A century-old illness is still affecting up to 40% or more of the human population.
Unbeknownst to many, humanity has been plagued with an almost incurable disease for centuries. Depending on the country below five or even in some cases up to above 40% of the population are affected by it. India and Jordan are two of the countries most affected followed by France, Indonesia and with a rate of around 20–30% Russia and China. At around 5–10% are Germany and Mexiko. In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and the United States below 5% of the population are affected. If you are curious where your country is exactly you can find a map on here.
Several decades ago Humanity was close to being overtaken by this disease. A disease that affects the mental health of everybody who is infected, farmer or politician, doctor or scientist, women or man. In recent times humanity has come closer to working on the eradication of this illness. Yet the news broadcast frequently talks about new casualties. What is this illness that I am talking about?
The cause of it is unknown and there seems to be no way to treat it. There seems to be a correlation between age and grade of infection however several young people are also affected by it.
Symptoms of this century old disease are: severe cases of discrimination against foreigners, loss of intelligence which is in turn often connected with people making public statements against people of color.
With the recent wave of refugees reaching Europe this problem of racism has started to become more prevalent in European politics. In Germany we have a political party of right-wing extremists disguised as an “alternative” option and in the USA the police kills unarmed people of color almost at will.
In the 21st century racism is still a global issue and has to be dealt with on a political but also a social level.
When I walk by a foreign looking person I always think about how I can’t even imagine what they have to put up with just because they look different. Quite a few of my friends don’t look “typically european” yet I’ve never asked them if they face any forms of racism. It’s hard to imagine if you yourself don’t face it and don’t see a reason why anyone should because it is just plain stupid to rate or value people by the color of their skin. That’s like valueing a persons wealth by the look of their pet. Doesn’t make any sense. Yet it’s a widespread issue.
German “politician” Gauland recently stated in an interview that he and “the people” wouldn’t want to have a “Boateng” (defense player in the German national football team) as their neighbor. Not only was he born and raised in Germany but he has been playing football in the national teams for the past 11 years. Gaulands statement sparked a debate not only in politics but especially online where thousands of people posted statements of support for Boateng. Just yesterday in Germany’s game against Ukraine Boateng managed an incredible save and denied a goal for the Ukrainian team. This obviously led to more mockery of Gauland. And even though it sounds positive that there has been a lot of support for Boateng there are still up to 1 in 5 people who are racist in Germany.
Let’s have a look at another part of the world now. Since this is a blog article for a publication called Newzealand thoughts I have to somehow manage to turn the discussion to New Zealand which I hereby did in a more or less elegant way. As I mentioned earlier New Zealand ranks high among the countries with the lowest amount of racism in its society. And while there are not a lot of cases of public discrimination against people of different ethnic groups, racism doesn’t only manifest itself as such. Institutional discrimination is a good example for this. In New Zealand’s educational system some sections of the population are being discriminated against due to the inherent rules of these institutions. Now this isn’t just the case in New Zealand but it’s also a global issue. However this is just to illustrate that there are ways of discrimination which can be a form of racism. Amongst these forms of inequality we have things like economic injustice which mostly affects particular parts of the population, surprisingly these groups are often the same when comparing different countries. For New Zealand this mostly affects the Maori. How crazy is it that this form of discrimination and racism affects the group of people who lived there long before the first white settlers came. Everywhere and every place where white people went in the past centuries they brought and transmitted this disease and so they did in New Zealand.
Dr. Napoleon Wells talked about Racism and its similarities to psychological disorders and how it is much like other mental illnesses and thus there has to be a way to treat it. You can hear and watch the whole talk here.
To conclude this blog article let me say one thing. In a globalized world in the 21st century there is no place for racism or discrimination against anyone or anything. Human kind has originated from one source and the globalization enabled us to be closer together than at any point in time before. You can have friends in the Philippines, Indonesia, USA, Germany, Sweden, Tanzania, Nigeria or Nicaragua and talk to them. Does it matter what color their skin has? Hell no it doesn’t. People aren’t great people because of their skin and everyone who thinks that color has any impact on anything is just stupid or, after reading up on medical research on the psychology of racism, most likely mentally ill.
Lastly I would like to invite you to write your comments about racism down below and maybe some of you want to share a story about this issue and maybe others have some advice on how to deal with it.
Think about this for a minute:
What do all of these words have in common: black and white, black market, to moonlight (or in German “working black”), fare evasion (“driving black”),... and how racist is your language?
