Xenophobia is not just Xenophobia anymore.
“Hatred, rivalry, deceit and arrogance.” I never realized I’ll grow up in a world this far gone in its morality, with skepticism adding a cherry on top of the situation. My intent and purpose is not to distract anyone with fancy vocabulary; I’m just trying to portray a scenario of the present world. Xenophobia or international racism is not a new term for those who have been to the foreign world. Especially in the new decade, we the Pakistanis come to look at it at a more concentrated sense. It is not whether you are black and brown now; it is about whether you are a Pakistani or not.
I haven’t personally been to the States or any other English region after 9/11 myself; however, I do have a personal example to share on my part too. I happened to come across this US individual once as part of my job as a Graphic Designer. We started off on a good introduction, he clearly liked my designs and wanted to hire me up, until he asked me about my geographical location for future reference. His answer afterwards was very polite, yet harsh.
“I am sorry but I am really not interested in hiring someone from your country.” – OFFLINE
We may never know what the big bosses at Washington plan every day for this world and nor do I care much because I personally believe that we are very much responsible on our part as well in this whole non sense scenario. Starting with our so called ‘Transparent Journalism’, I am not in any way against the freedom of expression. However, it is the mere fact that one should keep in mind, the targeted audience when delivering information on media such as television and radio especially. Portraying detrimental image of our country all the time to an international community is just not right. It is like playing the right cards with the wrong people. There is an extremely high chance that people may already know about our deficiencies as a country however, by enforcing the fact by means of a local channel; we make sure they believe what they hear. This gives a fair chance to others to play around with our own news to turn their own people against us (example refers to any country in general and Pakistan in particular).
As in John Mayer’s ‘Waiting for the World to change’.
‘When you trust your television;
what you get is what you got;
cause when they own the information;
Oh, they can bend it all they want’
However, why only blame an institution that is meant to spice things up for their own promotion. We are equal culprits in defaming ourselves. Think about it for an instance, why we keep on hearing about sectarian disputes, religious disgust and provincialism in daily news. Isn’t it time already to unite as a nation and set these differences aside that led us to become servants of the British in the 19th Century? We may have developed ourselves as human beings but deep in our heart we are still animals.
We don’t care much about politics, yet we feel pride in degrading everyone in authority and calling them with obscene names in texts, mails, cartoons and day to day conversations. What gives anyone this right? Just because you don’t like what they are doing, doesn’t really give you the authority to point fingers. Whatever they are doing may be right or wrong, but what about what are you doing in your life? Don’t you think, how you classify people in your life, may also be the way you may be classified by someone else?
We hear journalists asking people in power about their views about the government policies every day, reporting about the incidents around the world at the change of the channel, acquiring news where no one can reach. To this statement my friend’s teacher once commented upon with this question.
“If you have somehow reached there, why don’t you help the people in need first before flashing cameras?”
That is only one example. Think about our day to day office affairs or school scenarios. How many times did you hear this?
“He is such a tattler, I heard him gossiping about us to the manager, sir.”
And what exactly is this person doing?
No one may be right in their deed, but one significant step can make a difference. We should take that step.
“Stop thinking of people as what they show you on television; stop thinking what colour, creed or caste one belongs to; stop thinking what religion one belongs to, stop thinking about others just for a day! They may make fun of you, they may even torment you but think of what good you did to someone, and this one day will make a difference in your life. The outcomes of which would be a thousand fold to that which would have become of, if you had repeated the same thing again.”
I rest my case.