Your Time is Coming to an End:
An Open Letter to Racism
About a year ago, I was a student-teacher assigned to an inner-city school. One of the classes I taught consisted of students from war-affected countries. English was their second language and as a result they often spoke in their native tongues to their friends. Many of these students had come to Canada from war zones or refugee camps, in search of a better life.
One particular day, I arrived early to set up a lesson that had been something of a passion project for me. It was a presentation on human rights and social justice, profiling the everyday people whose efforts have made a huge difference in the human rights and social justice communities respectively.
Prior to the presentation, the teacher had warned me to tread carefully, as many students came from countries that are known for their human rights offenses, and the students likely would have experienced racism themselves. Toward the end of the lesson, we did an activity where they broke into small groups and discussed what they would do if they witnessed or were a victim of racism.
There was one student, a young boy from Ethiopia, who was always happy and energetic, playing practical jokes and giggling in the middle of my lessons. That day though, there was an emptiness in his eyes that broke my heart. He looked like he was about to cry throughout the whole lesson and so when they broke into small groups, I made my way over to his table and asked him what he would do if he experienced racism.
With some prodding and support from those in his group, he told me (and later the entire class) about what had happened at lunch earlier that day. This boy and his friends had gone to a local pizza joint for lunch, and a customer complained about their presence at the table next to her. The students were paying customers, just a couple of kids eating pizza and laughing with each other. They were forced to leave not because they had been causing problems, but because of their race and the way they spoke
For the rest of the day, his words ran through my head on an endless loop. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the sadness in his face. I could hear the pain in his words and the more I thought about it, the more furious I became.
Let it be said that I am proud to be Canadian… most of the time. But when Canadians discriminate against a group of kids simply because they don’t speak English and aren’t caucasian, I am not proud of how those people represent Canada. I knew something had to be done, and I also knew that not only Canada was affected. Racism was everywhere, and has been for centuries. I thought about a quote from an unknown author, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
This generation has received an earth burdened by the problems of the previous generation. Our earth is sick, but so are the people on it. We are stricken by an epidemic, but there is no vaccination and no cure. We are stricken by hate. The world we live in now is the one we give to our children, and we must take the necessary steps to ensure that the children of the future inherit an earth that is better than the one we were born into.
I thought about how best to say this—how best to reach the youth, the future leaders of our world—and I decided to sit down and write a letter. A letter to racism, a letter to hate, and, in effect, a letter to those that, for one reason or another, think a person is less of a person based on the color of their skin or the fact that they talk differently from us. The letter reads:
Dear Racism,
Since the beginning of modern time, the world has been governed by hate, governed by you. Everywhere I look, you are there. No matter if I am turning on the news, walking down the street, or tracing my finger along the endless swastikas carved into the bus seat in front of me; you are there and you disgust me. In spite of all that hate, however, I am reminded that the world is full of people who love. Millions of people have died at your hands trying to escape from your grasp. But for as long as you have been around, there have been people to fight back with love.
You aren’t welcome here. You weren’t welcome on the cotton plantations of the deep South, as you destroyed millions of lives and created the systematic racism that exists today. You weren’t welcome as “colored only” bathrooms, water fountains, and schools popped up around the country. You weren’t welcome at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, February 1st 1960, when you beat and poured hot coffee on African-American students simply for refusing to order lunch at the “blacks only” counter. You were never welcome, but on August 28th, 1963, a preacher named Martin Luther King Jr had had enough. And to the tens of thousands gathered around him, this prophet of the modern world spoke with conviction, and pushed back at you. And as he spoke the words,“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation,” so did the rest of us.
Here in the 21st century, you grip the North American people in fear. You are the mastermind behind Charlottesville Neo-Nazi rallies. You are responsible for the deaths of innocent African Americans by our nation’s law officers, for you paint them as villains who don’t deserve the human decency you take away from people every day.
On that day in 1963, Martin Luther King said “I have a dream that one day… little black boys and black girls will he able to join hands with little white boy’s and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Over 50 years later, Dr. King’s dream of the nation as one big family regardless of how people look or where they are from, is still unrecognized because you manifest against good people. You take pleasure from the pain they have felt for the last two hundred years, and we, the brothers and sisters of today, will stand together and push back, so you may never again feel that pleasure.
We must choose to love and support, not to hate and doubt. Donald Trump, the U.S. President whose short reign over this great nation has been swathed in controversy, used his supreme power to spread your message to millions of people. You travelled through the radio waves, through the TV screens and into the homes of people who love people for who they are, and you planted the seeds of doubt.
These seeds of doubt have led us to wonder if our neighbor, co-worker, or fellow citizen wearing the Hijab is a friend or a terrorist. But to you I say: the people of this nation will uproot you, once and for all. There has never been a place in society for you, and that fact remains as true today as it did then.
You, dear reader, are the first to read this letter. It is up to you to share it, to involve your fellow peers in this war against hate. As the Ancient Proverb goes, “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will remember.” The only way we can uproot the deep seeds of racism that have torn this country apart is through action.
We must spread the message of love to douse the fires of hate. We must not stand idly by while racism spreads like wildfire, infecting the minds and worldviews of the people that can make a difference. As it is said, “Don’t build a taller fence, build a longer table.” At our table, everyone has a place, and nobody’s identity—whether male, female, or non-binary; heterosexual or LGBTQ; Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jewish; young or old; rich or poor; able bodied or a person with disabilities; black or white—is worth less than the person next to them. This is our time, and I promise you this. The masses will sit with us at the table of plenty, but it is our duty as citizens of the world to show them to their seat!
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