It's all in the title ...

Children aren’t born as bigots. Children are born into prejudice and become bigots. Was that too strong? I hope not, but I think sometimes you have to be bold and upfront, especially when you feel strongly about something as important as social injustice and tolerance for people's differences.  Of course, this is only my personal opinion and you know what they say, “Opinions are like ... er ... noses. Everyone has one.”

I grew up in a small town in Ohio, right smack dab in the center of the state. Heck, it was so small that if my high school graduating class had more than a hundred students in it, I’ll be a monkey’s aunt.

My hometown looked very much like the town in the movie, Back To The Future. We had a ten pin bowling alley, a quaint little Main Street centered around a picturesque white-domed brick town hall building (yes, complete with a clock just like in the movie), a pool hall where the rowdies hung out, a movie theater with 25-cent Saturday afternoon matinees, the pizza shop and root beer stand for dates, and the drive-in movie -- but this was off-limits to most of us until we were almost grownups ourselves.

Other than the senior citizen trailer park down by the river, there wasn’t really a north or south side of the tracks in my hometown. What we did have was an area just east of town where most of the rowdies lived.  Of course, not everyone who lived there was a rowdie, obviously, and Lord knows, there are rowdies in every socioeconomic group everywhere.

Anyway, in my hometown, the rowdies were the tough kids who were always in trouble with the law.  How they were used as an example by our parents or anyone in authority was like nowadays when people say, “You’d better be good or the Boogie Man will get you ...” just change it a little and what we heard from our parents was, “You’d better be good or you’ll end up as a rowdie!  For most of us, that was enough for us to mend our ways. Those kids were the real town toughies, the bullies in school who beat you up, and the ones we most wanted to stay away from.

Isn’t it shameful that the color of a person’s skin, what their sexual preference is, how rich or poor they are, or what their religious beliefs might be, have all become so much more significant to us than the behavior of the rowdies in our communities?  Sometimes I think the whole world has gone nuts.  It’s depressing to know that prejudice causes more hurt and resentment than crime does on our city streets.  I would love to go back to a simpler, more gentle time when the town's tough rowdies were the ones we didn’t want our children and grandchildren to play with ...