A Foreign View On Racism

I had once come across a video clip online which discussed different races and their beliefs. A young fellow had stated that black people from different cultures all related to each other simply because we were black, thus we could all understand racial injustice…which is FAR from the truth. I’ve often found it entertaining that some people believe black people have similar experiences or rather similar views regarding racism, simply because of our skin colour. But this view ignores the black people who live in PREDOMINANTLY black countries, for example, the person who is responsible for this article you’re reading now, MOI (me).

I grew up in a black neighbourhood, black parents, black teachers, black school, black shop owners, black hairdressers, black eateries…I think you get the point. Seeing a person of any other race was a sight to see; stuck out like a sore thumb. As you can probably guess, we rarely talked about racial injustice, if at all. I can honestly tell you I didn’t understand the depth of racism until I arrived here in the UK for University. I didn’t think much of racism. ‘What was that?’, ‘Something that happened when we were colonized by the British?’, ‘Oh! That’s over right? We have our independence!’ This was me.

This can come off as ignorance or sheer stupidity, but unfortunately that’s how my reality played out. As they say, seeing is believing. How do you believe something exists when you haven’t seen it, don’t really hear of it, or don’t even experience it yourself? It’s pushed to the back of your mind because it holds no importance to you, and it doesn’t affect you. And that’s how it is.

Of course, my perspective on racism changed, when my environment changed.

I am in a new country. New faces. New races. New beliefs.

I became self-aware of myself as a black person, and the struggles I faced being a black person. I noticed the stigma my race faces in the smallest forms - through interactions with people from different races, and the way they treated me differently, or the way I was shunned and stared at, like a zoo animal. I became self-conscious, as well as scared of the possibilities to be attacked simply based off my skin colour. I hadn’t faced these discomforts before. I never had these fears. Because I had no reason to. But now I did. I am in an environment where your race can be used as a weapon against you. I became weary and sad of this new reality. That truly I am treated different because of how I look, and it simply shouldn’t be that way.

I still find it difficult to roll on with these changes in my life, because I miss the days when I didn’t see colour-I didn’t put meaning behind being black or being white or Asian-because people were just people, no matter how I looked at it. But everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows. The world is really going through it honestly. It is what it is I suppose.

Commentary by Alleunamme