What is good for the goose is good for the gander!

Warning: This piece is long, but I shall hope you will find a very interesting read. So make yourself comfortable; grab  a cup of something and  balance...

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I promise you on my honour that this is not about Donald Trump so please read on, lol .

One of the things people had against Donald Trump is that he is racist; he does not like Latinos, Mexicans, Blacks and anything coloured. He is also anti-muslim, a narcissist, and a “dis-respecter” of women!

I am not a Trump apologist, so I won’t try to defend him. However, I venture to say that most of us also exhibit some of these traits that Trump is vilified for. Most of us are racists! Phew! I said it! A lot of black people hate white people, of course with a valid reason, but hatred is hatred. A lot of black people hate themselves also; tribe for tribe, nations for nations; even clan for clan. The Hausa man is supposed to hate the ‘yanmirins’ and the yorubas. The Ibo man is supposed to hate the ‘ofemanus’. The Yorubas also hate the ‘ajeokuta ma mu omi’ in equal measure (hope you can translate these terms).  I don’t even want to go to what goes on internally between the three major tribes. You have the Fulanis against the Birom in Plateau; you have the Aguleris against the Umuleri people in Anambra; you have the Ifes versus the Modakekes in Osun to mention but only a few. In essence, all over the country, there are plenty instances of intra tribe and inter-community clashes due to deep seated, age long issues that, on close examination, bothers on hatred, racism, and other kinds of bigotry that you will even be shocked exists amongst a supposedly homogenous group of people..

 Even when we are not physical clawing out each other's eyes, we still have misgivings and bad blood amongst ourselves! When I was growing up, my mum gave me a list of places from where I should never bring a girl home to her as the one I want to marry. She would tell me that they are not good people, and I always wondered about that list because even some of the Yoruba clans were on that list! Hopefully today, some of her misgivings about those 'people' have are no longer there, but you never know right!

One more relationship to unravel; let’s go into inside the family line. Sibling rivalries are all too common around us, even with most people coming out of nuclear families. Don’t even go the extended ones; everything that happens to one wife and her children would have most definitely been caused by the other wife; and so unfortunately, these poor children are taught to hate, even when their hearts want to love!

Today, I just want to challenge us about our attitudes; by this I mean the attitudes we show towards other people, mostly people that we have concluded are lower to us, perhaps in birth, in stature, in status, in education attainment, in breed, in the amount of money they have; and whatever else we use to build a dividing line between ourselves. There is the general tendency to treat such people with disdain by most Nigerians, and I am deliberately trying to restrict it to Nigeria today. When we come in contact with people of lower or humble status, we see them as mostly to be tolerated, and sometimes not even deemed good enough to be tolerated.

I often wonder what switch is in our head that goes flip flop, making our brains to quickly catalogue person we meet as either equal in status, bigger than we are, or smaller than we are. And when we think they are smaller, our attitude becomes distinctly condescending of downright demeaning. We are like a peacock; we flare our feathers, and dazzle these ‘poor’ cousins or people.

Let me paint some scenarios to drive this home. Say you have a close family member who just died along with the wife, and their kids have to come live with you. When he was alive, he had bigger stature and means, but now he is dead, and the kids are now under your care. How do you treat them? Do you treat them as equal to your own kids or as the now unfortunate orphans that they are? When their parents were alive, they attended the same private schools with your kids. Now they are no more, do you still send them to the same school, or suddenly they are not good enough for that place any longer?

Another scenario, a help who lives with you, and she is perhaps only about 3 years older than your first daughter. She became a help because she is an orphan from the village, daughter to some distant relations of yours who had tragically died. She had never been an house help, having been nurtured by a loving mum and a caring dad. But because of the tragedy that struck, she was sent to live with you as a house help , even though she is still a little girl, just around the age of your own daughter. Your daughter is woken up to have her birth in the morning and get dressed for school. The house help has to know when to wake up, several hours before your daughter, otherwise you will draw a work of art on her body with your beatings. She wakes up, sweeps, washes, cooks, and finally goes to have her bath to prepare for school; that is if we are lucky that madam found her worthy enough for school in the first place. Tell me, what makes her different from your own daughter? I can tell you; the only thing different is that she is not your daughter; she is the maid, and your daughter is the princess.

