We live in a world of colors and labels, lots of them. A world where our eyes only see the colors but never bother to look at what is on the inside of a person. We live in a world where we can somehow speak color, and act color. “You talk white”“You act black” they say. It is ridiculous.
We live in a world of colors, a world where colors define what we are and the way we will be treated. Our eyes are bound to the colors that our skin bears and somehow, we let our minds be chained to the concept of skin colors and what we think they represent. Men and women are being judged and discriminated for the color that they bear, for something that is not in their control. We are bound to the colors of our skin, and it is something that we can never change, something we have no control over.
Prejudice creates a loop where hatred is followed by hatred. When we hurt each other, we keep on hurting because we always want to be the one with the last words or actions. We let our grudges be thrown back and forth and we are not the only one who is affected. It is a chain of pain, of hurt and segregation. I see this cycle of hatred and the thing is I cannot stop it. Not alone. This cycle goes on and on and how many more lives will be sacrificed at the hand of prejudice and injustice before we realize that it is time to take actions?
Discrimination does not have a limit. A single difference can lead to segregation and bias.
Buddha once said “with our thoughts we make the world”. What one sees and feels creates the world around them. For some, the brownness of one’s skin indicates violence, that whoever bears such color could only cause troubles for others. What do you see when you look at the black color on one’s skin? Do you see crime and malice? Or do you see the richness in it and embrace that beauty to your heart? The point is you have total control over what you see and it is up to you to make your world surrounded with beauties by realizing the prettiness in everything. Or, by looking for the irrational malice in these colors, make the world a nasty and dangerous place. If you can surround yourself with beauty, why choose ugliness?
Do not discriminate and do not hate without basis because if you let your mind be clouded with all those assumptions based on just the color of their skin, you will never be able to see the beauty that they possess, you will never be able to see them for what they are. To make it short, if you look at these people by just glancing at the shade of their skin, you will never truly see them. Our thoughts are the lenses through which our eyes and mind perceive the world. For instance, a color is just a color, nothing more and nothing less, but to a racist, they thought that it means something, no, everything but a color. It means superiority or inadequacy. It means whether they should be nice or brutally rude without a care in the world for others’ feelings. It is everything to them. It should not be. It should never be. Now, time for the truth. These people are us.
We are the ones who make colors define everything a person is. We are the ones to create these concept of colors and we make it more than they should be, making ourselves comfortable in our own skins and criticizing people with different shades than ours.
Why do we do that? Are we not aware that these ways of thinking could affect the way we treat others and the way others feel? Do we not realize that these thoughts could kill someone if we allow them to become actions? Maybe we don’t. Maybe we do but we choose to ignore because it is easier to hate and make other feel bad about themselves through the method of racism and discrimination. After all, how much can these small little thing possibly do? It can kill and it did. Men and women of colors fall one after another because of something they did not have any control over, because of our concepts of colors, because we choose hatred over love and understanding, because we choose to ignore the consequences of clinging onto the meaning and importance of colors, that we make up in our mind.
Race is not the only problem here. Gender is also an issue that we should address.
The people around transgender individuals insist them to be their body to be how someone with their body should be, to trap themselves inside, to hold all the hurt and all the pain of not being able to be themselves inside. To those people who hurt these men and women, they are humans they know of pain. They know of suffering. We all do because guess what, at the end of the day, we are humans. We hate pain and we want happiness. So why hurt someone just like you? Someone who just wants to smile and for all the scars to go away? What could be the reason that justifies your action of insulting and hurting and taking away someone’s happiness, the very same thing that you need everyday? What could be the reason that makes it okay to steal these people’s smiles, to take love away from them?
Though it is in human nature to be angry and mad, it does not justify the fact that we risk the possibility that someone will get hurt by our discrimination against people with the skin like them, the chance that we will treat someone unfairly not because of the person that they are but the skin colors that they have. It is important that we realize the impact of our thoughts. Our thinking influences the way we behave and our action does not just affect ourselves but others as well. Our actions have an impact, whether large or small. A single word of kindness can save someone’s life just as a small act of malice can lead to someone ending their own life.
There is a way to put an end to all of this. It all starts with our understanding toward pain. Understanding pain allows us to be more sympathetic and loving toward people.
Pain is a powerful thing. It could change the way we are and the people around us. It is the one thing we all have in common. As humans, we just want to be happy and work our way toward our definitions of blithe. When we are not happy, we feel pain, an emotion of discomfort that we just want it to stop as soon as possible. We don’t want to get hurt. We hate it, so much that many would rather end their own lives than live through the pain. Then, why? Why would we go and hurt someone and discriminate them and cause them pain? Why would we go ahead and inflict all these hurts we are also trying to run from to other people? Do we not realize our need for happiness and distaste for pain? Do we not know that these people are just the same? We feel pain. Yet we still choose to inflict in on others.
Why love a stranger? Because they are just humans like you, beings that just wants to smile and for the pain to stop.
Look. Learn how to really look. Look with your eyes closed because as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of the famous novel The Little Prince, once wrote in that very same book “and now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye,” it is not the outside that we should trust. It is the inside of ourselves that is vital. It is what behind those colors that matters. The point is we let our eyes be the only thing that looks around and appearance is more often than not, deceiving. So, instead of the eyes, let your mind do the looking. And this time, look deeper and realize that behind those colors, we are humans. Beings who feel hurt. Beings that just want to be happy. Who are we to take away those joy from them just because of something as simple as their color skin?
Discrimination knows no boundaries. A single difference can lead to a chain of hatred that seems to never rest. It is important that we put an end to this chain of discrimination, to stop the pain that it is causing, and to ensure that everybody will be treated as human rather than the color on their skin.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that “According to a research, one out of twelve transgender are murdered.”
About the Author
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