The front page of The Spectrum on Monday proclaimed that white supremacists were "countered" by demonstrators voicing their vehement opposition to the bigoted and racially inflammatory message of those marching on Sunday.
The article painted a picture of five marchers surrounded by a "wall" of 200 protestors banging drums and shouting on the streets near South Campus.
For my part I did not attend the protest as I was home for the weekend celebrating Rosh Hashanah with my family. Had I been in Buffalo, however, I would have done everything in my power to avoid University Heights that afternoon, and would have asked others to do the same.
I don't believe in appeasement nor do I believe that ignoring a problem makes it go away. However, I do believe that a more encouraging headline would have read not that the marchers were countered, but that they were alone.
Certainly just as those waving swastikas may spew venom, those who disagree may return fire, but where is the maturity in that? When did yelling louder than a bully force him to stop bullying?
While Buffalo's "guests" on Sunday were fanatic, they were not the Third Reich, and to treat them as such merely empowers their sense of aggressive hatred and intolerance. Letting them play to an empty house, however, serves only to reinforce the fact that their time is wasted here, and that their poisoned breath has no affect.
When Adolf Hitler took power in Germany in 1933 he spoke for tens of millions of disaffected, starving and angry citizens who gravitated to someone who told them they were destined for greatness. His actions thereafter are well-documented infamies of demonic proportions.
Such is not and never will be the case here, as these five individuals speak for a tiny fraction of Americans. Accordingly, we must not fall into the trap of dignifying their hateful rhetoric with our own.
So how can UB prove itself to be an oasis of tolerance and enlightened thought if counter-protesting only adds fuel to the fire?
The answer is simple - do something productive.
And it seems I'm not alone.
At the same time as the marching, representatives of UB's multicultural student body as well as the undergraduate Student Association staged a "Unity Jam," in the Student Union, miles away from the shouting. Instead of proving that racists are hated, many showed that they are irrelevant.
The only recourse we have against those who wish to destroy is to build, and this step is to be commended.
I disagree with those who say that there is no room for hate in America. I say that there is plenty of room, and we should let those who make hate a way of life have as much space as they need as long as they're obeying the law.
We do not make the world a safer place by making more noise than our enemies. We make the world safer by creating an example of ourselves worthy of emulation.
America has always stood as a symbol against the forces of ignorance, destruction and chaos - we cannot allow these enemies to reap casualties in the well-meaning defenders of our ideal.
Just as we would ask Sunday's five marchers to see another way of looking at things, a way separate from hate and fear, we ought to ask ourselves if we're looking at the world in a flawed way.
There is no victory in hatred, even if we merely hate the ideology of troubled individuals.
One day I hope for our headlines to be free from reporting on such ideology, and the only way to accomplish that is to build another ideology, one which emphasizes productive communication for a greater good. Until then, we must allow those who would have it otherwise to shrivel away like a fungus in the sunshine.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
