Racism: are black people just being overly paranoid?

A tweet got my attention yesterday and I have been hunted by the tweet. A white girl tweeted, “black people should just go back to Africa we shouldn’t have bought them in the first place” and people could not stop insulting her about it. I don’t know why there is so much chaos in the world about this notion of race. Are black people just being paranoid or do they really have an argument? I am so tired of hearing things like, “the cashier at the store treated me badly because I am black”, and “that only happened because I am black and the other person is racist”. While we make all these comments I think we seriously forget something; in constructing others as different, we in turn construct ourselves as different too.

There is nothing else on the news than Ferguson and Michael Brown. Don’t get me wrong, no one has the right to take anybody’s life be it black or white (I don’t even know what that means). However, the media attention and the violent protests that this has stirred is something else. It’s unfortunate that Brown is not here to tell us what happened between him and the cop but would this have been dealt with differently if the cop was black like Brown? When are we going to move past this racism discourse in this world? I can’t even begin to explain what I deal with every day in South Africa. A white lecturer says something about the reality of black South African students and a black student gets offended; not because it’s not the truth but just because a white person said it. According to them, she has no right to talk about black people (lol).

We are first of all human before anything else and I think all the noise about racism can be avoided if we just see ourselves as humans and nothing more. Seriously, how hard is it to just see another person as human instead of black, coloured (learnt this in SA), white, Indian and so on? The world will be a better place if we can all just stop pointing fingers. The next time you construct someone as racist, bear in mind that you in turn construct yourself as racist too.

Please remain happy and spread happiness around. Xoxo