Racism - Rashad Abdelrahman at TEDxYouth@Khartoum

The problems of racism in Sudan are many, and so are the ways of dealing with them. Rashad gives his perspective of how to solve some of the problems of racism that are affecting Sudanese youth through poetry.

Salam alaykum.

Before I start talking: We've been sitting for a long time,
so I just want to play a little game.

I need two volunteers from the crowd,
any two random volunteers...

...little game.

Another random volunteer?

Alright, come up.

Come on up here.

(Applause)

Stand right here.

Stand facing each other.

So, the game we are going to play
has only one rule.

There is a red line here

and the person who convinces
the other person to cross the red line, wins.

That's the only rule.
If you convince her to cross the line, you win.

If you convince her to cross the line, you win.

What would you tell her
to convince her to cross the line?

Girl 1: "Be strong. Use your strength."

Girl 2: "There is an iPad over the line."

RA: So you try to bribe her to cross the line.

That's a good thing, that's a good thing.
Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

(Applause)

Now, the real answer to that question is,
you tell that person:

"If you cross the red line, I will cross
the red line and then we'll both win."

See, that's the difference between
real life and competitive sports.

In competitive sports, we believe
that there has to be only one winner,

but in real life we can all win together
and I'll try to explain this later.

(Applause)

The reason I decided to talk
about racism today is because

four months ago, I was chilling in the 'Nile Street'
with around 15 of my friends,

University of Khartoum Students,

people that society considers to be educated people
and the future of our country,

and they were talking about politics,

you know, UoK students love talking
about politics, religion and all of that,

so I said, you know, let's see what these
educated people have to say about racism,

and so I decided to start
a conversation about racism.

They were are all saying beautiful things
until this one guy asked a question.

He said, "What if a man from Southern Sudan,
who happens to be a Muslim, well educated,

and has a decent job,

what if this man proposes to your sister?
Will you allow it?"

14 out of the 15 guys
that were sitting said no,

and they insisted they said this
has nothing has to do with racism.

So that brings me to a question.
Do people understand what racism is?

A statistic that we did in 12 schools
throughout Khartoum,

12 high schools –

we have been working with high school kids
about racism, doing workshops –

80 percent of our high school students

do not know anything about racism.

They don't know what racism is.

But once you explain it to them, once you say,
"Racism is this, that and the third,"

and you give them examples of racism,

they all click, they say, "I know this is happening
but I just didn't know that it has a name."

so it shows you that this is
a big problem that we live in everyday,

but we don't have a name for it, that means
we cannot point to it as a problem and solve it.

So the question is,

Is there racism in Sudan?
Is there racism in Sudan?

You guys wanna answer it?
Audience: Yeaah!

RA: OK. But the average person...

Before before we continue,
let's define racism, alright?

Racism is views, practices and actions,

reflecting a belief, a belief that members
of the same race share certain attributes

that make this race collectively, as a whole,

less desirable, more desirable, inferior, superior.

It's like when you say,
"Black people are thieves,"

that's it, you are closing the door,
saying black people are thieves.

"White people are this,"
this is racism, when you generalize.

Alright.

So to answer the question,
"Is there racism in Sudan?",

what we'll do instead of saying yes or no –
you guys already said yes,

but then my presentation will be over
so we still have to do this.

So to answer the question,
we'll look at racism

and what it does to an individual and
what it does to society.

And then we'll look at the Sudanese
individual and the Sudanese Society

and see if there are traces of racism.

So first we'll talk about 'stereotypical racism'.

Stereotyping is when you generalize something,

just like I said, "Black people are thieves."

You see one black thief, you say,
"All black people are thieves."

This is stereotypical racism.

So what stereotypical racism does
is that it reinforces the stereotypes,

for example, we continue with the thief thingy,

if – let's say we have a tribe called Tribe X,
and Tribe X is known to be a tribe of thieves,

so what we'll see on the streets,
if a lady is walking by, she sees a kid from Tribe X.

