The roots of bigotry are buried in ignorance. No human being is born hating anyone. That condition is acquired and accepted by the offending person. Even if your parents are racist, anti-Semitic, or anti any group, once you reach the age of reason, good people reject the hatred.

But not all people are good. And many are simply stupid.

I grew up In Levittown on Long Island, an all-white working-class suburb. Jews and Christians lived side by side.

Sports were big. Who was better on the baseball field, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle? Kids were divided.

There was some ethnic name-calling courtesy of ignorant parents. Mostly anti-black stuff. When I heard that, I used reason. What about Willie? Jimmy Brown? Wilt Chamberlain? We root for those guys, right? So, what's with the skin color idiocy? You sing Four Tops songs all day long.

That shut a lot of them up, not all. But the hardcore bigots who imitated their ridiculous parents never made it into my crew. The race stuff was boring. Who wants to hang with a hater?

So now it's being spotlighted with the Hamas terrorism attack. Fools are spreading hate about "Jews." These Hamas sympathizers are cretins. There's no excuse for this garbage.

There is evil in the world, no question. And there are those who enable evil.

It's pretty much the same thing if you ask me.

New column Sunday at noon.