A hate crime, by definition, is a crime motivated by racial, sexual or other prejudice. It seems the further away that we move from inequality as a country, the more the term “hate crime” is tossed around. That seems a tad backward, don’t you think? I have never heard the word more in my entire life than I have just these past few years.

First, the big one: the President of the United States of America. “You don’t like President Obama because he is African American.” It seems that this is a constant phrase I hear and possibly the one that gets on my nerves the most. This is said to me and to a lot of my family and friends, it is said to news anchors and journalists, but it seems to happen most towards republicans.

If I had a nickel for every time I have heard that phrase, I would have enough to pay off this country’s debt and still buy myself a yacht. Yes, I dislike the President very much. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin, but rather the way he is ruining this great nation. This is not racist, I dislike Joe Biden as well.

Michael Sam, a defensive end for the Missouri Tigers football team, has recently come out as gay. This has become a huge deal for most of the world. Viewers can’t even turn on SportsCenter days after this has happened without hearing the name Michael Sam. Once again, people have accused me of hating Sam because of his sexuality. I can assure you, that is far from my reasoning. I simply tell them my argument and shrug it off.

He is not the greatest, but not the worst and while there are many people at his position who play much better than he does, he is better than quite a few. However, he is small for the NFL and he cannot stop the run. He is good at pressuring the quarterback, but that is about it. Sam said that he no longer wanted to fool anyone or for it to distract him come NFL combine time. My theory for Sam deciding to come out now instead of later is simply this: Why not? It’s a win-win for Sam. He either is chosen much higher than he deserves simply because an NFL franchise is too scared of the media, although franchises are hard to bully into doing anything, or he is chosen much later than he deserves and the media ridicules the NFL for being ignorant. Win-win for the LGBT community, lose-lose for the NFL.

Last month in Des Moines, police stopped, searched and detained Roman Miner because officers claimed he looked like a man identified as “Derek,” a suspect in a crime. Miner’s mother is now taking on the police, claiming that they racially profiled her son. Police officers are in a constant lose-lose battle. Since they arrested a man who looked like their suspect, the police are apparently racist. If they did not arrest Roman, people would say that they are not doing their job correctly.

Hate crimes seem to be a never-ending battle that only one side can win. People continue fighting for equality, but for what? If Miner was white in the same scenario, this would just be labeled as a mistake and not a hate crime. If Obama were white, I would no longer be racist for disliking him, I would simply oppose the other side of the political spectrum. People fight for equality, but it seems that we are becoming less equal.

If you want equality, fine. But if we talk about equality, what about scholarships aimed directly at a minority or the homosexual community? Television stations like BET, or Black Entertainment Television, target specific racial groups. Companies can maintain racial quotas for their employees. Schools keep track of the percentages of students of each race enrolled. When will there ever be equal ground?

When we stop caring so much about statistics and trying so desperately to be equal maybe, just maybe, we can become an equal country, otherwise, inequality will always remain. The only thing that will change is the group having the upper hand, and these groups will trade places quite often. If we truly want racism — or any other discrimination — to cease, we need to stop spreading the idea of discrimination in the first place and just embrace the fact that we are all different, yet share more in common than we have in differences.

I leave you with a quote from Shelby Steele, an African American author and columnist: “Now, to be innocent, someone else must be guilty, a natural law that leads the races to forge their innocence on each other’s backs. The inferiority of the black always makes the white man superior; the evil might of whites makes blacks good. This pattern means that both races have a hidden investment in racism and racial disharmony, despite their good intentions to the contrary.”