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From racial Segregation to Obama: and how to transfer this phenomenon to Sri Lanka

By Charles.S.Perera

In 1950s black children could not walk into a sweet shop to buy candies. They were black and therefore chased out. The blacks were not allowed to enter restaurants. They were refused to be served if they were in. The black children were admitted only to schools meant for them, and was refused admission to any other school. They were not accepted for registration of their names in electoral registers. Many a blacks were lynched or hanged and burnt alive by the Ku Klux Klan, and other "hate groups". The blacks had to be satisfied with lowest paid jobs, working under unimaginable inhuman conditions.

On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress from Alabama , got into the Montgomery City Bus No. 2857, and sat on a seat just behind the ten reserved for the whites . In order to provide a seat for a white passenger who boarded the bus, after the ten seats reserved for the whites were filled, Rosa Parks along with others in the next raw of seats were asked to give up their seats and keep standing. No blacks could sit on the same raw of seats where a white was seated.
Though the other black passengers obeyed the order, Rosa Parks refused and the driver James Blake had her arrested under Alabama's Segregation Law. She was charged and found guilty. She was fined $ 10 and costs. She appealed against the court order .This incident followed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott ended in victory when the Alabama's Segregation Laws were declared unconstitutional.

In the shadows of that past racial segregation, the dark mist of which has not still disappeared, a black man with his wife , and two beautiful children walking through the front door of the White House, on the 20 of January,2009 as its occupant for the next four years, would have been furthest from any American's imaginations.

Even if one argues that Barrack Obama is not a black man of the slave stock, his father being a Kenyan and mother a white American, in America, or in the West, a person with a dark skin from the lightest shade to coal black, is a black- a coloured person. Since slavery was outlawed, blacks in America lived in fear and uncertainty, like the dalits in India or even worse.

That was the lot of the black minority, under a white majority in America long time ago, quite a distant away from Sri Lanka, where the Communal distinction, was not a barrier to mix equally with the majority, and do every thing as much as the majority without any barrier, fear, or uncertainty.

In this background the election of Barrack Obama as the President of America is a remarkable lesson of racial integration. How did all that happen ? There are already different arguments, comparisons, and suggestions for possible ways out for nations with ethnic problems.

In America this racial integration had been possible through non aggression, and a peaceful, patient, intelligent approach. Education has played a significant role for this racial coherence, which had created not hatred, but an understanding. American racial minority followed a non violent political philosophy professed by Martin Luther King, who had been influenced by the Gandhian non-violence movement for Independence in India. There was intense heart searching to turn a very intolerant racial discrimination, to an acceptance level of political integration, as against a social integration.

In Sri Lanka Communal difference has gone beyond a search for social integration, to an aggressive search for a political integration to dominate the majority. The Muslim Community, as against the Tamil Community is going even beyond the political integration to enforcement of their religious faith to subjugate the majority into accepting their own religious culture. It is a religious fundamentalism that jumps basic social norms of communal cohabitation.

The extreme form of fundamentalism results in intolerant "talibanism", which one should try to avoid even in its mildest form, as it was seen in a manifestation against application of rules of an institution that does not accept out word show of religious difference.

If the communities in Sri Lanka accept each other without seeking dominance over the majority community, they could foresee a day, like the racial integration of America, which promoted a black American to the highest office of the land. In Sri Lanka the ethnic difference has stepped over its racial bounds to hatred towards the majority Sinhala.

This is despite a Sinhala President who accepts all communities without discrimination. He has shown an unbelievable calmness in the face of verbal expression of enmity of all his adversaries. He does not seek to take revenge. He is manifestly aware of his mission and, does not let personal attacks deviate him, from his search for the path to reach the goal he had set.

If the Communities, leaving aside the ambitious egoistic verbal tirades of the political parties like the UNP, JVP, SLMC and the TNA, unite without hatred to really build a united nation, the day will not be far when we will have in Sri Lanka a Tamil or a Muslim President.

The greatest barrier for a meaningful unity of Communities at the moment, is the far too many Political Parties identifying themselves with different Communities. This separateness of identity distances the communities, rather than bring them together, perpetrating hatred, towards the majority. A political party identifying itself as belonging to a particular Community, shows its opposition to the other Community. This opposition is the root of hatred, which is worst than racism.

Therefore, we in Sri Lanka should adopt this non aggressive political integration by seeking political membership in the main political parties- the UNP or the SLFP which have no communal bias. That would be a first step to political integration of all communities. Thereafter, it is within the political parties that further communal integration for political leadership should be advanced.

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