#explaining hate

She’s not a terrorist.

There’s so much hate going around targeted toward certain groups of people, and I thought it would be helpful to explain why this happens. Human beings are ingrained to fear what’s different than them. I’m sure this was a helpful trait before science and technology when cavemen lived in small tribes with no means of traveling far distances. If a stranger shows up to your camp and there’s not supposed to be anyone around for miles, I’m sure you’d be terrified too. It helped our ancestors distinguish between family members and strangers, which was important back when humans had more primitive brains.

But let’s be real: there’s no good excuse these days to be afraid of different cultures. You can read about different cultures without leaving your house. We don’t live in small segregated circles. We can see all kinds of different people on our TVs and walking around our cities. We can travel to places and see that different people live their lives in different ways. We’re not dumb idiot cavemen with tiny brains who have no goals other than hunt and gather. We have evolved. But sometimes we don’t act like it.

Hate is really just fear wrapped in an angry wrapper. People are afraid of Muslims because a tiny percentage of them are bad. Does that make any sense? NO! You are way more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack. If you were thinking logically, you would be FAR more terrified of cars than Muslims. Are terrorists bad? Of course they are! Muslims don’t like terrorists either. But we stereotype. Terrorists are Muslims, and that means Muslims are bad. Um, no. That’s wrong. There are millions and millions of peaceful Muslims all around the world who did nothing to deserve this hate.

The best way to combat hate/fear is to educate. To inform. To have a conversation with someone and explain a different point of view to them. They have to work through the hate/fear and realize that their fear makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. I’ve seen firsthand how this works. I used to work with adults with disabilities, and I had a few clients with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a muscular disorder, which means people who have cerebral palsy are just like you and me, only their muscles don’t work great. They’re not mentally disabled, they’re not weirder than anyone else, they just have trouble walking. I got to know these people that I worked with, and they were no different than anyone. They were sharp, they were funny, they were great to talk to. But I had experience being around them. I’ve never looked twice at anyone I saw struggling to walk because I understood what they were going through.

When I went out with my clients with cerebral palsy, I’d see people look at them strangely. I saw the stigma that they faced, people not wanting to get too close because they didn’t understand why this person was struggling to walk. Or why they talked weird. (For the record, they talk weird because the tongue is a muscle and as they get older, they struggle to control their tongues just like their other muscles…thus making it harder to talk.) I always tried to smile at people who made eye contact with me when I was out with my clients. If somebody was staring nearby, I would try joking with my client, laugh at their jokes, have a normal conversation that the person staring could hear. I always tried to show people that hanging out with someone who has cerebral palsy is just like hanging out with anyone else. They might just need a helping hand to the car.

Sometimes I’d be out with a friend and we’d see someone struggling to walk. The person I’m with would say something like, “OMG why is that person walking so weird???” Remember, this isn’t hate…it’s really fear. It’s a lack of understanding. As soon as I said calmly, “Oh they probably have a muscular disorder like cerebral palsy. It makes it hard for them to walk because they can’t control their muscles,” the person would go OHHHH ok. And that would be it. They’re no longer afraid because they understand.