The path to enlightenment begins with acceptance

All people of colour have been oppressed, but not all to the same degree.

This is something I have been thinking a lot about. In my life, I have faced structural racism. I have faced individual racism. I have watched racism tear at the seams of my family. Yet, I have never feared for my life at the hands of the police. Black communities across the world face oppression like no other community of colour. But how did we get here and why does it take something like this before we start to address the implicit part non-Black communities of colour have played in this system?

Thinking this through, my mind has gone back to colonial times and my family's history. Like many others, my family is Indian origin, but from East Africa. In the early 20th century, the British East Africa Protectorate was created using citizens from other British colonies. We became agents of the colony. They placed Indians in the likes of administration, police and army positions across East Africa to help to keep order over the native people. It was a very strategic plan which I don't think us beneficiaries have thought enough about. Why was this done? What were the intentions? Ultimately, we know how divide and rule was used to devestating effect within colonial territories, but I don't believe that we have given enough thought to how it was being used between territories.

By creating a hierarchy within people of colour, colonial powers were dividing us and preventing us from fighting back as one. Preventing us from fighting back more powerfully. They were exerting their control over us, but in a different, more subtle way. Those given a slither of opportunity clung to it as their way out of poverty and oppression. It was their opportunity to build something better for their families. It became a survival game and, as a result, we left behind those whose oppression was worse than ours. In fact, worse than that, we became oppressors ourselves. We stepped on Africans in an attempt to raise ourselves.

What we need to accept is that we continue to do this. Part of the system, not all of it, in the UK, US, and other Western countries, works for us, and so we close our eyes to what is happening and try to play the game in an attempt to move up society. We don't use that little bit of hierarchy already afforded to us to fight back for those left behind. That is what needs to change. Even those being oppressed can be oppressors to others. Our cultures have taken on the prejudices that were given to us when colonial powers were trying to divide us and we have never addressed them. Isn't it sad to think that we are still under the influence of colonialism? As an Indian, we believe that we were granted independence in 1947, but if we truly want our independence, we have to look inward and address the culture which is still under the influence of divide and rule. We have to unite, not just by going onto the streets, but by addressing the culture of our communities. If we want to create a better system for our children, without the structural racism we still all face, then we have to acknowledge the part we have played by clinging to a hierarchical system designed to give us enough power to keep us quiet, but not enough to rise into true positions of influence.

Some may point to the UK's current Cabinet to disagree with me. Yes, you are right, representation of Indians in British government positions is higher than ever before. However, consider the policies the likes of Priti Patel are pushing through. Punitive immigration reform. Have children of immigrants forgotten so much of their own history that they truly stand by these policies or do they continue to play the role of colonial agents? Are we falling again into the trap of divide and rule where we oppress others on some false notion that we will finally be free of our own oppressors? If so, the need to look inward and accept our role in aiding this system has never been so high.