YING AND YANG; THE EQUALS AND OPPOSITES!

BLACK AND WHITE, ARE THEY OPPOSITE HALVES OR HALVES OF THE WHOLE? Post No.38 (AN 8 minute read) 

It is all either black or white, as we say! One extreme or the other! Opposing sides of opinion! Left and right! What about the enormous space that lays between those two extremes? Look at all the range of colours in between black and white; the black and the white are the only two that do not exist in nature. They are man-made colours not NATURE´s colours. Hence, our lives are as man-kind dictates, BLACK or WHITE!

Hello and a very good morning to you readers around the world. I am so looking forward to having some comments from you. Please remember that I have the translator tool at the top left of the blog. I myself can do English, Spanish and French but will certainly look to translate any language that comes my way.

THE YING AND YANG SYMBOL. Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash.

So, on to chapter thirty five entitled YING AND YANG! I am going to quote myself and at the same time pay tribute to the most gifted human being that I have known personally. I could so wish that she were our national leader! I quote myself:

I had never really thought about skin colour other than that dark skinned people seemed so exotic to me. Living as I did in the English countryside, the European African albino complexion was absolutely dominant. Our Bangladeshi doctor and his family, were the first people of a different complexion to mine that I knew personally.

It was not until secondary school that I knew my first African born person. She was a brilliant girl, born in Ghana, West Africa and adopted by two British people, who adopted three other children from Ghana too. Moving on to secondary school, sees a parting of the ways for many as we are put into different groups in our new schools and we have to start all over again getting to know who is who. 

I and this girl both found ourselves, as the only two who did not know any of the girls of our new group previously. The pairing up was done between existing friendships and we both felt like spare parts. She came to me and told me her name and I told her mine. "Did I know anyone in the group?" she asked. "No!" I replied. "Me neither!" she said and laughed. We became friends from there on. She was quite the most brilliantly talented human being that I have ever known. 

Her parents were both well educated folk and they were absolutely supportive of their adopted children. But what those parents gave those four children, was BELIEF! The belief that all they had to do was work, listen and learn and they could excel just like any pale skinned child. Proud indeed must those parents have always been to see the meteoric progress of this brilliant daughter.

Her talents knew no boundaries! The sciences, the languages, the mathematics, music and art, sports too, she was the best in every single area. Initially she was cold shouldered by most and I was cold shouldered as her friend. So, I saw very close up just how uncomfortable narrow minded people can make a person´s life. She stood firm though and it was as though she wore a suit of armour that gave her full protection against all the verbal knocks and blows. 

The teaching fraternity was the same in the beginning. But she just channelled everyone´s negativity into her positivity!! Eventually, no one could deny her what were ever her dues, she was magnificent! I was proud to be her friend, though trying to keep up with her proved far too much for me and actually, demoralized me. She was going too quick for the rest of us and was put into a group of the most gifted.

That saw our close friendship begin to fade as she became closer to those on her intellectual level. I was working hard, so were most of the group but she left us all trailing way behind. I fell in with another group until I went SOLO in the later stages. There was another boy of African-American-Caribbean-British origin too, who was also adopted by pale skinned British parents. Strangely enough, he was the one who gave my friend most of her trouble???!!! End of quote.

I continue looking at what are the aspirations for children depending on who their parents are. This is a fine example of two educated British people who were achieving as two individual people their own aspirations and now wished to help vulnerable children to have aspirations too. That is where my girl friend´s situation differed to the boy mentioned. His adopted family did not have aspirations for him. They did not believe in him.

She took every opportunity that she had with two hands and made the most of them all. The complete opposite to the boy who found himself being permanently compared to the only other child with the same complexion as he. It destroyed him poor lad. Belief in ourselves is instilled (hopefully) by others. That is what appraisal brings you, belief in yourself.

Musically, my generations were all complexions. It was not because a musical band was or was not, of a particular complexion that we followed them. It was because we liked what they were doing. We did not see black and white, we saw fusion. Music though is an area where African-American-Caribbean-British, dark skinned folk, can FEEL very proud indeed. Rhythm comes very naturally. Dance and song they can do well.

But it is the belief that they CAN  do that and that comes from seeing others with the same complexion having success. It helps you to believe. The sports field is another similar territory where they have been allowed to triumph. The pale skinned inferiority complex has seen doping come into being in an attempt to match these wonderfully strong physiques.

Where are the academic aspirations though? They come from the parents or others who try to encourage a child to believe in themselves. Poverty is at the root of most things and education has to be paid for in so many countries. Which means that education is only available to a few sadly. Those parents like my African girl friend´s adopted parents, really wanted to break the cycle for their adopted children and they succeeded with all four.

We must see education available to ALL girls as well as ALL boys too. We cannot allow ignorance anywhere in this world, that is the great crime of man-kind! Withholding knowledge from the masses; it is so much easier to lead ignorant people, I imagine is the line of thinking. But does it work out that way? No!!

There is a lot in this chapter, like all of them. Do you have any family, friends or contacts with different complexions to you? Are you skin tone ignorant? Are you prejudiced? Do you pre-judge according to skin tone? Have your family broken through cycles of ignorance and now aspire to better?

Thank you as always for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment or make contact. You can use the space below for your comments or leave me your e-mail in the contact box at the top right of the page should you prefer. I have a follow tab too for those who might like to keep up with my Trains of Thought. 

Next post I will be DIVING IN, the title of chapter thirty six and getting acclimatized to sub-Saharan Africa and its peoples. So, come back and read on. My book is available on Amazon: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

Until then, happy learning.

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