[quote author=“jncsta2000”]Here’s an interesting story…. I’ve been in school for about the past 5 weeks, and over that period of time I’ve found it odd how many people speak poorly of others’ cultures, religions, etc. Well the other day in gym class (it was free gym, so we didn’t have to do anything) I was talking with this kid. And HE was talking about how great Hitler was and that anyone who killed 10 million Jews (i think it was actually more like 6 but oh well) was a genius. I’m 6 feet tall and can benchpress 235 lbs. When he found out that I was a Jew, he was not excited. I’m sure you know where it went from there…...
While I would have wanted to do the same thing, I’m not 6 feet tall and can’t benchpress 235 lbs. (though, hopefully one day soon 😉). While I don’t think hitting him was wrong, I certainly wouldn’t condone or suggest that kind of retaliatory behavior. You walk a fine line yourself when you act like that towards ignorant idiots who have a warped sense of reality.
Then again, they might know nothing other than racism… That possibly being the case, sometimes violent reactions towards their venomous words are substantial means of affecting change. Though, I doubt it.
In America, you’re allowed to think what you want, and say what you want. As long as this kid wasn’t doing anything that actually affected someone else’s ability to learn, I think you might have been running the risk of getting into trouble.
What I would’ve recommended, is for you to ask him to kindly stop with his hate mongering comments. If he did not, I would have taken the matter up with the administration. If that didn’t solve the problem, I would belittle him. I’d take the issue to fellow students, and I’d try to make it apparent to him (and whatever like-minded peers he may associate himself with) that his words were better kept to himself. The kind of unanimous response you could draw from your peers might actually affect him. Remember, hating hate doesn’t solve anything, it only generates more hate.
SIDE NOTE:
I feel as though I’ve contradicted previous statements, statements in relation to the Wahabi schools in the Middle-East.
Yes, the propaganda/brainwashing is fundamentally similar, but what’s different is the goals or intentions of those that hold these beliefs. The neo-Nazis of America rarely have the balls to take it to homicidal levels, whereas the primary purpose of the lives of those taught in the Wahabi schools is the destruction of anything pro-Israel.
Don’t get me wrong, I, personally, know more than most anybody the potential damage caused by words; they are most certainly comparable to any form of physical damage. Words can hurt just as much as any stick or stone. The welts and bruises left upon one’s soul are every bit as apparent as the scars seen on so many faces, arms, legs, backs, and chests.
I don’t think you can can definitively say one is worse than the other, so I won’t take sides.
What is relevant, is which problem we can affectively deal with. In America, hate can be suppressed and knowledge can be spread to affect the minds of those who harbor such feelings. In the Middle-East, we don’t have that luxury.
We’re already being told that we shouldn’t be sticking our noses in the affairs of the world, but yet we’re expected to do everything with no real effective directive to follow. We can’t go there, we’d lose too many people in trying to “educate” them, and we’d be called even more bad things than we’re already being called. Are we to sit idly by while we’re attacked, while innocent blood is spilt in the holiest of any place on earth, and while the whole world cries out for their respective divine beings to save them from their oppressors? Are you to turn the channel while the commercial depicts, yet again, another starving child that needs your help?
I don’t have the answers for you, but I have the answers I need for myself. And that helps me sleep at night.
