Racism? I get it; My First Experience

 Before I start, let me state that, I hate using words like race, black, white, etc to describe people but for the purposes of this write-up and in order to provide a thorough description, you will come across a few so forgive me.

 Last week, two events, underpinned by the same issue brought back memories of my first experience with racism in my country. I speak of the Rachel Dolezal event and the Church shooting in Charleston both in the US. I am sure most of you already know the stories let me remind of the Rachel Dolezal incident. Makes you wonder what really ‘race’ is. Why can’t Rachel Dolezal simply fight for a cause she believed in even if she doesn’t directly relate to its history because of her ‘race’? Many including myself believe that, Racism is a social construct meant to benefit a group of people with a superiority complex. As a result, those discriminated against may react in a radicalized manner that may result in ‘reverse racism’, so to speak. I really like this book (https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/news/view/free-ebook-racism-in-winnipeg). It is a thoroughly researched book on racism against Aborigines in Canada but with a wider reach on the subject which will give the reader a deeper understanding. I recommend it to anyone interested in racial issues.

Back to the subject! Let me say that, I believe in one race, the human race as do many in my country. I have friends from the entire globe and believe me, no racist will be my friend. As a kid growing up in West Africa I never experienced racism at first hand for obvious reasons; unlike today, there were very few tourists and expatriates working here, but the horrors of Apartheid South Africa was daily prime time news on television so i was no alien to the subject. Our next door neighbors were Caucasian and we had a normal neighbourly relationship.  But, in my teen years as a high school student with the swimming team, an interesting event occurred that drove me into researching more into slavery, colonialism, racism, the African-American experience vis a vis the Civil Rights Movement and the liberation struggles of various African countries in their quest for freedom from colonialism. Make no mistake, these are all intricately woven together. I found much in books I read from a library in honour of George Padmore, a Civil Rights Activist himself, who was to later settle and die in my country. In the early 90s, I also read a book titled “The Bell Curve” by an ‘evil genius’ of a professor, who propounded the absurd theory of why Caucasians, are by dint of genetics, more intellectually gifted than Blacks.

As a 16 year old I have attended in innocence and pride, live at Independence Square in my country, speeches of  Louis Farakhan, who spoke the truth but with some radical brute. Don’t get me wrong, this was not in appreciation of the expression of a radicalized ideology though I must admit I found some affinity is his expressions after my first experience with racism. As acerbic as his speeches may have sounded, I felt that this was a man who simply wanted to be accepted in a country where he found himself by default due to slave trade.

THE STORY

It was a beautiful sunny day during the second week of a three month long vacation from high school. As a member of my school’s swim team, I needed to keep in shape for next terms swimming competition. The lack of a community swimming pool drove me to a popular hotel with an average pool size about 20 km away from home. With a nonchalant attitude of a teenager, I pushed opened the gate that led to the poolside of the hotel, wondering why it was closed during working hours. Just then I saw these three Caucasians, two males and a female, breast-stroking in the pool. Apparently they were the only customers at that moment. I paid little attention to them and walked straight to the attendant, got my ticket, went to the changing room and took a shower before diving into the pool. When I emerged from under the water, I realised they had left the pool and sat under the canopy, murmuring a conversation that could hardly be heard. I still paid little attention to them but kept on with my warm-up strokes. This 60ish Caucasian lady, who apparently was the owner of the hotel, appeared through the poolside gate with a lithe poise and strolled straight to the attendant. By her agitated gestures towards the attendant and an occasional slant of her head towards my direction, I had a hunch that, there was something wrong. As she approached the canopy of the Caucasian customers, I sensed strongly that she spied my direction, albeit demurely, with her peripheral vision. After what seemed like an endless chatter she left and suddenly, I became self-aware of my surroundings so I approached the attendant to inquire what the problem was. His body language gave him away and I knew he was telling a lie when he said, the owner wanted to ensure that everything was alright. In the meantime, the other Caucasian customers went back to swimming. To cut a long story short, I noticed everytime I dove into the pool, these other guests would come out until at some point one of them went out apparently to make a complain to the owner. Within 5 minutes the owner came in and requested that I left the pool, the excuse being that I had a limit of one hour swimming period. I knew it was a lie because I was a regular at that pool though I have never met the owner before. Typical of me, I didn’t complain. I left but not without finding out the truth from the attendant who was brave enough this time to reveal that, the other guests had complained that they couldn’t swim with me in the pool. This is just one of many subsequent experience.

