Livy’s Romane historie, 1600: Birds of a same feather flock together. So it implies that birds of opposite feather peck at each other! It’s a natural phenomenon in the animal and bird world. But we protest so much about racism in human beings. Why should we not accept that racism is natural and let things be the same way as in the natural world like the animal kingdom?
Racism transcends colour, and has more denominations:
Good old racism of colour: Needs no explanation
Religious racism: Christians tend to associate with Christians, Jews with Jews, and Hindus with Hindus and Muslims with Muslims.
Economic racism: Rich associate themselves only with the rich, where the middle class and the poor mingle among themselves but try to identify with the rich.
Intellectual & social racism: The elite clubs don’t allow ordinary people to their clubs; the intellectuals don’t even want to talk to the common man as they are so highly perched, while an artist wants to bring in his / her progeny into their footsteps with no admission for a rank outsider.
Subte NRI Racism: This is a special kind of racism which is relavent to some Indians settled abroad. There is a strong urge to merge and identify with the main stream. In the process if they come across a newcomer or other who is struggling to fit into the mainstream, it triggers off the emotions involved in their own personal struggle to fit in.They resort to avoiding fellow indians. It manifests itself in the following ways.
# Indians want to align themselves with either western friends or north American born Indians.
# They are not comfortable with new immigrants style, speech and manners
#They are so defensive about their faith, country, and customs while the westerners are merely asking questions out of curiosity. In response they end up slighting themselves and their people.
# They are excessively polite to white people and hence the emotional vent is closed while dealing with them. They vent it out by being excessively aggressive with fellow Indians. Racism in human beings begins only when both the subjects feel superior and inferior simultaneously. If a person feels superior and the opposite person does not feel inferior then the frailty of the human mind of the person who thinks superior person comes out for all to see. This is because the constitution of the human mind of both the king & the beggar has the same basic emotional constitution.
Meanwhile the good old colour racism has turned to being more subtle. You can see it in television and radio commercials.CNN is a major player in the subtle racisim industry. A good example is the way CNN promotes Mrs Clinton in her battle with Mr Obama.
On the other side of the coin, many non-whites have used racism as a weapon to silence whites. You can see it in court cases, when cornered by the law, or even at work places.
The word racism is not used as widely in India as in the west though they suffer it in various forms. Its time India recognizes that racism exists in India and make laws to prevent the society from further erosion.
While it’s not easy to be submerged under the onslaught of racism it’s equally hard for the perpetrator of racism to accept things without a sense of superiority.Its here we need to remind ourselves that we pride on our human achievements and being a human being calls for great responsibility. It can be demonstrated in simple everyday acts. Many people are leading perfect but quiet lives as human beings. Undercurrent salutes them all.
