a difference of opinion

One of the biggest conversations on racism in my college sociology classes was whether racism still existed.  The professor would show the class for forty-five minutes how racism still existed today and how for people of color it is harder to get a quality education, job, car, you name it, than someone that is white.  Of course the last five minutes of class a person who raise their hand say “I grew up in a poor family and I pulled myself up by my boot-straps”, completely ignoring the discussion of the previous forty-five minutes.  

I used to think that person was just one person in a mix of an overwhelming majority of people who saw existing racism and wanted to do something about it.  It seems as though racism, although still existing, was not as bad.

And it’s not.  There is no slavery or Jim Crow laws.  But over the past decade or so persisting prejudice and overt racism against illegal immigrants (most coming from Mexico) and people of Middle Eastern decent (Muslim or not) is getting worse.  Maybe it has been a big problem before that, but this is my perspective.  The classic case of this is from just last month when NPR fired their news analyst Juan Williams, who on said on Fox News made several blatantly prejudiced comments about Muslims.

I’m not here to discuss whether NPR was right or wrong to fire Williams, but whether we should be tolerating what Williams said, how he acted, and accept a culture that promotes racism against other human beings.  

Although white people have mailed bombs through the mail, bombed world trade centers, and murdered hundreds of people in the United States there is no racial profiling against white people – yet people today not only think but are acting to perform racial profiling for illegal immigrants and people of Middle Eastern descent to the point of detrimental heartless acts and death.

It makes me sick to my stomach the way we treat others in this country and people around the world.  Only education, awareness, and building relationships with people that are different than us will truly make the world a better place – a place full of peace and well being.

dogs and chickens

A few years ago when he was caught for illegal dog fighting, the world turned on Michael Vick.  He left football and went to jail.  For most people it unearthed underground dog fighting that happens everywhere in the United States.  It also reinforced the fact that 99.9% of people think that dog fighting is wrong. 

In the United States, cock fighting is also illegal.  Much like dog fighting it is inhumane and cruel to the animal.  Like dog fighting, 99.9% of people find it wrong.  However, that’s not the only inhumane thing that happens to chickens everyday and almost all of us do nothing about it.

Most Americans, every time they eat chicken, don’t know how the chicken was raised, fed, and treated from birth until mealtime.  The chickens can be injected with different hormones and fed food that fattens them rather than food that is healthy.  The chickens are kept in confined dark places with no opportunity to walk.  Many of the birds are even unable to walk.  After the chickens are finally ready to be processed and slaughtered they are transported, again in confined spaces, crammed into a semi by the hundreds. 

It’s a quick overview of the inhumane manner in which chickens are raised to be eaten.  The chickens are not raised as chickens, but are processed more like a bag of Doritos on the grocery store shelf.  Why, as a people, do we find cock fighting immoral and illegal  – where only a small number of chickens die each year - but find it okay to treat thousands of chickens each year inhumanly through the way they are raised?

It is not a question of finding cock fighting as something that is good, because it is not.  It is a question of this: why are we sitting around and letting our chickens be treated so inhumanly without considering it to be immoral?

For more information on the treatment of chickens and other animals I recommend Fast Food Nation and Food Inc (book & movie).