Choose Tolerance and Understanding

Day 4,577, 17:47 • Published in USA USA • by Tyler Bubblar

Over the last several days I have watched in no small amount of horror as a supposed officer of the law knelt on a man's neck ignoring pleas from him and onlookers for mercy and consideration. "Please, please, please, I can't breath. Please man." Those words will forever be seared into my mind, heart, and soul. My 8 year old son watched this scene on a YouTube video as well. He had 3 basic questions that he kept asking me. "When did this happen Daddy?" "Where did this happen Daddy?" and lastly "Why did this happen Daddy?" He in his innocence could not wrap his brain around the answers. Minnesota, this week, and because some people are cruel and treat others as less than human because that person is a little different from them.

He could not understand my answers because he believes that events like George Floyd's very public execution were a thing of the past or at the least in a faraway nation in a remote corner of the globe. Sadly this is not the case. I know this to be true as I lived in Louisiana for the better part of a decade. A large part of my motivation for leaving that place was so that my children would not grow up in a place where others hate because of trivial differences. I do not want them to learn that. Racism and hatred are learned behaviors. We are not born with such ideas pre-planted in us.

Shortly after seeing the unconscionable end of George Floyd's life I then watched in horror as protests in cities all across America erupted into conflagrations of violence, looting, and destruction. I have no small amount of shared anger and sorrow with the people who have taken to the streets to make their grievances known. I am Hispanic. My Great-Grandfather was born in Mexico but he and his family fled to Texas during their Socialist Revolution in the early 1900s. He was a very small child when this occurred. After Pearl Harbor he was drafted into the Army. He was not upset he wanted to serve the nation that provided him and his family refuge. However, because he was brown he was relegated to serve the duration of his enlistment in the kitchens.

When he returned home my then 4 year old Grandmother did not know him. My Great-Grandmother was pregnant with her when Uncle Sam called him away. Again because of the color of his skin there was no GI Bill to help him go to college or buy one of the famous late 40s early 50s starter homes that bloomed like flowers in the desert after a rainstorm during that time period. Jim Crow laws were still very much a thing in Texas, and in Texas they applied to all people of Color; Hispanic, and African American. My Great Grandfather was ripped from his family, shunted off to the kitchens, came home to an ungrateful nation, and did not have the right to vote even after giving 4 years of his life to the United States Army. Everything he had he scratched, fought, and clawed for. Despite that he flew a Star Spangled Banner in his yard all of his adult life. People of Color have long believed (with in my opinion no small amount of justification) that they are far more loyal towards their Nation than their Nation is to them.

Those who know me here in this game have some idea of the way I grew up. It was not a happy childhood. My mother at the age of 24 was twice divorced with 3 children aged 7 or under. She did not have even a high school diploma. She was smart, brilliant in her own way, but poor choices painted her in the direst of corners very early in her life. When I was 5 years old she brought a man home from one of the restaurants she worked in. She was a waitress he was a cook. He was a year or so younger than she was. He was also a sadistic, violent, racist, dishonest, and all around horrible human being.

For a time he hid this from her fairly well. My older brother and I saw a side of him when he would watch us while she was working that unfortunately mom did not see until they were irrevocably linked together. Once she was pregnant with their first child it was like he felt he had sealed her as his. That is when he began a near decade of beating, raping, terrorizing, and stalking her. When I was 11 my mother sent me to live with her brother and his wife who lived near Salt Lake City. I was there with them for a year. During that time I grew quite close to my Aunt's parents. They became Grandma and Grandpa. For the rest of their lives they were there for me. Today I sit writing this article in a home that is about 5 blocks from where they have been laid to rest. I visit them often, and thank them for everything they did for me.

After that year of reprieve. I was sent back to the hell that was my family. The violence and despair I had left behind hadn't abated. For two more years things cycled in a seemingly unceasing pattern of terror and pain. I was a defiant child and fought back any way that I could. To this day I bear the pain of some of those beatings I took in order to divert attention from my mother and/or younger siblings. I would often call my Grandmother back in Utah. Collect (yes I am a child of the 90s) I would sob out the story of the latest horrors I had witnessed and endured. My Grandmother sweet wise woman that she was always told me the same thing. I would like to share that with you now.

She would say "Tyler you have a choice. You can allow these things to make you a cruel man who inflicts pain and suffering on others like has been done to you. Or you can allow these things to teach you tolerance and understanding. You will be able to have empathy and compassion for others in a capacity that few others will possess." Those words will be with me until the day that I die. They echo in my mind frequently when confronted with a choice on how to interact with someone. They usually force me to attempt to look at things from the perspective of others.

Her words did not take away what I was going through. They did however provide perspective and some meaning. Humans can endure just about anything if they can attach some meaning to their tribulations. My Grandmother gave me that. Things in my family eventually culminated in the disappearance of my mother in the Spring of 1996. A police investigation more than 15 years later concluded she had been murdered and likely thrown in the septic tank of the property we had been living on. They said likely because after so much time no recoverable biological remains could be found. My nightmare ended in 1996, I was ejected from the home and placed in Foster Care which was also no picnic, but infinitely better than what I'd left behind. A few years later, my older brother committed suicide. Our tormentor died about a year and a half ago. He never faced justice. The prosecutors in the area said without a body they would not proceed to trial. As you can imagine justice is a very important principle to me.

I tell you all of this not for your pity or sympathy, but to more clearly illustrate my frame of mind as I urge all of you regardless of your circumstances to choose tolerance and understanding. So much of the pain and strife in this world stems from our inability to see through the trivial differences that separate us. Each and everyone of us regardless of socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, sexuality, race, creeds, gender, etc is a human being. We each have feelings, hopes, dreams, ambitions, disappointments, and untold sufferings. It is my sincere hope that we each remember that. It is possible to disagree with someone and still see them as a person worthy of dignity and respect.

With that I as always thank you for taking the time to read. I wish you and yours nothing but peace and comfort during these most trying of times.