Let’s go back to the first scenario. If we look at your clothes line, there are two types of school uniforms. The ‘tush’ nice one is for the Avant Garde school your kids attend; the second one is the standard material for the derelict and 'unresourced' public school the children of your late cousins now attend. I ought to remind you that they were school mates with your own children before their parents died, but now that you are the closest family they have, things have suddenly changed. You even swore at their parents’ burial that you will take care of them till they are grown and settled, but shortly after, they are no longer good enough for the school your kids go to. I know you may not be able to afford all the fees for all of them, but are these other kids different from you own, that they should have to go to schools where we know that the end for them is already determined? So instead of putting only your own kids in that school, have you considered looking for a cheaper school where you will be able to pay all their school fees.

Funny enough, whenever I drive my little girl to school, I see a lot of parents who are also taking their kids to the same school as we are going, but they first drop off their 'other children' at the government school on the main road before they proceed to the cul-de-sac where the private school is located.

One day, it struck me! I said to myself, "why are they all not in the same school?" What is the difference between these two sets of kids? I can already hear groaning from a lot of people who will read this, but think about it a little bit more. Why do we treat them differently from our own? Why can’t those other kids attend the same school as yours? God forbid if you were dead, and your brother chooses to reverse the life your kids were used to just because you were no longer alive, would you rest in your grave (as if there is anything like that)?

For the house helps, a ready excuse is that they will soon be taken away from service with you. I agree with that, but what about the ones they will never take away; like that your poor cousin from the village? Why can’t she attend the same school as your own kids?

Why do they also have to eat their meals in the kitchen with plastic bowls and spoons while yours eat on the dining table with the finest cutleries? Why do they wear ‘okrika’ and ‘bend down boutiques while yours wear the latest GAP designs? Why do we just know that these are not your kids when you take them out? Why do they look underfed while yours are bursting their shirt seams?

I guess I can ask questions upon questions, but I may not get an answer. It is unfortunate that we simply apply a mental label unto people, and we act based on our perception of who we think they are and what we think they are worth! A lot of times, we are even rude to some people only to realise that they are important personalities. So why can’t we be respectful of all persons? Why can’t we treat everyone with respect regardless of their prefixes or suffixes or their rides or clothes or position?

At my older children’s school (a secondary school), when they have their inter-house sports, they often invite kids from the community schools around them to their invitational relay races. Of course, once you see these ones you know that they don’t belong in the environment of that school. Then race starts, and these community school kids outperforms our own kids with the back of their hands! It is the same feeling I get watching the channels TV kids soccer tournament or the Shell Football tournament. Kids from our world never win such things simply because they almost don’t know how to compete against kids from the other side of the divide!

So I said to myself, one day, these two categories of kids will meet. How will my own cope with the demands of this country and the realities of living in this world? How will they be street smart and hold their own turf? What if on first contact, they meet and fall in love with one of the boys/girls from the other side who has been so roughed up that they don’t have any problems ‘extorting’ from others? Some of these people we probably have had the opportunity of bringing close enough to us to be able to reshape their lives, but we held them at arm’s length

The truth is that we can separate them all we can now, even in our homes, but one day, their paths may cross, and it always does. The ones that we put down most times develop a backbone because of the adversity they have suffered, and are often more successful in the rough and tumble of real life. Our own, pampered and protected, sometimes end up running from everything, and running back to us. When they don’t come to us, it is because they have found one of those other ones who seemingly know everything about everything and can help them to stabilise in the real world. If that other one is a bad one, we and our kids are in trouble.

I guess what I am trying to say is this; whatever is good for the geese is also good for the gander. Whatever is good for the privileged son of yours is equally good for the less privileged one around you. There is no reason for the separation, for the maltreatment, and for the hatred. If we love all equally, we will be contributing to a safer world, and to kids growing up to realize their potentials regardless of the kind of hand fate had dealt them in the past.

Try to embrace them starting from today, and you will find out that these kids are no different. If only you can remove the label you have placed on them  and embrace them today, you will find that you will gain more than you have thought you will lose. I know a mother who had to do this; and she did it so well. She sent all of the children around her to the best school that she can afford for all, sew the same kind of clothes on all of them, treated everyone as equals. Today, the result is that she has many more people calling her mum and grateful to her for their successes. She is now enjoying her old age living out a glorious life with plenty people around her, and their kids all calling her grandma.

I challenge you today to look at the ones around you who are less privileged, and commit to treating them humanely. Even if you can’t treat them exactly like your own flesh and blood, make sure you come close, close enough to make it difficult for people to tell the difference just by looking at them. Remember, what is good for the geese is good for the gander!