Its surprising when you see elite and sometime common Pakistanis condemning the killings of black men by police. Most of them don’t know what’s going on and who is doing what, but just because it has name US in it, they are going for it. They completely ignore racism in Pakistan in 2020 and before and beyond.
I won’t get into what’s going in US as that’s really something else and plenty of people are already talking about it. What bothers me is that racism in Pakistan is rampant, sort of institutionalized, part of our social fabric, education system and everyday life. We discriminate like nobody does elsewhere. We discriminate on linguistic, religious, sectarian and sexuality lines — and more.
We marry, make friendships, make or break relations, live, and play as per out ethnicities, color and creed. There are races within races and there is intra racism and inter racism in the country. When all else fails, we divide ourselves in social strats. The traits like poverty, gender, and rural origins are enough to dehumanise anyone and we don’t feel any reluctance there.
We are divided into Shia, sunni, braveli and thousands of other religious groups. We are segregated into Sindhi, Punjabi, Mohajir, Pathan and the list goes on. We are divided on the basis of region, language and even food. We are divided into streets and you just name it and we are divided. Just look at what treatment we met out to minorities and there is nothing else need to be said.
The tragic and ironic thing is that we lost half of our country in 1971 on the basis of this racism. We took Bengalis as inferiors and leaders of West Pakistan openly and publicly hurled racist remarks on Bengali culture, people and other things. We then saw the backlash and they got independent and now far ahead of us, us the ‘better’ ones. Some people say its the former colonial mindset which we inherited. I don’t think so. We were not rulers, but just the ones who were ruled and left clueless.
So forget about US, and just focus on racism in Pakistan in 2020.
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