You may wonder what the big deal is since  you may probably have experienced far harsher racial discrimination. Well here’s the big deal! You see, my country was the first African country south of the Sahara to gain independence from Colonial rule in the 50s. My country played a major role in the attempt to unite all races on this continent. To think that, someone will dare come here and discriminate knowing this history was shocking to me. I have become an online police against discrimination on social media. Several times I have reported racial abuse on Facebook but they very often have returned with a message suggesting that they saw nothing wrong with what I reported. Authorities track communication between so-called terrorist groups and the youngsters they are attempting to recruit and indoctrinate with so-called ' radical Islam' but find nothing wrong with White supremacist groups that operate next door. They block 'terrorist' sites but find nothing wrong with groups and sites that promote racial abuse and other forms of discrimination with ridiculous statistics under the guise of freedom of speech. Far right ideologies, pivoted on the paranoia that a particular race face extinction due to 'dilution' from other 'races', continue to gain grounds worldwide. Herein lays the hypocrisy of the Charleston shooting and the many other shootings that have occurred. There's a time bomb brewing online that may generate a new form of terrorism and we must all watch it. This will only be the beginning if no conscious effort is made to put things in check.

There is only one Race, The Human Race

So, all I wish to say to all who suffer some form of discrimination, based on gender, class, economic, religious, race/reverse racism and all but most especially to my brothers and sisters in the Diaspora is that, I GET IT!! 

The Jolly Ride That Landed Me in Entrepreneurship: A True Story

 A MINI VAN KNOWN IN LOCAL PARLANCE AS TROTRO

There I was, basking in the sun on the beach, when suddenly, a huge lion with its fiery mane from nowhere, sprung out of the Atlantic ocean towards me. I need to act fast, I thought, or I am minced meat. Then I pulled the toothpick that was clipped between my teeth and stuck it into its neck. “Boom”, the roar of heavy thunder, was the sound that made me jump suddenly out of bed and from an adventurously interesting dream. Oh it was just a dream? Argh!! I checked my clock; it was 4:30am.  Damn, I was thirty minutes late in preparing for lectures! I forgot to set the alarm! The cool breeze, the roar of thunder and bright flashes of lightening, signified a rushing rain storm. I had to speed things up or I might get stuck at home. Quickly, I took a shower and without breakfast, off I sped in the heavy wind to stand by the road in hope to catch one of those rickety mini vans fit for the junkyard. They are called Trotro in local parlance. It’s the cheapest and preferred mass transportation type for majority of the people to which I belong.