He hasn't stolen anything yet, still a kid,

she says, "Oh, that's the Tribe X kid,
so I'm gonna cling on to my bag,

because I know what he is trying to do,
he is trying to steal my purse."

So this Tribe X kid goes and
sits on the public transportation

and the man sitting next to him is like,

"Oh, Tribe X kid is sitting next to me.

I need to check my pocket every two minutes
to make sure my wallet is still there."

So this kid is being treated like a thief
before he steals anything,

and if anything is missing,
society accuses him of being a thief.

So society actually pushes this guy
towards being a thief,

and if we look at the Sudanese society,
we have a lot of stereotypes.

One of the stereotypes that we have
is about the Shaigiya people.

Is anybody here Shaigiya?

Raise your hand if you are Shaigiya.

So OK, we love Shaigiya people,
it's OK to be proud of yourself

as long as you don't think you are better
than anybody else, that's not racism.

(Laughter) (Applause)

One stereotype that we have about
Shaigiya People is that they are cheap.

Some people say Shaigiya people
don't like giving anything,

so let's look at a kid
who's born to a Shaigiya family.

This guy is born and society treats him
like he is cheap,

for example if I want to make a phone call
and I don't have credit,

this guy sitting in the middle is Shaigiya,

so I go like, "Do you have credit?",
he says, "No,"

then I'm like, "Oh, he's Shaigiya."

"Do you have credit?"
(Laughter)

So this guy – so I'm giving him
an excuse for being cheap.

I'm like, "You are Shaigiya, it's OK,
you don't have to be generous."

If he does something nice,
I'm like, "Oh my God!

This Shaigiya person
has actually invited me for a drink.

I don't know how it happened."

(Applause)

So what we are doing is, we are not giving
him a chance to be a generous person

because we are giving him an excuse
for being cheap

and we are not actually encouraging him
to do do anything,

so this enforces the stereotype,
it makes him more and more cheap.

And this can be seen in our society.

One of the things that racism causes
is what we call self-hatred.

When a person is constantly subjected to racism,

they start to question themselves.

They start to hate themselves.

It's like, "Oh, I'm black, maybe there is
something wrong with my color,

because people are making fun of me,

my hair is nappy, there is
something wrong with nappy hair."

And then you become embarrassed of who you are.

And we can see this in the Sudanese society.

Some of our sisters, they're bleaching
their skin with toxic chemicals

because society tells them that
if you become white,

if you behave like white people,
then you become a better person.

(Applause)

And so you see a Sudanese person
goes to Egypt, he stays in Egypt for two months,

and he comes back as an Egyptian.

He stays in Saudi Arabia,
he comes back as a Saudi Arabian,

because we don't have a reason
to be proud of ourselves,

because we have racism within ourselves.

So if you consider self-hatred
– (Applause) –

and you look at the Sudanese society,
you see a lot of self-hatred.

One other thing that racism does is

it creates more racism,
what we call reverse racism,

and reverse racism is when
somebody is being racist towards you

and you don't want to hate yourself,
so you say, "Hey, I'll just hate you

and I'll become racist towards you,"
and this will create a head-on collision

and that can be seen
in the African-American struggle.

It lead to the rise of militant groups,

we have the Black Panthers,
the Black Panthers is a militant group.

When the average African-American
was straightening his hair and lightening his skin,

the Black Panthers, they were growing afros
and taking the AK47

and then that created more violence.

The white people called them niggers,
they called them wiggers.

You call me chocolate,
I'll call you vanilla.

And then it just became
a conflict within the society.

So racism leads to more racism,

and we can see this in our society here.

Some tribes, they never get along here in Sudan,

because one tribe might have started this
and became racist against this tribe,

and now they are racist against each other

and this leads to nowhere.

So what's being done
to fight racism in Sudan?

Well, I'm actually here
to talk about a group of people.

I'm very honored
to be a member of this group.

