My eyes on civil rights

One of my local PBS channels has been running "Eyes On The Prize". I hope that I have the correct title. For those who have not seen this show, it is a documentary on the civil rights movement. It was really interesting and eye opening. For one of the Earth's most intelligent species, we have a tendency to sink to the lowest forms of intelligence. No one in our country deserves to be treated the way, we've treated people. We talk about the threats of terrorism, but we've had acts of terror carried out here in order to keep people down. We've even had murders committed to in the name of halting civil rights and to racism.

Look at history, you'll see the repeated mistreatment of people purely because of their race. Slavery held a people for centuries tied to the American soil. We pushed Native Americans off their ancestral lands by force. During WWII, American citizens of German and Japanese descent were mistreated. Japanese citizens were placed in interment camps. Moving to closer times, there have been verbal and physical attacks on people of Middle Eastern descent. Why do we feel the need to act that way towards others. I mentioned terrorist acts earlier, and believe me they happened.

Sadly, these terror acts were directed on people who trying to gain rights and on people who were struggling to hold on to their ancient way of life. We gave small pox infected blankets to some tribes of Native Americans. We tried to starve the Plains tribe by eliminating the American Bison. In closer times, people had cocktail bombs thrown at their homes. Churches were burned to make a statement. Lives were threatened and lives were lost. People were beat up. People from the north who came down to support those seeking civil rights also got beat up and assaulted. Fear can be a very powerful weapon. Threats and acts of violence were done to keep people in control. After all who would want to lose their homes to fire. Terrorism on our soil was a very real part of the civil rights movement.

It's the violence that bothers me. Is fear a reason to kill? It seems to me the men who carried out violence against these people were deeply afraid of something. This fear spawned hatred, and hatred give birth to violence.

Freedom and civil rights are worth fighting for in any country. I can understand dying for freedom's sake. Dying or killing for civil rights just doesn't make any sense. When someone dies in the act of defending their countrymen or in the attaining civil rights, they become a martyr to the cause. It strengthens the cause in weird sense.

It is my opinion that great strides were made during those challenging years. The mere fact that, we still have problems in race relations troubles me. It sickens me to think, that racism is thriving in the 21^st century. What worries me is where hatred will take us as a nation. I'm a firm believer that hatred has the power to destroy. I also believe that it can be taught to our kids even if we do not mean too. Our examples and our language both spoken and unspoken are equally powerful teachers. We shouldn't have to tolerate hatred or civil injustices regardless of our race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. We need to remember those years.