Every couple of days, I lose respect for at least one more person. However, today I lost respect for not just one person, but a collection of the most unlikely people. Good ol' English class! You wouldn't believe that we are the advanced class meant to be the "smart", "open minded" children.
We were talking about a poem having to do with the Holocaust. We were discussing all of the people who could've helped, but did not, and why they didn't do so. Many of the comments made sense and many did not. Some people said that, maybe people didn't realize the severity of the situation, or didn't know about it at all, which is somewhat true. Some said that many people didn't care because it wasn't them, again, true. A few even said something about how they were too afraid of what might happen to them, true. It was not the reasons of why people didn't help that made me feel a loss of respect for these people, but it was their reasoning, that they even agreed with!!! For example one girl said the reason she wouldn't say anything about it is because her word wouldn't make a difference. WRONG. What this girl doesn't realize is that the reason the Holocaust not only continued, but continued with such brutality and severity, is because no one stopped to question: "Why is this happening?" "Why is this wrong?" (Another girl said something in response to this remark and she put it the best way possible so I will put it on here) "When enough people complain and ask questions, eventually someone will have to answer to them eventually" - An obviously more educated/experienced student. Now, I'm not dogging anyone for their opinion, but I AM saying that if you"re going to have an opinion try your best to have it backed up with morals, evidence, and reason. This still, isn't what quite upset me. My teacher went on to make a point on how the U.S. tends to move on from enemy to enemy (in response to a students comment on how the U.S. weren't too fond of the Jewish nationality at that time anyhow), despite if what might be happening in the world. Therefore, the conversation was moved to racial clashes and many more stupid comments. For example, I heard "I hate mexicans." "Yeah I'll have to agree with you on that one." and "But you know who really gets on my nerves? Chinese people" or "Ugh, have you heard about that building of a mosque on Ground Zero? Why don't you just go ahead and invite the terrorists in?", and I couldn't help but think of how ridiculously stupid each and every one of these comments were. I began to get offended, and was about to burst when THANKFULLY our English teacher brought the conversation back to it's previous point. I kept thinking about everything and anything I could say to these people. How close minded and stuck up do you have to be to be so ridiculously judgemental? Yet these people are always complaining about others being exactly what THEY are. However, I should have expected it. Its sad that I actually had so much respect for these people at first. I have to consider the fact (also being that there are only two kids in there, including myself, that are not caucasian) that we live in a small southern town where they label, label, label, judge, label, judge, judge, and label some more, and in their eyes you are either a christian, atheist, or agnostic, goth, emo, prep, redneck, alien, or, my least favorite: just different.
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