Tradition: noun, a custom or belief passed within families or other groups from one generation to another.[1] Prejudice: noun, a strong feeling against something.[2] Strong prejudice has always been a tarnish, or to some a beautification, of the south. Prejudice is simply an idea. An idea passed from generation to generation. It’s an idea of hatred, isolation, discrimination, and disconcertment. Some people would rather live with ignorance in their hearts then love and understanding.
Prejudice is a tradition. Children do not come into the world hating others of a different race, religion, ethnicity, lifestyle, or past. Young children don’t hate; they love. A dictionary is not needed to know the true definition of love; merely the presence of a young child can describe the virtue in its fullness. The next generation, the next lawyers, politicians, doctors, and teachers of the world must be taught prejudice to have it. That is why it is a tradition. It is a custom or belief passed from one generation to the next. Traditions can be ended.
“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”[3] In its most hateful, horrendous, and clear form, prejudice can be horrifying. In 1955, a fourteen-year-old Negro boy visiting family in Money, Mississippi was tortured and killed, to be found later in the Tallahatchie River. Two men, Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam would eventually be arrested and tried for murder. An all-white jury acquitted them. In an interview published in Look magazine three months after their acquittal, Bryant and Milam described how they kidnapped, tortured, and finally murdered Emmett Till. The third white man and woman involved in the kidnapping and subsequent events were never identified or apprehended.[4]
If you would, with me imagine this: you are a teenage boy in an unfamiliar and humiliating environment in which you must practically bow to any white person. Two burley men with guns and flashlights drag you from your uncle’s shack in the middle of the night for whistling at a white woman. After you are literally dragged across the rocky ground to their truck, you are thrown (again, literally) into the bed. The men get into the truck where two other silhouettes are waiting- one male and one female. Gravel and dust spit from below the tires of the truck as it accelerates away from your screaming and crying uncle, aunt, and cousins. These four people drive far out into the Mississippi countryside where your screams won’t be heard. (And even if they were heard, no one would help you anyway simply because you were born with brown skin rather then white.) The men slice you with knives. They castrate you. They whip your bare back. The women watches with an evil smile tickling her lips. Finally, the men attack your face with a baseball bat and then tie a noose around your neck with barbed wire. You’re excited as they shoot a bullet through the back of your skull. One end of the barbed wire is attached to a cinderblock, and the other is wrapped around your neck. Your lifeless body is thrown into the Tallahatchie River.
All because of prejudice. All because of hate and racism. Why? It’s a one-word-question, yet it’s hard to answer. You did this to an adolescent because he’s brown and you’re white? It’s disgusting. Life destroyed for a reason that sounds ridiculous even if you were the killer. “Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem; it is a deep-seated evil within our society.”[5] Emmett Till’s story is my definition of prejudice.
There are ways to destroy the nasty monster lurking in our homes, schools, and government, though. One way: destroy ignorance. “Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”[6] Teach people the wonders of their enemy. Instruct them on their enemy’s successes, downfalls, heartbreaks, troubles, and culture. Another way: end the tradition. Even if you are prejudiced against one group of people or another, don’t teach your children of your hate. Why show them the horrifying ideologies and feelings of the world they have barely entered when you could be teaching them of love, hope, and charity? My goal for you: kill the demon the killed Emmett Till.
[1] Definition found on page 332 of A Student’s Dictionary (ã2004, The Dictionary Project, Inc. Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482)
[2] Definition found on page 249 of A Student’s Dictionary (ã2004, The Dictionary Project, Inc. Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482)
[3] Maya Angelou
[4] Historical Note (with slight alterations) found in Mississippi Trial, 1955- Chris Crowe
[5] Judith Light
[6] William Hazlitt
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