Thoughts on the "isms"

Something I often think about is how confusing the human race is. I am reading a book right now, A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson (it's AMAZING!!) and it takes place right before WW2, so the late 1930's. The main caracter is British, but she's working at a school in Austria. The staff and students of this school come from everywhere: England, Germany, Austria, Russia, America, Sweden, Scotland, Czechoslovakia and so many more. They all speak English and German and it really doesn't matter where they come from, because they're all friends. Then, at the beginning of the war the school had to close. The main caracter had a friend in the Austrian village who wrote for the first few years, and then was suddenly called the "enemy" and wasn't allowed to write anymore. But she was just an ordinary girl from a beautiful village, and she was all about peace and love and everything wonderful. It doesn't make any sense. There were caracters who were austrasised or interned because they were Jewish, or because they were German, and so many more reasons. That isn't fair! That's the complicated about war. It's not just this book and this war, it's all of them!! During the revolutionary war in the states, suddenly everyone who stayed loyal to Britain was dubbed the enemy and run out of their homes by their friends and neighbours.

But here's what I want to know. Did they change? If two people were friends before a war, and then a war happened and one of them suddenly decided the other was the "enemy" or whatever and dumps the other one. But did the one who got dumped change in any way? No! They stayed exactly the same, they just happened to be a certain way, and a law or a war suddenly made that bad. Maybe people just go looking for things in each other to hate. Maybe it's in our nature and we can't help it. Only I know it's not. I know that, because I'm not like that. There are some things that we just can't help or change because it's the way we were born. Nobody chooses to be born, or how or where they just are. They don't (WE don't) pick what religion their family practices, or if they are religious at all. We don't pick our skin colour or nationality or language or if we're gay or straight. It's just the way we are and we just have to accept it.

Now me, I'm really lucky, because I was born in Canada in the 90's and raised believing everything I just said. Nobody that I've ever met hasn't wanted to be near me because of what I look like or believe or anything else about me. The past few hundred years have really changed the world. People worked hard so that people of all nationalities, all religions, all skin colours, both genders, gay or otherwise could live together in peace without problems. And still the world isn't perfect! People are still rasict, sexist, homophobic and all the other "isms" that exist. Why? I don't know. But it's stupid. And it all goes both ways. When I read The Secret Life of Bees and To Kill a Mockingbird I learned that in those times, in the southern states, (Alabama and South Carolina) people were excluded and beaten on (physically and emotionally) for having black skin, which I knew, but the racism went both ways and some of the black people were just as hostile toward the white people. I read a story once in Chicken Soup where a boy in the grade 8 class of whoever wrote the story got in a fight with another boy and was suspended and punished for a few weeks and had to miss out on all the special school events. Nobody thought that was fair, because the fight started when the second boy had said something rude and racist against the first one (who was African-American) and the school had a zero tolerance for violence ("missing the irony of the situation" to quote the story) I didn't understand the irony until my mom explained: zero tolerence for violence, but not for racism. And that was in current times.

My school is great. Everyone is included, cared about and welcome no matter what. People get in trouble for being rude or smoking or skipping class but skin colour and religion doesn't play into that. There are programs like Gay/Straight alliance and posters everywhere saying "Homophobia free zone" and other inclusive things like that. And still I hear people saying "that's so gay" or other rude things like that. I guess for some people they can't help it, it's what they've grown up with. For others they're trying to be cool. But for me, I'll never do that. It's partly because I was raised knowing everyone is equal, that we're all the same inside and most just want what's best for their families and themselves. But also, I don't say or write things like that because I can flip the situation and I can imagine how much it would hurt and how I would feel if it was me. Think of what the world would be, how fast wars would end, if everybody started believing that. It's so easy! So why isn't it happening?

I've been thinking these things for years, wars and human equality. I want to do something to help change the world, to stop this more then it already is stopped, but I don't know how effective it would be. If people I see in the hallways of my Homophobia free school can still say rude comments like that, how much more can be done? Now that I think about it, nothing. Now they've got the information and it's just up to them to change. Let's hope, for the good of changing the world, they pick it up soon.