May 25th, 2020 was a Black and bloody Monday. The cold homicide of George Floyd, an Afro-American in Minnesota, USA sparked riots, spoliation, and vandalism in America, and triggered solidarity protests in other nations.

This unfeted acts of violent protest were based on racism, this time not a war between Whites and Blacks, but rather the World against Racist. As racism is notable with America and Europe, does this endemic systemic rivalry absent in the Africanized context?

The concept of racism has merely been understood as an act of discrimination between Whites and Blacks, but the concept goes beyond that. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General asserts that “we may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race”. This means that race means more than skin color.

In putting this argument in its proper perspective, the definition of the term racism according to the Oxford dictionary is a prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. By extension, race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical and social characteristics.

While the masses raise their voices against America for its failure to keep its sacred promise of ensuring shared fundamental human rights for all its citizens, far-reaching racism exists aside from the white and black racism.

In Ghana, a predominantly black society, the pervasive nature of racism is evident in every sphere of our national life: at the tribal level, religious level, skin-color racism, economic racism, and gendered-racism. In this article, I will raise fundamental issues of racism in Ghana which has become a normalcy in our daily endeavors.

In Ghana, severe racism faced by most people is the tribal racism. Tribal nomenclatures have become a typical issue in the Ghanaian context where people belonging to certain tribes are identified as superior to other tribes or ethnic groups. In our daily endeavors, the comments made against how people belonging to certain tribes pronounce certain words is a common feature of a racist society.

The funny comments made of the names of people belonging to certain ethnic groups are typical of the racial climate in Ghana. In Ghana, there exist automatic negative connotations for people who belong to the Ewe tribe, Northern, Krobo, Fanti, Ashanti, Ga, and others.

The attribution of people from certain ethnic groups or regions as “Royals” and others as “Subjects” is a typical feature of racism in Ghana. How many families are welcoming of their members marrying from other tribes? How many times haven’t the delicacies of people of “other” tribes been subjects of mockery? These people belonging to these “odd tribes” are citizens of Ghana, yet the freedoms and rights enjoyed by these people are limited due to these negative attitudes of their fellow countrymen.

In a society where ethnic and tribal discrimination exist in various approaches, is the Floydic-situation any different from what we do in Ghana? Certainly NOT, and neither can members of these “odd tribes” and ethnic groups breathe in their own country.

Again, religious affiliation discrimination is also common in our Ghanaian context. The philosophy that “Ghana is a religiously tolerant nation” is a well-known nationalized deception that we hold dearly. The various religious sects proselytize about brotherliness and sisterliness yet their understanding of “Do not yoke with unbelievers” is an internalized wisdom that reflects in our communication approaches on a daily basis.

The three major religions in Ghana are Christianity, Islam, and the African Traditional Religion(s).

How many times have not practitioners of the African Traditional Religion been identified as reprobate people?

In Ghana, every religious sect has a negative perception of rivalry believers. These perceptions motivate us to treat each other with disdain. This is a common feature of a racial society.

In a nation where the religious customs and traditions of people are accepted only in theory but never in practice, such a nation can never be a religiously tolerant nation as in the case of Ghana. Akuaku (2008) revealed that the relationship that exists between Christians and Muslims is not without negative perception for each other.

While Muslims perceive Christians as people with superiority complex who look down on other minor religions, Christians also perceive Islam as a religion of violence and Muslims in general as a group that is oriented towards conflict violence.

The banalest religious racial attitude is intra-religious racism. This is the form where adherents of the same faith but with different conventions to the faith antagonize each other unjustifiably.

In Ghana, the treatment given to adherents of Jehovah's Witnesses, Musama Disco Christo Church, and the likes are different from the other Orthodox and Pentecostal churches. Similarly in the Islamic faith, the different approaches to the worship amongst the Sunni Islam, Ahmadiyya, Sufi, and others have records of frictional relationships.

If the concept of religious racism is about individuals heightening the superiority of their faith whiles belittling the faith of others, then Ghana cannot be said to be a non-racial country.

