How Can Africans Rejoice in Black Identity?

How can Africans rejoice in black identity?

INTRODUCTION

Racism is a belief in the superiority of a particular race. A race is a division of man because of his distinct physical characteristics. How do these differences come about when man is supposed to have stemmed from one parentage? That is a question that geographers, biologists, ethnographers and to some extent ethnographers have been battling with throughout or particularly since the 14th century. Owing to the fact that sciences were still then inchoate, race was naively used to put down some group of peoples on earth and to put some up there to near statues of gods and goddesses. I endeavored to explain this in my work Who is African American? Crossing Racial Barriers published by www.baico.ca Publishing Co, Ottawa, Canada. Irrespective of my explanation and those of many other scientists, the fact remains that peoples with dark skin complexion, still feel resentments at work places, sport arena, in the public, institutes of learning  http://www.gpb.org/news/2013/02/27/emory-students-plan-racism-rally ,  areas where they want to settle, get jobs they want to are  being are rejected by those supposed to have superior colors. This is bitter racism. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/is-america-a-racist-country_b_2773132.html.  The rejected feel that if they were accepted for what they are, they would be riding high in the job market, in schools and colleges, and they would settle where they like without fear, their standard of living and those who rely on them would be improved and many positive things will happen. That is a fact as we saw that with the abolition of slavery and slave trade, the global wealth rose. It was because the enslaved were also allowed to participate in the free trade, to buy and sell without inhibition.  The same could apply within enclaves of racism and tribalism wherever they are in the world.

Not only that, the marginalized because of the color of their skin also feel that they would marry whoever they want, and live where they like anywhere in the world. That is the Utopian perspective that could only be reached if we abandon protectionism and make the world as a one state nation.  Unfortunately there is no perfect world we all pray for when we kneel or squat or stand to pray to God. As I have explained in my last rendition on this blog, irrespective of many on earth knowing the origins of physical differences of man, they still resent others for the color of their skin, shape of their derrieres,  noses, their gender, sexual inclinations, size of their bodies, head, and hair and so on and so forth. 

Racism is not only confined among Caucasians or some peoples of light skins. It transcends human colors. In the case of Caucasians, I attempted to  explain that this was so because they were generally nervous and protective of their achievements or possessions. Is racism or disdain of one of us by us only confined in Caucasian milieus?  Far from it! There is also subtle racism in the African set up. We euphemistically call this tribalism. We will leave that for our subsequent commentaries. 

ALBINISM

There are Africans who would resent whites or albinos just for the color of their skin. They are naive as I earlier said as a man who hates a fish for its slippery body and domiciling in water. They do not know that in the past man had one color. He was made by God or as others like to put it, evolved in Africa. His skin had to adapt based on the climatic and other natural conditions he found himself in. It had to build protection from the radiance of the sun. What we are trumpeting the world to do now with the destruction of ozone and part of the troposphere by unprecedentedly releasing into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and CFCs. The nearest thing man's genes did was to build in that melanin that gave him black pigmentation. This acted as a sealant to the infrared from the solar spectrum. With that he could survive under the scorching sun of the tropics without having cancer of the skin. If his genes did not build this, he died or he was likely to die and I would not have been here to write this and you would not have been there to read what I have transmitted to you through this medium.

You will see that some Africans who are born without skin pigmentation we call albinos die before they reach the age of forty. So the advice that health authorities give them is that they should cover themselves up the moment they step out into the sun. Albinism is not only idiosyncratic of Africans. When you go to SW Asian and among the Caucasians in Europe, the Americas, and even in Australasia there are cases of albinism. 

Albinos are lucky in some parts of the world where people understand where they come from and are not discriminated against. In certain parts of Africa, albinos are considered in some primitive societies as spirits just the same as Africans took the first Europeans they saw after the Dark Ages. They thought that they were spirits and shunned them or feared that their dead brothers and sisters were coming back. You need to read travelogues of early Europeans who had contact with some Africans communities to hear repetitions of this story. Among the primitive communities in some part of Africa particularly in Tanzania, Kenya, Cameroon,  Zambia, Senegal and even right down to Mozambique, albinos are thought to be sprites and their skins are highly demanded as horns of rhinoceros are demanded by Arabs and some Asians for medicinal purposes. Are those witch doctors not crazy. A dead albino could have HIV/AIDS related diseases and if you share his body parts as medicine, you are helping to spread diseases we in the West are fighting hard to stamp out.  Albinos in these backward societies are arrested and killed for parts of their bodies by witch doctors. How this works is something modern science is yet to venture into to explain to us. Whatever the benefits to be derived from this macabre or primitive behavior  it should be deplored by all and sundry for it has no scientific underpinning. 

