My cousin’s hatred
“Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feel it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.” — Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist and playwright.
Seems that I have a first cousin, born 3 years, 8 months and 7 days after me who has a Wikipedia page. This man was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in the middle 1990s. My older brother happened to catch the show, and recognized the name, and was not proud. This cousin was serving time in jail for beating up a woman trying to leave his skinhead group of the time. He used her blood to make a swastika on the wall. So when I look at his profile on our family’s Ancestry. com page, the information is limited. His death is listed as perhaps in Texas in 1999. He essentially disappeared. It is said that he had possibly mixed with the wrong crowd, particularly being involved in a love triangle.
A former skinhead, has written about my cousin. I have been in contact with this author, who wished to know what I knew about my cousin. I knew very little, and although my cousin and I were both born in the same state, at a similar time, I may have only seen this cousin one time at his parent’s house when I was about seven. He was a city boy, I was from more of a rural area, yet our backgrounds were quite similar.
This cousin, who is described by my sister as an attractive person physically, was also very well spoken on the YouTube video I listened to. Oprah announced his name and said he was serving time in prison and the audience applauded. Once speaking my cousin promptly demeaned Oprah as being a “globalist” and not working for “her people.” He commented on the blacks within his jail who were true to their race, and not “globalists.” We do hear this same rhetoric today. He spoke in a tough bravado language, yet an intelligence came through the bluster. This cousin was said to be very charismatic by the author, and his speaking on the Oprah Show certainly indicated this to be true. The cousin was known for easily recruiting young men into the skinhead movement.
One’s relatives are not always what we may wish them to be. And this cousin who had been in trouble in high school for throwing a Molotov cocktail, and had been a worry to his Aunt, my mother, demonstrated a hatred that is still so common in 2023 America. I have gotten to know his sister and brother in the last few years. They do not talk of this brother, they both seem rather to the left in their political views, and are outspoken against what their brother represented.
It was somewhat difficult processing this voice from prison on the YouTube I just watched. How did he turn out this way? This family was quite poor, and there was alcohol abuse by the father, but after talking to his sister last summer over breakfast, it was apparent that our childhoods were not substantially different. As his father was my mother’s half brother, and there was conflict with this cousin’s family, he was a stranger to me. This family lived among some Mexican Americans and Native Americans demographically, but very few blacks. So it would seem unusual that this cousin would have a reason for such views.
I am one who likes to look scientifically at all phenomena of interest, especially to neurological behavior parameters in the social sciences. Without going into too much detail it appears from research that both the activation of the amygdala and the frontal cortex are involved in the learned behavior of prejudice, of the hate that my cousin was so afflicted with. It is not an easy behavior to break even when the desire exists to do so. It takes much continued effort on the part of the hater to break the cycle. As in twelve-step programs it seems that those afflicted benefit from talking to others with the same disorder. Certain approaches may have a temporary effect, but may not completely “heal” the prejudice. Even after much work, the urge to use racial slurs still arises in the person with such bigotry when exposed to those they are conditioned to hate. A 2018 article inThe New Republic goes into some good detail on breaking this hatred, and theory behind the science. The article ends with a University of Nebraska study indicating a possible location where most of the heightened activation shown by fMRI scans to be occurring in one part of the prefrontal cortex of neo-Nazis, in particular, the region associated with regulating moral behavior. This research is said to be ongoing. Research indicates that those, like myself and my cousin, who have grown up in mostly all white communities can become virulent racists. It seems to come down to personal attitude in how we handle our response to race.
I did not give more in depth information of my unfortunate cousin’s identity primarily because of my living cousins’ privacy concerns. In the end, a young man lost to hate is still only that hater, regardless of his family. And I only hope that those so lost can find their footing into the sand of humanity, although as with my cousin it perhaps might never happen. His life of about 40 was rather short compared to mine. I was perhaps lucky. We can only live our lives the best way we can now, and try not to live in hate.
After some contemplation I thought I would add to this discussion the spiritual and religious aspects of hate. Upon some research I decided to write on this next time as it requires some in-depth work.
To end this writing, I thought this particular family story might be of interest to others who may have similar lives and of family members who may bring a sense of disgrace.
My 2nd Posting - January 30, 2023