Approach this week with a new lens for life

In all the efforts to raise awareness about societal injustices and historic memorials, this week may seem like just any other. It also seems we have become a little apathetic as a society.

However, this week it is important to take note and heed the call to support the Anti-Racism Network South Africa (ARNSA), an alliance of organisations working to respond to racism in South Africa.

Also read The Good News: Reflecting on SA’s positives

Because as much as many of us would like to believe, especially the younger generation, that this dividing, exacerbating, fear-instilling, abstract boundary between people of different races, cultures and faith groups no longer exists, we have to admit that the real conversation has not yet begun.
And my goodness, is the conversation imperative.

A friend said to me the other day that he thinks “racism” needs to be more clearly defined.

What does the word really mean?” he asked.

And he is right. Is race the colour of one’s skin, and is racism the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior? Or does racism refer to more than that?

From Europe to Asia, and the Americas to Africa, “racism” exists. The more one travels, the more one notices it. It is in the way people from Western countries are revered and those from third-world Asian nations looked down upon.

Also read:  ‘Mbombela, this is for you!’

It’s the mutual dislike between the Koreas and Japan and the atrocities of wars and colonialism which never even involved a European country.

In the United States, we have seen the fear of the unknown in action, with Donald Trump being elected as the 45th president of what is still arguably the most powerful nation in the world.

In South Africa, the fear of the unknown is also all too real, with the recent spate of xenophobic violence showing that prejudice and discrimination is certainly not only about race.

Let us not be anti-anything”, another friend said last week.

So, I propose we think about this Anti-Racism Week in a completely different way.

Let us think about “racism” as an issue of intolerance and misunderstanding; about cultural heritage and background, about belief systems and eating habits, about faith and family.

In the end, we, as a society, can only improve the situation by trying to understand why others behave the way they do, in the same way they might try to understand why we live the way we do.

There is no right or wrong colour, culture, or language. We are all prejudiced. We see the world through our own, individual lenses, a product of socialisation and circumstance.

Perhaps it is time to try and look at our surroundings through the lenses of others, to interact and converse with people we would not usually spend time with. That is why the conversation is important.