The racism that is based on skin-color of people is very common even in our Ghanaian context. One thing most people are more forgetful of is that Ghana is a Black African country, just as the Star in our flag depicts. However, the inferiority complex that has become almost an epidemic in the country has made most people lose their sense of national pride.

A common tag any typical black Ghanaian is faced with is the nickname “Blackie” which is a form of mockery of their God-given pigmentation. In other places, fair-colored Ghanaians are also termed “Molato babies”, “Disappointed Europeans” and sometimes the ancestry of those fair-colored people are attacked as being prostitutes who slept with the early European settlers in Ghana. With all of these tags and name-calling, how do we seek to create a friendly society for our fellow country people?

The most disappointing scene in Ghana is the commercialization of racism. It is either that advertisements that run on our media space contain scenes of a depressed black family and a happy white family.

When cosmetic companies want to create an inferiority complex in the minds of the Black woman, they use fair colored ladies in their product advertisements.

This occurs on a daily basis on our various media platforms. As this is seen as a normalcy how do we look forward to remedying the ills of racism when it is putting monies in the pockets of advertisers and media agencies? We can’t just breathe with this endemic systemic racial discrepancies even in our black soil.

Racism is also about discrimination based on economic status. In a middle-income country like Ghana, people find the need to establish a system of discrimination between the average rich and the extremely poor.

In a racial America and Europe, the average Afro-American or black person finds it extremely difficult to rise from the button to the top wherever they find themselves. Positions mostly occupied with not much stress in acquiring by these Blacks are the normal janitor and conservatory work, security personnel, house-helps, amongst others.

This is not to say that such works are necessarily evil, but the issue is how well are we receptive to such people even In Ghana? In our public and private institutions, even as individuals how do we treat these average working class?

Even if their work is not respected must it affect their personal integrity? In a society where better human relations exist between people of certain economic classes, how will those of the depressed class breathe?

The level of togetherness that greets the world today as we fight against racism as witnessed of George Floyd’s incident must be greatly applauded, but this must not end here even after the justice we seek is attained.

The world must come together once again to fight against the gendered-racism that has been a bane on our individual stereotypical conscience in Ghana. The customs and traditions as practiced in Ghana since ages have been one that greatly suppresses women, and elevates men. This custom has become self-imposed whereby most women have internalized this unhealthy social construct as part of their epistemic being.

A woman is more likely to settle for a junior position today even when they most qualify for the topmost position. The reason is that in a predominantly male-dominated society as in Ghana, it is socially established that men are not to take instructions from women because according to some sacred believes “Women are to be submissive”, where submission in this context means slavery.

In such a society, rape and other sexual abuses against women are more prevalent. The woman race has been suffocated by these toxic social norms and until this unhealthy social conscientization is deconstructed for the establishment of mutual respect of all human race, man and woman, the justice we seek against racism in America will be a far cry as our own gendered racism in Ghana lies prostrate before our eyes.

The Floydic-situation is any event or occasion where a group of people living in a society is suppressed as a result of the classifications of people into different segments and treatments are given to them based on their class. The Floydic-situation is the one that people from different race: tribe, religious believes, skin pigmentation, economic status, gender-orientation, and social standing has an impact on their access to their inalienable rights and freedoms.

“I can’t breathe” means more than a simple sentence which explains a difficulty in inhaling air, but more “I can’t breathe” means my rights and freedoms are being curtailed; I feel suppressed and depressed; the situation where unhealthy social norms and the attitudes of individuals act as a barricade towards the freedom of others. In a healthy society, people should be able to breathe, and to achieve these people need to do away with negative stereotypical attitudes. Suppressive social norms need to be replaced with a more developmental one, and the commercialization of unhealthy racial comparisons need to be checked in Ghanaian media. As Ibram X. Kendi posits “denial is the heartbeat of racism” and as we deny people their personal freedoms in our everyday lives in Ghana, we become racist.

No matter how big or small a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people. Therefore if we will be strong together, we need to respect ourselves and respect others in order to create an enabling environment for our personal advancement and collective growth as a nation.

God Bless Our Homeland!