What is wrong with being Black?

What can we say is actually wrong with the black nation? The assembly of black people all over the world is plagued with all sort of social vices. The abundance of melanin has gone beyond just skin deep, it fills every atmosphere it infiltrates with a sense of primitiveness, self-destruction, menace, hedonism and debauchery. Looking back to the Africa continent, the most developed section of it belongs to inhabitants with the fairer skin. Looking outside the Dark Continent, the Caribbean islands with the black majority are going through the same problem as us. Are we now safe to say something is wrong being black? Our consolation is in the fact that black people such as the ancient Egyptians and the Moors left a footprint of sophistication in the world, even when the whites were incapable of it. The sphinx is not the image of a white man and this was created alongside other wonderful feats such as the pyramids of Giza and all other pyramids scattered over Sudan, Uganda, eastern-Nigeria etc. The moors enjoyed years of dominating the white man in Spain and its environs. It is evident that the black man is a wise man. It has also been genetically proved that the only difference between blacks and whites is the colour of their skin, which has no influence on the body’s physiological processes - hence, it is safe to say we are the same.

The average black man has been made to believe that something is inherently wrong with his natural state, and has been given an unhealthy precedence to follow before being accepted by the outside world. This unhealthy and deprecating set of standards has led to a chain of reaction of low self-esteem involving all black generations and the ones yet to come. He is not to be blamed for accepting these standards because when he looks around all he sees is vices, environmental degradation, poverty and conflicts. We have been made to believe that the fairer skin is beautiful; hence a lot of people bleach their skin to look good. The black hair can be stubborn, but it’s amazing and most black women cover it up and feel ashamed when it is exposed. It is also very shameful that we look down on those who speak our local dialect even though they are learned, some are even very proud to say they can’t communicate in their mother tongue. When Spaniards and Italians murder English; we say it is ‘sexy’, but most times we are ashamed of our accents and praise those who talk through their nose and call them enlightened. These sets of sickening double standard are too much mention. The mind is a strong tool and when it has been trained to accept these standards, it becomes the norm even when the real is staring in our eyes. Nothing is wrong with a thick woolly hair. Nothing is wrong with your accent and native names. Absolutely nothing!

Nearly every culture on the African continent has been badly battered by Christianity and Islam. While we were told that we worship idols and have to discard our gods, but if we are to be sincere and compare these religions; these gods are only different by name and related in terms of worship, sacrifice, wrath, rules and jealousy. We found it easy to leave a god that accepts human sacrifice for one that permits genocide and slave trade. Is it that we fail to compare or we were trying to meet up to standard of our fellow developed humans? I hear someone murmur the New Testament, but if our religion were to be left alone maybe we will have the new testament of African Traditional Religion too. The truth is that every God is an idol.

Asia and Africa has once been pillaged by the Europeans and most Asians have gotten over it. They have successfully retained their language, culture and religion and they hold it in high esteem over every other western alternative. The Asians have gone further to develop some countries on their continent to a first world and they have the largest economies in the world. This is a set of people that we have been through the same situations and another point to tell us that if we put in the work all will be well with our continent. We need to stop judging ourselves with unrealistic standards and set out to think independently as self-reliance is the first step to greatness. Every black man needs to get knowledge, read  about his history, know what shaped his existence and then set out to think independently outside these factors with the mind-set that he and his kin is capable of wonderful scientific feats, capable of good governance and making his continent proud as it was once were.

We have had black inventors and great scholars in the likes of Lewis Latimer, Frederick Jones, Granville Woods, Charles Drew and a lot others. Some had their intellectual property stolen and sold to corporations and then persecuted to keep quiet. We have also had good systems of government before the encounter with Europeans; a good example is the Benin and Songhai empires. So why do all these now seem as a myth to us? These are facts the young generation needs to be aware of to help prepare an unbiased mind-set, but sadly most history books nowadays starts with ‘when the white man’s boat approached’.

Slavery is behind us, our destiny has been in our hands for scores of years and it seems like we can’t even cater for our own. Our continent is a very religious one and the average black man is hoping for a New Jerusalem, rather than build a new Africa. It’s time for the black man to educate his folks, as ignorance is the bane our problem. Let every one of us not just get education, but actually become enlightened. Know your history, identify your problems and proffer solutions, even if it means going the hard way. Nothing is wrong with black man!