Whacko came up with two very interesting, not to mention controversial posts recently.
This and
this. You can tell that just by looking at the shitload of comments he got. Still getting. Well I'm not trying to get as much comments, not trying to come up with my own controversial post just for the sake of it, but just wanted to add my two cents to this interesting conversation, or debate if you want to call it that.
Getting back to the topic.
Are you a racist? I think I am. And I also think we all are. I assume that someone is a racist if that someone is a homo
sapien, just as I assume that someone is a liar if the said someone is a homo
sapien. It's inherent in us. It's built into us. That's the way we are.
Take a minute and take a good hard look at humans. I mean not literally, don't stare at the chick in front of your desk at work, but think about humans. Ever since we were created by god, or since the mother nature turned the little black apes in to us - pick the one you like - we always wanted to divide ourselves into groups didn't we? As much as we are a
social breed, we want to be social in groups. From the beginning of time, or rather the beginning of humans we divided ourselves into as much groups as we could. First we were hunters, but there were males and females. Females collected things like berries and stuff, took care of children and probably even decorated their caves with flowers that existed some thousands of years ago, while men went on and did the more
macho and masculine stuff like hunting. It's a different story that women, instead of us men hunt more these days, that they even hunt us men down. Then we started cultivating, and more groups started to pop up, there were hunters, the new farmers and what not. They divided themselves into groups based on their geographical locations mostly. The group on the other side of the river had the right to their land and nobody from this side would enter their territory. And vice
versa. There was
our land and then there was
their land. Our food, their food. We and they. You get the drift, I think.
What I want to say is, though they might not have clashed with each other all the time, this feeling, this concept of 'us', which was built into us was there all the time. By the last 'us' in the previous sentence I meant the humankind. See my point?
With time we evolved, or became civilized so to speak. But the concept of
ours and
theirs always remained. Today, we have found new ways in which we can divide ourselves into. We're Asians, Westerners or Aussies though some people put them - who are in the far east corner of the world - in the Westerners category which defies all logic. Then again there are not corners in a globe so maybe they do have a point. We divide into whites and blacks, not to mention browns and yellows and whatever else. We are
Sri Lankans, Indians, Americans or Eskimos. When it comes to
Sri Lanka, such a small island and such a small population, how many groups do we have? Up country
Kandyans are categorized as big heads, while the wily old southerners are not to be trusted. Then comes the race. We are Sinhalese, we are Tamils, we are Muslims and we are many more. Even if you take us Sinhalese, don't we divide us into casts, and treat differently? I know people give much less importance to it by the day, but it still exists. Don't believe me? Take a look at marriage proposal column in a Sunday newspaper. And I didn't even mention the religions.
What I meant to say is, it is in our nature to divide ourselves into groups as much as we can. We feel comfortable that way. The thought that we belong somewhere is always comforting. Now I'm getting to my point. To divide us into groups, we need something to be based on. We are white, black or brown because of our color. We are Asians or Westerners depending on our geographical location. Same goes with countries. Then races. Though, it is a bit confusing what a race is. Certainly there are some biological differences in each race, I think that has something to do with breeding within that race for centuries though I'm not qualified nor knowledgeable to explain that any further. But I think you do agree, that Sinhalese differ from Tamils, Muslims and Jews or
Japs. Then, there are some other differences that goes with races which are purely, the word is
adjustable, I think. If a white boy born to American parents was raised by a Tamil family in
Sri Lanka, he would be a Tamil in all sense except for the color of his skin, wouldn't he? The same goes with adopted Sinhalese children in Western countries. Remember that girl who perform exceptionally well in Australian Idol, who was born to
Sri Lankan parents but was raised in Aussie? When someone introduced her as
Sri Lankan, she objected and said that she was an Aussie. And she was damn right!
Now, after we divide ourselves and put us into groups, we do have a sense of belonging and a sense of
ours don't we? We love our mothers the most. Our fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Exception is the spouse. But the thing is, we do love
our group, and nobody says it's wrong. The problems starts when while we love, care and treat
ours the best we can, we start to treat
theirs a bit, say, not so well. There in lies the problem, but it is also the human nature if not the nature of all things alive. It is not necessarily the right thing, but that is how things are!
Let's talk about
Whacko's arguments a bit. When you summarise what he has to say, he says that Tamils and Muslims in
Sri Lanka are being treated differently, and that is to say less favorably compared to the Sinhalese. I beg to differ. It must have been the case, and yes it does exist to a certain extent today, but not as much.
There is one thing I want to differentiate between here. That is, the way in which each race is treated by the constitution and the way in which we treat each other individually. My whole point of this post narrows down to the fact that while the former can be addressed, should be addressed and is being addressed, with the latter we are all a bit helpless and it is up to us individuals to correct that. Now, a while ago
NB came up with a
good post about the privileges Muslims enjoy in
Sri Lanka. It is a pretty long list and to be frank pretty accurate as well. They do enjoy all that and some more. And so do the Tamils in
Sri Lanka. In short, the constitution of
Sri Lanka has given minorities enough privileges to enjoy and enough power as well in my opinion. Here I do not want to get into a verbal battle about should we go to talks with the
LTTE, because while we should treat Tamils with much respect and equality, TERRORISTS should be crushed. And that is what
LTTE is. So if you want to argue on that, save it.
Then, while that remains such, the way we treat the members of each race in a personal level does have some racism involved. I said this in the comments section of a post by
Whacko, but let me state it here again. Say you're the CEO of a company and that you are in the process of recruiting someone. After many interviews you select two guys, or girls for that matter who have exactly the same qualifications. They are both excellent, but you need to chose only one of them. If one of them was a Sinhalese and the other was a Muslim or a Tamil, who would you choose? If I'd be frank, I'd choose the Sinhalese guy. Now before jumping the gun on me, sit back and think for a minute. Who would you chose? As far as I know, only an alien would be totally unbiased given the situation. What I'm trying to say is we try to treat
our side better than
their side, almost always. When it comes to friends and family nobody gives two hoots, but when it comes to race, cast or color of the skin things differ. But, the things is, it goes both ways. Not just the Sinhalese treat their kind that way, so do the Muslims and Tamils. Sinhalese hold monopolies in so many industries/businesses in
Sri Lanka and they do discriminate others to a certain extent. But how many businesses are there in
Sri Lanka that Muslims and Tamils hold monopolies over? So many right? And if you are not being naive, you will have to agree with me that there is discrimination by them as well. When Sinhalese gather together and talk about Muslims, they might talk ill about them, but wouldn't the Muslims and Tamils also do the same?
But the world is not as bad as it seems. What is important is, despite differences, and inherent hate between our races we still manged to live rather peacefully. I want to talk about the place where my home is. It's in Kandy and in my hometown there is a very large Muslim population. I'm not exactly sure about the statistics, but it is close to 50-50. And almost all the shops belong to the Muslims. But we never ever had any kind of conflict there, in fact we do go along quite well. I do have a lot of Muslim friends, and they are being invited to our home every
Sinhala New Year day. And we are invited to their homes for their new year. Muslims support us a lot when we organize "
Dansala" for Wesak and
Poson poya days, and one time the richest Muslim
Mudalali made the largest contribution to our
Dansala. Not to mention the chicks we tried to dig from each other's race.
The bottom line is, there was always some friction between different races that are in Paradise, there is now, and there will always be as far as we remain humans. But as long as we manage not to go as far as kill each other, which I'm sure we won't bother starting again, things will be fine.
The world is not as bad a place as it seems folks...
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