Universal Language

There is something to be said about the redeeming quality of the human spirit. Especially in the face of global upheavals caused by world wars, military coups, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored violence, worldwide pandemics, and maniacal dictators, just to name a few.

Many times over, humanity has proven resilient, hopeful, and optimistic when standing against oppression, defying social and political injustices, and working to rebuild from the ruins of poisonous ideology.

Still, for as good-natured and accepting as we’d all like to believe ourselves to be, times of tumult are also quite effective in bringing out the worst from the same human spirit we so proudly boast of. If nothing else, history serves as the greatest reminder and is usually the best teacher when it comes to highlighting human failings and incivility.

This is no more evident than in the disturbing and ongoing news coming out of Ukraine this month. Even after being unlawfully invaded by forces led by a former KGB agent-turned-politician hellbent on restoring the Soviet Union to its former Eurasian prominence, some Ukrainians have responded to the despair and ugliness of an oppressively waged war by being themselves, oppressors. Many digital media outlets, as well as reports from those directly affected in the country have exposed several instances across Ukraine where African, South Asian and other marginalized foreigners had not been allowed to flee to the safety of bordering nations—even being blocked or removed from trains and buses—until Ukrainian nationals were accommodated first.

Actions like these exemplify racism as the one language truly spoken universally. It also reinforces why mistreatment of non-white people all over the world will continue to be tolerable (let’s not forget that global responses and righteous indignation to equally devastating invasions in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, and many other non-European nations have been vastly different, if not muted by comparison) if we don’t consciously work to recognize and acknowledge how our prejudices and biases have normalized conflicts like these (and not like Ukraine) in our minds.

Sadly, I fear that most people who naively recognize love as the global language of choice, without recognizing and adopting the learned and very messy global lessons of history will always only view zealots like Zimmerman, Breivik, Rittenhouse, and Chauvin as the obvious problem with the world. When however, terrified European refugees can pause within a raging war to appease their discriminatory and race-driven penchants in order to maintain a long and closely held supremacy hierarchy, the problem with this world clearly runs much, much deeper.