Everybody
is against racism whenever they are faced with the question. Everyone has an
argument to show how awful it is and how far they are from being racist.
However, this issue takes part in our lives more frequently than we think it
does.
As a matter
of fact, it happened to me yesterday at work. We were talking about situations
that affect our planet and us human beings, when suddenly I found myself making
a racist comment. In my mind, I was trying to defend women’s rights, but I
ended up generalizing the part that was to blame. I just put them all inside
the same tagged bag saying “Guilty”.
We
constantly do this. Even when we talk about our neighbors, colleagues at work,
classmates… when we just open our mouths to give our opinion.
Recent
research in Germany has shown that thirty percent of its inhabitants still have
Nazi thoughts, although there are constant manifestations all over the country
in order to open people’s eyes. Students have been described the history of
Second World War by their teachers in such a direct and personal way, that they
feel ashamed for something that happened long before their birth. Anyone who
has spoken about school time with a 25-30 year old German person must have
heard this. As a consequence of this all, the subject reaches an extreme and
may not be making the desired effect.
On the
other hand, nowadays, migration is as easy and common as frying an egg in a
pan. Not only happens this cross borders, but also across the oceans. Our
children have classmates of various nationalities, religions and races. They
get involved in group activities and it is throughout these activities that
they develop feelings for each other. As a consequence, the direct exposure and
involvement in different cultures is an everyday coin. Therefore, and going
back to the students who are blamed for the history of their countries, I ask
myself what the use of making them feel ashamed for belonging to the country
they do is. How can we expect them to actually feel everyone is equal when they
are not supposed to be at their level?
Nevertheless,
it is a fact that racism has caused victims along the years, but what I am
focusing on in this article is everyday racism, the unnoticeable one. When
Southamerican emigrants arrive in Europe, they have a banner right on their
foreheads saying “In my country I will never be able to buy a house”; when
Africans reach the Spanish coast, the banner is “I come here to survive”; when
Rumanians arrive in western European countries, the tag is “Beware of this
gipsy”, and the list turns never ending. Everyone can read these invisible tags
because they were told that they existed. Fortunately, and this time I have
learnt my lesson of not to generalize, some people close their eyes to clichés.
Maybe, we should feel fulfilled with the idea that, at least, there exists a
percentage that breaks the generalization. However, I believe that most of us
have felt guilty once, after avoiding talking to someone that, just because of
his or her appearance, looked suspicious.
To sum up,
it is very possible that I am just looking for an alibi here, for those moments
when I realize I am not a perfect human being, but the main goal of this piece,
is to contextualize phrases we say, opinions we give and behaviors we have
every day , into the frame of racism. Perhaps, I am acting in a similar way as
some German teacher use to do, but, in that case, those students were
absolutely innocent. What about us?
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen