Most of us Nigerians don’t understand the problem that we face. Do we know that we are really, on balance, the most hated and distrusted among a hated and distrusted ‘race’ or people? Perhaps if we knew what exactly our chief problem was we would act differently, think differently, spend differently, behave differently, plan differently.
As a frequent flyer to Dubai for about three years now, I have realized certainly, that gradually, and pointedly, the discrimination against ‘black’ people is increasing. Taxis often shun you like never before. Given an Indian, Bangladeshi and Chinese standing with you in a row, the taxis (mostly driven by Pakistanis), would find a way or another to avoid you and collect any of the others. At other instances, free taxi cabs would pointedly speed past you, while standing forlorn seeking for a reprieve. One cannot help but feel bad about such things when one bears the brunt of a renewed racism. Well, such actions are more poignantly carried out by illiterate and poor peasants too anyway. But it is a pointer to greater grief ahead. And of course, since Martin Luther King Jr, no one is articulating any views for Africans, or ‘blacks’ as they like to call us. Blacks? More on this later…
A Bangladeshi taxi driver was ‘unlucky’ to collect me at a taxi rank the other day. He showed much surprise that I wasn’t heading to Sabkha, the favourite haunt of most Africans, and much dreaded by taxis because of the ever-present traffic snarl around that area. He beamed at me, grinning from ear to ear and in his semi-illiterate parlance, told me, absolutely without guile “Black, I don’t like black!”. He didn’t mean it with malice, as I was already seated in the taxi, but he explained further; “Allah said anybody black will not enter heaven, so me I not like Black”. Now I am not exaggerating and would never lie on this page. But we may as well come to terms with the fact that religious books are often misinterpreted by different people from different backgrounds, and the under-educated often fall victim. The beliefs in the Christian religion that I am very used to, varies almost according to each church, so you better believe it, in Bangladesh, they believe that the darker you are, the less your chances of ever making heaven, and they believe the Almighty God himself has sanctioned this!
What I also know is that in India, there is such a big do about skin colour, with mothers rejecting/disliking their children for being dark (such instances are all over Bollywood), and a thriving trade in bleaching creams. This was once an issue in race-sensitive UK a few years ago, where one of the creams being marketed to Indians there had racial connotations. Perhaps in India, a very class-sensitive society, the darker your skin colour the lower your echelon in society. The Bangladeshi taxi driver actually told me that there were some black people in his country and he was sure they could never make it to heaven no matter how hard they tried. “I love white” he exclaimed in his uninformed delirium. Can anyone blame him? Truth be told, because of the 18th century incursion of the British into India, with many Brits ‘going native’ ie never returning to Britain, a certain section of India – and neighbouring countries – have a burgeoning population of ‘white’ natives, products of inter-racial trysts and unions in those days.
Maybe the world should be thankful that Mitt Romney did not become the president of the United States. One of the main beliefs of Mormonism – his brand of Christianity – is that darkness of skin is a specific curse from God, and that if one prays hard enough, God may well forgive one and lighten your skin colour, and of course reduce the load of sins you carry. Maybe that was why Michael Jackson decided to abandon the rest of us. In the Bible itself, many references were made to the holiness of ‘white’ and the evil of ‘black’. The other day, I saw a church pamphlet given to my children in which the archangel Michael was very white with blonde hair, and was standing over a fallen devil, whose skin was dark brown – like any Nigerian – with two horns on his head.
Brigham Young, successor to the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith is quoted to have said:
"You see some classes of the human family that are black are uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, and seemingly without the blessing of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.. Cain slew his brother.. And the Lord put a mark on him, which is a flat nose and a black skin…. "Shall I tell you the law of the God in regard to the African race? If the white who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so."
Does all this matter? Can we generally breeze through life ignoring how we are perceived by others? Or can we seek to recreate who we are and therefore set a new agenda for generations unborn? Are we today making the mistakes, the very mistakes our ancestors made that resulted today in us as a people occupying the very lowest rung of the pecking order of humanity? What were those mistakes? They never thought far enough. They never fully understood the implications of anything. They probably were so naïve they didn’t know what really mattered and why. They never really planned for generations ahead. In recent times, we have had people who steal money for their own children and great grandchildren unborn, but that is not the kind of planning I am talking about. In the first place, such provision for generations unborn is self-centred (it’s all about separating your children and grandchildren from the pack, while the vast majority becomes even poorer by your actions). On the other hand, I am not talking of making provisions of money for generations unborn. I am talking of knowledge, history, philosophy, innovations. These have been totally neglected.
If they were not, I would not meet that black man recently – probably a civil servant from some African country – who came to a high-profile shop to buy shoes worth $4,000 (N700,000) for his straggly, bow legged, son, who was prancing about and behaving badly one could be sure that his parents had destroyed his life! If we knew what to concentrate on, Nigerian big men would not be building vast mansions all over the place and gallivanting around the world displaying how much they can spend and how quickly. Our leaders – yes finally I believe that we have a leadership problem – have absolutely no clue what they should be concentrating on. We have no thinkers in our society who can help set the tone and direction that the country should move towards. I am not one to merely complain. I believe I am trying my level best in my own way. Many have asked me to stop talking and stop writing, and to act! Act where, how? I believe that we need to define the agenda properly before jumping into the fray. I believe we need in Africa, people who can help articulate our history, define what we should be doing in the present, and explain exactly what the consequences of our past and present actions and inactions, will be, in a bid to jar us all awake! And those people MUST NEVER tire in their advocacy, until the awareness reaches a critical mass!
With the way we are going, the future will see more discrimination against ‘black’ people from even more quarters. And those children of ours who are attending private schools and shopping at designer shops today, will get the most grief certainly! If their fathers had shown some concern for lifting up our poor vast majority, things could have panned out better. But they don’t care. Our leaders show disdain to the poor, and so they, and the rest of us, will be disdained by the world. QED. It used to be that a black man could hardly get a cab on the streets of Manhattan, New York. Now we can include Dubai among such countries where we are treated as trash. But more is coming, since we treat each other like trash, we damage our own reputation ourselves through criminal conduct, and of course NO ONE is advocating positively on our behalf as a people. I will try if I have the opportunity, but for now, I see none, except on this page where I express myself. And all I am trying to tell the world is, ‘we didn’t ask to be born where we were born, but we are ready to make the most of our circumstances and contribute positively to humanity’.
So the issue about ‘black’, defined in the English Dictionary as DIRTY, DODGY, EVIL, SINISTER, CROOKED, GUILTY, DAMNED, UNLUCKY, UNFORTUNATE, as against being ‘white’, which means to be HOLY, NICE, GOOD, STRAIGHT-DEALING, INNOCENT, LUCKY, and of course FORTUNATE! Your guess is as good as mine whether every ‘black’ person you know, including yourself, should be described by the above adjectives, and whether every white man qualifies for all those accolades and best wishes. I believe the greatest injustice ever is that which splits the world into BLACK and WHITE, when we all know that the world is indeed a mixture of several shares of grey, cream, and brown. I actually prefer being called colored – now that is colourful – than being described with such negative connotations that even has bearings for one’s future…
I see my work as one of a philosopher. Yes, Karl Marx did say, “Philosophers interpret the world, BUT the point is to change it…” One of our biggest problems in Africa is that we did not even interpret our world ourselves until others came and did it for us. And till now, we are not attempting to. Who was our Plato, our Socrates, our Hobbes, our Marx, our Engels, our Maslow and so on? Perhaps we had a few in the very ancient days, philosopher kings who had a vision of what they expect society to be. But did anyone document their works? And how extensive were those works? Yet, since colonization, we lost the plot. Can we say we have not had a breathing space, away from the daily hustle for bread and butter, to actually articulate our future and tell ourselves the home truths that will save our children from destruction. Or perhaps we are spending way too much time chasing way too much money, and most of us are way too absorbed in ourselves that we cannot see the dangers ahead, for ourselves, for our children unborn.
Since Martin Luther King Jr and a few others like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey etc, no one has bothered again. It is as if Africans stopped thinking. Maybe we are all chasing the ‘American Dream’ so blindly, and we are daily misinterpreting the concept of Capitalism, in such a wanton manner, that our society has gone to the dogs. Ordinarily, I refrain from criticizing leaders, but it is more than obvious that for a long time, one thing most of our so-called leaders have lacked consistently, is vision. And we are not only speaking about Nigeria. Say, in the issue of black vs white (which is a great fraud), how come someone as cream-coloured as Barack Obama is considered ‘black’? Anyone who sees someone like Obama and says ‘this man is black’, must either have a serious problem with his vision or brain, or must return to kindergarten to learn his basic colours. But the world conspired against us and labeled us with such an awful tag and no one is complaining. Employment forms and other such are filled in Europe and the USA, where one is expected to tick such a box which ‘boxes one in’, literally into some sordid race or the other!
I dream of one day addressing the United Nations on this and other issues, even though I know that body is part of the grand agenda. I don’t know how it will happen but yet I dream of it. Someone has to help our people, someone has to intercede, someone has to cry out so that we will be heard, pitied, or helped. Whatever works.
For the best our leaders understand about the issue on hand, is perhaps a need to build infrastructure, without building or improving the people. I have said elsewhere, that there is a need to build the people else they will destroy the infrastructure – if we are lucky to even get that one right. Nations where leaders are visionary are already giving back dignity to their vast majority. In the UAE, where the first part of this article refered to, the poorest of the poor ride their public buses and use the bus stops. But because of the seasonal heat, all the bus stops are installed with air conditioning. The leaders there have not treated their people with disdain. Even menial labourers from India/Bangladesh/Pakistan/Myanmar, have provisions of hostels that they live – even if many in a room. But in Nigeria, it takes a report to the Public Complaint Commission for the Minister of FCT to go borrowing from the World Bank in order to build pedestrian bridges even while speeding cars kill dozens each month while they try to cross the roads, and of course, the man admitted that some houses were supposed to be built for the poor people but even he does not know when (or whether), they will ever be completed.
