Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Independence & Racism

Here is a "politically-incorrect" idea about political independence: It is a form of racism. Hence, all people who fight for a political independence for ANY people in ANY area are racists.

Really.

The idea that "everyone in position of power has to govern well" is NOT racist. 
The idea hold by the "imperialist" or "colonialist" is that "ONLY people with certain skin color/race can govern" is racist. 
No need to contest those 2, everybody agree with that. On the other hand,  the idea that "You can't govern us well because your skin color are DIFFERENT from us" is just as racist as the imperialist's idea. The different is, this racism is done by the "colonized," by the "weak" toward the "colonialists", toward the "powerful". 

Why correlating independence with racism is not popular? Simple, because of at least one of these factors:
1) People think that the "weak"s are entitled to do anything they like.
2) People think that "racism" can only be done by the "powerful."
3) People think that 2 wrongs makes a right.

Anyone remember the fight against the imperialist power by the supreme leader Kim Il Sung? Or by Soekarno?  Yes, here I remind you how those freedom fighters ALWAYS sell the idea that independence will cure ALL problems like corruption, economic injustice, alienation, etc. In many cases that the new government behaves just like their previous colonial master, and continue the exploitation. Or in some cases, they just don't have any clue how to run a country. Usually to distract the people from their incompetence, or corruption, they keep scapegoating someone. Some ethnic minorities, some religious minorities, ANY western power, Israel, neighboring countries and many other groups usually picked as "the source of all our problems." Sounds familiar? Hell yeah, scapegoating is one of the oldest trick in politics, of course it is an "excellent choice"!

So what's the correct choice? Asking for equal access to capital, education, jobs, etc, without racism. Asking for accountability. Asking for representation. And so on. Not "independence." Politicians are all dirty, their skin color alone won't make them clean.


No comments:

Post a Comment