Racist

 I, personally, do not care if you think I am racist. I believe that I am not and I am pretty certain that I give all individuals equal standing regardless of their race but if you feel like I am coming up short, I do not care. I have enough reasons to be racist that do not reflect badly on my character so my striving to ensure that I am not is more than you deserve. 

I have 368 years of reasons to be racist. I am in a perpetual state of anger that messes with my quality of life because of you. Every time I turn on National Geographic and the narrator speaks of the dwindling North American buffalo I am reminded that they were almost wiped out of extinction because the Native Americans were dependent on them for survival and Europeans weren’t too happy about them being alive. 

My blood boils when I listen to prominent white people such as Bill Gates and Prince William speak about how overpopulation, and I remember the British hero, Winston Churchill allowed million of Indians to die of starvation because their lives had no value in his eyes. He even said, “Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits.” When the Delhi government sent him pictures of the consequences for the Indian people, he asked them, “then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?” 

My heart aches when I listen to the Holocaust being recognized as the worst crime against humanity ever, as if King Leopold the 2nd of Belgium wasn’t responsible for the deaths of 10 -15 million Africans in the Congo. I hate that they have put me in a position where I am forced to participate in the Oppression Olympics against other people who were wronged simply because I want our suffering to be recognized too. 

Whenever I am ashamed to meet the eyes of my friends from other African countries because of the xenophobia in South Africa, I am reminded that it only exists because they decide to divide land between themselves that was never theirs to begin with, and now we are living with the consequences of those decisions in 2020. My heart aches when I listen to my mother talk about how she had to learn a different language to avoid certain death because of tribal conflict in the early 90s that was fueled by the Apartheid government. Whenever I experience racism from a person of colour, I think about how the architects of Apartheid smile in their graves because they may have lost the battle, but they definitely won the war.

There are plenty of reasons for me to be racist and each one is more hurtful than the last, yet I still choose to not carry that darkness in my soul because I would be feeding myself poison and waiting for you to die. But don’t you ever for a second think that you are entitled to my forgiveness because history tells me if the roles were reversed I wouldn’t even get the chance to utter a word because I would either be in chains, in jail or 6 feet under. If you think that I am racist, okay, and if you realise that I am not, be grateful.


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