The lesson from the sperm and heroes.
The analogy with the sperm captures in a poignantly lucid way the main contention of this treatise that all men are created equal. As a believer in Christ Jesus, I need no proof to believe that but even when I distant myself from my Christian beliefs I have no hard time finding more examples than I can possibly enumerate here to buttress the claim. What makes this particularly attractive to me is that it has to do with the concept(ion) of life. The sperm, whether it came from a white, black, brown, or green man is the same color and never stops in its tracks to contemplate whether the egg it might encounter is black, white, brown or green; neither does the egg pause to contemplate the trivialities of race and color to validate reception. What a lesson! How would our world be if we all did the same, if we saw in each other, human beings, with a view which is not distorted by the convex and concave lenses of race, color, social status, etc.
Reason with me. If we were to strip everybody of every bit of the deceptive layer of skin we would see the same man and woman, the same color of the blood, flesh, bones, skull, organs and you name it. It strikes me that even the biggest racist in the world, on a dying bed with their life hanging on the balance and a blood transfusion being the only thing which can tip the balance back to life, does not have time to question what color the donor of the life he/she is about to receive in blood was/is - the same is true with one in need of an organ transplant to live. Tell me the reason why a person of one colour can give life to one of another.
It also strikes me that even when some were sweltering in the cauldron of slavery, masters who considered their slaves on some strata much lower than them, driven by a foolish passion which shamefully reminds us of our equality, abandon the matrimonial beds to sleep with maidens of the lower race, even on the hay of the fields where the latter toiled and sweated their blood. In some cases human beings where the product of this hypocrisy, babies tied by blood to those conceived on the matrimonial beds, babies who brutally reminded a willingly blind and forgetful world that in deed, we are all created equal, different in our ways, yet equal.
Totally cognizant of the fact that color does not make heroes but content of character does, I argue that it can in fact and has been destructive to strings of generations of young people, for them to grow up without seeing role models and heroes who look like them and rose from the similar depths from which they rise. While I dream and pray of a world where the color of heroes will not hold the dual potential to alienate or quicken the coming of the reality of a dream depending on the color of the eyes from which the gaze arises, I am convinced beyond a shadow of the doubt that in our current reality, it is heroes in whose lives the young aspirants can see themselves, who give the young permission to dream and form the best potential rail tracks on which their dreams can ride to reality. It is therefore categorically imperative to have such role models for young people to look up to, it is important that such heroes be also taught to young people in school, heroes whose path of rise strike a familiar chord of semblance to the place where the young person might be. Few things tell a more compelling and invigorating story than the life of one who looks like you and has been where you have been, yet overcoming the things you struggle with. Nevertheless I still dream and pray for a world which is color blind, where irrespective of the way we look, we will realize that it is the same things we seek, the same needs, the same desires, to love and be loved, to care and be cared for, to have a roof over our heads, to have bread on the table, to work, to have and belong to family, the one big human family.
© 2009 Afeseh Ngwa Hilary 08/11/09
