Today was the second part lecture in my Global Studies class that examined the history behind Colonialism and its brutal effects. I wondered: if people never knew the context, stories, or histories behind other people, they would probably not feel the right to judge others. I wondered: history is a pile of gossip, a bunch of negative things that accumulate on one person's tablet of deeds. Of course, that's only one side of it. Then you look at history from a different p.o.v. and you see the positives, the mistakes we can learn from, yada yada yada. But first, let's imagine.
If I had a child and I raised him/her to be completely stripped of information before entering school, this child would be almost the same as any other 4 year old in any other preschool: just wanting to eat, nap, and do the occasional play-do ball. But, the child learns math, English, science, and....history. The child learns: blacks from Africa used to be slaves. Natives in America were taken over by whites. Southeast Asians had to be civilized. All "minorities" had to assimilate.
Then I wondered. If I never gave a child the history behind people. If I never fed him the context of who they used to be. If I kept him blank until college. And he learned history in college.
Why college?
Because in young age, we are all too naive. Too naive to understand that we are being FED information, literally, by the spoon. Too naive to judge the soundness of knowledge, the accuracy of facts, the validity of "true" statements. So, in college, hopefully, then, we would have acquired the skill set to manage our own judgments.
If I had a child and I had stripped him of history, he would have no right to feel superior over anyone. He would not admire nor pity anyone. He would simply accept another as a human, the basic lines of similarity. He would see the obvious instead of the details.
Because sometimes I think: we are only nice to certain people because we know their history. And we are only nice because subconsciously we feel that they had been done wrong. Someone wronged them, so we pity--but which party do we pity? The slaves or the colonialists? Far too often: the slaves. The slaves dont need sympathy, they dont need pity. THEY NEED THE RECOGNITION THAT THEY ARE JUST AS HUMAN, not a
"Im only your friend because I am a good person and I am only a good person because I know that my ancestors screwed up and I only know they screwed up because I read it in the books and I only read it in the books because I was being educated on history and so now that I know your history I feel sorry for you and I will be your friend."
It's never,
"Hi I wanna be your friend because you and me are the same, we are both human, and we are actually at the same level regardless of our differences. Where did that 98% genome sequence come from?! Holla!
On a more depressing note, I do not know what to do about this Haiti situation. A second earthquake hit and I feel trembles that I have not done anything to help. Pray for Haiti, if you can do nothing else.
And I leave with a quote to summarize my disposition:
The Prophet Muhammad said, "When any one of you sees any injustice, let them change it with their hand. If you are not able to do so, then change it with your tongue; and if you are not able to do so, then change it with your heart, though that is the weakest (kind of) faith."
