“When I look around at my peers, I worry. Are these really the future leaders of America? People who come to school and sit in class not to learn, but to powder their noses, or talk about some girl they supposedly “did.”
Last year, I was studying for a test at school when I heard cheering. I looked around to see what was happening, and it turned out to be a fight between two groups of Armenians and Mexicans. A couple of people had to go to the hospital and for the rest of the day, that’s all anyone wanted to talk about: “Hey, did you see his left hook?”
When I was in summer school I sat next to a boy who loved to talk about fighting. He would talk about it in such a casual way, it really upset me. He’d describe how he hit a boy, as if hurting someone is as common as breathing. One time I went off on him. How could he say those things, when there are children getting shot in Rwanda or people going hungry in the Middle East because of the ravages of war? What about people who die here in L.A. because of drive-by shootings?
All he had to say to me was: “Yeah, well, you’re just a freak.”
He didn’t care about others
I saw that he didn’t care about anything else but himself. Swear words were going through my head, though I didn’t say them. I felt sad that he didn’t seem to care about the problems the world has or value human life. He didn’t think about the consequences of fighting.
And here I am, popping with goals, dreaming of college, thinking about how I can make a difference working on problems like violence, hunger and poverty. I don’t know why we’re so different. I just don’t get it. Why do people have to hurt each other? Why are some people cold while others are concerned? Why is there so much hatred in our world?
These young people are doing things that are considered small potatoes. What will happen when they’re older?
I looked on the Internet and I found tons of white supremacy material. Some of the sites claimed blacks are a plague on mankind, that the Holocaust never happened and that Jews cheated the German government. I found a black Muslim site full of hate propaganda towards whites. I found racist jokes, games and caricatures.
It saddened me how people could hate others based on their race or religion. A lot of these hateful people probably don’t even know the people who they hate.
How can people hate so much? Is it because they were raised that way? Did they form their opinions themselves—and based on what? Is it so crazy to think that people could put aside their differences and love each other? Is it so crazy to think that someday we won’t need weapons?
I haven’t found answers.
But I do have a question for the kid who thinks I’m a freak because I believe fighting is wrong: Am I really a freak for caring?”