Separate and Unequal | Teen Ink

Separate and Unequal

January 22, 2010
By Dan Justin Simpelo GOLD, New City, New York
Dan Justin Simpelo GOLD, New City, New York
13 articles 0 photos 0 comments

“Please God, help me find someone,” I thought in my mind. My feet and legs were trembling from walking all day. I had been trudging the busy town’s rough, sandy roads with bare feet during a scorching summer afternoon, in search of a doctor who might find compassion to help my dying brother Siddhartha. Fatigued, I stood wearily in the middle of the town flocked with white people. As I looked around with weak, exhausted eyes, I noticed that the town’s market places were filled with the beastly, greedy creatures. As I stood in the same spot for minutes, I caught sight of a white man who resembled a physician and decided, hesitantly, to come upon him and plead help for my brother in his deteriorating state. But to my surprise and disgust, the heartless pig looked down at me with mocking eyes and then viciously spat on my grimy face. “Don’t you dare talk to a white man, you savage ape- child!” Sad and infuriated, I began to turn around and head home, uttering curses as I take each step.
Even though I continually experience these types of maltreatment, I have to endure everything for my dear brother. It has been three days since he fell terribly ill of an unknown disease, and he now lay dying in bed with skin as pale as death and bloodshot eyes. My mother and I had been desperately calling for a medic during the past three days. But we knew in our hearts that no white physician would be willing to give aid to a black person.
Well, Siddhartha and I were not completely “black” as the whites referred to us. My father was a white man who had sexually molested my mother a number of times, which bore me and my brother Siddhartha. From the stories that my mother had told me about my father, I perceived that he was an evil person worthier of abhorrence than Soytun is. My mother used to read horrible tales about Soytun from a small, moldy scroll which seemed as if the pages will crumble to dust and be blown away when a strong wind came. Fortunately, she happened to be literate since a kind- hearted white person taught her how to read when she was still a young girl.
As I was growing up, I thought of all white men the same way I viewed my father. And I probably am not mistaken in my perception through what I see of their treatment of us “inferior” black people. The white people had conquered our land and had stolen everything owned by our people even before the day I was born. What our ancestors had regarded as their treasures had long been ours since the beginning of time, but within a few years the European people had taken everything our ancestors lived and fought for. Not only do the white people take our resources for their own good, but they also go on with their maltreatment and discrimination. They take Africans and ship them to Europe to be sold as slaves, to which Uncle Mahatma was a poor victim. That image of the bloody white people clubbing my uncle to paralysis, tying him up with barbed ropes, and throwing his battered body onto the trunk of a vehicle is still very vivid in my mind, as if the incident had happened just the past week. My uncle helplessly yelled for mercy, but I could not have done anything. I also have witnessed them use human beings as machinery, using our people as slaves in our own land, forcing them to work in gold mines and fields while lashing them with whips. Whip scars on Siddartha’s chest ceaselessly remind my family of the indescribable cruelties these animals had brought upon our land. The whites had taken everything they believe to be useful and had used it for their own greedy pleasures- like that time when our decent little bamboo hut was invaded by a group of white men, my father being one of them. Now, my family lives in a shelter held by mud, grass, and twigs, and the cold, dirty soil crawling with little critters became our bed and dining table. They separate black and white facilities and reserve the best utilities to themselves, like the smooth, well-built road with a “Whites Only” sign. The “black” roads, on the other hand, are crooked, jagged pathways that had never been paved in thirty years. My descriptions alone cannot express the horrors that the Europeans have brought upon us ever since they arrived at our South African land. Indeed, they have treated us worse than they have treated their pet canines.

But even though my people are experiencing maltreatment and suffering, I believe that our condition will one day change. There will come a time when the African people will realize the injustice that is being forced upon them, and hatred will form in their hearts. I know that one day, my people will finally act upon this hatred, take up their axes and torches, and unite to throw the whites out and back to wherever they have come from. Once again, we will take control of our own land- the sacred land that had been rightfully ours since our forefathers’ time.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 1 comment.


on Jun. 7 2010 at 5:30 pm
DayofRain50 GOLD, Robbinsville, New Jersey
14 articles 0 photos 48 comments
This made me so sad, but it was good. If you could, could you read my "Blue Hour" piece.