Racism is on a high peak once again where whites are segregating themselves from the black colour, appearance and many more.
It came with a “Black Lives Matter” campain after the death of American George Floyd who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. It became a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.
Many Black liives matters protests and movements have been trending world wide. Various sports activities in the world such as football have also used the campain to sensitize the masses by taking a knee at the beginning of each and every match.
However, there is a lot of division amongst our selves in Uganda. Religion, culture wealth status, education status among others are some of the major causes for racism with in the country.
In uganda, there are many different religions to which people believe in that is the Muslims, Catholics, Born Agains, Protestants, Advents, Orthodox, Witchcraft and many more. The religious differences has brought the rice oof racism to light within the country where many Muslims would like to associate with themselves and viseversa with other religions. In some public posts for getting a job, if the owner is of a certain religion, getting a job when your not of his or her religion might be a stumbling block.
Cultural differences has become the main cause of racism in our society today. We have got many tribes that is Baganda, Banyakole, Banyoro, Batooro, Bagishu, Bagwere e.t.c. This is becoming a norm in almost every public sector in getting jobs. If one cant speak the same language as the owner, you might not get any job, treatment might be different from those of the same tribe. Only having a name of a certain tribe may be the first pass code to deny you getting what you need.
Here in our motherland people are discriminating themselves just because of their wealth status. They have created a gap between the poor and the rich. Many Rich don’t associate with the poor just because they don’t have and consider them to be prone to human diseases and manny more.
We must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism as Emperor Haile Selassie I said. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open doors for foreign intervation and its potentailly harmful consequences.
According to scientists, “Racism is a Virus”.
By Andrew Wasajja
News writer and reporter.