Clayton, Jackson and Mcghie

Clayton, Jackson and McGhie

I was born on the West coast of Africa. I lived half of my life in Monrovia, Liberia. As a child growing up in West Africa, I did not know what racism was. I did not know that racism causes conflict between two different types of races.  My first experience of racism was my first year of attending school in the United Sates. A fellow student said to me “you are a black so you cannot be part of our group.” I really did not take offense to this statement until few hours later it began to bother me. I asked myself the question, so what if I am black that shouldn’t stop me from being in a certain group? I began to feel like a pariah and that is one of the worst feelings Later, I began to realize the controversy between Black Americans and White Americans. The hate all began, when Africans were taken out of will from Africa and brought to the United States to be slaves. Blacks were considered nothing and they were dehumanized. To this day there is still hate between these two groups of races. Although the situation has gotten better over the few years, there will always be hate. Clayton, Jackson and Mcghie are an example that racism still exists. When I visited the memorial of these three black men I felt really sad and began crying. It takes a lot of hate for a human to kill another because of the color of their skin. This surprised me because these men were lynched and they were not given a fair trial.  They were not able to prove their innocence of the false accusation that was made against them. These three men were falsely accused of raping a White lady. I believe these men were only lynched because they were black and there were not any reasons of killing these men.

  “If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. . . . If parents snicker at racial and   gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out.” I picked this quotation for the memorial because it has a story behind it. This brings me to a quote that was stated by Rob Larson “to be a good teacher one has to be a student and to be a good student one has to be a teacher”. In this case the parent is the teacher and whatever the parent does the child will always try to imitate. If a parent is being spiteful to another group of people, the child would also learn from his parent and continue the pattern. When this pattern repeats itself, it causes conflicts.

People need to stop the hate and the racism. If we cannot stop the society cannot go further. We all should be treated the same way no matter what. We all were created in the image of God. If things like this are still going on the hate will never stop. Black or White it is just a color of the skin it should not define who we are as individuals. I wish more people can look beyond a person’s skin color. This leaves me with a question is being Black a crime? Or are we not consider equals?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Duluth_lynchings