Neda is an LPN that works the night shift, a very out going intelligent women, who has a deep spiritually, and has a very open spirit when it comes to others.  She wanted to read what I had to say in my post on prejudice.  After she read the post she shared with me some of her experiences with racist when she worked in a prison hospital for a few years. 

She remembered one of the guards (trusties) that were sent to the infirmary to make sure nothing would happen to her; a guard that she came to like very much and who treated her with kindness and respect.  After he was there awhile she found out that he was a white supremacist, involved in the Aryan movement, active where she worked.  Now Neda is black, and proud of it, and finding out this information did not affect her in the least, since she knew the man and liked him.  He obviously liked her after getting to know her; hopefully it helped him to overcome his narrow views.

She also told me that she had to evaluate the men when they came into the institution; for instance if the man was gay, she would put him in a area were he would be safe.  One custom was to put an Aryan in with some big mean black prisoner or with someone who was hated by the Aryan’s.  She did not say this but I would think it was also done the other way around.  It came to her attention that a very small Aryan sympathizer was coming in that day to jail and she found out that they were going to throw him in with someone who would hurt or possibly kill him.  She got him into the infirmary and after talking to him stopped the move into the cell.  Now the guards doing this, were both black and white, they did it out of sadism, they liked to put the prisoners in a position were someone would get killed or hurt.  The young man could not believe that she a black women would help him a racist who had hateful tattoos all over his body.  She told me that he changed his thinking after that.

It seems that prejudice, except in the extreme cases, will break down when you get people one on one, the center does not hold, it falls apart; at least as far as the person in front of them is concerned.  It is like some men who think that women are inferior and not as intelligent as they are.  No matter how many times they meet an intelligent women, and get to know them, the prejudices will drop for awhile, at least for the ‘one exception”, or that is how they look at it, but the underlying prejudices will not go away. 

I suppose even for those who are not racist, stress could trigger this violent irrational hatred of whole groups, be it racial, religious, political, or gender based, that lurks in our unconscious.  In the past I suppose this kind of tribal attitude was needed for survival, but it is not working anymore.  Unless we find some way to counteract this it could be the end of us.  Hate feeds on itself, hate for hate only increases the fire, revenge never satisfies, but only perpetuates the cycle of violence that seems to be unending.   I really believe that the only way to overcome this is for our race to come to the understanding that God does exists, and that we are all brothers and sisters created in the creator’s likeness.   

I suppose the only way that one can stay a bigot is to surround oneself with only like minded people, root each other on, and simply make sure that someone in the hated group is not met on a personal level.  When this happens the mob rule can be overcome, for some only for a short time, but for some, like the prisoner that Neda helped it can be life changing.

I must be a terrible burden to have to carry around so much hate and anger.  I know how painful it can be for me when I am angry about something, but to have to carry that around all the time must be a living hell.