I was shocked this week to see that my 11 and 13-year-old daughters had changed their WhatsApp profile pictures to an image featuring a black fist. I came to know that videos and slogans revolving around the riots in the US are circulating among children their age. Even though they, as children living in Dubai, do not experience this racial discrimination, my daughters and their peers feel strongly about what is happening in America. This shows that our youth, the Arab youth, is experiencing a new consciousness — a collective perception of what is right and what is wrong. Our youth realizes that discrimination based on race or ethnicity is the root of injustice. One might see in the new icon on my daughters’ WhatsApp profiles two enthusiastic and innocent children who get impressed by what they see on TV. I see in it a light at the end of the tunnel. I see an upcoming youth that will reject gruesome identity politics. What did the divisions between Sunni and Shiite and Arab and Kurd bring to the Iraqis? It brought them rotten, corrupt politicians who looked at Iraq as a gold mine and did not think about Iraq or the average citizen. It brought them politicians who saw in Iraq a platform to realize the agendas of their foreign backers and transnational projects that brought nothing but destruction and misery. For the Lebanese, what did the division of power between Muslims and Christians bring? Fifteen years of civil war followed by 30 years of corruption that dragged the country to the ground. All that the politicians who fed on identity politics thought about was how they could subjugate the “other” and how they could loot the country in order to elevate themselves in the name of their denominations. They crafted laws that did not treat citizens as sons or daughters of the homeland, but as members of a denomination. When this is the case, individuals view themselves as part of a denomination before being a citizen. From this division, this discrimination, individuals lose trust in the state. Citizens are no longer interested in abiding by the law. They are actually enticed to circumvent the law because the state does not represent them. The denomination or the tribe represents them and offers protection and status. We cannot have real states unless we have a different outlook. Our ethnicity, sect or race cannot be the basis of our political affiliation. Those elements of our identity should make up our cultural background; they cannot be the foundations on which we build states. It is important to examine why there are riots in the US. The laws changed thanks to the civil rights movement, but the mentalities did not change and, hence, the enforcement of the law still carries biases. From this, we can deduce that it is not enough to merely change the laws in our countries. It is not enough in Lebanon, for example, to call for the abolition of the sectarian quota in the government — we also need to change the mentality. Deep in our hearts we need to reject sectarianism. We have to be aware that we must transcend ethnicity, race and sect to have a fair and just society. Today’s politicians are like mafia bosses. They use psychology and thrive on fear of the “other.” Syria’s Bashar Assad rallied the Alawites and other minorities around him by using the appeal of fear. After the amnesty of 2013, through which criminals from the Sednaya prison were freed, resulting in a massacre in the historic Christian town of Maaloula, he was able to bring the minorities on to his side. The message was clear: Alawites, Christians and other minorities should stick to Assad, otherwise they will be slaughtered. The tactical use of violence and terror nurtures identity politics, promotes distrust among members of the community, sows division and spreads corruption. In the end, the average citizen loses, no matter their background. Our ethnicity, sect or race cannot be the basis of our political affiliation. Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib In the US, George Floyd effectively died because he was black, not because he did something unlawful. Police officer Derek Chauvin, who was employed to protect citizens, kneeled on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Doesn’t this reflect the way we look at the state? There is no trust in the system. In Syria, Sunnis view Assad as the head of an Alawite regime, not as the head of the state. Similarly, in Iraq, the Sunnis do not trust the army, which is viewed as a glorified Shiite militia. The fact that our youth, our children, are empathizing with what is happening in the US means a lot. It shows social maturity, which leads to political maturity. Social change leads to political change. Once our youth refuses to discriminate and refuses to be discriminated against, we will have a new class of politicians. We will start having a system, a state, that we can trust. To change the system, we need to start by changing our outlook. When I see our children repulsed by the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, I see change coming to our societies. Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She holds a PhD in politics from the University of Exeter and is an affiliated scholar with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view