When you think that advances  in sciences had made us to leave primitive beliefs, you still uncover bizarre tradition not only in the rain forest of the Amazon where the born crippled are destroyed but in Africa were the born with color similar to what Caucasian used to bamboozle the black is resented. So we still have plenty of explanations to be made to let people who are not enlightened know that colors of the skin stem from the climatic region in which a person resides or it could be a mistake in nature that does not warrant summary execution of persons with such colors. You will see that it has taken us so long to start accepting that there are same sex people who can marry. This has not been without prices. Having said this, I am not saying that we can equate racism with gay-ism or homosexuality. The change of ones color from charcoal or blue black to white or pinkish is not an overnight process; it takes thousands or millennial of years before these changes take place. So man's internal and external features had to change to acclimatize so that he can live in new climatic conditions that are different from those at his place of birth, in our case Africa. What will be the situation now that there is ease of mobility and mixing of  of man in the world as never before?

DIFFERENCES IN COLOR WILL NEVER ALTER THAT INNATE ONENESS OF MAN

So color has nothing to do with the oneness of man even though man has capitalized on this in the past to exploit man. Man is one as I have just (Tuesday, February-26-13) learned on Facebook debate in which I do write concerning the fact that the Israeli authorities are singling out peoples with dark skin for discrimination. It is not only in Israel. Before 1994 in South Africa when apartheid, racial segregation was the rule of the day, color was used by the light skinned peoples to put the black skinned man in his place so to say. They were exploited and treated as animals because of their color. Should they have been doing this?  Caucasian Americans used this as were Caucasian Europeans before they realized that it was all wrong and changed their appalling treatment of Africans and some poor of their kind. It was not without a fight, a fight that still goes on in some quarters where die-hard are still sticking to it. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/inter-again-fined-racism-balotelli-receives-fine-200700059--sow.html  Some are subtle and others are open and that is sad. Those who discriminated in the past and still hitherto, had not known that their great grandparents were charcoal black or blue black as the Africans in the Sahel regions in the open Savannah or the desert of Sudan before they crossed the Suez and moved to colder climatic areas in Europe, Asia, and North America. Those who left Africa for various reasons had to adopt and adapt based on those climates where they traversed or settled else they could not have survived hitherto. A Chinese may look different outwardly but he or she is 99% like a Caucasian or Negroid.

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COLOR OF MY SKIN, WHY SHOULD I BE DISDAINED BECAUSE OF IT?

It should be clear for those who are stubbornly phlegmatic that those being discriminated against for their skin pigmentation were not responsible for their coloration. Nature or what many of us call God made it so. The nearest comparison is when it gets suddenly chilly our skin suddenly develops goose pimples and our hair stands up straight. These actions are inadvertent. Also when summer comes and our fair skin turns darkie  we call it suntanned. It is the way our bodies react to mini climatic changes or to cut off the infiltration of the long infrared rays that could kill all living things on earth if allowed to penetrate us in abundance  This body reaction is what biologists call protective mechanism. Some animals have this and this takes place instinctively without their knowledge. The ptarmigan changes white to blend with the snow in winter and when summer comes it assumes a different color to run away from its enemies. The chameleon does not tell its skin to turn white, red or yellow once it is enters areas with those colors. Man had to develop this even with his features (nostril had to be enlarged to get thin air in the tropics, they have to be reduced to inhale little in the cold climates, the hair had to be woolly to absorbed the scorching sun rays, she had to build big buttocks so as to store food for its children in areas with less food, some had to get different shapes of feet, hands, lips just to adapt and survive else they were just history. We learn in our natural history lessons that some animals that could not adapt perished and are only found as fossils. Where are the dodos that once roam Mauritius Island gone? Man could have been fossilized too if he was unable to adapt and some creatures could have been studying him as we study some fossils today we dig in the Canadian shields, the Rocky Mountains or look as folded mounts in Central Europe and Asia.

Then when those who were out to exploit these natural phenomena for their economic gains explained that ruddy complexion meant that they were higher in human echelon of superiority. How was this scientific? Then next were those who were yellowish and the last according to them were those who were darkie or dark. Fantastic explanation of the visible light spectrum! They could get away with it for they were coming with that position of strength and even economic power that the dark-skinned had not. All of us know today that it was wrong, yet it lingers on in some quarters. Why?

