Am I a racist?

• Recently I read a long story written by a fellow blogger about how she is racially abused by foreigners only because she is an Indian. She said she lived in various countries and went on to accuse Australia, Canada, US, UK and Israel as racist countries. I would like to disagree here because I feel racism is not present in certain countries or races, instead it is omnipresent. Yes. I feel almost each and every person in this world has a bit of racial intentions. Let me explain.

• What is racism? Leaving away the formal definition of racial biases etc, let us asses it from a psychological background.

• Every human being in this world wants to be better than others. For example, we are participating in Indiblogger of the month because we want to be better than other bloggers. We are participating in a running race, because we want to be better than other participants. In this world all the successes and resultant happiness is determined comparatively. Based on various reasons, we develop a perception that certain people are not competent enough to overtake us. If those people tend to outsmart us, we want to invent certain activities to irritate and spoil their happiness to keep them below us. This activity is what I am going to term as racism. If we see in this angle, we are all racists. What do you call the behaviour of cricket fans in India to Andrew Symonds? What do you call the violence unearthed in Chennai Law College? What do you call the behaviour based on casteist disparities in India? What do you call the behaviour of people in superior posts towards their subordinates? What do you call the tratment of maratis towards Biharis in Mumbai?

• My point is that we don’t have to develop hatred towards certain countries or race as it is not an activity present within them alone, instead it is the outcome of a basic attitude called dominance which is present in almost every human being. We need to understand that good people and bad people coexist in every part of this universe. Racism can be eliminated only when people tend to believe success is not a comparative term.