Ethnicity and Colour; The Divders

It is funny how the term ‘racist’ came into being.  From what I know, there is only one race of people in this world; and that is the human race.  That’s right.  The human race.  So how did colour come in?  How did ethnicity creep into the picture? Since when did political boundaries and territorial borders become more important than human life?

 As far as the history of the world goes, ethnicity and colour somehow had the power to divide the human race.  For example; Hitler believed that the Aryan people were the superior race and he led the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.  Back then in the 17^th century, the Europeans took Africans as slaves to America.  It seemed as though the colour of one’s skin determined a person’s character back then, so the Africans were called ‘Blacks.’ And then you have the crisis in Syria.  The ISIS killing innocent people in the name of Religion!? And just across the border we hear of the bloody massacre of the West Papuans by the Indonesians.  One can only imagine the oppression these people were and are going through.  Unfortunately the list does not end there…….

Watching a movie like ‘Hotel Rwanda’ changes your perspective. About life.  About death.  About peace.  And about freedom.  The friction between the Hutus and the Tutsis burned away the hopes and the livelihood of the future of Rwanda.  The Tutsis were the minority in Rwanda.  Being a Tutsi spelt danger and death.  Every Tutsi man, woman and child lived and moved with the fear of being killed anytime and anywhere. The smell of death was as real as air itself, only that it was graver. 

The movie depicts the love of a man for his wife and his sacrifices to save his family.  He is a Hutu and is married to a Tutsi woman.  Caught in between his ethnic group and that of his wife, Paul struggles to come up with ideas that will save him and his family.  He also had to put his life on the line to save a few of the Tutsis.  In such an ethnic clash, harbouring the enemy could end your life and that of your family.  But being an honourable man who always believed in doing the right thing, Paul set his heart on leaving ethnicity out of the picture and saving the lives of innocent people whose characters and life he chose to value.  

In Rwanda, all it took to be eligible for death was to be a Tutsi.  For a Hutu, one had to be loyal to his or her ethnic group.  If you were suspected of being a Tutsi spy, you would be tortured to the point of death.  The content of one’s character hardly counted.  In the Hutus eyes, all Tutsis were cockroaches; not worthy of living.  They had to be eliminated from Rwanda, and that was the awful truth.

Children; babies, toddlers and teenagers who could have lived out their childhood days have been slaughtered in the name of ethnicity.  For those who survived, the images and sounds of guns and machetes have been etched into their childhood memories.  Watching their families and people suffer at the merciless hands of the Hutus must have been a horrific torture.  No child ever deserves to witness a bloody warfare or to killed in the name of ethnicity.  Is peace too much to ask for?  Is the price for freedom and equality worth a human life?

Colour and ethnicity; two powerful words.  Powerful enough to draw a line between you and me.  Between what’s yours and what’s mine. Powerful enough to steal one’s happiness, take away one’s family and destroy an empire built on happiness. Eliminating an ethnic group from the earth makes the world less diverse.  I’m sure God had his reasons for creating the human race the way it is.  I’m sure He meant to colour up the world and teach us a lesson to learn to live with one another.  What’s to gain from all the killing?  Wealth?  Power? Glory?  That question can only be answered by one who believes in the human race.

 Watching ‘Hotel Rwanda’ changed the way I look at people.  Each and every individual is fighting a battle no one knows about.  It’s time to be a lot more kinder to familiar faces you see every day.  The may not be going through something like the genocide that took place in Rwanda years back.  But a little faith and appreciation in humanity will make a difference.

If I say that I’m a racist, that simply means I believe in the human race.

By: Rayanne Nogkas (2016)