I am glad you are able to put your rage into this story, Ezinne. I can tell you are fed up with being mistreated by your skin color.
No person in the world should be discriminated against for their appearance, whether black, white or anything in between. I lived in Mexico for half a year and it taught me that people can have views about me based on their perceptions and not on who I am.
In Mexico, many lovely people treated me fine. But there were two groups of people that treated me as if I were someone else. One group looked at me as if I were a rich gringo (I am neither) and tried to get something out of me. The other group would have loved to spit me in the face but didn’t.
Again, these two groups were not my main experience with Mexicans. Most are lovely and warm, and had I fit in better skin-wise I would probably still live in Mexico.
This experience really opened up my eyes to seeing others see me. I am not saying these experiences compare to your experiences, but I hear you. As a white person I had the fortunate experience to experience this racial reality. I had to adjust my own behavior (some) to fit in this otherwise warm Mexican society.
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I am glad you point out UK and the US, because they are both nations with a political system that is based on divide-and-conquer. Most European countries have a form of proportionality (Belgium was the first nation to incorporate proportionality about a century ago) and their societies are less classicist, less repressive (but I have that European skin color, so I do not experience being discriminated there based on my skin tone). For sure, the economic push-down is less severe. In Europe, the CEOs in the UK make the most compared to an average worker. They have winner-take-all.
Winner-take-all is bad news for the ones at the bottom. Anyone who can get pushed-down will get pushed-down by the sheer number of people above them also being pushed-down by the ones above them. Dog-eat-dog.
For the United States, there is actually a glimmer of hope that change can be established in our political system. Here is my spiel:
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One in eight Americans is African American. Three out of 100 Senators are African American and that is actually an all-time high. The system effectively promotes racism.
More than half of us are women and we do not even have half of that half sit in all our seats. The system effectively promotes the suppression of women.
The following explains systematic racism without mentioning it:
In 1996, New Zealand changed its two-party system to incorporate proportional voting. The number of female representatives jumped by a phenomenal 47 percent in the first next new election. This shows real well how the district voting system discriminates. Winner-take-all suppresses large voting minorities. Today, forty percent of the NZ representatives are females whereas the US has about half that percentage.
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The truth of the matter: Being able to speak the truth at the tables that matter.
This is us, to the left. We are segregated in districts where we have to battle each other for that single seat. This is pure divide-and-conquer.
Voting minorities of as large as 49.9 percent of the voters remain unrepresented; they don’t sit at the tables of decision making, not speaking their truths. Fifty percent plus one vote can dictate the outcome to the unrepresented voting minorities. It doesn’t matter if the voting minority is African American, young adults, women, homosexuals, or the poor; when not in the majority, no seat is obtained. All these large voting minorities are not represented to the level of their numbers.
To the right in the image above one can see the actual We The People system. As shown in this example of a city council with eight seats, almost 90 percent of the voters are guaranteed that their vote translates into a representative they handpicked themselves. All substantial voting minorities are represented in this better system. Example.
We can try to make our neighborhood be based on equality. Yet when the city is based on divide-and-conquer, we will never succeed in combating racism.
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When San Francisco moved from At-Large to district voting, the ugly voting system became quite obvious. Prior, in the semi-proportional system also known as city-wide, they had 6 men and 5 women in the eleven supervisor seats. After the change to district voting, the city had 10 men and 1 woman in these eleven seats (nice twist: a black woman).
The Democratic Party did their best to fix it up over the years. Wonderful as the board may appear today, the Democratic Machine tried to quickly mask the divide-and-conquer system we have with applying a nice pancake layer of We The People makeup.
It should not be a surprise that the system was changed to the more restricted version. Back then, the Green Party had become a popular party in the Bay Area, getting some of the seats in the region. Today, they are gone. By moving back to district voting, the Democrats made sure that third parties wouldn’t get their seats. Today, all SF supervisors are registered Democrats.
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Let’s not uncover and discard the good parts of our society; let’s fix the ground rules that aggravate racism and ingrain discrimination of all kinds.
The good news is that the US Constitution is already demanding the We The People system for cities and counties. Here is a visual.
A: Federal and State governments are given powers and freedoms.
B: The 14th Amendment demands the better system put in place.
As shown to the left, Federal and State governments received #A from the US Constitution and they can use #A to create themselves some leeway with #B.
Cities and counties are not even mentioned in the US Constitution, and so they must fully abide by the highest document of the nation.
States did not receive the power to hand over power to third parties within that then extends their right to ignore #B to the same level as the State.
Cities and counties must follow #B strictly as declared in the US Constitution. But as you can see in the same visual to the right, they assumed those powers that they do not have. They perpetuate the divide-and-conquer system to a level that is not allowed. They should have the We The People system in place, per the highest document in the nation.
Racism may never disappear from the face of the earth. But divide-and-conquer can disappear from the face of the earth, and that will be a wonderful day in our struggle against racism. It will make this a better nation for all of us, also economically.
We are a diverse nation and we need to honor all. That is best done when all are able to tell our own truths; we should be able to do that in our natural numbers.
We may tear down statues and air our grievances, making others see our struggle. I like your article therefore because you show us what it feels like to be suppressed while others that are not suppressed. But the momentum will pass and things will revert back to a slightly different but similar level of discrimination if we do not act on this momentum. We have to focus on the real institution of division, exploitation, discrimination and racism that needs changing: Our voting system.
