...Blinkers in Politics

I am feeling aggrieved. Social media is a world away from the days of writing a letter. Back then (it kind of shows my age when I utter those two words) knowing what somebody else was thinking meant you either had to sit down and listen to them face to face or read the latest letter they had sent to you or a member of your friend / family circle.

The world of "microwave" communication changed all that. We know what people are thinking almost as quickly as the thought has entered their head - normally because they publish it.

I grew up in a time when I was the only black kid in my first school and only one of two in my second school. It meant that, for the first ten years of my schooling life, I was running a gauntlet of racist and ignorant kids who wanted nothing more than to humiliate me or cause me pain - simply for the colour of my skin. These were the days of the National Front, Skin Heads and the DM-wearing punks who looked down on anybody who wasn't white. But over time we managed to sideline these pedlars of vitriolic rhetoric and accept that diversity was the way to progress.

Skip a few decades and it seems we are reverting to some very dark times. Our kids are not yet being beaten up on a daily basis. But they are pelted with xenophobic slogans. Their authenticity in the world is questioned, purely because of the colour of their skin or the origin of their parents or grandparents. We won't even talk of the institutional issues that face people of colour. So today I am saddened to have received this notification regarding the political campaign of a decent chap who I spent some time in school with:

"Not an American? I want people born and raised in the USA. I WANT THEIR PARENTS TO
BE Americans. Sorfy. You don't get my vote just cause your black".

You'll have to excuse the grammar - it appears that some US-born people don't have the ability to punctuate properly.

But here's the thing. There are very few people, born in the USA, who are not immigrants. Many of them can trace their heritage across continents. Immigrants built a large portion of the infrastructure that Americans proudly call their own. These same immigrants gladly and selflessly stand up for the rights of all, irrespective of ethnicity, age, sexual or religious orientation, or any other marker one might want to mention.

When you choose to vote based on the colour of ones skin rather than the value of ones politics, you are the loser. When you question a person based on the level of melanin in their body rather than their ability to draw people closer together, you are the dividing force in the political arena. If you can't see beyond where somebody was born, to the value of their input in your community, the lives of you and all those you hold dear will be less enriched. If you are spewing hate via social media, whilst pretending to be nice to the diverse population of service providers in your life, you are the problem. And it is partially the fault of you, and people like you, that the world is low in the currency of human kindness.

I salute the courage of the person who is Yomi Faparusi. I respect his courage to continue in the face of hate and ignorance. I applaud his resolve to face prejudice head on in his bid to support the American Dream. And I stand, if only in principle, with every immigrant who has chosen to make a home in a new country. Blinkered politics has no place here. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., there is more depth to character than skin colour.