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PREJUDICED HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS



PREJUDICED HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS
We always have sweet names for repulsive human behaviours all in the façade of easy identification. Tribalism, racism, chauvinism, feminism, sexism, totalitarianism, subjectivism, egocentrism, and all other "isms" that have turned the world up-side-down. These prejudices are everywhere you go even deep inside our spirits, souls and bodies. It is so difficult for one to just live freely as created by God that compromise becomes the only moving train which could take you to your destination and sometimes it ends up being your final destination.

Have you ever been told that you are too fat to be a front desk agent but would fit as a writer who’d work from home instead? Have you been asked to send a picture of your “real face” while applying for a Personal Assistant job? Have you been told that you’re too skinny to be a sales agent but should opt for modeling instead or too dark and short to be an usher or too plain to be the face of a brand or too serious to be a comedian? Have you been asked the name of your village, local government, state or country just to get your dream job? All these face value judgments are what many of us have to encounter almost every day and yet we claim to have the tag of a human being…

Let us start with the HUMAN BEING factor: a person like you, having good or bad qualities. Who then makes these rules promoting inequality and lack of equity if we all claim to have the human tag? There is the MALE factor: if you are male it is like getting a free ticket to the movies of life. You are welcome into the cinema morning, noon and night because in the voice of James Brown "It's a Man's World" so there's nothing much to be worried about. You can be a banker or an astronaut if you darned well pleased. The only obstacle you may have is growing old without any experience in whatever field you’d love to go into, or hoping to be a Personal Assistant to a married woman or even a man. With time men have overcome the challenge of being called a cook; I mean men don’t cook so if you were caught back then loving the craft then you were like being called gay. Now you can cook for money, watch E.News for fun, Telemundo for life’s lessons and forget about sports right!
The WOMAN is still on the mission toward self-discovery, or rather, societal acceptance. If you happen to be single you are lucky enough to be whatever your heart wishes to be with just little gender bumps here and there which you’d be able to handle at the time. Get married and ohh how your world turns more than 360 degrees. You must be home before the sun goes down and dinner must be set and kids must be settled and asleep and job should just hold its peace until further notice. You hardly find them being personal assistants anymore except their husbands turn out to be supermen or their bosses. The most unlucky ones are those who get married and have their babies while still jobless; Nigerian mothers… hmm they would end up being teachers; last resort.   
The TRIBES: I went for an interview some months ago. We were more than twenty applicants and were told to put down our names on a sheet of paper by an HR agent. It was a pension firm. The agent began calling out the names to attest to our presence and when he got to a particular name, he stopped and asked the owner to stand:
“hello, your name sounds like you are an Igbo girl. Can you please tell me where you are from?”
“yes I am an Igbo girl and I am from Imo state, Imbaese to be precise”
The rest of us became slaves, foreigners, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers… you just name it. It was like she became the only applicant for the job as they both rattled on with ancestral lineages until they got to the first ancestor of their families. We just looked on, knowing deep down that the firm had got the one person it needed for the job, capable or incapable. I thought to myself that even if he loved his sense of belonging so much, couldn’t he have taken his curious questions outside the walls of an office space. They could have even shared ancestral curses for all I cared but had no right to make others feel less important. We still saw them whispering in a corner and I noticed this lady never took the aptitude test with us. I am guessing she got an instant employment just by being an Igbo girl. How funny can that be? Should'nt we all be Igbos?
If you’re unfortunate enough to be born ugly; whatever your definition of ugly is, you should have it at the back of your mind to work extra hard for anything you want in life. Like Ayo Shogunro said "everything in Nigeria will kill you, even ugliness." Fineness comes with having more friends whether they are honest or not, it comes with being the light of the room, having more job offers and finding a spouse as easy as ABC. If you’re ugly though… ha! You are either the thief in the room, the one who farted even if you clean up a lot, the dull one and of course you just get pregnant if you're a woman so you don’t end up alone in this world by the time you’re like 50 because men like fine women. Everything would just appear hard for you. The determined ones turn out to be wall breakers because they work twice as the fine ones do. If you’re ugly you should not apply for the job of a TV broadcaster or a front desk agent or a PA; you could be an actor since there are ugly people in real life, or an OAP.
Are you SHORT? It comes with its advantages is what you are told to comfort you a bit. If you’re short you should not dream of being a model or a beauty queen unless they set another contest fit for your size. You should not expect respect from people, even from kids you saw growing up. You should not expect your employer to take you seriously at first. You are looked down on most times, literally. You also have to always prove yourself like heaven depended on it.
As for the IMPAIRED, they make us proud at the Paralympics. While growing up I concluded that any impaired person was as beggar; they were found under or on bridges sweeping or just begging day and night. There's no employment provision for them in this part of the world. So please if you know the minister for Labour and Productivity, ask him the solution to this...

If you know the statistics for all that has been mentioned above regarding employment from wherever you come from please let me know. I have noticed that statistics are taken more seriously even more than what they are trying to explain. We want to know the population of Nigeria more than we want to be involved in politics or voting. We want to know the death rate of infants more than we care about keeping them alive, we want to know how much Davido is worth more than we want to know how he got the money to get a private jet of over 9bn. We want to know if Dino Melaye has pulled another comic show more than we want to know how many serious workers are in the National Assembly. Aren’t we all statistically inclined!! May my honesty not put me in trouble for I might also be prejudiced...

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