Them

I was trying to stay as far away from this Muslim community center and Quran burning stuff as I could. I feel that talking and or writing about it gives it credence as a legitimate issue — although it is not.

First of all, the much-talked about Ground Zero mosque will not be located at ground zero, nor is it a mosque, which makes the venomous opposition so difficult to understand. I expect such attitudes from hatemongers, extremists and anyotherpeoplephobes. To date I have heard no valid argument against it, unless one accepts emotion as a logical construct for an argument. This perspective is so sophistical and wacky because it seems make it acceptable to block building an Islamic center in New York but gives tacit approval to the Quran burning proposed by Gainesville, Fla.'s self-proclaimed Guy Montag (the fireman who burned books in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451).

I remember as a child the day Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tenn. His death was the result of illogical emotionalism and racial extremism. How quickly we forget that from Memphis to the Alabama cities of Birmingham and Selma, King, too, was asked not to March, although many acknowledged his constitutional right to do so.

Then there is the attempt to make the irrational rational using statistics to infer that Americans are not radical, extremist or anti-Muslim just because 70 percent of them oppose the Islamic center in New York. It is obvious we do not follow history, because we have forgotten that more than 70 percent of Americans disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling (Brown vs. Board of Education) that abolished segregation in schools. Not to mention that the majority of Americans were also against equal rights for African Americans.

Historically, America seems to conveniently forget its history and gets defensive when the truth is impinged on their senses. The simple fact is that America is the land of racists and anyotherpeoplephobes. The newest target is Islam and Muslims. We refer to this group as THEM, just like we do and did Native Americans and African Americans. This is sad. Now I know why white folks are scared of all black people if one black person robs them. To whites, all Muslims are the same as the ones who flew planes into the Twin Towers; just as all black folks are the same. I call this racist, for anyone who isn't white in America is the pronoun THEM.