By Davet Muzvidzwa

RACISM is a social misnomer consisting of both prejudice and discrimination based on perceptions of biological differences among peoples.
In everyday life racism manifests itself more through racial discrimination.
According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the term ‘racial discrimination’ refers to any form of exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
For racism to occur, a particular race believes that it is superior over another and that its social and moral traits are as a result of its biological construct.
Racism created the foundation of the historical trans Atlantic slave trade of the African, the partition colonisation of Africa and other territories, apartheid in South Africa and Palestine and many other ills against humanity.
Xenophobic attacks in some parts of the world are manifestations of racism. The African has been on the receiving end of the ills of racism.
According to the United Nations Convention, superiority inferred from racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous.
The purpose of this article is to question the institutionalisation of racism by Western civilisation yet the West is quick to raise the racial discrimination card whenever any other people try to correct the racial misnomer.
Racism has been culturarised into sport, work and everyday activities.
The following examples will illustrate how the Western culture was deliberately constructed racist.
The game of Chase
In the game of chase, there are two kings at war. There is a black king and a white king. As a rule of the game, a white king’s army is allowed to make the first attack.
It has become part of the culture that the white king has the advantage of making the first move in the attack strategy.
If there was no racism, then these kings would alternate to make the first move. White supremacy is already entrenched in the game of chase.
In the game of Snooker
In this game there are balls of many colours but there are two distinct balls. These are the white ball and the black ball.
All the rules of this game are centred on these two balls. First, the white ball has the privilege of attacking all the balls in the game saving the black ball for the last.
There is no ball that is allowed to hit the white ball but the white ball has unfettered right to hit all balls. After pocketing balls of all colours, the white ball will draw the attention of the crowd as it prepares to give a devastating hit on the black ball.
The pocketing of the black ball by the white ball signals the end of the game.
The player who pockets a black ball using a white ball wins the game.
If you pocket the black ball using any other ball you are given the heaviest penalty of losing the game. So it is the white ball alone that has the universal privilege of hitting the black ball and pocket it.
In Western cultures, when a person dies, the mourners wear black clothes. It is common knowledge that people who are mourning are possessed with grief.
Their mourning is associated with black colour. You will not see people going to a Western funeral wearing white or pink.
In the same racial stereotyping when Westerners draw pictures of witches, they are all in black. Vampires wear black.
When Westerners paint their houses, one will notice that they will put a black paint at the bottom and white or other colours at the top.
It is the black colour that should be absorbing all the dirt of the building.
African players have kept the European football industry going. They have contributed immensely in the multi-billion dollar industry.
Despite all the contribution, African players in Europe have been denigrated to monkeys, baboons, chimps and so forth.
Such racial attacks have come from spectators, players, and officials alike.
Such attacks are manifestations of a deep rooted racial culture institutionalised through everyday life activities such as sport.
A child that grows up playing snooker knows that the black colour is a colour that must always be attacked.
When a black person is presented before that child, the initial instinctive reaction is that this is punching material.
This argument was held true in colonial farming areas in Zimbabwe where a pikinini baas would beat up an old man for no apparent reason and get away with it.
This could be seen when the Basa Viljoen had to choose between a dog and his ‘garden boy’ to sit in front of the car.
The whiteman would prefer to sit in front of his pick-up car with a dog.
The arrogance that when whites feel ill-treated they are quick to raise the racial card arises from the fact that they cannot fathom an African treating them worse than they do because the African is perceived less human by the Western culture.
This explains why there are more Africans in Western jails by percentage of the population.
When Africans are affected by an agenda, it is not regarded as racism but when Europeans are affected by the same agenda, it is racism.
When in 1890 whites took land from blacks, it was not racism.
However, when Africans repossessed the same land in 1999, the whole world cried foul pointing at blatant racism by blacks.
Therefore the refusal to recognise that Africa was subjected to a lot of racism historically is racism in itself.
It is only the racial eye that fails to see and note the racial discrimination that Africa continues to go through.