Peter Tosh, the famous reggae star, once said, “wherever you come from as long as you are a black man, you are an African”. The conspiracy against blacks in the world is merely the extension of the conspiracy against Africa, particularly Nigeria, that has the largest concentration of black people on earth. During earliest civilisations, the whole world settled for blacks as the most suitable for slavery. Their suitability stemmed from their ability to do great work with little food. They are physically strong and can survive great environmental hazards with little food. This attribute made the whites travel thousands of miles from Europe, Middle East to Africa to buy African slaves to work in their plantations abroad. When slavery was abolished, Europeans couldn’t take their eyes off the great natural endowments in Africa. They descended on Africa again and colonized it. Africans became slaves in their own nations while their raw materials were catered away to abroad for the enjoyment of the Europeans. This obnoxious situation meant that if blacks are taken abroad, they are treated as slaves and if blacks are in their homes, they are also treated as slaves.
After the colonization, Africans fought for independence and the Europeans reluctantly granted them independence when the heat became too high for them but made sure that they became mentally enslaved. Any leader in Africa that dares to liberate his people from this, is either killed or disgraced from office. This resulted in a lot of military coups in the early stages of independence of African countries which swept away almost all the freedom fighters who struggled for the independence of their people. The emerging African leaders became stooges for these foreign powers who continued their dominance of Africa indirectly. The citizens of Africa rebelled against these leaders and restored democracy in Africa. Yet the European foreign powers will not let go. They continued their dominance through corrupting these leaders by providing safe havens for their looted money and for them if they are thrown out of power by their people. In all the continents of the world, Africa is the only one that doesn’t have any representative in the United Nations Security Council. It is not accidental that security challenges are worse in Africa than in any other continent.
Although advanced countries like the US pride themselves in the welfare of their people, the lots of the blacks in those countries can still be equated to their counter parts in the third world countries. When they were brought in initially as slaves, they were treated as properties not as persons. This gave rise to the civil rights movement which capitalized on the provision in the American declaration of independence that “we hold this truth to be self evident that all human beings are created equal” to fight for their liberation. Martin Lurther King Jnr, who was in the vanguard of the struggle, was slaughtered in broad daylight by the US security agencies, for daring to dream that one day the children of the slaves and the children of the slave owners will hold hands and walk as equals in the streets of America. The furore his death created compelled the American government, to grant the blacks freedom in principle. However, in practice, till date, blacks are still treated as second class citizens in America and around the world. It is not enough that all men are created equal because this is God’s duty which He has effectively discharged. It is also important that all men should be treated equal because this is the duty of man which he should effectively discharge for the good of all.
On May 25th, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, at 8:08 – 8:28 pm (CDT) a white Police Officer, Derek Chauvin, was called in to arrest George Floyd, a black American man, on the suspicion that he bought something with a $20 counterfeit. Three other white Police Officers joined Derek in the arrest. George’s hands were handcuffed at the back and he was escorted to the Police vehicle. He fell down on the ground at the base of the Police vehicle. Derek, as a way to punish him for falling down, knelt on his neck in broad daylight for about 9 minutes until he died. Not even his plea of “I can’t breathe” and calling his mother could touch the heart of Derek, who nonchalantly put his hand in his pocket, while kneeling on the neck of George till he died. The other two officers also knelt on the body of George while the fourth one stood there looking until George was killed. The bystanders pleaded with the officer not to kill George in such dehumanising manner but he refused. I do not think that Derek ever looked at blacks as human beings because no humane person can kill an animal that way.
This case is not an isolated case in America. In 2014, the New York Police Officers strangled Eric Garner in broad daylight on the allegation that he was selling some unauthorised stuff. In 2012, a 16-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed by a local white vigilante while going home on suspicion of being a burglar. Ahmaud Arbery was killed by three white men earlier this year while jogging because he entered an uncompleted building, owned by a white, to take a look at it. In all these cases, the Prosecution Officers were reluctant to bring charges against the offending White Officers until activists and men of conscience cried out. It took more than 2 months for Ahmaud’s killers to be arrested because a leaked video recording exposed the killers. Eric and Trayvons’ Killers were acquitted. Among the four officers that murdered George, only one has been charged. The other three are still working free as at the time of writing this despite riots and protests across major cities of USA. It was even an offence for a black man to be a journalist to report the events of the riots as Omar Jimenez, a CNN black journalist, was arrested and handcuffed with his hands at the back while live on air reporting the events. Till date, apart from his offence of being black, nobody has told him of any other offence. It seems that the blacks in US have found themselves in the awkward position of being guilty of offences they are accused of until they prove otherwise. It seems also that when it comes to blacks in America, the Police is the judge over them and the penalty of any allegation against them is death. The Police make the laws for them, judge them and execute them at will.
Contrast this with the case of Mohammed Noor, a black American police cop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who was called in to track an offender in the night and mistakenly shot a white lady, Justine Ruszczyk Damond, in a claim of self defence, in July, 2017. He was immediately arrested, charged and sent to jail. The police chief of the entire city was fired. According to data compiled by the Star Tribune, Noor’s case marked the first conviction out of 179 police-involved deaths in Minnesota since 2000. Throughout Europe, successful black players are mocked on the football pitches with monkey chants, whenever they are performing well against their opponents in order to demoralise them
Let us not even miss the reality that the whites are not the only problems of the blacks. In China, in the heat of the fight against coronavirus, blacks were harassed out of their hotel rooms and homes and left on the street unattended to. In Libya, here in Africa, black immigrants were sold as slaves to the wealthy and warlords of that country.
• To be continued next week