━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
–ˏˋ ✦ ˊˎ–
A Boxer’s Response to Racism
17th January 2019
–ˏˋ ✦ ˊˎ–
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Sanjay Perera’s talk on the ‘best fight [he] never had’ was full of witty comments, hilarious one-liners and detailed descriptions, and was funny, insightful, but most of all, very surprising.
Perera tells the story of how he, as a scraggly university student on the school boxing team, was at a bar one night and was the victim of racism, from a hulking, bigoted man who Perera could tell, completely hated him, and clearly displayed his aggression. He said, it was a ‘quite scary moment’, as it should be, but he realised that his friends, the university boxing team that had won many competitions, were sitting right behind him. As his aggressor made another comment on how blacks shouldn’t be in the country, Perera cheekily said, “I’m black? Does Dad know?”
And to his and my surprise, this great, beast of a man’s friends began to laugh. “They saw me as a human being for a second,” Perera said, as the tension suddenly evaporated. It was completely bizarre.
Within this experience, Perera sensed a deep injustice, and realised that this was one of the rare moments illustrating perfectly the idea of ‘some people will hate you for things you can’t control’, which Perera himself expressed. However, the really surprising thing for me about this story was how quickly people could overcome their prejudices, even for a second, to share a moment of laughter with another person. Even if the connection lasted only a second, it was there, and this gives me faith that anyone can change how they think about someone else. Perhaps on the first impression, people will dislike you for something you have no control over, but as time passes, maybe their opinion of you could change.
This story taught me the importance of seeing others as human beings, not as white, or black, or brown. To see without colour is something all children are born with, and lose as they grow up, but perhaps it is important to preserve that innocence and willingness to accept people in any shape or form, so that in the future, all of us will have a safe world to live in and express ourselves in.