I'm not black... I'm brown... But that's just my opinion.

My most memorable (in that I cannot forget it) encounter with racism was several years ago whilst I was volunteering at the local veterinary surgery. I was playing the role of receptionist and assisting an elderly (OK, I’m going to identify him by colour) WHITE gentleman. He seemed really friendly and just before he left he casually said, “You speak really good English for a black person.” I probably just blushed and mumbled something as he walked away because back then I wasn't quick and witty enough to think of a clever response that would have made him feel as bad as he made me feel (I’m still not good at that). However, in the past years I have thought of many responses, none of them gracious or Christian or exemplary of the perfect little angel I am supposed to aspire to be (I think that ship sailed a long time ago, I’m far from an angel, I’ve accepted that. I try though, and then I get tired). I will share with you one of them however. It goes something like this- 

 “Where have you been living, under a rock? Come on man, the war ended many years ago, segregation and racism are things of the past! Expect us all to be equals now. Why are you surprised that I can speak English?”

But I digress. I am fortunate to have grown up in a society where I have had just about the same opportunities as anyone else, unlike my parents, but somehow there is still this inward discomfort. We may all, in theory, have the same opportunities in life, but I feel like this is something forced, not something effortless and natural like it is meant to be. For example, people should be employed in a company because they are qualified for the job, not because of their race of even their gender. But on the other hand psychology says that a white employer is more likely to hire someone because they are white or because they are male as they deem this more advantageous.

As much as we must celebrate our differences and learn from each other I sometimes wish that humans were colour blind with no way of telling what race their neighbour is, just to see what would happen. Would it still be a big deal that Obama is ‘black’? Would white American police officers feel the uncontrollable urge to point firearms at ‘black’ males and pull the trigger several times? Would that old white man feel the need to commend my good English skills? Would interracial couples be a hot gossip topic? I doubt it.

Now to address the actual title of this rant- I understand that it is necessary to use ones skin colour for easy identification. Say you got robbed and the police asked you what the suspect looked like-

“Oh he was tall, brown curly hair...”

“Was he white, coloured, black?”

“Oh I can’t tell you that that would be racist!”

Truly I understand its necessity. But I just can’t help but inwardly cringe when someone, especially someone who isn’t, says ‘black’ in reference to a person. I am not saying that these people are to blame or that it is racist, I understand fully that this may be my personal and irrational pet peeve. I think the root of the problem is that in the past we were referred to a black people and were mistreated and looked down upon by none-black people. Now we are still referred to as black people but not openly mistreated as in the past. The bad connotations that come with the word black have followed us to the present. I can’t help but feel that this word has negative connotations. Think of something good that is black. Black is associated with darkness which is associated with evil, deceit, crime, sin etc. There is the black market, the black plague, black, black, black, black, black.

“Wow, Obama is president and he is black! Well done black people!”

It is sort of patronizing. I understand that the word black is easier than saying ‘person of colour’ but actually there is no such thing as a ‘black’ person. I am brown; there is chocolate brown, toffee brown, caramel etc. In the same way there is no such thing as a white person (unless he/she is extremely pale at which point I suggest medical attention), also, what colour is ‘coloured’ exactly? Green is a coloured colour isn't it? Indians are referred to as Indians, so should Africans be referred to as Africans? But then how can you distinguish between a white African and a black African? Oops there it is again, colour.

There really is no conclusion to this piece. All I’m saying is that I’d prefer to be called brown than black.  I am a brown person... If you MUST identify me by colour. 

GOD- "HE-WHO-DOES-NOT-EXIST"

“I was the accuser, and God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone- terribly alone in a world without God and without man. Without love or mercy. I have ceased to be anything but ashes. Yet I felt myself to be stronger than the Almighty, to whom my life had been tied for so long.” 

~Elie Wiesel

Although my suffering, if I may be so bald as to call it that, cannot compare to that of Wiesel, a man who lived through Hitler’s Jewish concentration camps, I claim his words for my own for I too was once the accuser and God the accused.

