Racism

The word by itself can stir up quite a cocktail of emotions. It could make you feel uncomfortable, it could make you hiss with anger, it could make you adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, or (for a very small proportion) it could make you feel sympathetic. I am not going to condemn the racists or make them feel guilty because I am pretty sure that they did not get up one day and decide “Hey I know what I want to be I wanna be a racist.” No the racist does not choose to be a racist he picks it up. You know like sex, no one really tells you how it is done, you just pick it up. It is only later that you fully understand what it really means. I am just going to make a humble attempt at guessing why a racist is a racist. Xenophobia comes almost naturally to most people. Humans just have it inbuilt in them to frown upon anything different.

Why do we immediately laugh when we hear a different accent? What is so funny about someone wearing his or her traditional dress in a different zone? A small girl with whom I was on friendly terms once told me she did not like her School Bag because it was Bihari type. Now she was fond of me and had no clue who a Bihari was. I politely pointed out that I was a Bihari myself. She was pretty shocked and did not say anything further. She will have grown up by now and learnt to respond by saying “Of course I don’t mean you. You are not like them.”

Where do these thoughts come from? The girl of course must have picked it up from parents and neighbours but why did she keep it? My explanation would be that it’s because it made her feel better. It is nice to know that we are superior to others. So is that the source of it all, a desire to feel important and special. If that is so will it all go away if we feel we are important and confident of ourselves? It seems like a plausible solution. So I sign off wishing that we learn to love and respect ourselves so that we can love and respect others.