THE ROUGH RIDE

I got to the main road in time before it started showering. I hate raincoats and umbrellas; they make me feel clumsy so I rarely use them. The showers started getting heavy but luckily I had a waterproofed leather bag in which my books and phone were safely tucked. I was one of just three passengers seeking transportation; on a normal day the place is crowded and it’s usually a dogfight to get an early ride in one of those rickety vehicles.  As the storm rushed in, I looked left and right and the only available shelter was a nearby kiosk with a broken roof; I was in danger, I thought. Just when I was scrambling my brains for the next solution, I saw a bright headlight in the distance so I decided to wait awhile before taking cover. I heaved a sigh of relief when the conductor stuck his head out and yelled “37, 37” (the name of the station I was headed to before I hitch another ride to Legon my original destination). Without hesitation I sprung into the bus, oblivious of the cut that a rusty protruding metal from one those improvised seats inflicted on my right thigh, despite the fact that I was in thick denim pants. As usual of the arrangements of seats in such vehicles, anyone sitting in the middle would have to give way to someone sitting at the back should he/she wish to alight at any station! To avoid the inconvenience, I scrambled my way straight to the back and heaved a sigh of relief as i sunk relaxingly in the left corner seat.  Three more passengers joined in at the next station and the bus was full. Off we headed to our destination, in slow and careful motion as the storm raged on. By my side, sat a middle aged woman, apparently a market woman off to find her daily bread, rain or shine, with a huge head pan that kept scratching my arm as the rickety ride, swayed left to right on a bumpy rough road filled with flood and mud. I shall not complain because I know what it feels like to be the bread winner of the family especially for single mothers; I assumed maybe she was. My mind was on how to find shelter at ‘37’ for the rain to subside before I hitch my next ride to campus. Just then, I felt a drop of water on my head. Usual of such rides there was bound to be some drops so I ignored it but then it started getting heavy. Infact, it started pouring in, wetting part of my shirt. Apparently, there was a long crack on the entire length of the roof covering at the back seat. Infact we would have been actually better off in the rain at this point. Some of the passengers came to our defense with heaps of insults and complains towards the driver; some telling him ‘how all they cared about was collecting the fare and not fixing their wretched vehicles’. I thought, afterall, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t get wet at the station anyway so as my usual self, I stayed calm; strangely enough I was actually enjoying the ‘adventure’ somehow. I found the whole episode very amusing. At this point, it was virtually raining on the three of us in the back seat but guess what, instead of saving and protecting herself, the market woman decided to save me. She requested i leaned on the headrest of the seat infront and she placed her pan against the leaking roof over my back. She would hold on to the pan until it was filled with enough water and then she will slide the windows, throw it out and then put it back again. How sexy was that? All this while, she was getting wet but never ceased untill we got to ‘37’. Luckily, the storm had then subsided and it was just drizzling.  At the station, I took the pleasure to thank her and wished her a happy day and good luck in sales. She was called Esi. She responded by saying that she knew by my accoutrement that, I was a student hence a potential future leader of this country so she had to protect me.  

THE INSIDE OF A 'TROTRO'

LESSON

Esi’s act never really struck me that much at the time except for the fact that, she was an awesome woman who cares for people. I also thought then that her response was one of those usual clichés people used to encourage the young. Not until I left University and worked in public service for a short period, did her response hit me really hard. Everyone who has not had the privilege of higher education expect those who have had that privilege to fix and not compound their problems. That is why we get education, right? As revenue officer, I together with my team was tasked to enforce the law that everyone, including the struggling roadside hawker and market woman paid their taxes. These are women, boys, men and girls barely making ends meet, yet somehow we had to extract tax from them. Some of them pay in tears. Some threaten to mug, kill and hide our bodies all in the belief that we represent a corrupt system that only extracted from the poor. This was a common feature of our job anyway but I relish these challenges because they really shaped my life. Once, i had a woman petty trader, come to me, in tears willing to have her clothes seized as collateral because she couldn’t afford to pay an amount of  ¢10, an equivalent of about $3 at today’s going rate. I had to let her go at the risk of losing my job but that would have been a small price to pay. What do you do as a revenue officer if at the same time, you read stories of multi-nationals engaged in 'smart accounting' to avoid paying the appropriate taxes and engaging in money laundering? Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means an angel and there are lots of great people serving very well in public service but I just thought it was not for me. Corruption, as you may deduce from my narration, exists in both public and private sectors of every economy. It’s just part of human nature, the reason for which laws exist.

Besides, Esi’s words were perpetually painted vividly on my mind.  It’s even sadder, when on a daily basis, hawkers and market people are chased out of the streets by law enforcement but come back to extract daily tolls from these same traders. By all means laws must be obeyed to install order in the city but this is the creation of the educated, myself included, who have failed to fix a basic social problem through good planning and implementation.  That was how I was eventually pushed into fulfilling my long term ambition of being an entrepreneur with the hope of fixing problems and helping others in the process. With graduate unemployment on the rise, entrepreneurship is the way to go anyway. I admit it’s not an easy road to travel but I am enjoying the challenges so far because they always present something new to do.

CONCLUSION

In my opinion, any form of education and its benefits therein, that does not engender social change is waste because the totality of the deprived among the world population, exceed the totality of the privileged. If you’re privileged and you help the under-privileged, you will be helping yourself in the long-run. Do you have a story that may have influenced your life in anyway? I would be honoured to hear it.