When my dad Bruce, Sr., used to pick me up from Bradley Elementary, he would tell me about his childhood. I would be sitting in the back seat of the car wondering about how painful it was for him to grow up when he was hated just because of the color of his skin. He was living in a time that prevented people of African descent from having equal opportunity. For my dad it seems like beating up on whites was something he enjoyed. "Just to see the fear in their eyes made me feel powerful, in control," he said.

Once I was sitting in the back seat of my dad's car. He had just picked me up from school and was telling me another story from his childhood. He and his twin brother Brent saw some white boys getting off the bus. They walked with them, talking to them like they were "cool" with them. All of a sudden they beat the white boys up. That incident made me think, what if they would have not promoted hate? Did these actions lead the other person to develop hate or more hate for my father and for black people in general? In the long run, violent actions such as these can change people from peaceful to hateful. The boys who got beat up probably could have joined a police force in those times to beat up black people. They may have taught their children hate and helped it spread. My dad took the pain he experienced in racism and used it to cause pain in others.

I knew about pain from my own life. I was suspended from school about six times a year when I was in elementary. In my case the pain was from lack of attention. Just like my father, my pain ended up harming others.

When my dad told me about his hate stories, he did not mean to teach me hate. There was a miscommunication. I took what he said, and I started hating white people. The story he told me I accepted with a torch and burnt my heart crispy and dry. It was on me to make it red again.

Promoting peace was not my expertise during those young years. I always found myself disrespecting teachers at school and cursing all the females. I was hating myself, lashing out at everybody else. In my parents' home there was a lot of bitterness, confusion, cursing and stress. Being around these emotions all the time made them grow in me as years passed. By my dad telling his stories about beating up whites, I took them and reacted on them.

When I was in the fifth grade at Bradley Elementary, a predominately black school, I put it in my mind to stab a white boy. I saw a small pair of scissors sitting on the desk calling me to release my blinded hate. The class was dim with students sitting around. A few students were cheering me on to stab up the white boy with the scissors. During lunchtime, I confronted the white boy. I was standing there hesitating, almost as if I didn't want to do it. I saw the fear in his eyes; he was defenseless. That also made me feel like a monster. I was reacting, not thinking. The scissors in my hand reminded me of the time I'd be in the kitchen holding a knife pretending like stabbing something. Except this time I chose something real to stab. I cut him on his skin, and blood was dripping to the ground like tears.

After a while, this violent act made me feel bad instead of good. I began feeling like what I did really didn't have any cause. I could have been his friend. I never saw him again after what happened. It made me think, "what if I would have approached him differently? Does he have hate in his heart for blacks as a result of my scissors attack? How did his parents look at this?" If his parents were already teaching hate, this could have made their belief more solid. Or if they didn't have hate in their hearts, that situation probably changed their views.

People have hated all kinds of ways, not just racism. Some people hate others because the other people have better things than them. Others because more girls like one boy than the other boys. Hate comes from home, and many parents teach it. It also comes from children misunderstanding the stories their parents tell. My dad could have talked to me more about what his story meant and about what it made me think and do. From my experience, I learned that I can promote peace by loving all brothers and sisters and by communicating clearly with everyone.