Colours

Only Pink and Blue?

Humanity’s true colours

Board member of OII-Canada

Even before a human being is born, they are put into categories relegating them to a set of colours determined by a standardized, but arbitrary, system. It is not anyone in particular who makes this decision. It is the system which determines the category.

As a foetus, we are scanned to check out if we are doing well and yes, whether we are male or female so that we can clothe our dearest in the announced colour. The sex is of the foetus is announced as if it is only in passing or some additional information that the tests reveal. The tests were performed because we really want to have healthy children, vibrantly reflecting all the tones of the world.

As we come out of our self-centeredness normally attributed to childhood, we find that the world is really a hurtful place. We adhere to our parents in the hopes that they will protect us from all the evil that exists for it is during our childhood that we learn about good and evil, about feeling good and feeling bad, pleasure and pain….in essence the wonderful things and the dreadful things. Later we start to grasp colours, that most things are in between the white and the black. We find ourselves being relegated to a certain colour, a pink or a blue, despite whether we feel we were rightfully labelled.

From infancy on, we are taught to see the emotional world through colours such as a cowardly yellow, a depressed blue, an enraged red, a sickly or jealous green and a haughty purple. Later we refine ourselves and emotional hues come out of these like lilac or tan and we find ourselves re-evaluating the world which we felt as a limitation. Another world of emotions appears within us where there are no set standards and this frees us to discover them for ourselves within our own experience.

As far as outward looks are concerned, we have a nice variety of tones. Hues of white, dark brown, black, pink, yellow and red all combine to form what we call humanity. The intermixing of these tones of skin and emotions are the embodiment of a vast variety of cultures and ethnicities, each giving us well rounded characteristics. Living in a metropolis of all these colours gives a person a glimpse of what would be if all this would be accepted, of how rich we would be.

Colours emotionally move us, rule us, direct us and box us in. But they can give us freedom and allow us to express ourselves. They can identify us and what sustains us and challenges us at the same time. We are under the colour of a territory, of a country and of the world as a whole. Each different country has a painted flag that includes a tone for the representation of the people and of the land. Every four years, the multicoloured Olympic Rings represent all the people in a sport and the entire event celebrates colours of every hue except for those individuals not in the pink nor the blue.

Yes, the representations of blue and pink are the only colours allowed and this is a good measure of how far humanity has come. All that we are taught from childhood on stops when organisations made up of differently coloured people both internally and emotionally decide what colours are acceptable.

Here, we the children of the world, learn a new more about a word to which comes the ugliest of colours: discrimination.

Out of all the vibrant tones of civilisation, it is hard to accept that this is a representation of humanity's true colours. How can pink and blue possibly represent all the colours of humanity?

It is time that all genders and all ethnicities be honoured and treated with the same dignity and it's time that intersex people be considered part of the human family.

Our time has come.