The Colour Game: This Thing Called Racism
So a friend is writing a comparative
analysis of Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon and Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie’s Americanah for her Master of Philosophy in English thesis.
She happened to give me copies of both books and on reading them, I’m outraged,
surprised, and amused for a lack of a better word. I could use several
adjectives to define or describe the emotions that were going through me as I
read these novels. I’ve had to remind myself that these works are just fiction.
The realistic representation of women and racism is biting and unnerving.
Reading these novels in the wake of protests
happening in the USA especially in Ferguson brings a different perspective and I
dare say the real meaning of race relations in USA, Europe and Australia. Race
is only noticeable when one is viewed as the other. This other
is then regarded as mysterious and hence unknowable or ‘not understandable’. By
branding the other as different from ourselves and mysterious, we do
not then make any attempts to understand them because recognising them as people
who are not mysterious will raise them to our standard. What I’m saying here is
much like what Simone de Beauvoir used in her argument on her treatise on women
and the gender status quo.
In analysing race and hierarchy one faces the question of power that is ‘who is in charge?’ When one sect sees itself as superior and parades itself as such, he stripes off the innate identity of those he considers as others and replaces their eyes with a tinted glass through which they come to see themselves. The other does this without recognising it because the superior one becomes the norm while the other is the anomaly. He comes to see himself as the anomaly because that is the only image he is given of himself by the mainstream superior force. Yes, some in the class of the other will indeed have an epiphany and come to see and recognise their true selves. However, unfortunately, the issue of identity and discovering who one truly is is a battle many do not begin or realise they have to do. The answer to finding oneself and taking the hood off racism and racial stereotypes is not in school or in the refinement of schooling, language or money.
The answer is in Christ Jesus. For in Christ
Jesus there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In other words neither white nor black
or Hispanic nor Asian. In Christ Jesus we are all one because we have the same
father. Our issue is not race or gender these are only tools being used to
manipulate us to steer us from the real important issues of salvation and
accomplishing our purposes on earth. Remember whether people choose to or not to
recognise you for who you are, pardon them for their ignorance. God knows who
you are and that is what is important.
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