"It isn't our weaknesses that make us vulnerable... It's our mindsets..." ~ RituThere are many people in our world today, black people, white people, brown people. And now you are sitting there behind your screen calling me racist. That's because you got the meaning of racism wrong.
Racism, by definition, is the discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. That's what Google said. Now when I say that I wasn't being racist, I mean that, although I called them black, white and brown, I didn't subject qualities or skirmish characteristics to any of them, I simply called them black, white and brown.
Now I could also call them Africans, British and Indians; respectively; that's not being racist either.
I am Indian, and my skin color is a tanned brown, I am a Hindu by birth and I am born into a general caste. That information was based on my nationality, color, religion and caste. If someone doesn't know my name, this is the information, or I'd say basic information, they would be relying on. This would be my apparent identity.
I'd like to rephrase what Google said. Racism is the discrimination or antagonism directed against someone having an identity based on the belief that one's own identity is more dominating.
Apartheid was an event in history when the whites dominated the blacks in their own country and curtailed their rights. Some of you can just draw a straight line joining the two dots, apartheid and racism, but what you need to understand is that Apartheid was an event... Racism is an issue! It's a global issue. On a much large scale.
Many people from all around the world have held campaigns across their country to wipe away traces of racism. But you know what the truth is? None of that is going to do any good! The best we can make out of these campaigns is to stall the people so that we can buy as much time as possible to actually get a solution. But when the mass will truly see what the media have been doing all this time, they will be battered and that little spark of the fire could leave this world in flames. I mean WAR.
I'm writing this today because of a triggering news broadcast that I watched a couple of days back. Times Now was broadcasting a debate on racism. I was thinking, Racism existed for as long as I can remember and they were on my TV screen, yelling at each other, creating absolute hullabaloo on the broadcast and still trying to define racism. That was an absolute waste of time, I'll give you that. Victims of racism are dying out there because someone who has been troubling them finally lost their control. So much for stalling.
Let's face it. We know this issue cannot be controlled by anything we are doing. Really, how many of us actually read the posters put up by campaigning parties, and even when we read them, do we care? No! Because we were never affected by the consequences of racism. And although we are watching videos on how it has affected people, reading articles on what had happened because of it, it doesn't really give us a true insight to how much it stings... and we don't want to know either.
In the 2016 US Presidential elections, Republican candidate Donald Trump, wants to evacuate all immigrants from the States. I think this act is enough to start a revolt. 13.3% of US residents are immigrants and 25% of them are Mayflower descendants. So Donald wants to remove 13.3% of the US residents, that is almost 42.4 million people of the total population with whom President Obama made peace with during his Presidential tenure, which made his country worthy of the title the "United States". Makes so much sense to me, Trump.
Let me explain why I referred to that. Most of the immigrants are Africans and Asians. These immigrants either came for jobs here or were called or they were immensely wealthy and decided to shift to this country. These are the immigrants who add their efforts for the welfare of the country. they provide service and obtain so too. These immigrants contribute to providing man power to all the country's deficient needs. Trump wants to shoo them because he thinks that they pose, or may pose in the future, a threat to the country. This is racism. Why does he think that only the Africans and Asians pose a threat? That is Racist. He doesn't have the rights to blame anything without proof! And for heaven's sake, the country's twice elected president is from AFRICA! Does he even know if any American is with the ISI? Does he have any idea about the statistics of his own country? Yes, I am throwing rhetorics now.
What the government and the Campaigning parties are trying to do now is bring or give more importance to the victims of racism. By that, unknowingly, they are propagating the idealism of societal one-sidedness. This is causing an uproar from the other side.
It's about balance and the intricacy in handling that poise. The spotlight on our stage today is swinging from one identity to another, from one race to the other. It's not about telling the people to run behind the spotlight, It's about stead fastening the spotlight to one spot where everyone can walk in and get Equal importance.
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I wanted to write this for a really long time but I never quite felt the reason to. This is dedicated to Pratya because I think she would understand me very well.
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