Colors Of The Wind

Even as society slowly opens up to past taboos such as gay marriage and religious freedom, there is yet another stigma that hasn’t been overcome. I find it ironic, that even in this era of globalization, it seems that racism continues to a prevalent problem even as geographic barriers cease to be a relevant factor in today’s world.

I will not discuss about what racism is, as I’m sure that most of you are more than familiar with the subject. Instead, I plan on pinpointing a few traits of racism and identify ways to stem our problems from there.

Sure, racism is a deeply rooted problem that existed since forever. Our forefathers had it just as their fathers before them, and we damn sure have it now too. But really, I don’t think that we’d have to deal with such a wide scale of racism if our elders or seniors didn’t spew and mutter racist remarks all the time. Racism is not something that a fresh mind would conjure, especially now that most stereotypes are largely irrelevant. Truly, racism is an evil that is passed down, not thought up.

Racism is also almost always emotionally-tied. It is used as a poor excuse by ignoring many factors and bringing up perhaps the most irrelevant factor: skin colour. For example, when an Australian local gets outsourced, he blames it on the Asian immigrant who ‘stole’ his job from him. He conveniently blames it all on every single nationality from South-East Asia while ignoring the fact that his replacement might be more skilled and qualified than he is. Anyone with a sound mind would do otherwise, and he might be immature or just plain ignorant. But sadly, these kinds of people exist, and in droves too.

The Internet played a big role in influencing people. With shared articles and easy-to-read pictures and messages, messages can be cajoled to readers such in a way it’s now a ‘cool’ thing to be a proponent of freedom of speech. In the same way, if only the Internet were willing to play a role in condemning racism, or rather, make it a ‘cool’ thing to not be racist. For one, poking fun via racist jokes, although we know full well that jokes are still jokes, it can be misinterpreted as hate speech.

I believe that the best way to curb racism is to be well-educated.

We live in a globalized world, and as I also said before, most racial stereotypes aren’t even relevant anymore, if they even were. Mixed marriages are very much the norm now. It shows that progress has been made, but we still have a long way more to go.