. In
both of these cases, the tragedies
have been obscured due to underly
ing issues.
Hatred based on gender, sexual
orientation, race, and religion is not
new, yet both of these cases have
brought it to the forefront. People
across the country profess astonish
ment at a former policeman’s
utterance of racial epithets, but I
have no doubt we could find them
being used on our campus any day
of the week.
Are we only aware of discrimina
tion and hate speech when it
involves someone well-known? I
hope not, but the evidence seems to
say so.
The hate speech we hear about is
the rare instance in which someone
brings forward a claim, goes to
court, or appears in the public
limelight. TTie average person
insulted at the gym, in a restaurant,
or even in a classroom rarely
receives much attention.
Detective Fuhrman’s actions are
particularly loathsome, but not
atypical. But it would ease our racist
consciences to think he is.
I would propose that everyone is
racist to some extent. Most people
work hard to overcome that fact.
But the circumstances in which
people grow up and develop a value
system vary, and not one of those
circumstances has an airtight
protection from hatred.
Most people overcome whatever
negative beliefs they hold through
experience and exposure to different
cultures and ideas. But there is no
guarantee of any one person
accepting everything. Political
Kristi Sch warting
“Resistance to
difference, be it color or
sexual identity,
perpetuates hatred. Such
hatred is unlikely to end
soon
correctness does not come naturally;
it has been artificially imposed in an
attempt to alleviate past injustices.
And its imposition does little to
solve hatred and misunderstanding.
Referring to someone by the
politically correct term does not
eliminate any prejudice existing
inside.
While Fuhrman clearly missed
the politically correct bus, his words
shouldn’t be so surprising. Most of
us have witnessed something, some
word or act, based on irrational
bias.
I spent four years in a Southern
city that claimed to be progressive.
New Orleans'residents had elected a
black mayor, and my senior year the
university saw its first black
homecoming king and queen.
The very wording of newspaper
articles — the “first” this or that —
demonstrates how short a distance
the city had in fact progressed. It
shouldn’t be so important to have
elected someone who was black or
gay or possessing of any other factor
considered “different.” In a truly
progressive society, these factors
wouldn’t carry so much weight.
Any notion of integration and
acceptance fell to pieces in fall
1992, when David Duke nearly won
the governor’s race. The convicted
white-collar criminal, Edwin
Edwards, edged out the former -
Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
What the Louisiana governor’s
race demonstrated was a community
showing its best face to the world
while keeping the ugliness inside.
Duke’s strongest voter base was an
affluent New Orleans suburb, part
of a town bursting with pride for its
forward-thinking philosophy.
What interests me is the amount
of hate 1 found in Nebraska when I
returned last year. While I was
away, I had somehow idealized my
home state as a kinder, simpler
place.
Instead, I came hack to the state
where Gary Lauck flourished. I
don’t know why he chose Nebraska
as his home base, but something
about it clearly appealed to him.
I came back to the state where
Teena Brandon will be remembered,
less as a murder victim and more as
a cross-dresser who happened to
die.
Resistance to difference, be it
color or sexual identity, perpetuates
hatred. Such hatred is unlikely to
end soon.
Against this backdrop,
Fuhrman’s remarks don’t provoke
as much shock. We oannot take
someone who says such things
seriously, but neither should we
dismiss him as an eccentricity, a
lone crackpot.
Hatred is alive and well and
flourishing in America. Political
correctness can’t stop its growth.
But an examination of what lies
beneath the mask of propriety can.
SchwaiUng Is 9 graduate student In
broadcast JonrnaUsm and a Dally Nebras
kan columnist
Leaving behind the Antichrist
o ■
Twilight, stars, souls. I sit in the
dark knowing that hundreds of
miles away there’s a heartbeat; a
heartbeat that prays for my death
with every pulse. Old school,
literally.
Proximity breeds friendship,
distance brings hate; the golden rule
that can be applied to any relation
ship. The endless quest to find
warm bodies to surround ourselves
with. You spin the chamber and
take a chance, knowing that
someday you’ll wind up with a
mouthful of bullets instead of warm
air.
