RECENTLY, the US State Department appealed to all democratic nations to take action against China for its crackdown in Hong Kong, as well as for its treatment of its Uighur minority.

Back came a tweeted zinger from a Chinese official: “I can’t breathe!” American officialdom will have to become used to getting George Floyd’s last words flung at it whenever it raises the issue of human rights.

But for China to criticise anybody over racial inequality is ironic indeed. Apart from its harsh treatment of its Uighur and other minorities in the west, it has condoned widespread discrimination against African students in China on scholarships. Several African governments have protested. For centuries, many Chinese have looked down on foreigners as barbarians, and perhaps secretly still do so.

Millions have marched in hundreds of cities around the world to honour George Floyd’s memory. Many Australians have joined these demonstrations. But while we can give them credit, we must not forget how they have virtually erased the continent’s native, aboriginal, population and its rich culture. While these deprived people now only constitute two per cent of the Australian population, they form 27pc of the country’s prisoners. And over the last 30 years, some 1,140 of them have died in police custody.

We are too hypocritical to look inwards.

The point here is that discrimination on the basis of colour, gender and faith is very common in virtually every society. While we criticise racism in other countries, we are too hypocritical to look inwards.

The Japanese, sophisticated and highly educated as they are, have discriminated against the million or so Koreans immigrants and their descendants living among their midst for decades. These people, known as Zainichi, had seen their nationality revoked, and many social security benefits denied, besides being excluded from public office.

Recently, the West Indian cricketer Darren Sammy, a regular player in the Indian Premier League, learned that when his teammates called him ‘kalu’ and giggled, they actually meant ‘blackie’. Such racial slurs are commonplace across South Asia.

In Pakistan, a number of women on social media called out hypocrites who supported the hashtag #Ican’tbreathe, while closing their eyes to the reality of colour-based discrimination, mostly directed at women. The popularity of so-called ‘whitening creams’ attests to the desperation of young women unable to find a match due to their dark pigmentation.

It would be a mistake to see blacks as a monolithic race: they, too, have a colour-based hierarchy that often dictates where the power and the money lies in the community. In 1959, the (white, American) writer John Griffin turned himself black with medical help, and ventured into New Orleans, a city suddenly transformed where he wasn’t allowed into any of the fancy restaurants he was used to dining in. Nor could he use toilet facilities reserved for whites. He had to sit at the back of buses.

The laws might have changed, but the reality hasn’t in most of the South. In the book he wrote about his experiences, Black Like Me, Griffin talks about the white editor of a small but successful daily newspaper who made a point of pleasing his white readers by treading the official line of keeping blacks in their place. But his approach brought him into conflict with his conscience, and soon, he was using words like ‘justice’ and ‘equality’ when referring to blacks.

As a result, he lost circulation and ads, and began getting death threats. When Griffin’s subterfuge was discovered, his effigy was set alight in the middle of Main Street, and a Ku Klux Klan cross burned behind his house.

One of the crueller ironies following the creation of Israel in 1948 was the transformation of Jews from a persecuted people — and one subjected to genocide by the Nazis — to an occupying force of Zionists who have persecuted Palestinians with the same savagery as anti-Semites displayed over the centuries.

So it seems like whenever we see the ‘other’, some atavistic instinct is awoken that demands that we lash out. Ultimately, we need somebody below us on the pecking order to beat and bully. Thus, the poorest redneck farmer in the American South will lynch a black without compunction, and his peers will condone this behaviour as it serves to prop up the rotten system they benefit from.

Obviously, nobody is born prejudiced: children pick up these hateful attitudes from their parents, schools and society at large. When they hear their mothers describe somebody as “hai kitni kali hai!” (God, she’s so dark!), this is a refrain they carry for the rest of their lives.

Matrimonial ads in newspapers and websites demand that prospective partners must be ‘light-complexioned’, and preferably have a green card. After these boxes have been ticked, they come to the nitty-gritty of jobs and income.

We can only hope poor George Floyd’s vicious murder will result in some changes in discriminatory laws. But what will remove the poison of prejudice from society?

irfan.husain@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2020