It's a race no one can win!

A new Saturday! A new weekend! Boring morning! 'Crash'ed afternoon. Saw crash at Glamour. And it is quite glamourous, only 40 seats, the Jana Gana Mana playing and a guy washed in alcohol sitting (read stinking) next to you. Anyhow, managed to go through the movie. It does not give opinions, only presents some incidents peppered with layers of meaning. Will not move into a review here. Others can do the job better. But I will certainly venture an opinion on why 'it' happens. (Yah! Like it matters - It does not but then little else does)

The grand reason is, the world is not much different than me. In fact they started copying me even before I was born, so that ‘racism’ could exist. And what do they copy from me? My love for laziness. My preference for simplicity. My hatred for complexity and chaos. I don’t know anything about the future and I hate that too. (Come to see, I hate a lot of other things including clean cupboards and good marksheets but this is no time for that.) The whole point is that the world is not full of people who can handle the complexity and chaos. We all love order and we arrange for it. Think about the classification of the animal kingdom and of the plant kingdom that we learnt in school. There are kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, genera, species etc. etc. and all this somehow presents an order. So now when I see Magnifera Indica, I only have to look at its classification and I am presented with a list of its salient characteristics. That’s called order! I have no time for fighting chaos and discovering all the salient characteristics myself. And this does not stop at plants or animals for that matter. Every little thing is classified: from rocks and soil to demons, from slopes to extra-solar planets, from volcanic eruptions to........ people.

Yes, we also classify people. We do not have the time or the inclination to evaluate each on his own merits. So like magnifera indica tells me of its salient characteristics, being a black, white, brown, yellow tells me about the persons characteristics. Stereotypes are the convenience of an ordinary mind. (I would like to say lazy but when the whole world is lazy, laziness is ordinary.) Being such a lazy species, homo sapiens, while institutionalizing other classifications, have never been pretty good with human stereotypes, so they use class, color, religion and everything else in the sun for an ad-hoc classification. And are they always false? No. Most of the times, they are right. So the probability that a car thief is black, is more. But the problems arise when the generalizations are imposed on an individual. Its not a problem if you believe most terrorists are Muslims but it certainly becomes a problem when you see every Muslim as a terrorist. Can we move away from imposing generalizations on individuals? It is difficult but possible, I think. But will it happen? Yes, because as a community, humankind has the ability to analyze its actions.

Let me take the example of Hitler. I literally love that guy. I absolutely adore him! No, I am not one of the neo-Nazis and I don't know anything about his economic policies. Niether did I enjoy his cheap imitation of the Charlie-Chaplin moustache. What I adore Hitler for is that he brought hatred to its logical end. What he brought to fore were the racial prejudices inherent in our society. The world did not start hating Jews when Hitler was born. Anti-semitism has a long history. (Think Shakespeare's representation of Shylock) It was also widely practised in the land of the free, even in College admissions. Like 'Jews and dogs not allowed' in Hitler's Germany, 'Indians and dogs not allowed' was a frequently seen sign in British India too. But the Brits did not indulge in institutionalizing mass-murder. Hitler's actions caused the world to curb overt racial discrimination and even make it illegal. While Britain was fighting for democracy, it could not justify its occupation of India. The idea of free, fair, equal, non-racist gained great momentum because of Hitler's actions and we all owe him that much. The whole point is that while everyday racism is in our blood, we still balk at Hitler-style mass murder, like most on the early-day anti-semitic Europe and America. Humankind can understand if it has gone wrong somewhere.

But I digress to much from the topic at hand, so let me list the reasons why I believe racism will end one day:

1) We all know racism is bad (Thank you Hitler!). So we all try to avoid it. Period.

2) Globalization leads to homogeneity. As societies progress and start depending on each other, differences will iron out over time. Same people go well together.

3) Intermingling will lead to contact. Till I don't know anything about the 'other', there's apprehension. A Muslim friend put all doubts in my mind to rest about all Muslims being terrorists. So as we mingle more and understand each other, we stop categorizing. Hopefully.

That's it for today.

(Did you notice the fact that I love 3-point programs? Especially after the IIML interview. But I also love long pointless rants, so it offsets everything.)

Racism as defined by skin color also exists in India today. But it is more a baggage of our lack of confidence as a nation rather than discriminatory categorizing. More on it tommorrow.