Dear racially ignorant and culturally hateful,

I want to start this letter by saying: I understand where your hatred comes from. I don’t blame you for your actions, because after all: you are ignorant. You don’t know what it is you fear because that is ignorance after all, and you quite possibly don’t understand your own actions. How could you, when your natural response comes from an unwillingness to empathize with your fellow species. Your hatred and ignorance are steeped in fear. You have been told that people who live in a different part of the world from you, who have the same chromosome count and organs and protein strands and atomic structure, are different than you. You are too ignorant to see that, at a cosmic level, there is nothing distinguishing you from them, and that whichever God you use to support your beliefs would not be able to find a difference between you and them.

I don't mean to put religion on the hot seat, but you have to understand these religions were created at a very different time in human history. You also have to remember that some religions are not without their seedy pasts (See: The selling of “contrition,” leading to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses). You need to realize that, while religion may house a lot of information and guidelines for life, they also allow biases to exist solely to suit their own ends. Keep in mind the Catholic church collected a small tithe in the day: if you were homosexual you couldn’t be fruitful and multiply and they couldn’t collect.

While these legendary tomes help many people and can be a source of inspiration for altruism, they have, in many aspects, become anachronisms.

I’ve seen your fear first hand. I’ve seen your ignorance first hand, tossed off with such an arrogant air. I was in high school going to the mall with a friend, as teens often do.

We walked past a Sears automotive, outside there were three people (two males, a female) were standing and talking. They looked a little older than us, but we were all young adults. My companion turned to me and made a statement, disparaging them because of their race, which I only picked up on as we approached. Not only was this offensive, but he hadn’t even been able to properly identify their race and here was the first time I saw true intolerance, the first time I was aware I walked among blind bigots.

Bigotry is, in of itself, a miasma of ignorance emanating from those plagued with it.

Bigots are so reluctant to be aware or to empathize, that they aren’t even aware of what they hate. All it needs is a slight difference, any “difference,” and bigotry will inexorably find its niche. This was echoed in his write-off when I told him he wasn’t even assuming their races correctly. Because this is the other side of bigotry: Bigotry is stubborn. Being right and wrong has no place in the world of the fearful: their all consuming fear of the unknown twists their brains into a frantic state of survival mode, despite what may actually be in front of them.

I understand that hatred is born from love: you hate what you fear because it might hurt what you love. But this is no longer an age of reasonless beings who are ignorant of the world around them: we now have incredible means of global information sharing, means of viewing the outlines of atoms, a complete understanding of the human genome: we can no longer afford the lethargic “luxury” of ignorance.

If you truly fear your fellow man, rather than focusing on tearing them down, putting your efforts into disparaging them and everyone whose melanin is pigmented the same, I have a piece of advice to take to heart: Work on your own insecurities. Most ignorance comes from racial stereotypes, idiosyncratic characterizations of entire races. Learn to look beyond such basic statements and assumptions, and learn to treat each person as an individual, rather than a collective.

In regards to fear: We are a society so “civilized”, so domesticated, that we that we have actual buildings where you go to exercise. Whereas in a pre-industrialized age you would get your exercise from your daily working (walking, lifting items, using non digital machines and tools) we have become so automated that we have to simulate these things now. In privileged countries, thinness has become a goal and a commodity as opposed to a byproduct of something dark, such as poverty.

Along with this, there is a sense of security from the cages that make up our cities and towns: we have become docile in our sense of safety, relying on others to defend us. If you want to protect what you love, learn to defend yourself and what you love as opposed to blame others for your own perceived shortcomings. As someone who spent time in the Marines I can say that joining the military can achieve this desired effect as well, though it is not for everyone.

In closing this letter allow me to say: I don’t blame you for your actions. I understand where your hatred is coming from. You are too lazy to pick up a book or to open your mouth to spew something other than hateful remarks at that which you do not understand. It isn’t your fault: someone in your life told you that because someone looked different than you, they were actually different from you. But it’s 2016. We understand so much now. It’s time you crack a book or talk to your neighbor or open your ears and listen to the world’s voice instead of waiting for the right moment to interject your vile rhetoric.

Open your eyes before you die.

Sincerely,