Emad Barsoum writes: The right to Equality
One afternoon my phone rang and on the other side, in a serene voice, a lady confirming my name, then introducing herself as the human resources manager of a group of companies that work in retail business of a major product.
Swiftly but with the same monotonous tone she said,
Call ended !! For a few moments I was stunned, the phone call had no single question about my experience, capacity, competency, job requirements or any other factor to determine whether the applicant is fit for this job or not.
But suddenly, the situation struck my mind like the lightning and I realized that this was racial profilingsince this city is known to be mainly the home of one race and one color. It is not as multicultural as other cities and towns around it, and it has a reputation of not welcoming others of different backgrounds.
Still confused, how could this famous company advertise their jobs claiming that they are an equal opportunity company, showing their pride in the faceof diversity and inclusion! They are not the only ones, all humans from different origins have similar stories about explicit or implicit discrimination in the country.
Although she didn’t see my color, however she could tell from my voice that I was not born in the country,despite my excellent command of the language, but for her, the accent was my color, a sign of non-affiliation to the majority of the city.
Watching the death of George Floyd immediately reminded me how I felt and how humans now, in the modern civilized world are killed every day in many ways. Not necessarily physically, but by depriving them from many rights, based on their origin or color, even the simple right, to be equal to any other human.
Nevertheless, the racial discrimination is even extended to many groups of different origins, as we are witnessing every day that in some businesses the owners from different races or descent tend to favortheir faction over the others who do not come from the same origin or those who have different language or even different accent.
Nowadays we are not only experiencing racism against one colour, but against all people of colour. It is clearly not only visual discrimination, but auditory too.
