“Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.”

– Robert Green Ingersoll

I have heard, in the past several days, the story of James Craig Anderson, an African American man from Jackson, Mississippi, who was killed simply because he didn’t happen to be white.  As a child of the ’60s, I remember the years of hatred and intolerance that preceded civil rights legislation.  I remember the invisible but very real dividing line that ran between white society and the culture of citizens of color.  I remember stories of lynchings and freedom rides and people disappearing in the night, never to be seen alive again.  So much has changed since the passage of laws that at least made it illegal to harm another human being simply because he was the wrong color; but a generation later, there still are places where racism and ignorance reign.  How many generations will it take before we see the end to mindless hatred?

Sadly, it is not such an unusual thing for young people, disenchanted with their lives, to express their anger in ways that break laws and hurt others.  What makes this particular story stand out is the fact that not one of the assailants of Mr. Anderson had a bone to pick with him.  Not one of them had been wronged by the man they attacked.  In fact, they didn’t know him at all.  They didn’t even live in the same town — these teenagers drove from their home in Brandon in search of a black man.  They were hunting.  Ignorance might spawn enough fear to cause such a scenario in a chance encounter.  I can’t even come up with a word other than “evil” to describe the source of such a random and intentional event.

“Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.”  I’m sure what you expect next is a description of the sort of anger that caused these teenagers to snuff out the life of a total stranger.  I am sorry to disappoint you.  Instead, I would like to tell you how blindly angry I became as I read this story.  I want to tell you how I felt like hunting down these ignorant racists and giving them a dose of their own medicine.  I want to tell you how I visualized similar attacks being brought on them out of retribution.  An eye for an eye.  I could hardly think straight, let alone begin to seek a rational way of acknowledging the rights of the victim and the need to protect others from this brand of hatred.  It was then that I remembered why the civil rights leaders of my own teenage years gave their lives and their safety over to something much bigger than themselves.  It was not to gain the upper hand.  It was to gain equality.  Robert Green Ingersoll also says,

“Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.”

This is what we fight for — the legal right to offer all others, whether our skin color matches, whether our ideologies match, whether we share a religion or a heritage or a nationality, the same dignity we desire for ourselves. We must be careful not to become the people whose actions we despise.  We must not return hatred for hatred.  We must use the laws that now are on the books and insist that justice be served.  We must see that the rights of every person involved are acknowledged and upheld.  We cannot bring Mr. Anderson back, but we can stand up for his rights and see that his voice is heard.  We can stand behind the laws that place hate crimes in a category that overshadows random acts.  We can uphold the rights of the attackers to be punished to the full extent of the law.

I am sad.  I am angry.  I am confused by the ways that human beings inflict their rage on others.  I dry my tears, I heave a large sigh, and I remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi:  ”An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” and the lamp of my mind begins to burn, ever so dimly, as I remember who I am.