On Politics, Religion and Race
Three things that cause the most fighting, divisions and wars are all intangible — religion, politics and race. They are all based on ideology and belief. They cannot be touched or felt but their impact is felt in intense fights, violence and systemic oppression.
They are also tied to social constructs — an idea of how to perceive the world that one generation passes to the other. This is heavily influenced by where you are born or live and what the cultural norms are.
Discussions about which political or religious view is correct are hard but often remain unresolved. Usually, there isn’t a single unifying answer.
Revolutions and elections come and go. They are often mired in manipulation or sometimes bloody.
Religion comes through as an antidote to all the ills that the realm of politics and greed that human rule brings. It is all innocuous until you realize it is as pervasive and powerful as the world of politics is.
People kill and maim for religion. Religion controls how nations operate and what values they ascribe to. Religious leaders are rulers in their own right. Political rulers need the blessing of religious leaders for clout. Religious speak is standard in order to win over certain masses even when you do not ascribe to their religious beliefs.
Even worse, there is a thin line between religion and politics. The parallels are impossible to ignore. They both sell a saviour. They both expound on your deficiencies as a people and show you that you need another being outside you to save you and repair your deficiencies. In both, you must act in faith and believe that the saviour has your best interests at heart.
The role of religion is particularly curious in African nations founded on colonization and slavery. Three key external groups overlapped their arrival on the continent — slave traders, missionaries and colonial rulers.
The one group taught forgiveness and love while the other two positioned themselves as dominant rulers who violently grab land, steal resources, destroy people and uproot them from their culture and origins.
One triggers intense anger amongst locals who oppose them in vain. The other teaches them to forgive and not to harbour hate. It’s as if one stings while the other soothes the sting. The influence of religion cannot be separated from that of colonization for these nations.
Ethnicity is a fact. That there are diverse races and skin tone is a fact. That different skin shades correlate with the type and number of melanocytes making melanin in one’s skin is a fact. What race connotes, though, is a human and social construct — a powerful one at that because it is used to connote privilege and power or lack thereof for entire generations. The social construct is not based on hard or measurable facts except those that have come out of this social construct being internalised and acted on.
A person’s sex as defined by the hormones and biological nature of the reproductive organs is fact. The roles and privileges that each gender connotes though are a social construct. Like race, these constructs are passed on from generation to generation and define human operations.
Politics, religion, race and gender will remain for as long as men live. Getting absolute fairness or justice between opposing groups would force some groups to give up their privileges and they are not prepared to do that.
