I read an article in the newspaper this morning about a man being beaten up because of his colour. A drunken woman knocked into him, so a gang accused of him of pushing her out of the way, so tried to smash his knee caps with a rock. This disgusts me, racism really really angers me. Haven’t we got past looking just at colour in this day and age? Why should one person be considered different just because there skin is darker, or in some cases lighter than another’s? Some people are just narrow minded and cruel. I’m half caste and luckily; other than a couple of odd comments, I have never been a victim of serious racism. But I know how much those little comments hurt me, so I can’t even begin to imagine how victimised and vulnerable other people who have seriously experienced it must feel.
Racism is such a nasty thing, particularly in incidents such as the one mentioned in Jades post when someone is not just verbally abused but also physically. A lot of work has been done over the years to eradicate racism in this country and the progress has been very encouraging. A good indicator for this would be when England football team played agianst Spain on the 16th November 2004. The black players playing for England were subjected to disgusting racial abuse by the Spanish supporters but what was encouraging was the reaction back in England. Everyone was disgusted with the behaviour of the Spanish fans and I feel this is a positive indicator that our country is winning the fight against racism.
ReplyDeleteWe also have to understand that sometimes, two people can disagree over random circumstances and if they are of different backgrounds, it does not necessarily mean that one or both is being racist. It is possible they may just have differing views in life and as long as there is no racist language and no discrimation involved because of the persons skin colour or background then this is acceptable.
I think sometimes racism can be triggered by past experience. If someone has a bad experience, eg been attacked by someone who has different colour skin, then they may be fearful of people who have different colour skin to themselves. This could cause them to be aggressive to these people and want to hurt them verbally as they can't physically.
Another reason is that some people are just purely simple-minded and don't have the brain cells to understand and accept that everyone is different in this world. Sadly, as Jade points out there will always be people in our world who are cruel and narrow minded. We can just hope that these bullies are also made to feel victimised and vulnerable one day, so they can be sorry and understand how their victims felt.