Last night, I sat on my couch, quietly healing from having my four wisdom teeth yanked out. Doped up on penicillin and pain killers, I watched Spike Lee's epic movie Malcolm X again, trying to contemplate an America so full of hate.

Over thirty years after Malcolm X was assassinated (most likely by the Nation of Islam), our nation has gotten better and worse. There is no blatant segregation of schools and public facilities. Nowadays, the amount of money a person has in their pocket is much more of a factor than the color of their skin. There are no more public lynchings and cross burnings, but a horrific incident like dragging a black man off the end of a pick-up truck still occurs.

To say I've never had a racist thought would be a lie. During a summer that I lived in the heavily black downtown district in St. Petersburg, I was badly hacking overgrown grass with a hand scythe. A muscular black man walked by my place, said I was doing it wrong and offered to show me the correct way. As I gave him the scythe, a scared voice in the back of my head said "I hope he doesn't hit you with it." I don't know why that thought popped in, but it did. The man showed me the proper swinging motion instead of my way which would have eventually pulled my shoulder out of its socket. I asked him where he learned how to use a scythe, and he replied "Prison," handed me back the tool, and went on his way. That man was everything a white man was supposed to be afraid of, and all he did was show me what I was doing wrong. But still, there was that little voice in the back of my head, screaming about some irrational instinct.

That's what America still needs to work on--dismissing that irrational instinct. It's not just with a person's race. We judge people by the clothes they where, the cars they drive, and the hair cuts they choose. It's these prejudgments that make us look bad. Every time America bombs Iraq for messing with the no-fly zone, we chastise and harass people of Middle East descent in America, as if every one of their names were Saddam. In Wyoming, we beat up and killed a homosexual college boy because he made a pass at another guy. We follow around anyone wearing a long trench coat in the supermarket for fear that they might swipe a cube of butter.

I say "We" because we are all part of this country. This big melting pot. This land of tolerance and unity. You can say "I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't drag anyone from the bumper of my truck." And you didn't. And I didn't. But this We is bigger than you or I. This We accounts for the actions of almost three hundred million people. And We still have a long way to go.

So as Martin Luther King Jr. suggested to our nation a few decades ago, we need to stop judging people on what they look like, and more on the content of their character. Don't assume the guy with the Anarchy T-shirt is going to stab you, don't assume the black guy with the scythe is going to whack you, don't assume the Hispanic guy is going to pull a gun out. DON'T ASSUME!

There are some tremendous people of every race and nationality, and there are some terrible people of every race and nationality. Don't hold the actions of one person (good or bad) accountable for an entire race.

As this nation grows older, more and more bigots will die off. As long we don't encourage new ones, We just might be one big happy family in another fifty to one hundred years. That's when we will all be proud to be part of We, and We will wonder why we ever hated so much in the past.

Chris Jungle is still on painkillers and wants us all to just get along.