What are labels?
In today’s society we tend to give labels to anything that breaths or even things that don’t breath. But why do we have so many labels to represent people?
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The existence of labels leads to stereotypes, then stereotypes lead to generalizations and then we start to assume we know someone because we call them by the labels they are given. Labels don’t tell you about a person’s story, about their pain, their joy and their struggles. The more our society puts labels on each being, the more we start living through those labels and before we know it we become nothing without those labels. Because of labels we judge, we fight and we dive deeper into the darkness of racism and marginalization. We are taught to call each other Black, White, Asian, Hispanic or African. When we think about it we are the creators of racism and stereotypes.
No child is born and says they are Black, White or any of race that I listed. It is decided by our society as soon as a newborn baby sees the light of this world what they should be called. Those labels don’t represent who we truly are.
A great speaker Prince Ea talks about how our bodies are like cars that we are forced to drive through labels given by society, but there is no logic or pride in judging someone by the car they drive because who we truly are is found inside. Living behind the history of dividing people in different groups makes it easier for the country to manage the population, or that science shows that genetically we are all different, is not what I want this world to see. It all just adds up to one single question, “who would you be if the world never gave you a label?”
We can argue that we can’t change the fact that we are all different. But arguing the fact that we are different does not solve the problem that because we are different we judge those that don’t look like us, and because we judge people by their color we miss that persons story and who that person is not by color but by their personality. It may be unrealistic to say that we should all stop seeing people as different race, because we also can’t change the fact that we are different. But doesn’t that apply to each of our stories, each of our pains, each of our personalities that make us who we are not our skin but our personality is different. But we fail to see that because when we look at someone the first thing we see is their skin. If I asked you to ignore the different skin colors of each person that would be ignorant. Because also denying that the difference exists, would be denying the existence of that whole race.
So what can we do in today’s society to clean up the mess we created? Well the answer is simple. When you find yourself repeating the various things that keeps our society oppressed, make a difference and stop the cycle.
