IT IS EASY TO ATTACK THE "OTHER"

Recent letters have highlighted the divisions in our country.

It is easy to attack minorities when you are in the majority and let's face it we are a nation composed of 100's of minorities all vulnerable to attacks by a larger white mostly Christian majority. No other nation on the planet has the large number of  minorities that we have in the United States.  Most nations in the world  are more homogeneous than we are.

Except for Native Americans, North America looked empty to our ancestors and many oppressed peoples from all over the world flooded to this land. So now as a result, in the twenty-first century we have become an unplanned experiment in the ongoing survival of the human species. 

Most of us who are white do not know what it feels like to be a minority because we have never had the experience. Have you ever been in a room where you are the ONLY person WHO IS NOT  Jewish, or Black, or Hispanic, or Muslim, or Chinese, or Gay, or the opposite sex?  If you have never had this experience, then you have no idea what minorities face in our society. Millions of Americans are the "OTHER" and they feel it everyday and in every way in the current polarized political climate gripping our nation.

My observation is that many of us live in a bubble, surrounded by people who are the same color, the same ethnic group, go to the same church and often work in the same occupation.  We are insulated and isolated from the real world that exists beyond the edges of our bubble.  If you do not have any real human contact with the "OTHER" it is easy to demonize or criticize them.

The only way we will survive as a nation will be our willingness to get to know our minority citizens as human beings who have the same needs, desires and hopes as we do, so we then can move forward together.