What I have stated below is that biologically speaking mankind is one. There is no difference between an Indian, African, Chinese, Mongoloid or Caucasian. They are all the same. For those of you who philander, dalliances with Mongoloid, Negroid, or Caucasians are the same. The difference may be in those who are racist and are not in terms with the fact that a person of a different color is not a person. It is for this reason that some Africans who were made to believe that they were inferior have the feeling that they could increased their "human" status in the society when they chum up with Caucasians or those they believed were in the high echelon of race. I have elucidated this in my work above-mentioned and more could be read in Dr. Frantz Fanon’s work, Black Skin, White Mask one of my mentors. Well, those who hang on to different tastes because of different colors are telling me that a white egg tastes better than a brown egg or a black egg. They all taste the same.

CONCLUSION

We started that racism should have no place on earth. We all fought the Second World War because of racism. If we entertain anything after the sufferings inflicted on us by that war then we will never learn from any lesson. For any person or nation to operate or use racism as a tool as it was used during the days of slavery, is myopic and unproductive. I have said that racist remarks often comes when there are football matches and Africans are doing well, or dominating. It is then that some shallow Caucasian fans would start howling racist comments or invective. http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/feb/27/millwall-fan-ban-racist-abuse-el-hadji-diouf ;  http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/ opinion/entertainment/lets-blow-whistle-racism-1733214. Those booing at them are wrong and hollow and should be corrected if we do not want to go into another third world war because of racism.    A racist is myopic as someone who grows up to hate another because she or he is a female or gay or crippled. Man does not tell his maker, his parents that he want to be born charcoal black or snow white or yellow or pinkish or  female or male or homosexual or what. He just finds himself or herself that way and he should thank his maker God for giving him life. When you abuse one or exploit one because of one's color, you are just being very naive and a plant in your garden is better than you. You are like a shepherd dog abusing a Chihuahua because it is small or a house cat abusing a leopard because it lives in the bush and it is big. The bottom line is that they all had the same parentage at one stage in their biological history.  Let us hope that the people will be educated and should sternly excoriate whoever is racist. There is no question of ignoring him or her for not knowing what he or she is doing.  No person of whatever color should accept domination or exploitation or discrimination in the 21 century. 

Finally, this note was provoked by the fact that Africans were being discriminated against in Israel. Of all people or nation states, Israel should not be the one practicing discrimination for Africans shed their blood to defeat the Nazis thereby liberating the Jews, homosexuals and gypsies from the gas chambers of the racist leader Adolf Hitler. Let this just be misinformation and let the Jewish authorities explain to us circumstances that led to what is reported as racial discrimination in Israel. 

To dark skinned peoples or Africans wherever you are in the world after reading my two summaries of what could fill volumes, know that you have to be grateful with your maker for if he had not given you that coloration, you would have been history and would not have even read this my write-up. Consequently, dark-skinned East Indians and African men and women should desist bleaching to look like Caucasians. They Caucasian is not a prototype that you must copy. He is that way because of the climatic condition he lives under. You cannot chisel yourself or change your color to look like him as you could be a square peg in a round hole in your tropical region. They are committing grievous bodily harms and biological transgressions. Let us leave this for our next reading.

Finally, The New Yorker (1967) commenting on Frantz Fanon’s work Toward the African Revolution said the following:

 “Dr. Fanon’s three powerful ideas come through: that Negroes (Africans my emphasis) must rejoice in black identity, that only violence can wash away humiliation, and that African must be freed and unified.”

WHEN YOU ARE TOO COMFORTABLE YOU BECOME LESS PRODUCTIVE

While sympathizing with The New Yorker of thirty-six years ago, when Africans were fighting to regain their lost independence from European colonialists, something that had racist undertones, what we have now are smoldering vestiges of the past and violence is not what is required to regain the grandeur that man of Africa was in the past. Violence still pops up during elections or people are elected because of their color in some or barred from voting because of the color of their skin in some conservative areas of the USA. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/shelby-county-v-holder-pits-local-election-control-224753576.html.  He needs to welcome the new knowledge his lost children (Europeans, my subsequent parenthesis) are bringing back, knowledge got because of the harsh conditions they found themselves in while in diaspora I earlier mentioned in my previous article on this Blog. Their children should not forget that when you are too comfortable you become less productive. Africa, the first domicile of man on earth has everything. It is a Garden of Eden and that is why its inhabitants prior to the first coming of Europeans were lackadaisically comfortable. It is that beguiling comfort that has made Africans to appear last in economic race of the world. It is not that they are different. We have African millionaires  intellectual, and there is nothing a Caucasian can do that they cannot do and may be better. The question is if they are given that opportunity without discrimination.  Now that they have accepted the reason d’etre of their conditions and are bent on reforming, there is no reason why they should not stand up and rob their shoulders with their children in not too distance future.

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo, vibanngo@hotmail.com