I flicked BBC1 on tonight when the "Real Story" was being broadcast and there was Gee Walker sat with her husband being interviewed by Fiona Bruce.
The strength that Gee Walker must have makes me ashamed at my own weaknesses. I would hope that I could act with the same dignity, compassion and understanding that Gee (and her family) have shown towards the killers and to the parents of at least one of them.
She admired one of the killers for admitting his guilt and that he had begun to realise the consequence of his actions. She also felt sorrow for the mother of the killer knowing that she too must also be suffering. It takes a lot of courage and inner belief to be able to ‘do the right thing’. She said for her to show hatred would be nothing less than that which was shown to her son Anthony and would make her no better than the killers.
There are those that are saying her actions are as a result of grief and remorse and that it is not normal. Are they really saying that "an eye for an eye" is the correct way to think? I have two sons and a daughter and if the same would happen to one of them, I don’t think I would have the strength that Dee Walker has to be as forgiving. But it doesn’t mean I would be right to want vengeance. I am not totally committed to religion, I have my personal thoughts on the subject so I don’t know how much of this is ‘faith’ based. The Bible does preach forgiveness and perhaps that is where Dee Walker gains her strength from. Perhaps that is why I find it hard to think I could react the same way. I do bring my children up with their religion at the front of their development and I hope that perhaps they will see the right way.
Just because I watched 25mins of that programme tonight, I feel that Dee Walker has touched my life and shown me that there are good people out there. I haven’t even met the woman, I have not felt or shared her pain in any way, yet she has given something to me.
Every person accused of, or who has committed an act of racism should be made to watch the interview so that they can see what a real human being behaves like. Dee Walker has not brushed it all aside, you can quite clearly see her pain and that will be there for ever. She will never forget that terrible night when the news was broken to her, yet she has retained her dignity and her moral values throughout.
Let us do everything we can to stamp out racism from our society. Let us all do something to ensure that this cannot happen again. We need to stamp out hatred from our society. Without hatred we could end wars. Something I read the other day shocked me too. The UN is asking for a couple of billion dollars in aid from various nations. That equated to the sum of money spent in the Defence Industry worldwide in two days. Slight off topic from my original post I know, but it all stems from hatred, greed, envy and many other things. If the world was full of more people like Dee Walker, we would have more than 1 billion dollars a day to spend on helping those who need it. We wouldn’t need as much because there wouldn’t be so many wars.
All I can do is ensure that I attempt to bring my children up knowing that there is no room in life for hatred, greed or envy or any other of the traits that lead us down the wrong paths.
