When Martin Luther King made his now famous speech in which he stated that ‘I have a dream where my children will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’ in 1963, the Ghanaian society was then trying to survive its many post independence problems.
Of course, Ghana was and is still one race nation as such there was no need to reflect on those words as a people. But I wish we had.
You see, for me, the basic meaning of that statement is that a person should not be judged by his race, religion, sex, or by any other association but by the depth of his character. Unfortunately we are in a society where we’ve got the underlying principle behind that statement totally wrong.
In the society we are living in now, if you don’t have money, or look a certain way, or know the right people, then I am sorry but your life is going to be difficult until you attain one or more of these ‘achievements’.
It really doesn’t matter that you are courteous, patriotic, kind, ready to help others, etc, if you don’t have what our society sees as valuable i.e. money then you are going to be talked down to most of the time.