46 years passed since Pablo Casals said ‘The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?’ yet colour of one’s skin, religion and culture still is determining one’s position in society.
Halfway through the year 2020 a video of an innocent black man being murdered by the police force in front of civilians, on broad daylight, in America got a lot of media attention indicating systemic racism still is ruling since its first appearance as slavery over 400 years ago.
After the news hit the internet, people quickly realised it was really not that hard to spot racism in schools, workplaces even in doctors’ offices that supposed to be the most comfortable environment for us. It was an awakening for many, like myself, that what should have ended many many moons ago was still one of the greatest issues. I was aware of the fact that discrimination ruled the world, but it opened up my mind to a completely different level and I started researching, reading and learned that even us can say little things which we might seem as normal but has racial undertones. I even heard that people from other ethnicities treating each other unfairly because they were made to believe that there is so much tolerance in the world that if they stood up for others they would not fit in or be valued as much which is another proof of how corrupted the system is.
Discrimination in Turkey
We might not be the country that has a high population percentage of people of colour as other countries but we certainly have considerable amount of people with all sorts of backgrounds whether that is racial and/or religious, and after these events I started to see some very serious patterns in day to day conversations the people were having. If you were to see someone passing the street, stop them and ask if a person’s nationality mattered, they are most likely to say they would be accepting of any human being but that does not seem to be the case. No matter where you are in the world on media, political speeches, historical textbooks we are taught there has to be one favourable side and one truth. It is of course easier to tell a story from one perspective but it is different when done in a way to solely manipulate and divorce people for own goods. You can sense these types of objectives because they will not necessarily yell it out but conceal under different titles so rather than giving them what they want shouldn’t we all set aside norms that define us by pigmentation of our skin, our sect or religion.