The Soul of a Black Woman

Yesterday (Sunday) I devoted half of the day to a field trip to The Museum of Tolerance in NYC and I must say it was a learning experience.

Before I went there I didn’t know what to expect. When I hear museum I usually think of exhibits, but I wondered how do you have a museum of tolerance? However, it was more of an interactive museum which consisted of 3 stations.

The first station was what was called “The Point of View Diner.” It was set up like an actual diner. We watched a video excerpt and the question that came up was “Is hate speech considered free speech?” Hate speech is defined as any hurtful or derogatory verbal abuse which consist of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. Someone said yes it is considered free speech. The answer that stood out to me was “Yes we have the right to say whatever we want, but we also have the moral responsibility to pick and choose our words wisely and think about how it will affect others.”

I believe our generation is too careless and unaware of the affects of the things we say. Someone once said, “It’s easy to be seduced by sexism, homophobia, and racism.” That’s true and most of the time a lot of people are conditioned to think in such manners.

You might be jokingly calling someone a “nigga” or “gay” or a “b***h” unaware of the fact that you’re feeding to this whole ideology of sexism, homophobia, and racism.

The goal of The Museum of Tolerance was to teach us that we don’t have to like something, but we do have to be respectful. Also, that in some cases, Tolerance isn’t enough, sometimes you have to speak out against or stand up for.

Just thought I would share this and give everyone something to think about.