I have said, on several occasions, that God does not exist. For how could He, when there is such pain and suffering in this world? Sure, He is not the one who causes the pain but surely He is mighty enough to hear the cries and moans and prayers of those in pain and the agonizing sound of a heart breaking- for it is seldom that a heart in excruciating pain can tear apart silently. Surely, I have thought, a God who is alive would hear the millions of prayers from a family in hurt praying for a miracle. Surely, a God who exists would not let a man who has done nothing but work hard all his life and followed Him completely die. Yes, everyone must die! But a God-fearing man surely deserves no less than an honorable death! Not a death which takes years, not one that takes away a man’s most precious memories one by one, surely not a death that reduces him to a child-like state!

But if such a man who serves God, is unfortunate enough to come upon such debilitating circumstances as is dementia then surely a God who is alive would hear the prayers prayed over the years, getting more desperate, and surely this God would see the efforts of a heartbroken family for their head to be healed. So, surely, if this thing that calls Himself God sees and hears all this He need only to raise His mighty hand and correct the situation. If, as the scriptures say, God is the same yesterday, today and forever then surely He could have healed Alzheimer’s as easily as he healed a leper. After the unanswered prayers and after the funeral, I, indeed, was the accuser, and God the accused.

God does not exist, yet, I continue to spell His name with a capital letter. God does not exist and yet I am comforted by the knowledge of a healthy and whole honorable man in heaven who perhaps (in my child-like yearnings) looks out for me from his vantage point up there. GOD DOES NOT EXIST and yet I feel ashamed at the very thought of myself trying to fool myself into believing something I know is not true. When I am scared I run to Him, and when I have nightmares I use His name as some sort of invincible weapon against evil. I see Him in the numerous blessings that encompass me.

Much of my very short and somewhat uneventful life I have felt alone. I have always been ‘different’ (a term which many people would use on themselves). I have felt the all time low of presumed abandonment from a God who refused to answer my prayers so therefore who ceased to exist, and from man because no man could do the work of God. I have often said that I cannot hear God or see Him and because I had (and often still do) shut the door on Him and created a painfully carnal void between me and my creator, I could definitely not feel him. Yet, well, He-who-does-not-exist was and is always there. “Alone, yet not alone” as in the words of Joni Eareckson Tada.

I am ashamed to admit that I once thought to myself and even, between the bitter tears of a child who did not get what she wanted, uttered the words ‘maybe it would be better if he just died.’ Because I thought that that would ease incomprehensible pain and suffering, and because “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, and I reasoned like a child”. But death has a way of aiding in one’s growing process and so I would like to think that I have since “put childish ways behind me” because I have since learned that the pain of absence in no lesser than the pain of suffering. Pain is pain just as a sin is a sin. But perhaps this God spoke a bit through my childish words because, I am happy to say that I have since learned that a child of God does not die away FROM health and happiness but rather dies INTO health and eternal happiness - life that cannot even begin to compare to what our carnal minds can fathom.

I have been broken, as has my family and many people in this world. I was broken and then I tried to break myself to the point of numbness but that was impossible because my foundations were built on a God who supposedly did not exist. Still, I screamed and struggled and drove myself away from Him. I often said that I couldn't hear God speak to me and so therefore He did not exist, all the while not knowing that the voice was not from the eternal but from the internal. Whose voice showed me the way back to the path when I had wandered too far in the darkness, the darkness of sin, of depression, of loneliness, of anger and confusion? Whose voice gets me out of bed every morning and makes me want to try to be the best that I can be? Whose voice tells me that I can? Whose voice reminds me that I am loved and blessed with a God-sent family? Whose voice tells me I am beautiful?  It’s not the voice of the world and it’s certainly not my own voice.

I am the accuser and God the accused. There are plenty of questions I still need answers to but I understand that I may not get these answers because I would not even begin to comprehend them in this lifetime. Because of my earthly mind I will feel bitter about my lack of understanding and yes I will play the role of the accuser yet now, unlike Wiesel who lost his faith in God completely because of what he had been through, I understand that I will never be mightier than the ALmighty. I know I am weak, but “blessed are the weak for theirs is the Kingdom of God” and my life will be tied to Him-Who-Exists for eternity.

Wiesel, on seeing a small boy being hanged in the Nazi concentration camp...

“Where is God now?”

“Where is He? Here he is- He is hanging here on this gallows...”

Indeed.