I have been hesitant to write this post. maybe putting it into my words makes it more real to me, more horrifying or more humilliating. when obama was elected president i was proud to be an american. events like these, however, remind me how far our country has to go in terms of acceptance and tolerance.
on thursday, february 26th (this year) a group of chilean university students had gotten together at a house in florida. they were on the Work/Travel program that Javier and his friends did this winter only they picked a little bit warmer destination. their party was interrupted when a man started shooting through a window of the house killing two of them and severely injuring three more. follow the link to read the whole story.
if you read through the comments following this article, or others from other papers you will see many people shocked/stunned and horrified by the fact that someone is capable of committing such a horrible crime. however, there are many comments from people standing up for this man saying things like, well what would you do if you were a white male and there were a bunch of hispanic people causing ruckus. or what are 26 or 27 year old people coming on a “work” visa to come to the us? that doesnt sound right, they must be illegal. and on an on with ignorant, racist attitudes. how do you think the families and friends of the victims felt reading comments like that? javier went to high school with one of the boys killed and he was shocked by the opinions that some people shared. his reaction was, that could have been us. and he and his friends (still in my house in michigan at the time) were somewhat scared.
another thing that made the situation hit close to home was that the man who did the shooting went to MY university. all of javiers friends know that i went to Auburn University, and when we found out about the students killed i couldnt believe it. i no longer was proud to say i spent four years there, or had a degree from there. although it was an isolated event, it still tied us a little closer to the story.
everything about this story is awful and what makes it worse is the ignorance displayed by Americans. it is really hard to believe that in our big melting pot of a country people really believe that they have some kind of ownership on it, and no one should be allowed in. not to be a debbie downer on this lovely sunday afternoon but ive been meaning to write a little about this story and today was the day.
Weird that you had so many connections to the incident. I had heard about it too.
Ignorance is all over the world. Sucks. big time, and it amazes me that people like that exist. However, thank goodness that love is all over the world. Hopefully there’s more good than bad to balance things out.