Lanre Akinsiku The Price Of Blackness

Mad World
The way a person looks, acts, and moves can tell plenty about an individual. The way one dresses, for example, can define social status, field of work, and even income. It is often said to never judge a book by its cover. However, it is also true that the cover is the first thing that can be seen: it inevitably creates a first impression and it is the main contact with a new unknown person/thing. Lanre Akinsiku, in the article “The Price of Blackness,” demonstrates how appearance influences decisions and reactions of people. He describes the frightening experience of been pulled over by a police officer and receiving an unfair treatment based on the color of his own skin. Being black, according to the behavior of the police officer
mentioned in the article, was equivalent as being a guilty of a crime. In fact, it is by judging others based on the outer appearance that people promote an increase in crimes, discrimination, and racism.
Discrimination is stated as “action that denies social participation or human rights to categories of people based on prejudice” (“discrimination”). An individual is often discriminated against for various reasons such as age, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, and race/color. My whole life, I have witnessed numerous acts of discrimination, especially in the school environment. For example, children from different cultural/ethnic groups are easily targets for discrimination because of their non-typical look or talk. These prejudice acts, especially at early ages, are often source of behavioral issues as well as depression, isolation, and low self-esteem. Discrimination against someone’s race can also be considered as a form of racism: this is the belief that a culture is superior to another based on the ability to create evolved societies. Racism does not only cause hate between ethnicities, but also frames intolerant individuals against any kind of diversity. The most common conception of racism is to attribute biased stereotypes the somatic
difference of the skin pigment and facial structure. Akinsiku mentions how being a black person makes living harder because of the prejudice that being of color is equal to be suspected of some crime. Black men in America live in a “constant state of fear” (Akinsiku), terror over something that the individual have no power on: his genetic patrimony. Those discriminatory acts can take various form in people daily life. For example, it is really common to hear about individuals who do not get a job because of the color of their own skin and their national origin. There is a stereotype associable for each culture, I always heard how asian people are good in all the scientific academics but this is not necessarily true. In the same way Akinsiku, by showing the college ID, proves to the police officer that he is not one of those black Americans that deserve to be shot in the street. There are cases where stereotypes may be true, but often they are not.
Unconditional hate against other races often brings to social problems, unfairness, and even wars. Unfortunately, history has many examples of racial wars. Some of those are World War II, the Rwandan genocide, the American Civil War, and many many others. War is generally characterized by violence and disruption between ethnic groups that try to predominate one over the other. Religion also is also found to be one of the main causes of conflict between peoples. The most popular case is when a religious group of invaders tries to impose their religion over the native population, believing that one god (or gods) is more important or powerful than the other. However, religious wars are often mixed up with economic reasons. One example of a purely holy war is the arab-israeli one. I am fundamentally pacifist, I do not think there ever is a good reason for people to kill each other, but unfortunately, I believe it is inevitable. Every day on the street there are millions of little aggression, when those aggression become institutionalized, war can begin. Unfortunately, war is the weapon that the population uses to compete one against the other. In fact it has the juridical function to release final judgements performing the same task as the natural selection.
When there is a problem, people look for the cause and the origin of it.
Many individuals recognize Charles Darwin as the beginner of this way of thinking. Darwin’s theory is that populations are in competition with each other for natural resources; in this struggle to survive, the environment makes a selection known as “natural selection.” In this process, Darwin describes how the weakest individuals, because of their natural characteristic, do not survive. Only the individuals who are strong and adaptable survive and transmit the genes to the offspring. Common sense seems to dictate that his idea justifies, directly or indirectly, acts of selfishness, racism, and violence. This happened as Darwin’s concept of natural selection evolved from biology to human relationships. Scientifically, humans are “social animals”: our natural instinct is to identify ourselves with determined group. One group distinguishes itself from another because of competition. When confronting different population between each other, it is immediately noticeable the diversity of behaviors, and cultures. Populations are different, but there are not superior ethnicities: in fact, from a genetic point of view, populations do not even exist. In fact populations have always been the product of the meeting of different
individuals.
Each person is different: everyone has his/her own diverse characteristics, personalities, genetic, and prospective on life. Because of the development of public communication, people today are more open mind about diversity. The majority of the U.S. population is composed by individuals that immigrated, or they ancestors did, from different countries, but they are unified with the same “desire to succeed”). The lively aspirations of wealth of many motivate and active people created the idea of “the American way of life.” Despite the fact that this statement can be true for the majority of the population that emigrate in America, it is false for the African Americans that have been forced and slaved to work. This, in fact, is one of the main reasons why racism and ethical fights are a daily concern.
My perspective on this topic is that for the major part racism, discrimination, and prejudice today are fight not only by black people, but also from (hopefully) an increasing number of white people. Racism can be battled with communication, information, and education. I am positive that in the future, with the improvement of those three basic skills, every population will be able to live together in a more peaceful and respectable world. Equity is a right that everyone should have and it should be handle in all prospective.