RACISM: MY STORY
There is beauty in a sun burned skin and in fingers charred from long hours of work. There’s beauty in huge parched lips bracing the harsh harmattan winds. Maybe you don’t agree, maybe for you beauty is all marshmallow softness, exquisiteness and perfection. But I still think there’s beauty in the sight and sounds of a colourful vibrant culture. And there’s wisdom in clinging to values of old.
Half the world, however, doesn’t think so. They deem them ugly and backward and yes, uncivilised. Ah backward, uncivilised! In their own rejection and violence towards their fellow beings, they prove more to be every one of these things and more. Varied races and varied complexions shouldn’t be dividing factor for our world. Neither should it be a basis for such discriminating acts.
I’ll never forget my first trip out of Africa. A trip that started as exciting and wonderful and ended horribly. I discovered then, what racism truly was, I understood what all those movements against racism were for. At first I dismissed that gnawing feeling as an illusion, but they became persistent and unmistakable.
It was there, chasing me every where I went, hanging over my head. I saw it in the slight wavering of smiles, in the way the women held their purses tighter, in the way children laughed a little less freely, in the always empty seat by me in the bus. Worst of all in how they portrayed our culture as barbaric in their movies and documentaries. The words were left unsaid, but they were loud enough to be heard.
I was being defined by what I looked like, where I came from. I was denied the simple joys and whims of life just because I didn’t have the most dignified and whitest of pedigrees, just because my skin was a few shades darker than the rest of the world.
And apparently, no matter how much the world changes or how much time passes, there will always be a reminder, always a line of disparity between the conquerors and the conquered; the fair skinned perfection and the dark skinned mistakes because white people may never really understand what racism is.
My fight against racism started then, driven by anger, grief and of course fear. My yearning for higher, more refined education was primarily centred on getting an opportunity to liberate minds and empower my people in the fight against mental oppression. My strategy was simple, if whites can be racist towards us, then Africans can return the sentiment tit for tat.
With that in mind, every single word I’d heard in nativism, every action of supremacism I’d seen, I re-enacted. It was a bit childish, I know but I have an aversion to discrimination of all sorts. And I wanted them to feel, to know, to understand what all of it felt like.
It did work, somehow, because one day Linnea, a foreign exchange student in my class who I’d been terribly rude to, called me out.
“ Akua, why do you hate me,” she said rather point blank.
“ I don’t hate you,” I muttered turning to leave,”
“That’s a lie! You hate me. You act weirdly every time I come close to you.”
“ I- I don’t hate you. I just don’t like what you represent.”
“ Hmm?” she asked confused.
I told her my story and she understood, actually understood. And why wouldn’t she, she’d felt every single awful emotion I’d wanted her to. And she agreed to fight with me, with a different strategy definitely. Because I actually understood what I’d said, I don’t hate white people just what they represented. We started our own local movement in school and found others who were just as passionate about changing things.
In the end, I realised that the fight was wholly dependent on changing human mind set and that’s the hardest change that can be wrought in the world. But we still fight, because these little steps may go a long way to make a big difference one day. And so it begins, those tomorrows of fighting for little things we believe in.
