RACISM IS FOR WHAT
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On April 3, 2017, while reading the Financial Times newspaper, my eyes caught this heading: “Racism towards Africans in India.” As I have visited India many times and only ever felt a good and warm welcoming environment over there, reading this news about a statement given by a student from Nigeria who had just finished a three-year course from an educational institution there shocked me.
This is the story.
Mr. Orji’s time in India had been characterized by persistent low-level racial discrimination and intimidation. With weariness in his voice, Maxwell Orji said he had been laughed at, spat on, and verbally abused on the streets of Greater Noida, which is close to New Delhi.
The situation became harsher after the death of Manish Khari, a local teenager whose family had accused their Nigerian neighbors of supplying him with drugs.
The highest possible stage in
moral culture is when we recognize
that we ought to control our thoughts.
Charles Darwin
It Got Worse
It was a warm, muggy summer morning in Greater Noida. During a candle march, a protest against the youth’s death, the crowd was so angry that when they encountered four African students with no known links to Khari’s death, they requested them to stop. The students felt like lambs circled by hungry wolves. The protesters attacked the students so badly that the latter required hospital treatment.
At the hospital, one of the students spoke. His mouth felt dry. A feeling of anguish was growing in his heart. The words were hard to say. We’re feeling pain now. We’re feeling miserable. We want to go home. We are not welcomed anymore.
According to the Association of African Students in India, the country has about 25,000 African students, about a fifth of whom live in Greater Noida, a new city 30 kilometers away from New Delhi. Racism is one of the most severe diseases of human society in this age. What is it for? The fact of the matter is that superiority is not by birth or color or blood but by righteousness. We are all human beings and should always maintain and strive for peace.
I would like to end this story with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”