Always See the Person, Not the Stereotype

Recently the news has reported a few incidents of racism on public transport: A person on a bus is hounded by blanket comments from a spectator alluding to his or her race group, saying get off the bus you <insert race group expletive>. Bystanders may look on for fear of getting caught up in a racist argument, or perhaps because many agree with the shouted sentiments. Sometimes the person who is being villified may even look like many other people on the bus, but speaks with a different accent and is from a different culture. Sometimes of course the person being taunted has a hand in egging people on, maybe touching an arm or making a provocative gesture or using sly words said with a smirk, but the response towards such people should never be a blanket racist statement, for example, you people are all alike; people can be shouted at in general instead, for example, hey you, leave me alone or I'm calling the police.

I have seen examples of racist behaviour reported about widely divergent ethnic groups, showing that this tendency can occur along the entire race spectrum and that any group can be targeted by any other group. Racism towards others is colour blind in a sense, as people from all races groups can discriminate and hold racist attitudes, and people who are targeted may themselves target others, especially their persecutors.

How do we avoid racism? Firstly, I believe racist attitudes should not be taught. Never accuse an individual's bad behaviour as being due to their race! Don't tell your children that such and such a group is dangerous because of their colour. This can be easy to do if one grows up in an area where the majority of a group look a certain way, as one may hold prejudicial mindsets if one has experienced untoward behaviour which seems to emanate from the group. For example, if one is constantly the victim of crime and perpetrators always seem to be of the same colour, this can imply that the group as a whole is to blame and that individuals from the group are all the same. Yet consider that this may be because the individuals concerned are from the same majority group or societal community. It is never the group as a whole that is dangerous, it is individuals only, as a group of people from a certain race who seem dangerous to residents in a particular country may not pose a risk as a group at all in another country. Why is this the case? I have lived in a country where crime seemed to largely emanate from a non-white sector of society, and these people were the majority, and I have lived in another country where crime seems to emanate mostly from the white sector of society, and in this case these people form the majority.

I initially thought this precedent must be due to poverty and the more downtrodden sector of society in each country, then I stopped my thoughts as I remembered that I have been in very poor parts of countries where poorer people are wholly ethical and polite and friendly. I have, for example, seen poor people in Africa warmly greeting people of other colours and cultures. I have also seen people in Africa who are more wealthy, who look the same as the poorer people mentioned, who seem to be career criminals instead, and who rob people violently at gun point and sometimes will kill someone for less than a dollar. One should never generalise. What causes some people who lack resources to turn to crime and hate, whereas others remain polite and upstanding? I put this phenomenon down largely to the upbringing of individuals concerned. It is possible that lack of ethics and lack of love drive some criminal behaviour, as well as learnt behaviour and peer pressure, especially where people are largely uneducated and lack a sense of self and a sense of purpose. I wrote a blog article recently titled, Learning Bad Behaviour By Example As Demonstrated by Bella, the Dog. Role models in society are vitally important, to teach upstanding examples of behaviour. We do learn from our peers and the example society presents to us as a whole. Are our teachers caring and friendly, for example, or do they ignore stragglers and do they lack empathy? The overriding culture may dominate and spread the overriding message within the community. Change needs to happen in all sectors of society to uplift communities, and the easiest place to teach this is with children in schools and in our homes. This may take a long time for good to spread, if bad is entrenched, but sometime tipping point will be reached and good will take hold.

What I suspect is that a group who seems persecuted when they are the minority may become the persecutors when they are the majority group, or when they hold power. All people have the capacity to do this! This is why it is important, I believe, to try to eliminate mindsets where we form groups and it's best to only look at individuals. Of course one wants to honour one's own culture and ethnic roots, but we should strive to see all citizens of a country as individuals with equal rights who are all part of one nation. As soon as one group bands together against others, or one group is given more human rights or privileges than others in the same country, this tends to lead one down the slippery slope of discrimination and tends to create classes of advantage levels.

Change should not be about counting the numbers of different groups of people to make sure quotas are reached; change should mean we are all colour blind and we see only individuals, not stereotypes.