Through My African Eyes: This Thing Called Hate
09-15-2021
By Stephen Apollo
As a first year MTS student from Kenya I have been exposed to perspectives and dimensions of racism that I was hitherto not aware of. For instance, like some still believe here in the US, I believed that hate is a personal prejudice, an opinion that blocks the systemic racism view. This has kept me thinking about this thing called hate. Interestingly, in the US people who speak the same language hate each other on the basis of different skin colors. In Kenya, people who have the same skin color hate each other on the basis of different languages (ethnic groups). In other contexts, like Rwanda for instance, people who speak the same language and have the same skin color, hate each other on the basis of class stratification. I understand that in South Korea the young people don’t like the old people. The list does not end here because people will hate on other basis like sexuality, gender, faith and so on. This clearly tells us that the real problem is not really the forms of hatred, but hatred of diversity and difference.
In my opinion, racism, negative ethnicity, gerontophobia, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia and indeed all other forms of hatred, are just outlets of the highly polluted and toxic river of hatred. We need and urgently so, to block these outlets of hatred with instruments of love, acceptance, tolerance and most importantly truth and justice. A colleague of mine once said that hate is a fertile ground for injustice and where injustice rules bitterness is born and where bitterness multiplies, joy retreats and where joy is absent the people are continually sad. Hatred should and for emphasis must not be left alone to rule. The reign of hatred must be interrupted and overthrown and the weapons of this warfare are not themselves of hate and violence but of love, that love that has been shown to us through the old rugged cross, that outrageous love whose partner is truth and justice. The big question here is what is your rightful role in this struggle? Down with the rule of hate!
