No Place for Hate

I have never understood discrimination or hatred. Last week, I was surfing the internet for an update on a news story about a beautiful 8-year-old with a severe facial deformity. Instead of finding the story I wanted, googling this child’s name turned up several sites that used disgusting language to describe this little girl’s appearance, stating that she’d be better of dead, a drain on resources etc. This is a little girl who dances, plays with her siblings, goes on vacation, reads, and does many of the things that girls her age do. She has some medical limitations, but her family’s website described her as a happy child who enjoys life.

I believe that young children who grow up believing that is acceptable to bully their peers for differences in the playground will grow up to be adult bullies if left unchecked. As someone who was bullied excessively from grade six to grade 12 and who still struggles with anxieties as a result of certain things that were said to me, I believe something needs to be done about this.

That something is not promoting eugenics or hiding away individuals with disabilities because they appear “undesirable” to others, but dealing with the people who are the real problem—the bullies. Disabilities and medical conditions are already challenging enough for children and adults to deal with, they don’t need the additional challenge of dealing with bullies. Sometimes, and I believe this is often the case, the damage done by the bullies can be worse than the effect of the original disability.

Let the child with Asperger’s Syndrome be greeted with “hello” as they skip around the edge of the playground in an uncoordinated manner. Let the little girl with a different face be invited to come join the neighborhood game rather than being pointed and laughed at. Let the little boy on the playground sing and hold hands with the toddler in a wheelchair rather than pointing and laughing at her. Let there be one day when different abilities are accepted as readily as differences in culture in a multicultural city.