Racism

OUR READERS WRITE

What is it with Black, Brown, Indigenous and Muslim women that arouses such fever in people that can result in some systemically disappearing permanently, others brutalized satanically? (Same can be said for their men) This September four Muslim woman made a front-page appearance sharing racism directed at them.

Some examples of how closed-eyed people speak:

1.  “They should integrate”.  Reply: “How should they integrate”? Blank stare is
the answer.

Some do the extreme to integrate by bleaching their skin to take off the brown or black and damaging their black hair to blonde, red, orange only to find it does nothing to relieve racism or elevate their lives. Should they discard all their customs and latch on to only western ways, many of which are detrimental to westerners causing them no end of physical and mental health issues?

If Muslim women publicly peeled off their clothes revealing two pieces of strings, or lined the street with cigarette in mouth, blowing toxins on innocent passersby, dropping butts on the road while dressed in expensive instant old jeans made specially for westerners, gorged on pork chops, and lived along these lines will they be spared racism? No!

It's very elegant the way they wear their hijab and shalwar. Is there modesty versus immodesty or plain hatred? Nobody pulls off head drapes that ooze conceit, or scrapes off peroxide or formaldehyde from other peoples' head so the same courtesy must be extended to Muslim women whose hijabs are not polluting like things other people put on their heads.

2. “How much is enough for them”?  “All they are asking for is some rights, unpoisoned water, a place to pray, an end to miseries heaped on them. How much waxing, tanning, massaging and other wayward luxuries enough for others”?  From the well-oiled, answer is silence, which says a lot.

3. “When we go to their country don't we have to integrate”?  “ ‘You' go to their country for a cheap holiday and oppressed people do their utmost to give “you” the best, and “you” go back for more.  If “you” go to live “you” live in a compound missing nothing of the Canadian lifestyle even in the most conservative countries”.

Endless self-serving questions and comments resisting requests for equality reveal the insides of people who appear kind and “civilized” on the outside.  Any surprise racism lives on? 

Looks like planned destabilization of poor countries send their professionals fleeing to the West as scorned immigrants. How else would the “great” ones get doctors to drive their cabs, nurses to change their babies and old parents diapers and clean their houses? High standards indeed.

Easy to conclude colonialism did a masterful job dividing people and brewing hatred globally. What kind of bitterness leads people to announce immigrants suck up welfare while purposely closing their eyes to millions of non-BIPOC Canadians living on the handouts for generations?. And immigrants taking all the jobs!

People believe racism is structured to keep BIPOC beaten down wherever they are in the world. In the West a handful of their success stories make front pages. Sadly colonialism saw to it that racism infects all races turning some BIPOC notorious against their own and each other.

Of course there will be those who claim racism does not exist - in their contained world. The tune changes when the
tide turns.

Gloria Ramnath

Shelburne, Ont.