Why Do We Hate

There was a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Stone County Leader, a local weekly that still prints a paper.

A woman asked, “Why do we hate?” One sentence was her entire letter.  I want to answer it.

I wonder why we hate too.  We are not born hating. No newborn hates. Neither does a 2-year-old, but training has started by that age.  Parents and other adults in a household teach children to hate. We teach them to hate the same things we hate. And our churches reinforce the hate.

We usually hate people who are different from us.  They might have a different skin color or a different religion or live in a different neighborhood.  And we hate them because the people who are teaching children were taught when they were children to hate the same people.  

Ask haters why they hate and they will tell you.  That other person is a different color or they go to the wrong church. We hate because we want nothing more than to feel superior to someone, so we learn ourselves and then and teach our children to hate. Silly isn’t it? 

Just last night, I was watching local news. Seems as if a high school football team wants to start games with a prayer. Of course, mixing religion and public education is unconstitutional, so they are being sued.  A ‘man in the street’ interview yielded this opinion: “Why are all those Yankees coming down here trying to tell us what we can’t do?” Another person said it was like the confederate flag. He was disgusted that the rainbow flag could be flown over the capital of the US - something that made him gag, but he wanted his confederate flag to fly at our capitol and it can’t because of the hatred it represents.  He hates and teaches his children to do the same.

Hate. Passed from generation to generation.  

This town and state hates our president. The same president who makes federal assistance available to this state, a state who gets more federal dollars than other states because it is so poor, is hated because of his skin color. 

So, letter writer, why do you hate? It’s a habit we can’t seem to break. What about you? Do you hate? And who tells you it’s OK.