Why are you black?

Howdy folks!
Lately, I have been busying myself watching a mini-series called The Book of Negroes.

It is about a young girl — Aminata Diallo — who was captured during the Slave Trade era, forced to cross the oceans (the Great River) in a ship tightly packed with other slaves and was auctioned and sold into slavery in South Carolina where she experienced an avalanche of untold sufferings at the hands of her racist masters.
The mini-series is based on a book by the same title, written by Lawrence Hill.
And from the book, I have been interrogating two quotes from one character, Aminata Diallo.
First she says: “Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink.”
And another interesting quotation in the book goes as follows: “She asked why I was so black. I asked why she was so white. She said she was born that way. Same here, I replied.”
To folks reading this piece, how would you answer the question, why are you so black, pink, red or yellow?
But here I would like to deliberately zoom in on blacks, being incensed by recent events.
Some may not see the necessity of this consciousness of blackness.
But it seems the 21st Century is fast ushering us into a horrible era where we are constantly bombarded left, right and centre with reminders that we are black; an era where we are apparently supposed to apologise profusely for having more melanin in our skin.
Yet, it is the very pigment that is merely supposed to absorb light, to dissipate over absorbed UV radiation and protect our skin cells from damage, thereby reducing the risk of cancer.
Otherwise how could we have survived recent episodes of heat-waves, record-breaking temperatures as high as 44 degrees Celsius, without melanin?
Folks, it is a worrying spectacle that people are apparently starting to see all things in black and white at a time when we are all supposed to be colour blind.
What has happened to Lucky Dube’s “one people, different colours”?
Folks; this latest trend of other races labelling blacks as inferior and sub-humans, and apologising five minutes later really stinks to the high heavens.
In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) party deputy chief Alexander Gauland recently told media that Germans would not love to live next door to Jerome Boateng, who has a black Ghananian father but was born and brought up in Berlin.
Said Gauland: “People find him good as a footballer, but they don’t want to have a Boateng as a neighbour.”
In other words, he is saying that no matter how good you are, if the colour of your skin is black, then you are automatically not good enough.
To him, skin colour is the currency that buys you neighbours.
Looks like Gauland still has nostalgia for Adolf Hitler’s Aryan race.
If Germans are not to have a Boateng as a neighbour, then where should he be sent to?
Gas chambers?
But wait a minute, is being citizen determined by one’s skin colour?
Should we choose neighbours on the basis of their melanin levels?
AfD party chief Frauke Petry had to apologise later, but the sincerity of the apology is dubious, at least to me.
People normally speak from the abundance of their hearts.
Folks, if nations that call themselves developed are this underdeveloped when it comes to fundamental matters such as race, then it leaves a lot to be desired about them.
The words of one Robert Mugabe, said 36 years ago, should echo in their ears. He said: “Oppression and racism are inequities that must never again find scope in our political and social system. It could never be a correct justification that because whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power.
“An evil remains an evil, whether practised by white against black or black against white”.
What, however, worries me now is that there actually seems to be an underlying scheme to oppress and pull the black woman and man down.
It’s not only happening in politics.
Even the corporate sector that thrives on having good relations with customers, white or black, has joined the bandwagon. Have you not seen a recent racist detergent video advert by a Chinese company — Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics — for its Qiaobi detergent brand?
The advert’s main message, to me, was “it’s dirty and parasitic to be black”.
It shows a young black man who is made to eat the detergent, at the hand of a Chinese woman, and then forced by the same woman to get into a washing machine to be spinned until his blackness is “thoroughly washed”.
He emerges from the washing machine, moments later, having transformed into a Chinese man, much to the Chinese woman’s affection.
Shame on you Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics, our melanin cannot be washed away by your detergent.
And they get away with it by scratching a few lines: “For the harm caused to the African people because of the spread of the advert and the over-amplification by the media, we express our apology. We sincerely hope the public and the media will not over-read it.”
Nonsense!
Can’t you see the arrogance being exuded here in the name of an apology?
It is adverts like these that are also inciting some gullible black Africans to think that they are not good enough, so long as they don’t have wavy hair and light skin.
No wonder why many African women and men have been bleaching their skins, using skin lightening creams, injections, bleaching soaps and tablets.
A United Nations Environment Programme document titled, “Mercury in Products and Wastes”, established that “the use of skin-lightening products in African nations is very common”.
It also highlights that 77 percent of Nigerian women use skin-lightening products, 59 percent in Togo, 35 percent in South Africa, 27 percent in Senegal and 25 percent in Mali.
Even in Zimbabwe, you probably know of some folks who have bleached their skins.
Yet, the same report says that direct and prolonged exposure through the skin during repeated applications of these products can cause damage to the brain, nervous system and kidneys.
If it’s not the skin, it’s the hair?
Who really are we trying to be?
And what’s wrong with who we are?
A report by Euromonitor International says US$1,1 billion of shampoos, relaxers and hair lotions were sold in South Africa, Nigeria and Cameroon last year alone. The dry hair industry which includes weaves, extensions and wigs is also estimated at US$6 billion a year, which is circa 20 times the annual budget of the African Union.
All this just to change your identity as a black person!
Wake up black folks, it’s time we fully embraced the pride that comes with being African and reject all forms of neo-slavery and racism.
It is important that people of all races unite and treat each other equally.
In South Africa, people of different races forming the Rainbow Nation recently gathered to condemn racism and celebrate how the rainbow looks when all its colours are together.
It is the very rainbow that God installed in the sky after a heavy downpour that obliterated the generation of that time.
And He vowed: “I have set my rainbow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.” (Genesis 9:13-15)
Similarly, when we meet each other as people of different colours forming the rainbow, let it be a reminder to us that never again will any form of racism stand in the way of our progress as a people.
Later folks!