After seeing what happened in Charleston I can completely understand why people tune out the news.  Seeing such hate happen in a place where people are supposed to feel safe.  When I ask people why they don’t watch the news or keep up on world events; what they tell me is that all the negativity in the world makes them feel bad.  They would rather hear about the kid that got saved from the well.  Or the dog that rescued a kitten trying to cross the street.  You need to know what’s going on in the world so you can make an informed decision about certain topics.  Supporting the right candidate or taking a stand against certain injustices.  You don’t even need to leave your home to make a difference.  You can protest on multiple social media fronts.  This has a bigger impact than actually protesting if you get enough people on board.

You need to know where people stand on particular stories.  If we just bury our head in the sand, we will continue to make the same mistakes as a human race.  If our children are frightened of every single person of certain ethnic origins how are we going to evolve as a species.  After hearing about the Charleston shootings, I felt anger.  It feels like every time we take a step forward that we take three steps back.  Whether it comes to sexual orientation, sexism, or racial discrimination we need to be better than we are.  You can’t judge anybody for how they are born.  Whether it’s skin colour, gay, lesbian, man, or woman.  None of these things are decided by the individual.  It’s who the person is that is important.  The decisions that they make.  That’s what you can judge them on.

The way that I retrieve my news is extremely important.  Nearly everybody gets their knowledge online.  If you woke up this morning and went to Yahoo or MSN the story was about Tyra Banks and the way that she looks first thing in the morning.  That’s the news story.  How a person looks without makeup on.  Do you know the reason that’s the top story?  People click on it.  People don’t want to hear about somebody’s opinion about the hate crime that happened in Charleston.  It will be swept under the rug in about a week.  Could you imagine if this was a terrorist attack by a group from another country? The US would want blood-shed.  They might even prefer that, they could at least make sense of what happened.  But when it’s a plain old racist hate crime by one of their own.  Well, he’s just crazy then.  This is a one-off.  The US will take no responsibility for this.  Put their head back in the sand, and continue concentrating their hatred back on who they believe is the real enemy.

What do you think is going to happen when the younger generation grows up?  We haven’t faced any of the issues that directly impact our society.  We should have zero tolerance for any type of narrow-mindedness.  We can only move as quickly as our slowest person.  And in this case our slowest person has just shot up a church, and killed 9 African American’s in the process.  It does seem like we are climbing Mt. Everest with running shoes on.  Just sliding back down to the bottom of the mountain every second step.  What I try to tell myself after watching CBC news is to think about all angles before making a judgement call.  I am by no means perfect.  I have made a lot of mistakes in my years of living.  My attempts to better myself are sometimes difficult.  You grow up constantly hearing things that you are told to believe, and then have to decide for yourselves what is correct.  Listening to open-minded people is one of the things that I try to do on a consistent basis. Really hearing what they are saying rather than just waiting for your time to pipe in your own opinions.  I really dislike writing about these things, but in light of what happened in Charleston I think some of these things need to be stated.  And if you really want to hear it summed up perfectly watch Jon Stewart.