Why the Hate

My name is Mark Newman and I was born in New York. I am 23 years old and it’s currently 2016. I want to tell you about myself and how I was against anti immigration at a young age. I have been religious my whole life. My mother’s parents are from Poland, so her family background was very religious so she choose that path way as well. My father who was born in America wasn’t very religious himself until he meet my mother. My parents were very active in my life, they came to my soccer and basketball games, we went out to eat together all the good stuff that any kid would want to do with their parents. My father and I are very close, he was the one who showed me the path through sports because he was pretty athletic when he was younger. So me and him were super close when I was younger.

As a young kid I always have been shy so it was hard for me to get to know new people and find friends. When I started to get out of my comfort zone and finally had the nerve to talk to some people, I invited a mexican boy to to my house to hang out. He just came from Mexico and is starting a new life in the US. My mother was happy for me but my father was furious. I was so confused, I thought that they would be happy for me because I am making friends. My father pulled me to the side and told me “we don’t want those kind of people in our house.” I drew a blank and said “those kind of people? What do you mean?” My friend was an immigrant but I didn’t really see what the deal was because I was only 9 at the time. My father told me “just don’t bring another “alien” in this house.” And of course I listened and him because he was my father I didn’t want to make him mad so I ended up never bringing him over again.

Years have gone by and I have more friends, all kinds, I just never really brought them over to my house because I was afraid of what my father would say or do. I have gone to private school my whole life and it was pretty cool, I made loads and friends and I didn’t want to leave but it was time. High School was approaching and my dad just got laid off from work due to corruption at his company. So money was tight and I had to start going to a public which wasn’t really a problem for me but for my dad. He was mad but he couldn’t do anything, I had to go to school. Before the first week of school my dad told me the night before “son, tomorrow I want to take you somewhere very important.” I was confused but excited cause I get to spend some time with my dad, we haven't been hanging out lately because he’s been looking for new work. The next day appears and both me and my dad were driving for less than 10 minutes before arriving at our destination. It was a old building, sort of looked abandoned but when we went inside, there was about 25 to 30 people.

The meeting was about immigrants and how they don’t belong here. Me coming from a private school with mainly white people and not one immigrant, so I didn’t really know who they were and why they were hated. My dad told me that immigrants don't belong here because they're lazy and come to America to steal OUR jobs. My father said it was so much passion so I knew this wasn’t no joke to him. Don’t get me wrong, at first I was very spectacle but during the meetings, they had many valid points. So I started attending meetings and I even started to skip school here and there. Finally the day has come where I was asked to join their group and I was really happy to be part of something that I thought at the time was for a good purpose. During our first week of school we had to write a research paper of something that we’d like to know more about. So I started to look more into Anti-Immigrants and how it was founded. It was founded by a guy named John Tanton and he basically wanted to limit the people coming into the US because of language barriers, but he knew he would get hate for making it a Anti hate group so he sort of squeezed it into politics and it intrigued people. I liked the idea of not wanting immigrants so I stuck with it.

They told me they wanted myself to prove that I have what it takes to be in the group. So during school I went off on someone who didn’t belong here and wanted to put him in his place. I don’t even know why I fought him, I was becoming something I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want people like him here but I also didn’t want to fight every immigrant I would lay my eyes on. We fought full fist on fist, it wasn’t my finest moment but during the time all I could think in my head was “I cannot let this foreign win, I can't disappoint dad.” I couldn’t stop I kept beating and beating and now what? All because he was an immigrant? They stopped me and I had some of his blood all over my shirt. I was suspended and that’s when it hit me. Why am I doing this? To please my dad? Even though I may hate them, doesn’t give me the right to beat on them. I get home and my father is proud of me, I was in disbelief. I just pounded a kid due to his race and my father is congratulating me? I didn’t want to be that person that hurts others because of some beliefs. I stopped going to the meetings but I still kept with the news and I still believed in immigrants not belonging here.

Years past and currently I am 23 years old and it’s the present. Trump is running for president, and I am allowed to vote and of course I’d want the president that says he will build a wall because immigrants aren’t welcomed here. He states "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall." I believe in our president when he says he will “Make America Great Again” he shows true passion and wants the United States to back on being the best country in the world. Although I had some tough times in highschool going through the faze of hurting people even if was only a short period faze, I still learned a lot. One valuable lesson that I learned was, we will always have something that we dislike. We have to stand up and fight for what is right, even if there are people who disagree with you.