We are all born equals, we breath the same air, we bleed the same color, and will die and be buried beneath the same ground. Bilal
I’ve heard stories of the past, a time of ignorance and slavery, how they came in the name of religion, and plundered, in the name of civilization, they took, they enslaved. Like children, we were fascinated by their looks and tools. Oblivious to their intent, soon we found our selves doing their bidding.
Their labour we carried on our backs, their chains we wore on our hands, our freedom they took from us, and we endured. A past we choose to forget, the pain of our fathers and their fathers before. Someone once said that history is like a man, who is fond of taking the same path. Now I realise what he meant.
Generations past, yet this sickness I feel has secretly endured. Though the wind of freedom now blows, or so I like to think, I still feel caged though I walk free, I see the hate underneath those smiles, openly you call me friend, secretly you call me foe. What is my sin? my colour, my race.
The system is injured with a fault, making safe some, haunting others. The talk of a land of the free, only a dream. The cry for equality ignored, the storm of inequality endures.
I have become a walking target, a suspect with no offence, a threat without provocation, a victim with no guilt. I never realised the gravity of this vice, until my son asked me,
“Dad, what is wrong with my colour”?
Hmmm… What form of answer could a father give. I heaved a deep sigh, looked into his eyes. I knew, i understood the reason for his question. I remember asking my father the same thing, all he said was,
“Be proud of who you are, never let anyone make you think otherwise”?
My plight, my fathers plight and his father before, are now his. A young generation spoon fed the fault of their fathers, nourished with the sour food of stereotype and racism, can only give birth to a future extremely nauseating, devoid of unity, set on a path similar to the past.
Racism is like a bacteria, it thrives on society’s that are uneducated and culturally sifted. Being born into a certain nationality, culture or race doesn’t make one superior or inferior to another. Diversity is the beauty of life and nature, like the plants, trees and green of the earth, we should learn to coexist. We are a system, believe it or not, one part cannot function properly without the other.
Every race is unique in its own way, if one race were better than the other or the rest, then that race, should have been the only ones walking the earth. But no, we all are part of the beauty of nature and life. The sooner we come to terms with this principle, that diversity is humanity, the better it gets for the future unborn.
Emmalase.
Emmalase