Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
WRITTEN BY KALAHAN DENG
Racism in America in the past was considered as a part of convention or social institution that has no boundaries or limitations against black people. This is a hard fact about America which many people do not know or understand. Freedom for black people was one thing and equality something else. In other words, black and white people were living separately but equal under the same law or constitution that discriminates against them. For example, Jim Crow laws which were based on the idea that separation between white and black people is now and forever more, but black people were not deterred by that prejudice system that was instituted by some white folks who just hated black people because of their being from the other side of the world. Even in South Africa, the black continent, racial discrimination between black and white lasted over 300 hundred years and eventually came to an end like melting ice. The white minority that was running the country thought through oppression and destruction of young black men, their discriminating system would last forever. Unfortunately, that system vibrated away and the people will prevailed. Do we still see that kind of racism today in Americans?
Therein, at the beginning of slavery business until the revolutionary war in the U.S.A. Our forefathers who were enslaved in America started looking for freedom in ever more far distance places and small numbers were running away to Canada. Why Canada? Because, no slavery for black people, and no slavery meant no slavery catchers.
In Canada, a black person could serve on a jury, a black person could vote, and a black person could become a citizen and own property like any other Canadian. This good news travelled across America to all black people that Canada is for them and America for white people only. It was estimated that over 10,000 African-Americans fled to Canada in 1850 including the well-known conductor of the under-ground rail road who settled in a small town known as St. Catherine.
This historical account is a reminder to my African-Canadians who do not know the greatest role Canada played in helping our ancestors who were enslaved, deprived of their dignity, and even killed for being from a black continent who were brought to America as slaves and not as fellow human beings.
Furthermore, if you cannot trust yourself, then, you cannot trust others who do not look or have the skin colour like you. Many of us failed to comprehend that variety is the spice of life and racism or hate should not be a part of human nature for any account. For the whole universe expresses itself in each one of us; no matter how or what the skin colours look like, the languages some of us speak, ethnicity, and beliefs. For we all belong to this universe which we came out of and which we shall leave behind when each one of us days are over.
We need a new kind of consciousness that tells us who we are, because we do not yet know ourselves as we should. We do not judge ourselves by how each one of us look or treat each other as enemies with no apparent reason. We all belong to one race that breathe in the same air and experience the same pain or happiness.
