I didn’t intend or want to revisit the same topic on what’s ongoing in the US vis-à-vis police brutality motivated by racism. Again, racism being a canary in the coal mine, I’d to; in order to emphatically and strongly put the message across. There are realities we need to address before we stand up and take on others who do the same things we do. What transpired recently in the US where police are renowned for monumental and systemic brutalities and racism against African Americans speaks volumes. Right from the outset, my argument’s that we must put our house in order before asking others to do the same. We need to be open and truthful to ourselves and others in the matters to do with brutality and racism. We need to take this pandemic called racism face on without sparing ourselves from the same shameful sin we commit daily in many African, American, Asian, Australian or European countries. Indeed, this begs for soul searching for us to do justice to ourselves and others altogether. For example, my observation’s that almost all police forces globally are colonially trained to become brutally anti-human rights. They all share the same nexus, brutality and unfamiliarity. They all are the creatures or add-ons of medieval European callousness. We thus, need to reformingly decolonise, deconstruct and reconstruct our police forces as we do the same to our countries, institutions and societies.
There’ve been many demonstrations taking place in various African countries from Nairobi to Johannesburg; Accra to Abuja etc. condemning racism in the US soon after the massacre of George Floyd by brutal US police in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Fighting and opposing racism are good deeds. For, no one’d discriminate or deem another inferior. We’re all equal despite our trivial physical distinctions. However, looking at how racism’s emaciated Africa and the world though not noticed and practically taken head on, sometimes I wonder about what I see at the crosshair we’re at. For example, it’s an open secret: African police are comparably more brutal than their US counterparts; because they brutalise and kill ones of their own while their governments stay aside and watch as if there’ve nothing to do with this systemic malpractice. They maltreat those whose taxes pay their salaries like nobody’s business. This is discrimination though not based on the pigments of one’s skin colour. Yes, while US police and others in racist countries kill blacks based on colour differences, in Africa, cops kill their brothers and sisters based on class or ideology. Likewise, many African governments order their police to abuse innocent people based on class and political cabalism. To it, while the bigger chunk of the world demonstrated against racism in the US, only a few countries with a few numbers of demonstrators did so. In the Middle East the situation was the same compared to Europe. South America where racism against Africans is still rife the number was negligible as well.
Beside the small number of demonstrators in Asia, everybody’s shamelessly going about his or her business when the whole world’s united against racism in the US and the commemoration of Floyd. To Asians racism against blacks was nothing important. Again, can we blame this on them while they also are renowned for the same sin against blacks? Try to imagine the country with over a billion people like India to have less demonstrators.
Why Asia didn’t care or participate in this world movement against racism? Who cares about Africans if Africans don’t? What counts is nothing but their resources; period. And this can’t be further from the truth based on experience and reality altogether that many Asians discriminate against blacks openly and systematically. Ironically, when Middle Eastern Arabs in Palestine are brutalised by Israel, many Africans take to the streets! Isn’t this the candle love? The candle lights others to end up perishing pointlessly. While the whole world’s reeling with this massacre, China took it as an opportunity to excoriate the US. Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s quoted as saying “many people may want to ask this question: Why does the U.S. refer to those ‘Hong Kong independence’ and black-clad rioters as ‘heroes’ and ‘fighters’ but label its people protesting against racial discrimination as ‘thugs’?”
The question we need to ask ourselves is: why do we demonstrate to support the people who don’t support our cause[s]? Is it because they’re more important than us?
While the US police kill innocent people because of colour difference, in Africa, some Africans, not all, are butchering their brethren either because of ethnic or ideological differences.
While Africans protest against and condemn the ways the US brutalizes and maltreats African Americans, they don’t have the guts to replicate the same whenever ones of their owns are subjected to the same criminality. Where will this take them? Watch and see.
Many Africans in many African countries walk the streets whenever either their brethren in the West are discriminated against; but don’t do so whenever their African brethren face the same in any Africa! How many countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas reciprocate? Refer to the xenophobic attacks in South Africa or selling Africans in slavery in the Maghreb.
Further, Africans will throng the streets whenever they think that their co-religionists are maltreated in India, Middle East and elsewhere though don’t reciprocate when such a thing happen to their African counterparts as has been the case in the Central African Republic where Christians and Muslims have been butchering each other for a while now.
Indeed, Africans are able to see what’s happening far, far, far away from them but unable to see what’s happening under their noses. They know more about the Asia, Europe and Middle East than they do on Africa! This speaks to how Africans consciously or otherwise discriminate against themselves. Do we need to save them from themselves? Consider how xenophobic attacks against Africans from neighbouring countries in South Africa’s become a norm. o further and remind yourself of the 2007 Post-Election Violence in Kenya. Further, remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide not to mention the same in Burundi though at a lesser magnitude? Refer to the North and South Sudanese war that took generations to finish not to forget the ongoing war between Dinka and Nuer in South Sudan thereafter. Where do we get the willpowers of condemning others for what we do without first condemning ourselves or just abandon the same?
The other day, I heard a Jamaican black retorting––when she was referred to as an African–– “can’t you differentiate me from Africans?” I was annoyedly flummoxed. Such a reaction reminded me of the Swahili sage: the mandrill doesn’t see its rumps. It laughs at those of others. After failing to take it, I asked her, why do your colleagues in the US are referred to as African Americans if they are not Africans? She’d not answer this thorny question.
By the by, when African Americans Muslims speak, talk about the glories of Islam and the Middle East but not Africa where they originated. For, they’re more Muslims than Africans. They’ve the Nation of Islam but not of Africa! Despite this, those non-Africans they wrongly think are their co-religionists who many reside in Asia and Middle East did not see any importance to demonstrate against or stand up on the crime that’s destroyed them for over 400 years.
Long story short, we need to put our house in order likewise all those who still think racism against blacks is not important to them as we’ve indicated above. Although some lack moral authority to condemn what they do, even staying quiet when the same criminality is committed denies them moral authority. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The saying goes that we all are a human race whether we’re black, brown, pink (white) or anything. Our races are socially constructed to serve colonial agenda. Those who participate in any form of racism or stay back and do nothing when it is time to take on it, must be shamed and told to their face. What they’re doing is a crime against humanity. Please, let all of human race be humans but not black, blue, green, pink, white or whatever. We all have the same needs; and thus, deeds to humanity. Black Lives Matter.
Source: African Executive Magazine
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