The Observer Newspapers | Stories of Hatred Are Easy to Find

May 19 , 2008

Stories of Hatred Are Easy to Find

To the editor:

Judging by your editorial ("The Good, and Bad, of America," Close to Home, The Observer, May 16) you had one of those "Easy Rider" moments in Mississippi. When I was 15 years old—the year was 1962—my friends and I set out on one of those spring break bike trips. It was about 500 miles and lasted a week.

About halfway through we stopped at a gas station and asked the owner if we could slip inside of his garage to get out of the rain. He looked at us, and said "Ok, since we weren't" and then he used a disparaging word for black people. What can I say. It was southern Ontario, Canada, and our trip was up and down Highway 3 between Detroit and Niagara Falls, along the north shore of Lake Erie.

Some years later I landed in Vietnam. It seemed the Vietnamese hated the Cambodians, the Cambodians hated the Vietnamese, and the Koreans seemed to hate everybody. Life was cheap in that part of the world, and that is a gross understatement. They made those guys you met in Mississippi look like civil rights workers.

After I married my wife I eventually found out about her parent's experiences growing up in Eastern Europe. I won't go into detail, but basically if you came from the wrong village, or spoke the wrong dialect you got beat up after school, or worse. Oh, and you really do not want to be a Gypsy in Eastern or Western Europe. In fact, you probably do not want to take any bike trips, either.

I guess I would have been impressed by your Bubba-Mississippi experience at some point in my life. But, if my life experience has any validity, you can find this stuff under a rock anywhere.

Samuel Burkeen

Reston