Hidden Prejudice

The talk around NBA circles is that the L.A. Lakers star Kobe Bryant’s anti-gay slur proves that homophobia is active in the NBA; active may not be accurate, but latent may be.

If you want to know what he said you can look it up. What the issue here is that when a star, a celebrity the stature of Kobe, lets loose on a national television broadcast with a anti-gay slur it can influence young fans all over even though it was said in the heat of the game.

Bryant has apologized.

Prejudice is inherently abhorrent to the human spirit because deep down we know the miracle of life is in its diversity, not in its created separation and fear of difference.

Prejudice and all of its alias’s, particularly poverty, can disguise itself in the illusion that one is better than another. It can hide in the way we say words to describe others, Mexican, Gringo, Jew, Black, and even in the non-ethnic words like gay or immigrant and foreigner or poor or disadvantaged.

Prejudice can also manifest in rules and regulations that diminish the dignity of any society. It can harbor in actions of hatred and bigotry and sometimes in walls and fences, both real and imaginary. A comfortable commonality for all people is found in the open front yards of our hearts, not in the walled courts of intolerance however the ego builds them or the intellect sustains them.

We must remember that prejudice grows from many seeds: statements without truth, judgments without justice, belief without compassion, anger with thought, and even conversation without courtesy.