Dear Editor:
In light of this past week’s events in Ferguson, MO, I want to express my sadness in viewing the hatred and violence that occurred. The media repeatedly stated it was due to the way the people in the community had been treated. Just think of all of the business owners, who may have had the same feelings, but lost everything they had worked so hard for due to irresponsibility of others.
And it all started over the color of our skin. We are not born with prejudice, it is a product of our experiences in life and what we have been taught. I know, I have lived that experience.
At the age of ten I was right smack dab in the middle of segregation. Rode the bus to a school where two children in a class of 40 were white. During that year I learned a hard lesson in life. Those children hated me because of my color. I believe today’s term would be called “bullied” which occurred every day of that school year. Not only was it the children, the adults were just as much to blame. Needless to say we moved without hesitation to the suburbs of Baltimore.
This is a very impressionable age. And the experience left an indelible feeling in me that I fought for years. Until, I moved to Greenbrier County. It has been a rebirth experiencing no differentiation in color. Not everyone has this type of personal experience to create a feeling of prejudice that you fight to overcome and accept everyone as equal to yourself. The uprising across America should be to co-exist as allies for the common good of our society.
Kathy Hunter
Alderson