Cometh the Hour: Black Lives Matter is what has to Trend Far

                                                                                                  -SHUBHANKAR

Black lives matter, black lives matter and on and on these chants go, but why only now? Why not 40-50 years back or even 2-3 years back. Why people and society only wake up when some innocent person loses his/her life? Is it death of a person when we realise that he/she should be provided with justice? Why don’t we understand the suffering one faces when they lose their close one. Have we become so inhuman that we can’t even see one’s suffering, let alone feeling their suffering or pain. All lives matter, we know that. But oppression faced by the black people is which is alarming, not only for the past few years, but few decades for now.

The main reason the black lives matter movement has gained global impact is because of the death of George Floyd by a policeman in the United States of America. This gained widespread protests not only in the US but worldwide. The sporting community also joined hands and supported the moment as over the years many top footballers and cricketers have faced racism and still do. People should understand that nobody is born with a choice of choosing their skin colour, so why discriminate people on the basis of their skin colour. Why is it that people favour white skinned people in jobs, or in schools or elsewhere. Is it written in any religious scripture that people’s intelligence is determined by their skin colour. No, it isn’t but people’s stigmatised mind won’t change until real action is taken against them. Why don’t people understand that someone’s heart or nature should be good rather than their appearance or skin colour. But these talks are baseless because this movement of black lives matter didn’t start because of these talks, but because of the killing of an innocent man just because his skin colour was black. The below graph shows the percentage of black CEO’s in the Fortune 500:

The graph clearly shows the story, just 1% black CEO’s in the entire Fortune 500 companies. I don’t intend to ever say that give jobs or education based on any category, be it racism or on the basis of caste. I only say give jobs on the basis of skills, on the basis of knowledge. But don’t oppress a person who has the skills and knowledge just because he is black or from a lower caste.

Now, I will talk about the Indian society in particular and the racism prevailing in the country over the past very many decades. The Indian society is very stigmatised on the fact that white people are the one’s who are very good in all aspects and blacks need to be oppressed. But why this stigmatisation? Why do people don’t understand that skin colour isn’t everything. Every time we see in Indian newspapers, in the column of matrimonial we find people wanting grooms/brides with skin colour fair. But why? Don’t people understand how this can have a impact on the mind of people facing racism. This is the very fact that people nowadays are committing suicide because of problems like racism, etc.

And the problem doesn’t end here. Top celebrities in India endorse brands which encourage racism in a way by saying that by applying those products skin colour can be changed to a better skin colour. This is the worst impact as these celebrities have a huge fanbase. But my question is why? Is money so much more important than humanity that these so called celebrities endorse these brands. I mean a celebrity is a person who by his/her actions build a better society, not a society with racism.

In the end I want to state that people understand only when some innocent person dies but why people don’t understand losing someone is something which is worse than anything in this world. And losing someone over pitty things like racism, over skin colour killing someone, this is the worst thing one can do. Hope the world after this movement changes their thinking, and hope the world becomes a peaceful place to live again. SAY NO TO RACISM