Your hardships and struggles are foreign to me; empathize with your pain and sorrow I cannot. We lead separate lives but at the same time are connected. When we pass in the street do you see a man or the man? I often wonder what I have done to deserve a threatening look. Have I offend you with my presence? Should I have not looked you in the eye? Should I feel bad for you simply because you are a different color than me? Feel bad when I am denied certain scholarships because of my skin color. There wasn't a silver spoon in my mouth either my parents work just as hard as yours, and Barney pulls me over for no reason too. "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."(Mark Twain). We are both just trying to make it, but if hating me helps you survive so be it. Just don't expect me to congratulate you when affirmative action got you that new job.
             "Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." (Martin Luther King Jr.). Whose hatred was Dr. King referring to when he spoke that day, that of the black or white man? Does it even matter; both need to be abolished if we are to move forward and function as a healthy society. The past is behind us; this is a new century and should be a time of prosperity between all people. Communication is the key to change, and there in lies our primary problem. Most conversations either start or end disastrously when the topic of race emerges. The old ways of thinking are over; racially prejudiced people are believed to be ignorant on both sides. It is up to the new and better educated generation to re-open the discussions of race. This could be such a great nation if we could co...