We Are All Dishonest Murderers
ABOVE PHOTO: WWII Propaganda against Germans
It is rather remarkable that neither my wife, nor myself, nor our family experience daily discrimination. It is also remarkable that I’ve never worried about being the victim of a hate crime. Why is this surprising? Because my last name, Bessenecker, is German. My wife has three German grandparents, yet we pass our days without ever wondering whether somebody’s terse comment or rude treatment is because of our German heritage. And we have never been afraid of being the victim of brutality (police or otherwise) due to our Germanic roots.
Within living American memory are nightmarish experiences of German atrocities committed during WWII. I just watched the movie Fury about the horrors of tank warfare near the end of the war. Of course during both world wars serious discrimination against German people existed all over the world, especially if they were Jewish. But my German heritage has in no way stood in the way of my employment, my relationships, my privilege and my welfare.
People kill whom they hate. They kill those with whom they are angry. It is very hard to kill someone without planting and nurturing seeds of anger and hatred. One plot line in the movie Fury regards the training of Norman, one of the protagonists. Norman needs to inflame his anger so that he can set his conscience aside and begin killing Germans. Hatred and anger are weeds, weeds that grow very quickly in the human heart, and in wartime it becomes exceptionally easy to grow them.
But weeds of German hatred and anger died very quickly after the war, far more quickly than the weeds of hatred which still grow in some places against the Japanese people. The fact that Germans were white meant they could easily tap into white privilege, especially if they changed their names, which some did. They could not be visibly distinguished from other people of European descent. Anger and hatred subsided. Germans have been safe from discrimination for a long time.
By contrast we have a flourishing landscape of anger and hate weeds growing toward people of African descent. Oddly enough, we have never been at war against an African country. There have never been concentration camps run by Blacks within which American white people suffered unspeakable acts. No white Americans have ever been cruelly interred in Black-run POW camps. The only living American memory involving Blacks in war is when they fought next to us despite the discrimination, exclusion and enslavement that they experienced at the hands of whites. Though we have no reason to nurture anger and hatred toward Blacks, we have allowed those weeds to grow unchecked and we have continued to see violence committed toward black and brown people in our country for centuries.
Crazy people don’t kill. Angry people kill. The recent killing of nine people at the African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, SC was an act of anger and hatred. We have allowed weeds of anger and hatred toward non-white people to grow unabated for centuries in our country; what did we expect?
When Jesus talked about murder in the Beatitudes he said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment;” (Matt 5:21-22a). Jesus is aware that murder and anger are twins. The violence we commit in the body had already occured in our hearts.
The person who unloaded his gun into the bodies of 9 people in Charleston, SC had likely murdered many more people by Jesus’ definition over the course of his lifetime. So have you and me. Most of us are dishonest hate crime perpetrators. We are dishonest murderers. We have allowed the weeds of anger and hatred to grow inside us and inside our children without any serious, sustained, or widespread effort to eliminate them.
There is a tragic possibility that this crime will be written off as the act of a madman. If that’s true then we are all madmen. Let’s not exclude ourselves from this crime. Jesus’ sermon on the mount suggests that if we don’t deal with the heart then we will perpetually be madmen and madwomen, committing violent acts of murder against each other.
We must learn to eradicate the weeds of hatred in ourselves and in our nation. Americans learned to do that with the Germans, so Americans are capable of dealing with discrimination. This time many of us must learn to cross the ethnic barrier to reconciliation.
Who will teach us? I can think of no better teachers than some of my black and brown brothers and sisters who have excelled at eradicating the weeds of anger and hatred towards those who mistreated them. The best way to eliminate national hate crimes is for a nation to sit at the feet of those who have learned to forgive.