‘Black’ people have done badly over time, and we are still doing badly. We destroy our own environment and majority of us do not understand decorum and disciplined living. Our people down in the poor suburbs still lynch human beings with glee and happiness. The other day it was four students in Port Harcourt Nigeria, a few days later, a video surfaced from East Africa, of the lynching of four old people, perhaps for witchcraft! The world is totally integrated today, and will not see such things as mere exceptions. There should be a zero-tolerance to such events, but do our governments care? Of course our leaders are selected from among us, and so we may be wrong to expect them to do the right thing and behave properly, since they cannot be different from the rest of us. Still they should have learnt. They should know, in their lucid intervals, when they get one or two minutes of sanity, that the problem we face is collective, that their children cannot hope to escape the disdain shown by the rest of the world, that they are great, we are great, ONLY if we give dignity to the lowliest among us. We will be forever judged by the way that the most vulnerable among us fares.
Talk about how we think! The other day a thieving minister in Zambia ran back to his village when he was being sought by the police. They later caught him hiding in a tree, naked, because he believed that with some incantations, if he was naked he would be invisible. Those are the same kind of ‘leaders’ who have concentrated on feathering their own nests in Africa, buying shoes worth $4,000 for their stupid 10 year old children, even as Africa regressed into even more poverty and illiteracy. Nigeria is chief among such visionless countries. Today, terrorism has mixed up with mass illiteracy and caught up with us. To make matters far worse, are religious houses who continue to perpetuate the belief in voodoo and magic, and daily increase laziness among their adherents, while fueling greed and a warped sense of entitlement. Pastors acquiring $50million private jets in a country where most cannot even feed twice a day! All Good!
African leaders must return DIGNITY to the people. Yes the leaders may lack dignity themselves, but they travel abroad and see how leaders of other countries treat their own people. Nigeria comes to mind again. Our glistening FCT, with the most exotic houses the world over, is a massive toilet. You cannot drive five minutes without seeing people peeing and pooing on the streets! It’s about a lack of DIGNITY. The Kenyans are slightly ahead, but they too needed the one of Bill Gates’ NGOs to help finance public toilets/bathrooms in many parts of Nairobi. The NGO went ahead STRICTLY BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT HUMAN DIGNITY. So there you have it. It takes Bill Gates to build us toilets and bathrooms in Africa. And it takes a World Bank loan for Nigeria to finance pedestrian bridges so that cars stop spilling human brains on the tarmacs! What does that say about us as ‘black’ people? When will our leaders realize that they need to slow down on luxury and deal with the basics?
Those who are into tribalism and other useless ventures, should know that theirs is a hopeless quest. Some people have spent lifetimes pursuing phantom segregation, trying to show that their tribe is better than others. The taxi drivers/immigration official/policeman in New York or Dubai will not ask whether you are Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa or Efik. They see you, you look dark, and something activates in their mind. They interpret ‘black’ in their native languages, and all the meanings pop up ‘fraud’, ‘stealing’, ‘evil’, and then they enter the racist mode – even if many of them are good at heart! They will not care how much money you have stashed in the bank, and how many rooms are present in the mansion in which you slept the night before. They don’t even care if you are a big government official in your country, all they know is that some of us behave badly, are loud, lousy, fraudulent, dirty, arrogant, quarrelsome and even downright nasty and they have taken their decisions based on that. Just when we should be properly integrating into the world, what we are seeing for our people, is more discrimination ahead. I am sad indeed!
If Africans were wise, what we should do us to assist each other with the virtues we have. Those who know the value of enterprise should quickly and actively assist those who are laid back, those who know the value of humility should actively assist those who are riding their high horses going to nowhere. Those who understand the value of structured societies should infuse their knowledge far and wide. THIS IS THE TIME, AND WE MUST SHARE ALL WE HAVE. AFRICANS MUST REALISE THAT LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING IF IT IS ONLY FOR ONESELF. LIFE IS ONLY WORTH LIVING WHEN LIVED FOR OTHERS. Whatever we desire the most, we must be ready to give it away, in order to get more of such, and to enjoy what we have. We must not hesitate to share the intangibles; knowledge, love, values, systems, for oftentimes, sharing such takes absolutely NOTHING from us, but adds a whole lot back. Just what are we afraid of as a people?
Think about this. A hundred years from now what will be said about Africans? Would we, can we, continue like this? Or would some global cataclysm have come and wiped us out of our ignorant existence? Those are questions for the ages. But for now, do yourself a favour – share your knowledge, and try and see that you are nothing except you cause an African renaissance…h
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