Experiencing Discrimination – The Students' Herald

Young people have not developed fiendish racial views in vacuum, writes Usama Malick

Discrimination is experienced in many forms, and it often befuddles one’s mind that such a thing can even exist in this world. Discrimination against minorities is now ubiquitous and its skyrocketing repercussions in our societies confer on the recently turned adults an ability that they can pen down long narrative essays containing the pros and cons of the world’s majority of states not being—in real meanings— pluralistic ones. Mostly, the cons you will get to notice in such essays or pieces.

Gender discrimination is a thing of the past as many new dimensions have been discovered by the increasingly intolerable world netizens. Looking down upon the poor, deeming transgenders as having no hearts, regarding the widows as ill-fated humans(it has been a norm in India and still exists) and looking upon the birth of baby girls as bad good omens in many Asian countries are some vicious perceptions that continue to plague the world even today. If you are a man holding respectable posture as well as some fortune, you will witness how you get treated differently from the ‘guttersnipes’, daily wagers and the hoi polloi who pay—if ever get some money to enjoy a few luxuries of life— the same amount of money to buy, supposedly, a dozen bananas but they end up procuring the ones which just remain with one day life more.

Furthermore, the recent assassination of African-American George Floyd by allegedly a white police officer of Minneapolis city stands as a testament as to how gravely the white supremacists have become hollow inwardly for they don’t feel like bearing the presence of black people in the self-proclaimed “their states.” According to The New York Times, George Floyd survived mere eight minutes and 46 seconds in police custody and then succumbed to the brute torture inflicted upon him by the inhumane officers. His demise ignited nationwide protests seeking an end to this odious decades-old racial violence. After a few hours of his death, the social media app Twitter turned into a hot platform for debate with people excessively arguing that it had been decades since the blacks and browns were being treated with discrimination and within no time the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter had become the top trend all the globe over.

To let this tragic incident not go unnoticed, a plethora of eminent celebrities, journalists and authors also voiced their concerns over this issue that helped this matter obtain a tad more limelight. Besides this, everyone, largely Americans, came up with short clips where the black people were seen being targeted and beaten by the cops for no particular reason apparently. The hegemony of whites has been intact there for decades and doesn’t seem to go anywhere or end in the foreseeable future. But the question is whether American president Donald Trump who time and again reinforces this rhetoric “Let’s make America great again” will be able to cause this uphill task to come true sans the assistance of blacks who make up total nigh 13 percent or 50 million in this world power’s gross population.

A flick having a similar context namely Tall Girl released last year showcased an eerie kind of discriminatory behaviour based on body shaming. Seeing the woman being badgered and abused equally from both the genders merely owing to having a bit extra height as compared to other girls was utterly depressing and cumbersome. Therefore, you cannot anticipate from the multitudes of today’s contemporary world that they may spare you for the faults—either they are psychological or physical— which are not even man-made.

Youths have not developed such fiendish racial views in vacuum. Actually, they are conveyed to them by their parents.

A few weeks ago, I read in The Wall Street Journal a piece of news and it was about University of California removing the requirement of SAT and ACT tests for admissions as the university observed that they gave way to discrimination. According to the reasons cited by the varsity administration, blacks mostly would find themselves unable in some cases to pass those tests and on the flipside, fiscal issues become roadblocks in getting admissions for the required tests were out of the reach of many aspiring students. Undoubtedly, it has been a praiseworthy and bold step towards ending this diabolical discrimination.

Hatred against the people on the basis of their different colours and races in the developed nations has risen to an alarming level and it can certainly lead to uncontrollable mass disruptions in future as well. The recent paradigm of US citizens thronging the roads in order to demand justice for George Floyd must serve as a caveat to the world and United Nations that legal actions taken timely—against the officials and those who bolster this notion that people be served according to the colour of their skin— may contain the loss of thousands of lives. What on earth does the cruel world not feel that black people also have hearts in their chests so considering them as equal humans ought to be treated accordingly.

“Can you feel me now

That I’m vulnerable in oh-so many ways?

Oh, and I’ll never change

Oh, I couldn’t stop it”

Lyrics by: Maggie Rogers(Tall Girl)