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Equality and Skin Colour
Posted 9th February 2006 at 12:00pm by M1ke, tagged as Politics, Religion | Commenting Closed

Ever since Martin Luther King's civil rights movement, we have been aware of the need for equality in our society. This is a fact that does not change - everyone should be treated on their actions and merits, and not judged on circumstance. But recently it seems that people are forgetting that if things are equal, they don't need to be considered.

2+3 = 5
5=5
0=0

That's a simple mathematical example of something that has nothing to do with maths. What I'm getting at is that there is still a high level of segregation in our western society. The two main areas of discrimination are between opposite sexes, and different races - more specifically, different skin colours. The former is more of a complex issue, as men and women can be very different in a lot of aspects, and so there are considerations to be made when hiring them for jobs, for example. But two people with different skin colour have just that, and nothing more different. Just look at Michael Jackson - despite looking like a bit of a freak, he's pretty convincingly white. Skin colour is no different from hair colour, eye colour or anything else.

This is all very obvious - indeed all movements aimed at promoting 'equality' have made this clear (anti-apartheid, civil rights etc.). But if this is so, why do we keep having it shoved down our faces? Whatever people may say, we still have segregation, and I'd reckon that around 80% of the population of England segregate themselves from people with a different skin colour. Not just people - the media is a prime culprit, as is the government. Let's look at a few areas in which segregation is made very obvious:

• 1Xtra, radio for black music
• The Mojo awards, music awards for black music
• Hiring regulations on ethnicity
• Being asked to put down an ethnic type on surveys
• Promotions, campaigns and the like on contributions by ethnic groups
• Regulations against 'racism'

Now that was rather a diverse list, and what was apparent? That we still live in a society where skin colour segregates us.

Now, there will already be people reading this and thinking 'racist' in my general direction, because I seem to be opposed to what people would view as 'inclusion' of other groups. This is not the case, what I am saying here is that there are no other groups - or not separated by such ridiculous criteria as skin colour. Sure, a black person from Africa has a very different cultural view in comparison to a white person in London - but the same is true between a white person in London and one in Russia, between a black person in America and one in Asia. The upbringing, the choices, the location, all these things contribute to the wonderful diversity we see in society, but skin colour is meaningless.

I class myself as British - I am proud of this as it is my home country. A friend of mine back at High School classed himself as Mauritian, due to his coming from there. He had black skin, but his outlook was different from mine only because of where he had come from. Another boy, like me, classed himself as British. He also had black skin, but in this case his outlook did not differ from mine, because we grew up in the same place, went to the same school and the like. Segregation based on skin colour is, as you can see, stupid.

But why do we still do it then? My own guess is that it's just inbuilt into us, in our upbringing. A child sees a boy in his infant class with black skin and thinks nothing of it. He goes home, tells his mummy that his new friend has black hair, brown eyes and black skin. His mummy tells him that he must be respectful of the boy, that he mustn't offend him, that he must be careful what he says. The child now views the boy as something different from him, something separated. The boy's parents maybe did the same - as their boy was going into a class with all white people, they told him that he shouldn't be afraid of them, that they were no better than him, that he should stand up for himself. The boy would have done all that out of social interaction anyway, but now he does it because he thinks he is different. As he grows up, he will gravitate towards other black boys, and the chain of segregation continues. How easy it is, to be careful of something and end up highlighting its existence all the more.

The answer, in the end, is not for me to decide. Were I in charge of the country, I would order that people never be forced to see differences - that they should make their own minds up. Radio stations should play musical genres, not play music depending on the skin colour of the musician. Awards should be given to those deserving of awards, jobs given to those who fit the bill. Maybe some job interviewers still have racial prejudice - so how about preventing face to face contact if the boss of an interviewer believes this to be the case. In schools, remove the posters promoting equality - instead let the children never see a difference. In law, treat those in the court as if they too had full body suits on, as if their skin colour were hidden - judge on their behaviour. Whatever people may say, adding more laws for protection of this so called 'equality,' bringing in more teaching of it, promoting any group in any area only ever reinforces the segregated society - no matter how good people feel it to be.

If the system worked, I wouldn't even be writing this lengthy blog, as I would never have noticed the difference between black and white.

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