FEBRUARY 10 ― This week something reprehensible happened which has me shaken. It didn’t happen to me personally, but it felt personal.
We are not friends, nor even acquaintances, but the Internet has a way of making people feel connected though we have never met in person.
This woman is an outspoken activist for social justice and change in my country. Our worlds are connected because of like passions and we know people in the same circles.
One day this week she posted a picture of her son, her dark-skinned adopted son, and made a comment about “Black History Month.” It is not news to the world that this woman and her husband have adopted children, so what begat the hate that was spewed through Twitter after this post I cannot begin to comprehend.
Her post was not controversial, nor was it even making any statement, though in America where freedom of speech is protected she could have made whatever statement she wanted, she did not.
It is hard for me to even think about some of the comments that were tweeted. But I want you to understand the magnitude of what was said. Things about “Fu**ing her ni**er son,” about how her son is going to “rape her girls” about how she is a “fu**ing retard” and *ni**er lover,” and the list goes on and on.
On the other side of the US a lot of people say that racism doesn’t exist. The above is just a sample of the fact that it does.
To me this is personal, very, very personal. I have two adopted daughters, both share the colour of my skin. Through marriage and my adopted country of Uganda, I have six other children, not adopted but culturally they are my responsibility and are called my children; four nephews who are our responsibility, a godson and a little girl whom I have been taking care of for her sick mother for many years and who has no other family. My biological child, my child will most likely share his father’s dominant genes and have dark skin.
These are my children. Race issues in my home country are personal.
I’m struggling to understand how hate like this exists. I guess my mind knows it does, evil is everywhere and I have seen it displayed in other ways up close and personal, but my heart wants to reject the idea that this form of hate and prejudice exists even in pockets of my country. Or any country for that matter.
I don’t begin to believe that this is a large percentage of people in the United States, but there is a percentage where this does exist, either in this ugly form of hatred or in the belief that people of a darker skin are inferior. Neither one better, one just usually more subtle.
Beyond this ugly and obvious form of racism there is a large percentage of people in my country who willingly ignore that this is an issue; that black children are dying at the hands of police disproportionately, black men imprisoned at a much higher rate than the same exact crimes committed by white men, and the list goes on.
To many people it simply isn’t an issue. For those living outside of the larger metropolitan areas in our country, especially in the Midwest and West, for many people they have never had to deal with issues of racism because there simply isn’t any or much diversity at all in their communities.
In the town I grew up in there was a population of about 60,000 people. Growing up, there were fewer than 10 black people in our town, and perhaps even fewer than five. To this day the town is about 100,000 people and there is still only a handful of people of different races.
And the thing is as a young person, while racism did exist around me, it was not obvious nor were most people around me racist. Because there wasn’t much diversity, few people were faced with any prejudice, around them or in their own life, there simply was no need.
My observation is because of this, because no one felt like they were racist and were removed from the bigotry that existed in sections of our country, they also did, and do, have a difficult time believing that it exists and do not understand the concept of white privilege. Because every layer of our community was white, at least by a large majority, the idea of white privilege doesn’t even make sense.
While I understand this from the background I grew up in, I disagree with it. People in our country are crying out that something is wrong, they are telling us something is wrong, we don’t get to just say “no it isn’t.”
There have been atrocities committed throughout world history where people were crying out and populations refused to believe it was happening, if it didn’t affect their lives, it was sad if it was true, but it wasn’t our problem.
Slavery, native American massacres, the holocaust and the list goes on and on including current day issues like refugees and child slavery and prostitution. People told us then, they are telling us now; there is a problem.
Because of this, because people are telling us there is a problem, because people in my country are crying out that things are not right, in my country and in countries around the world, we must listen up.
We have an obligation to not be silent. Until the problem is fixed we need to actively combat it even if we think it doesn’t exist around us. It means being aware of what has happened in our history, what is happening currently, and why history and current events matter.
It means being brave, brave enough to challenge our own bias and even apathy about the situation and then taking what we find, the good, the bad and the ugly, and using it to make a difference. To teach our children, to speak out against injustice, and to actively be the change around us.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
