A group of beautiful black people/models in America posing for a photograph in 1968. Source: The New York times
Hmmmn……….
This topic is going be to be quite a long discussion as there is a noticeable confusion in the black community when it comes to telling our people the harsh truth and we being talked down on as a race. I’ll try to shorten it but share very valuable opinions. Any black person reading this part from young children will at least have an idea of our horrific past as a race mostly characterized by brutal torture and enslavement of our people by the white race centuries ago. As a race, we went from being captured and shipped to Europe and the Americas in ships while being chained (1600s upwards) to fighting for basic rights (1940s upwards) to the current state we are in now. On the part of basic rights, black America had their civil rights era from the late 1940s till the late 1960s. In Africa and Carribean nations, we were pursuing independence mostly from the 1950s downwards. This was during the colonial rule. After we “got” our “independence”, we transitioned into the post colonial rule.
With regards to this topic, I had to give a background history to remind us of the pain of our ancestors. Yes, we will always remember and honour them forever but looking at our current state as a people, I guess we are seeing something right? Regardless of our beauty, talent, resilience, strength and achievements as children of Africa there’s something lacking which has set the majority of us back as a race. Actually….there are a lot. It ranges from self hate to non chalance to backwardness to colourism to tribalism and the rest of them. I know some black scholars and historians argue that the white man destroyed what we had and brought a lot of hatred and discord to our people mostly through the education and religion he brought which they are right about but now that we know these, why don’t we reverse the discord instead of blaming the white man all the time. I’m not saying they didn’t contribute to our problems to a large extent but as human beings with brains capable of thinking for ourselves, why don’t we put effort into solving our problems as a collective and throw massive support behind people who want to liberate us?
This is where I want to shed light regarding this topic. I titled it self honesty or self hate because some of our people don’t like when they are held accountable. They want the white man alone to be held accountable forgetting that even our people participated in the selling of their own people for items such as umbrellas, mirrors and even dry gin. The day we start holding ourselves accountable and working towards a solution, so much will change. Some people will say, that if Africans begin to champion revolution against European imperialism, that they’ll use organizations like the CIA to shut us up. They are right to an extent in the sense that the majority of the world especially Europe are benefiting from the exploitation of African people and our resources thereby using their “stooges” who are our so called “leaders” to put the majority of Africans in abject poverty. Of course any body who champions a cause for change will be either sent on exile or eliminated. These imperialists only love butt lickers and greedy Africans who are ready to impoverish their people for power. That’s why Sankara, Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah went through similar experiences. So i understand the fear but these people I just mentioned were hated by the people who were bringing them change just because the western media painted them evil.
Right now, another well respected activist in the name of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been incarcerated since June, 2021 by the Nigerian/British Fulani caliphate unfairly just because he boldly spoke out against their evils and massacres they’ve inflicted all over our indigenous communities. Despite his sacrifices, we have people who talk down on him but still chant the same things he’s shouted for years, how funny? I thought he’s instigating violence? So this is my point exactly. We should never leave one person to do the work alone. First of all, when we see an activist among rise up and speak up boldly against the evils going on both internally and externally, it is our duty to investigate and ensure that the person is not an agent of the government or colonialists. After careful analysis and confirmation, we can throw our weight behind the person by lending our voices and through sponsorships, not this devilish crab mentality and envy that has killed innocent people.
On the other hand, some of our brothers and sisters think that with all I’ve said, I hate myself because I held the black man accountable and acknowledged he contributed to his own problems as much as the whites did, some hundreds of years back. I can go ahead to say the white man is superior to the black man and we probably deserved what happened to us as a race because we hate ourselves. On top of that, I’ll still call for the white man to colonize us a second time because we have failed to develop ourselves since the colonialists departed. Its very good for me and you reading this to condemn vices among our people and help show them the light but when we go extreme then it becomes a problem. I don’t blame some of our people for terming it self hate anymore. In life there must always be balance yet humans love being extreme at times which could defeat the purpose of any solution created at first instance. If I begin to mention that as a race, black people are good for nothing and should be colonized, how do we believe we can even do better? How do we live as believe in our capabilities when some of us already believe we can’t do anything except the white man shows us the way. Meanwhile we have our people doing great innovative stuffs out there so this counters the inferiority complex we’ve created in our minds as a people.
The major lesson learned from this piece is to be truthful to ourselves about our issues especially the ones that set us back a whole lot while reminding ourselves how beautiful and talented we are. Some black people don’t even know people of their skin colour are behind lots of inventions and innovations in every field today which is why they feel very inferior and don’t believe they are capable of inventing something or inspiring the world positively. Yes, we do have lots of problems as a race and as much as we must honestly point them out, but let’s focus more on offering solutions that will benefit us in the long run and not tear each other down with words that negatively affect us subconsciously. Thanks for your patience and reading to the end, with love from me to you all ❤️
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