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The Dickinsonian

The student news site of Dickinson College.

The Dickinsonian

The student news site of Dickinson College.

The Dickinsonian

Letter from the Editor: Keep Calm and Boston On

This week’s Letter from the Editor was written in the wake of the recent Boston Marathon bombing. The Letter from the Editor written for this week has been delayed and will run on April 25, 2013.

As a Bostonian and as a human being, the events of April 15 did give me pause.

People were harmed because of some individual or group’s violent actions. There are three fewer people alive now because of those bombs. I was sad when I heard the news. And yes, looking back now, I also felt anger towards the specific group or individual who would do such a thing to those people.

I felt anger towards the people that did it. Not a group. Not a nation. And certainly not a race.

But some people didn’t feel the need to make that distinction.

When asked if he advocated the murder of people of Muslim or Arabic descent, frequent Fox News correspondent Erik Rush said “Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all” on his twitter feed.

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck went on the record to say that “no American citizen blows up random people; that’s a Middle Eastern scene, that’s not an American scene.”

Media mogul and former minister Pat Robertson, amidst giving well-wishes to those injured in the bombing on his CBN show, placed blame on Muslims by saying “Don’t talk to me about religion of peace, no way.”

These are only three examples of some of the more well-known people voicing their opinions. Quite literally thousands of people swamped social messaging programs like Twitter and Facebook in the wake of the explosion to share messages filled with racial slurs calling for deportation, military attacks and even wholesale genocide.

Blind, indiscriminate hatred is not the right response to acts of blind, indiscriminate violence. Baying for blood does not clean it from the streets. Feeding into paranoia does not make our world any safer. That small, vocal minority that demands violence only continues this bloody cycle.

Feel remorse for what has been done. Be thankful for those who survived. And be calm and save the hatred.

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