Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech" at the Lincoln Memorial where tens of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C. yesterday to commemorate the occasion.
As this was happening, 700 miles away, a white supremacist gunman sporting swastika tattoos entered a Dollar Store in Jacksonville, Florida and murdered three people because they happened to be African-American before his taking his own life. Shortly before the shooting, the gunman unsuccessfully a tried to gain entry to Edwards Waters University, a historically black college.
Whatever progress has been made and will continue to be made where it concerns race relations in this country, the cold fact is that hatred will always be among us. Some who harbor such hatred will be prepared to take the lives of innocent people because of it. Some of these people are like this gunman while others are in positions of authority as was the case in Minneapolis several years ago.
So long as there are those among us (whatever their station in life) who see fit to judge people by the color of their skin, their religious faith or their sexual orientation, then we can sadly expect such ugliness to rear its head from time to time.
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