I had a plan—to write a series of articles on the Diaspora. But COVID-19 happened, and placed a literal restriction on the concept of ‘return’, for worldwide, we have all been rendered stagnant.
I had begun writing on China’s announcement that it was finally enacting legislationsto put an end to the wildlife trade, but America slaughtered yet another Black soul. As the world ‘divides’ against COVID-19, Blacks worldwide must unite against these re-occurring American ‘events’—the lynching of Black people.
The bleeding Diaspora
Ghana/Africa’s Stockholm syndrome—her reliance on the developed world, the West especially, is a major source of concern. For these relationships have been heavily laced with neocolonialism—one which cripples African countries and places shrouds over our developmental journeys. We yearn for severance from all such unhealthy relationships. So it should raise red flags when we sense in our call on our brothers and sisters—the Diaspora, this African tendency of dependency seeping through—this tendency to seek something else, someone else, to depend on. So I wrote ‘The Diaspora v. The Borga’, intending it an open statement for my subsequent arguments—the argument that a true African/Diaspora partnership is one that harks back to the Black solidarity of the past—of inter-dependency not dependency.
For our kinsfolk in the West—in America, the concept of ‘human dignity’ is woefully illusive and elusive. They are the expendables. A policeman gunning down a Black person now is like a White person lynching a Black person decades ago—little to no consequence attached. Some absurdly deny these injustices.
I have learnt a lot—from being a former child myself—that if one’s parent dishes out food, one must quickly look on one’s siblings’ plates to make sure no injustice has been committed against one. To understand the injustices served Blacks, we must do so through a comparative lens. We discover how little it takes for an African-American to find themselves in the grips of the law—murdered by law enforcers, and how hard and recklessly White folks have to work to get noticed for their ‘works’.
Lucky Jeff
At the age of 18,Jeffrey Dahmer, a White male, began a journey of luring men into his room, drugging them, sometimes drilling holes into their skulls and pouring acid or boiling water into their brains while they were still conscious; strangled and bludgeoned them to death, had intercourse with their corpses. He chopped up their bodies into pieces like a butcher would a goat, flayed their skins off their bones—all the while taking pictures—stored these body parts in fridges, boiled some, submerged some in acid. Dahmer, an advocate for inner beauty, stripped his victims down to the bones—literally, just to have intercourse, again, with their skulls. All this hard work makes a man hungry so Jeffrey sometimes ate his victims—their hearts, livers, flesh.
A demon like this ought to draw attention to himself; right? Well, he did—but not enough to call the police on him—a White man.
After luring and drugging one such victim—a 14-year-old teenager—Jeffrey decided to step out for a drink. He came back to find his victim sitting outside, dazed, with three women questioning him. The women had already called the police. Perhaps, finally, Dahmer’s day had come.
The police arrived, but to the women’s dismay, they helped the victim back into Jeffrey’s apartment. And there, the two policemen caught that pungent cadaveric smell. In Jeffrey’s own words, one officer just “peeked his head around the bedroom, but really didn’t take a look.”
Take good care of him [victim], the police told Dahmer and left. And Jeffrey did! He called in sick from work and dedicated time, carefully chopping up this 14-year-old.
Had these officers done a background check, they would have discovered that Jeffrey was in fact a sex offender on probation.
On the day Dahmer was caught, he actively resisted arrest—yet he, the devil who had human meat and bones lying around his apartment, was not shot by the officers for resisting arrest. “For what I did, I should be dead,” he said during arrest—nothing happened. Had he been Black, he wouldn’t need be the one to mention it.
The terrorists
Another American national ‘pastime’—mass shootings; perpetrators, also predominantly White—has had a long list of White Americans strategising for days, carrying out activities that ought to raise red flags, yet these acts go under the public’s radar, until these schemers are ready to introduce the world to their work—shooting down, indiscriminately, children, women, men, the young, the old.
Yet, all the African-American need do is walk by the street, drive his car, “look like a criminal”—meaning look Black, and the full force of the police would be there—questioning them, harassing them, degrading them.
Black plight
A man returning home with his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter is immediately shot by a police officer who had requested his driver’s licence. A 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in a recreational park, sees in a split second, a police car stop before him, and within two seconds—two seconds!, the boy was gunned down by the police. Now, you may have bought your fair share of toy guns for your children; never in a million years have you thought this, a reasonable consequence.
Black solidarity
Words like the Diaspora, Pan-Africanism, Black solidarity, et al are ‘reactionary’. They are weapons, defences against the White evil. Black people (and Whites freed from evil) stood together in fight against the devil to overthrow slavery—then again, colonialism. As we fought them here in Africa, our kinsfolk did same in the Caribbean, Europe, the Americas, etc.
The fight is not over; our kinsmen are fighting yet another battle; a more elusive, yet equally deadly battle—racism. Racism in America, Europe, worldwide; sometimes even in our own homes (eg. South Africa).
George Floyd, in the end, will form part of a tapestry—he won’t be the last. Unless Black solidarity finds its unbending voice again—he won’t be the last
I shouldn’t expect to cover fully this topic today. We would have to look much more deeply into this comparative lens. It may just succeed in making you angry—or angrier.
You shouldn’t be breathing.
Because you hunched over your newspaper with your glasses perched on your nose… in an alternate universe—USA, you are making a White person sitting somewhere antsy. Because you see, you have kept one hand in your pocket for too long, occasionally you have raised your head and looked around, what option does he/she have but to callthe police on you?
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I’m in a—, there’s a man/woman here behaving strangely, he/she’s making me uncomfortable…”