For a girl who has been MIA for a few months, this is a bold topic to start with! But hear me out for a second.

I just got back from a speaker series event, which contributes to providing awareness on the challenges and struggles faced by the Indigenous peoples of Canada such as the residential school system, the murdered and missing indigenous women and so on. I have taken training on this in the past, but hearing real people share their experiences on how this affects their lives till date made the huge difference for me.

What triggered this post was the discussion around the murdered and missing indigenous women.

Imagine your sister or someone close to you walking on the street to meet you up for lunch and someone targets them just because of the color of their skin.. how gruesome is that? A Canadian, targeted by another Canadian because they are different?

On the other side of the world, in my birth country- Nigeria, there is an election going on right now, and although everyone is hungry for change in government the main focus, has somehow managed to be ensuring that a certain tribe does not get into power. This has led to violence in various communities. Nigerians targeting other Nigerians for self-gain?

I hear and see these stories and the commonality is the fact that even within the same country, people don’t love each other.

So, is the problem really racism? We are unable to show compassion to people from the same country as us, yet we expect compassion/love from outsiders?

I think we need to take a step back, and because I’m a visual learner here’s what I thought of when I was dissecting this issue- A ripple effect!

To love others, why don’t you start with yourself. This means all the hurt, pain, trauma that you may or may not be aware of needs to be tackled head on!  If that’s not looked at, you will impact others around you firstly your immediate family then your extended family, your co-workers or classmates. Otherwise, you may unconsciously begin to pass on your frustrations about yourself to them!

Love your neighbor as yourself. You can’t love your neighbor if you don’t even like yourself!

So again, is the real problem racism? I don’t think so.

The real problem in my opinion is a human problem. Racism is another symptom that emerges from this problem. If I don’t love myself or family what love is there to extend to others?

So where do we go from here?

Be kind. Do unto others as you want others to do unto you. And watch that ripple spread!

Thanks for reading.

Akhere