An Attempt to Analyze Hate

Sometimes I look for answers about why you hate us.

I try to put myself in your shoes.

I imagine what my response would be if a new continent was discovered with inhabitants whose skin was a color unlike mine. For the sake of my mental exploration, I imagine their skin being blue. Maybe their hair is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Like it sticks straight out of their head. Or maybe they look like the creatures from Avatar. Either way, they look different.

Would I be alarmed? Maybe. If we’re being honest – probably. But once those blue people showed that they love their kids, mothers, sons, husbands just like my people, I would see their humanity. That they feel pain when their husband is killed. That they feel pain when a knee is placed on their neck. That they feel the pain every time they see it over and over again. That they burn when tear gas hits the eyes that you won’t even allow tears to flow from because they “have to be strong.”

I try to be more realistic, because there are no blue people roaming our earth.

So I imagine, what if this was happening to Asian people and not Black people. Or the LatinX community. Would I try to justify their murders by noting that an Asian man who was killed for selling CD’s deserved it because someone said he was breaking the law? If we’re being honest – maybe, to make myself feel better and avoid reality. But then I would think of an Asian kid who was killed at night as she sleeps or for playing his music too loud. Then, how could I justify their murder?

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I keep going through all these scenarios to help me understand why.

Why do you stop us from publishing the art that serves as our only voice, from promotions at work, from securing a business loan, from living at all? Why don’t you want people to know? If you hate us so much why do you hide it?

I don’t get it. What is it internally that forces you to take control over our lives, spirits, dreams?

I think about what if history played out differently somehow.

What if Africans colonized Europe and inhabited America. What if Africans enslaved Europeans and sold them to the African-Americans creating a new world. Would we Africans continue to ensure Europeans never found their worth or rose to power because we were afraid to lose ours? If we’re being honest – it’s possible. But that never happened.

You tell us we’re inferior physically, mentally, genetically. What do you say to the high school student with a 5.6 GPA, becoming his school’s first Black valedictorian? What do you say to the world’s fastest man? What do you say to the doctor leading the team dedicated to finding a cure to a disease you blamed on another group that’s unlike you?

So here I am left in my reality. Evaluating history and what ifs only to sit in a world that feels unreal. It sometimes feels like there’s a world where things did go differently.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James Baldwin