Get It Together UAlbany

This post is going to be completely off topic, it has nothing to do with college basketball.

An incident occurred on a SUNY Albany bus in which students were physically attacked, and called racial slurs by fellow students.

I was going to wait until the video was released to say my piece, but since the story has now hit cnn.com, and UAlbany held a rally Monday evening I figured I'd give my two cents right now.

If you don't know what incident I'm talking about then you can read about it HERE

What I'm going to say may not be popular, but it needs to be heard.

People can suck, regardless of their race or religion. We've been trained since birth to see the differences in each other physically, there's no way around it. What you can do on a daily basis is remind yourself that underneath someone's physical appearance is exactly what you are... a human being.

It's really that simple, stop for a second to think about how your fellow human being feels in a certain situation.

In my honest opinion, racial issues stem from human's need to blame others for their problems. It's always easier to blame someone who is blatantly different than you for issues affecting your life.

We tend to only care about incidents that directly affect us or those that we feel could one day affect us personally. Incidents that happen in our community, or a community similar to ours, tend to grab our attention more than those that happen in communities that differ socioeconomically.

This is where we may differ (if we haven't already)

To be honest, I love and hate the "Black Lives Matter" movement.

 I love the fact that it has the ability to give national attention to issues affecting communities that may differ from where an individual lives and experiences. As human beings, we should be exposed to the different circumstances our fellow HUMANS live in, and the injustices that can occur when people that are less fortunate are abused by the system.

"All Lives Matter"

I hate the fact that it works to differentiate between us as human beings. All lives matter, a human is a human is a human. If anything we need to realize that a person is just that; a fellow human being. Regardless of their race or religion, every individual should be given an equal opportunity in your life when you meet them. Some people suck; there's no way around it, but the least you should do is give them a clean slate before you get to know them.

Here's the issue when you differentiate between races during rallies: People automatically take sides. The intentions are always good, the results rarely are.

I'll never know what it's like to walk into a lecture hall, or on a bus and be one of a handful of minority students. I can't speak for anyone who has or will. I've attended plenty of events where 99% of the people are white; I've also attended plenty of events where I'm the only white jewish kid.

I know what it's like to walk into somewhere where you're different, and have everyone give you the "WTF are YOU doing here face". Your guard automatically goes up, and it takes a lot for you to let it down and trust everyone around you.

What people need to understand is that it's always easy to be in the majority. Everyone is more comfortable when they fit into a situation, it's just human nature. Next time you're in the majority just stop for a second and try to realize how you felt the last time you were in a situation you weren't accustomed to, with people from a different background as you.

If you take anything from this please realize that while you're attending a university YOU ARE A COMMUNITY. Your race, religion or socioeconomic status needs to be thrown out of the window. You've spent your whole life ignoring issues that haven't directly affected you, well actions within the UAlbany community affect each and every one of you.

ALL LIVES MATTER, the sooner we realize this the sooner people will stop drawing lines in the sand, and taking sides.

PS: If you can't drink and have a good time without acting a fool then keep your A$$ at home.