We are all coloured

I remember watching a US movie about a trial where a group of white southern senior teenage boys were being accused of raping a young black girl of around 13 years old.

The white prosecutor had the difficult job of winning the trust of the black family and fending off attacks from his white community for being a “nigger lover”.

Guess what? The jurors were all white too.

This story happened in the 60s where people went to church on Sundays believing all men were created equal and we should love our neighbours…

Even though slavery was abolished in 1865 after the Civil War, prejudices and segregation continued in the Southern States as the hearts and minds of men were not so easily won over by a mere act of legislation.

During the closing argument of the trial, the white prosecutor asked the white jurors to close their eyes as he vividly replayed the rape scene in the jurors’ minds. 

How a group of teenage boys set themselves on the poor young girl. How her dress was torn and shredded. And how her soft and small body were beaten and bruised as the boys took turns on her… 

The climatic ending was when the white prosecutor said these words to the jurors:

“Now imagine the girl is white.”

It’s interesting to see the amount of vitriol and discriminatory comments made in cyberspace under the cloak of anonymity; or putting a brown paper bag over our heads when we speak ill of others.

I guess these people cannot be people of religion. 

For even if no one knows who you are, the higher authority up there will know during Judgement Day. And for some religion, the mere thought will have consequences, never mind if you never put your thoughts into print…

They must be agnostics like me, or atheists. Or can they be Jekylll and Hyde personalities? Man of religion in real life, and neo-nazis in cyberspace?

I do not believe in consequences in the afterlife. But I do believe in consequences during my lifetime.