We call it the Unity House,
and what we do is –

shout out to the Unity House –

Big round of applause!
(Applause)

The Unity House is a group of artists,
musicians, writers and... yeah.

What we do is we fight racism through art.

We perform at open mic nights,

we perform at poetry events and we try
to fight racism through poetry and writing.

We also conduct workshops,
we have conducted twelve workshops

throughout the capital in high schools...
(Applause)

with high school children, where 80 percent
of them don't know what's racism is.

We have conducted five workshops
in Aldamazeen and in Babanosa

and we have conducted a workshop
for poets in Aldamazeen.

So how this works?
Why do we use arts to fight racism?

The thing with arts is that arts is a soft tool,
art is easy to accept,

like you saw the play
by Shawareea earlier,

like they're trying to send you
a very deep message

and you just see it in a form of entertainment,
it doesn't have to be rare

so that's what we do,

in performances we create scenarios,

in workshops what we do
is we usually work with artists,

so we get them to feel comfortable first

and then we start talking about racism,
and then we create scenarios.

One of the workshops we were working on,

poets from Aldamazeen, this one girl
at the beginning of the workshop,

she introduced herself, she said,
"My name is so so, and I'm a war poet."

I said, "What is a war poet?"

She said, "I write poetry to provoke people
and encourage people to fight the rebels."

That was her idea.

After five days, after the workshops finished,
she performed the piece.

And in that piece she was talking about
building a house with her lover,

her and her lover building a house.

So I called her and said,
"What is this that you're talking about?

Like, what does this
have to do with racism?"

She said, "My lover is the rebels that I'm fighting
and the house is Sudan that I'm trying to build."

(Applause)

So the whole idea changed

because we just got together and we started
talking and we started creating scenarios.

And the power of scenario is

that sometimes you don't know something is wrong
until we put you in that position.

I was doing a workshop in
Abubaker Alamin High School in Omdurman for girls

and this one girl, she said, "A man proposed to my sister
and we rejected him because of his tribe,

and my sister loved this man very much

and then she got depressed and
she dropped out of school for two years now."

And I said, "Is this right?"

She couldn't tell me it was wrong,
so she said,

"You know, we are tribe, we have our traditions,
we can't give our daughter to anybody."

So I tried to switch things a little bit.

I said, "What if the man that you love
comes to propose to you,

and your family rejects him
because of his tribe?"

So she was quiet,
so then I tried to flip it again.

I said, "Is your mom and dad
from the same tribe?"

She said, "Yes." I said, "Let's assume
they were not from the same tribe."

I said, "Is your dad a good person?",
she said, "Yes."

I said, "Does your dad deserve
to be rejected?"

She said, "No."

So I said, "What if your dad came
and proposed to your mom,

and then he was rejected because of his tribe,
would that be fair?"

She said,
"No, that's not fair."

So what we do is we mix things a little bit

and when we put them
in positions that they're not in,

and that way we can change the society.

One other thing that art does
is art gives you a lot of options,

like I can talk about racism,
or I can talk about the things that racism does.

And one of my favorite topics
is to talk about self hate.

If I feel like a group of people hate themselves
because people have been racist towards them,

I try to make them feel better.

So to end this, I'm going to share
a piece of poetry that I wrote

for all Africans, because I believe
Africans are very beautiful people

and they deserve to be happy
for who they are.

(Applause)

And this piece is called "Africa".

So Africa, please wake up,
your history was stolen.

Some of it survived
but still it was taught wrong.

We wasn't taught about the beautiful
African beings, the African kings

that traveled all across the globe
doing African things.

African rhythm,
African words over African beats.

African [artists] [still sleeping]
through them African streets.

African eyes, open up and realize
that sit back and watch as the melanine dries.

It hurts me to see all the Africans cry.

Africans, why?

Why Africans die, over hunger
while the colonizer's eating our pie.

Africa is not poor,
that's an African lie

black gold still glitters
under African sky.

Best believe these facts
from this African guy.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)