Well racism must have started way back when the Blacks were taken in as slaves. It did not stop there though till this day racism remains as one of those bad things left behind by our ancestors. Its come to the point where you are Black,Brown or White. Many have tried to go past racism such as Barack Obama, Micheal Jackson and Bob Marley but how is it that racism survived till our generation?
Well if you guys look around racism is everywhere and is given to you even through your education. Let's take a simple fairy tale for example:
Snow White and the seven Dwarves.
The Princess was white as snow and that is why the evil queen wants to kill her. Well she wasn't brown as a date or small eyed...no. she was white as snow. From this a child internalises the fact that begin white is important and that a Princess could only be white. Then there are advertisements that only show fair looking men and women specially in the SouthEast Asian regain. If a girl/boy is portrayed as brown or dark skinned it means that she/he has to get fair by using some kind of cream. Now this is where we as teenagers internalise the fact that begin white brings us a different social status and overall image.
Racism is every where we go and in almost every book we read. According to sociologists the very fact that coloured people are under represented in many areas of life is in it self racist. For example: look at all the Bollywood actors and actress are many of them darker skinned? No because dark skinned is not beautiful.
Of course there are exceptions for example last year Twelve Years as a Slave won many film awards. Also writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie write books which promote coloured people. Its not just coloured skin that is the target of racists. Your eyes are also looked at. Look at Koreans and Japanese they are very fair but they are put down by the fact they have tiny eyes. Look at the Chinese they are called Yellow people because of their skin colour.
Let's just see the ideology here, which is that only the dominant white are the only "normal" people in the world.By ridiculing other races the white ideology is trying to stay dominant after industrialisation. They then could conquer the world and justify it by saying that the ones they conquered are lesser than them. It then seems that the white west are "civilising" the uncivilized.
So let's say that racism may never leave our world at the pace we are going. We should call ourselves the sons and daughters of Mother Earth. So why bother dividing ourselves according to our colour and eyes?
No comments:
Post a Comment