Black – Registered Trade Mark! ?

By Beruk Mengestu

I am blessed with a wonderful circle of friends that many may not have had the chance to enjoy in their entire lifetime. One of my best friends happens to be of the “other race”, and it just occurred to me that if we were a couple of decades back, our friendship would never have happened.

I can never pretend to understand what those times were like, where people were judged based on the colors of their skin. It is truly amazing to see how far we have come, and we owe it all to brave souls such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Steven Biko, Nelson Mandella, Emperor Haile Selassie, and all the patriots that spoke out and some even gave up their lives for liberty and equality.

We still have the urge to label everything and especially everyone we come across, so I will identify myself as a black person but having a slightly fair skin shade, giving me in the perception of some people a plus from the darker black people, and of course as an African, I feel obliged to mention my ethnic background and finally as a devout Christian. All this labeling helps us fulfill our craving for belongingness.

Once all this labeling is well clear in our minds, then there in nothing left to do than just judge people, leading to a form of discrimination. Nobody calls themselves as racist, someone else that sees our action does that for us, but if we take the time to see our deeds, then it will all be clear.

I, for one, have never gone by a day without making fun of my “white” friend. I, and all my other friends, refer to him as Ferenje, Amharic for foreigner, and all the jokes are not because we hate him, rather we are trying to assure him that he has been welcome to the other side.

Now that I think about it, I am sure if the jokes were on me, then it would have taken a whole new meaning: to remind, both him and I that we are, and always will be different.

I have a serious apology to make to my friend. This is not what our heroes died for. Their fight was not so that the underprivileged of that time could have a moment to get back at the so called “oppressors”. They died so that we can all have a better life, but not so we do the same unto others what was done unto us. I simply expect all of us black persons to be better than we are now, for we know better what was done to us and to our forefathers, we should know better.

One of my all time favorite movies, is Denzel Washington’s “Remember the Titans”, a true story adapted to film of the first interracial football squad in Alexandria, VA. The school was forced to integrate by law in 1971 and so was the football team that was coached for the first time by an African American. It is an amazing story of how a single person can challenge a whole community to face its hypocritical believes and the change that followed due to the perfection of an integrated team.
Remember that when someone says racism, never associate it with the suffering of only black/African people. Remember that the term African does not refer to only the black population of the continent. True, it might represent the majority but what about our North African people, don’t they have the same right to be called Africans? And what about the white Africans and the Asian African population in countries like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya…

It starts right now; make a promise to minimize, if not stop, labeling everyone, because in my book, it only leads to a subtle forms of discrimination.