What Is Your Defence In?

We are still reeling from the senseless attack that sadly led to the loss of the lives of three young girls who had their entire futures ahead of them. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families and others who are still recovering from the physical and psychological trauma of the attack. Unfortunately, the attention, prayers, love and support that should have been directed to the victims and their community was hi-jacked by people with their own warped agendas.

In the past few weeks, parts of the UK have witnessed horrific violence and abhorrent behaviours steeped in hatred, bigotry, Islamophobia and racism. We can’t call it anything but what it really is. We can’t use fancy words like ‘riots’ or ‘demonstrations’ as those words make mockery of what we are seeing on our streets, is unfair to those at the receiving end of these behaviours and it condones the behaviours of the perpetrators.

I have encouraged friends and colleagues after listening to stories about their lived experiences and I have shed tears sometimes forgetting that I am also in the same ‘boat’ as them – forgive the pun. We have heard inflammatory phrases banded by ‘so called’ political leaders and the media have a field day with their power, a power that far too many of them have wielded from a cesspit of hatred, racism, bias and bigotry.

The media rarely fail to use the pictures of ‘Black’ football players to headline any losses even when they played better, were on the pitch for less times or didn’t even play at all. The wins on the other hands have to have a golden ‘White’ player to take the well-deserved and supposedly ‘earned’ crown.

We all fail when we don’t call these things out. We are happy to win on the shoulders of those we despise, we celebrate them mostly only when we get what we want from them and God forbid they get it wrong, we show them what we really think of them. How mighty of us as a ‘so-called’ evolved people.

Sadly, some of the people we celebrate and argue for, and sometimes on the basis of defending our religions or faith are laughable at worst and offensive at best. If the people we back in the polls exhibit behaviours and use words that would make others be seen as less than human, making them a target for attacks, we are complicit.

We live in a world where those who are meant to be the light and shine the light are willing to sleep with darkness to get a crumb of ‘something’. God can fight His own battles, so we don’t need to sleep with His enemies, lift up the golden calves or dine with those who hate His creations for His sake.

Hatred and bigotry make us willing to get in bed with the devil calling ourselves the light just because the devil promised us ‘what’? How dare we do that or think like that?

The preys on the weakest amongst us are often the most celebrated and we say we live in an advanced society. Not sure where that delusion comes from; but from where I stand, I see animals being kinder to their own kinds and to other kinds of animals as well.

We are willing to love and be loved unconditionally by our pets but refuse to see another human being through the same lens; how can that be? We have seen family pets turn on their owners and attack them, but we don’t view them through the lens of expecting an attack from them. We love, adore and care for them and even when the worst happens, we are heartbroken if they have to be put down for the harm they caused.

On the other hand, we consider crossing the road because someone is the wrong shade between the spectrums of ‘Pink’ and very dark ‘Brown’. In case you missed that, no one is ‘White’ or ‘Black’. We have some of the most beautiful women from Sudan with dark glowing skins that take one’s breath away, but they are still not the colour we call ‘Black’.

One of the underlying causes of the problems we have worldwide is the erroneous definition of skin colour which unfortunately has stuck. My skin is brown, I can see the difference between my skin colour and a black cardboard, yet I’m only described as ‘Black African or Black British’.

In the same way all my ‘White’ friends look different from the colour ‘White’ or even ‘Magnolia’, so who are we kidding when our thoughts, actions, fears, biases and behaviours are based on noting but an institutional lie or the deluded construct of other fallible humans?

Let’s look at the elephant in the room and ask the question, what is your defence in? Do you feel inferior because of the colour of your skin, or do you feel superior simply because of something that you didn’t have to earn and had no control over?

If the roles were reversed, and you got the chance to swap your skin colour with the opposite spectrum, would your life still be as good, as easy, as fun, as safe and satisfying as it is today? Would you be more or less successful, more or less trusted and would you have less or more doors naturally open to you?

If your sense of superiority or inferiority is currently only based on what you can’t determine, control or change, then you need to think again. Go back to the drawing board because something is wrong. If your sense of belonging is threatened or determined by the colour of your skin or another person’s, a colour you or they didn’t choose, then think again.

If the religion, nation or ethnicity that you were born into are the bases for your arguments of being better or less than another person, then please do us a favour and keep quiet.

Until you can learn to compete and win after stripping off all of these labels from skin colour, race, religion and ethnicity, then step out of the arena and stop demanding that others bow down to your superiority or celebrate your sense of inferiority.

The truth is beyond the skin dip layer, no one is better, more or less superior than another. Science is yet to tell us that the colour of anyone’s skins makes them smarter, stronger, superior or inferior.

At the end of the day, what it boils down to are the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we were told and the lies we continue to believe in because we fear the truth. As the Bible points out, you will know The Truth and The Truth will set you free.

The day we realise the literal ‘truth’ about humanity and the equal value and worth of each ‘created’ life, will be the day that we start to love our fellow human as ourselves because we see them as us and us as them. It will be when the foundations of peace can be laid.

If I lose an opportunity or a promotion just because of the colour of my skin, I didn’t lose and guess what, you didn’t win either. In the same vein, if the only reason I won something or got a promotion is because of the colour of my skin, I didn’t win and you didn’t either because there’s so much more to me or anyone else for that matter than skin colour, race, ethnicity or religion and everyone deserves to be seen as a worthy human first.

Thanks for reading my post; please share it with others and see you next week. Love and Peace! xx