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Martin Luther King Jr. was assasinated for trying to end segregation. Rodney King was beaten in the streets because he was black. These are just a couple examples of hate crimes caused by race.

Racism is really another word for ignorance. It's another way of saying that nature should have had only one type of flower or tree. It's another way of looking at the world with your eyes closed to diversity and change. Racism is another word for fear.

Fear of the unknown is understandable, of course, and for many of us those of different races and creeds are the great unknown. Most of us are brought up in a particular environment with a particular type of people. We may come in contact with those of other races but we are too busy or perhaps too unconcerned to know them as people like ourselves. For many of us there is the uneasy feeling that they are different, maybe somehow inferior. The easiest option is to close our eyes not to their existence but to their entitlements, to their needs.

Often we do not put those thoughts into words. We simply, as it were, stick to our own. We are comfortable there and it is where we belong. We often repeat our parents' philosophy on race and that too is understandable. They set our standards and we often, unthinkingly, adopt them. Some of us may be more aggressive in our attitude, of course, but generally we are just unthinking.

Today I would challenge you to look at other races with open eyes rather than a closed mind. I would challenge you to be honest about your beliefs. I would suggest that you ask yourself what makes you feel the way you do about race. Is it an experience you have had? Is it something you have learnt at home? Can you give logical reasons for your feelings? To do this you must ask yourself are your fears justified? Are races really different? Does culture really matter? All these are intertwined questions and ones that we must answer before we can...