Thrown into the granite tomb of
high school, you searched out
comrades in arms desperately,
forging alliances with the
unlikeliest of nations. Disposable
acquaintances, social cannon fodder
— relationships built on mutual
feelings of indifference. Healthy,
good ol’ fashioned teen-age crap.
One day a plague walked into
our lives.
Typhoid, malaria, black death —
child’s play compared to the fate
that awaited us. All around, shrieks
of “Black Death!” could be heard
over the scampering of feet on
linoleum, but we stood our ground. I
think we did it out of spite, the logic
being that if everyone thinks it’s
bad, it must be good. However,
every fledgling non-conformist must
remember that sometimes the
multitude has a point. Whether out
of pity, patheficness or a gestalt of
the two, we dared to stare the
demon in the face.
I don’t know much, but I know
the Antichrist when I see him.
He could have been in the
Guinness Book for being universally
despised. His body secreted some
kind of reverse pheromone that
caused people to contemplate
suicide in His presence.
He was maddening, He was _
obnoxious, but what the hell, he was
16 and had a car.
You can hide a hickey, but you
can’t hide leprosy.
Like tolerating a rat gnawing at
Aaron McKain
“Gone are my days of
reigning Kristallnacht
and screaming ‘DirtV
while driving past the
trailer park. West
Omaha elitism doesn’t
get me off anymore.
How could he know
that?”
your Achilles’ heel and then
realizing it has become such a
bloody, gunky mess that you can’t
pry it off, I grew a soft spot in my
heart for his social deficiencies. It
didn’t even seem odd when, out of
the blue, He confided in me that his
family was genetically hairier than
most. I grew to enjoy his insuffer
able company. We had the destruc
tive, immature, mean-spirited,
asinine fun that only 16-year-old
penis-wielders can have and for that
I am grateful, content, whatever.
Present tense. Now he wants me
dead.
“You ruined my life,” he says,
but that’s what we all say when
we’re not exactly sure what ruined
our lives. Every action deserves a
reaction. It’s not my fault that my
reflexes are just that, reflexes, and
don’t take into consideration the
emotional repercussions of their
backlash. Why do we become so
upset upon discovering that the
people we dislike hate us too?
Money is poison.
The intrusion waltzes into my
life, I leam to like the thorn in my
side, then he de-evolves back into
the primordial goop. Just as he was
becoming a human being he decides
to once again look at the world
through his crackeyes Viewmaster.
Daddy’s wallet bought him into the
rich boy school where they teach
‘em to drink and screw and other
junior high rites of passage. The
emotional cripple Olympics.
I remember his first call back
from college, a tape-recorded
dictation of his various partying
exploits. Yawn. He had a prepared
speech that he could spew out
verbatim, so as not to deprive
anyone on the juicy details. Super
Yawn.
Yeah, I drank and then I
Rollerbladed, then...I drank, then,
uh, 1 think my roommate had sex
once, and I drank, then I went to
somebody’s house and, uh,
drank..but I could be wrong, I was
pretty drunk...,” He looked like he
was going to cry when it became
apparent that Pavlovian drool '
wasn’t dripping down my face to
the tones of his vicarious beer and
intercourse.
I grew up, he grew down. Telling
myself that he came back more
intolerable doesn’t stop me from
knowing that I’m the one who’s
different Gone are my days of
reigning Kristallnacht and scream
ing “Dirt!” while driving past the
trailer park. West Omaha elitism
doesn’t get me off anymore. How
could he know that?
Drinking, sex, drugs, and
god...but I already covered that
once, didn’t I?
One of these days they’re going
to find my corpse carved out with a
shotgun blast and the words, “From
Russia With Love” spray painted on
my chest, and who knows, maybe I
deserve my death sentence.
Aaroa McKaia b aa aadedared sopho
more aad Daily Nebraskaa colamaist.
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by James Zank
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