The stories are chilling, the videos gruesome and rife with a manner of wickedness you would think improbable by one man to another. Children killed for the color of their skins and no other reason. It’s…ridiculous…painful.
There is a massacre going on in Southern Kaduna, and the government is literally in denial, and trying to gaslight us all. It seems as though, all over the world right now, there is a group or the other fighting for inclusion or freedom or just the right to ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.
Then just recently, there are the cases of Christian Cooper – the birdwatcher who could have lost his life due to racism-induced profiling, and George Floyd – the man who actually did lose his life due to the vile and horrid incident that the whole world has no doubt witnessed by now.
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Bigotry seems to have taken root in our system as a form of living. Truthfully, racism is on the front burner now, and rightly so, as it is the other pandemic that needs to be scourged from the earth, but many other discriminatory acts have in no small way stifled different groups of people from their own God-given rights, and, in fact stolen their freedom.
Sexism, xenophobia, classism, nationalism, religious prejudice, ageism, anti-semitism…the list is endless. It is as though every section that is big enough a unit to have their own values and have those values divergent from a pre-existing norm suddenly become a threat to the world.
Where is our ability for tolerance for each other?
Pardon the non-sequitur, in the thrilling series – Dear White People – which we recommend you watch by the way, you clearly see how a group of socially conscious, aka ‘woke’ college students tackle the problems of racism, inequality and social injustice in their localized community. This is as avid as symbolism gets for how in different corners of the world, people are trying in their own way to fight against the pre-existing systems of bigotry and discrimination.
But as such acts have yielded no dividend, what with the increasing frequency of discriminatory-induced crimes, people have resorted to more outlandish forms of protests in our country and abroad.
What can regular youths like us with seemingly workaday lives and next to no political influence, save our voices, do in this really sensitive time all across the world?
Use that voice as loudly as you can!
The injustices affect us all, and it is our continuous duty to make sure that the unalienable rights of each of us is protected.
So, write articles or sing songs or take actions that challenge the wrong system, go on peaceful protests, demand answers to acts that you perceive as injustices, sensitize your erring friends on what they may or may not do, or say, act right, legally fight injustice in any and all ways you can.
Let us all try to stay woke and look any and all forms of social injustices in the face, saying: ‘Not Anymore’.