How America has changed from the land of the free, home of the brave, and fast becoming a land of hate!
Likewise, it’s a bitter truth but an open secret that no one can feel safe in a toxic environment where hate is fast replacing what America stands for and is known for: love and looking after one another.
The fact is that hate as a human condition is never good, never has it is good and it will never be good in any civilized society.
As a Black and African man born and bred in a dictatorship, racism in America is vitriolic and if care is not taken, a ticking time bomb. Racism has become worrisome for those who can foresee the danger this malaise poses for the country and the good people of America as a whole.
No one can tell with precision where the already available toxic/hate recipes may lead us. Worse still, our enemies can also take advantage of the situation to cause further damage to our already fractured coexistence.
On a more serious note, the situation in the United States, according to T.R. Affatato, this human condition has been part of our DNA from time immemorial. “It is a condition of hatred and inhumane treatment of one another for millennia,” he said. He didn’t stop there but went further to cite his background as someone who has lived in culturally diverse cities like New York and could speak authoritatively on the subject of racist hate. Asserting how he grew up in the 1960s and 1970s surrounded by assassinations, the Civil Rights
Movement, Vietnam War. He expressed his worries about the future of the United States of America. He fears civil war and blamed it all on the human species, while he maintained that the fear is real.
Coincidentally, I’m in a better position, too, to talk not only of racism and hate in America which unfortunately is now affecting all races (white, black, brown, Jews, Moslems, and now Asians). Racism has its twin brother called tribalism mostly found outside of the United States of America. The similarity can be considered as same co-travelers with identical symptoms intended to cause bitterness and segregation. It symbolizes anything but overtly evil and wicked. Both racism and tribalism are a twin-root cause of human’s discriminative and cruel conditions. While racism is widespread in the West (America and Europe) between or among different races; tribalism on its part, exists and it’s practiced widely in Africa, sometimes openly and callously within different tribes.
All else being equal, no matter how you look at it or paint it, what’s bad is bad. In other quarters they say two wrongs cannot make a right. Of course, any racial hate, or slur is bad. And a racial attack particularly on Asians is even worse and in no way the wrongs can be seen as right. Such an attitude will only make us be looking over our shoulders and always in fear.
To put a permanent check on this incessant Asian attack, we should become co-laborers and allyship (empathizing and acting with others in pursuit of ending oppression and creating equality) to advance racial justice. It should be a forum to building a more perfect and inclusive society thereby the basis for a perfect Union. Being co-laborers would mean provide a platform for all of us to stand together to fulfill the old but profound saying of “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” A premise that would assure us of advancing our fight for racial justice and peace for all without any prejudice.