RACISM IS FOR EVER

‘Stop racism’, ‘say no to racism’, ‘end racism’. These are some of the slogans seen on television, stadiums and prominent locations all over the world. This is because of the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white, racist, USA police man, Chauvin. The event was recorded by a young black woman with a mobile phone. This has led to long lasting demonstrations in the United States of America, England, and other places by the movement, Black Lives Matter, and people sympathetic to the plight of the black people in the United States of America. The plight is racism. Mr Chauvin killed Floyd publicly like you would kill a rat or cockroach and seemingly enjoyed doing it. It is engraved in Mr Chauvin’s brain that black people are lesser human beings and since he has the authority as a policeman licensed to kill he had no qualms doing it.

Dear fellow human beings, since The Almighty thought it wise to create us in differing colours, He, hopefully inadvertently, built into the DNA of each colour group of human beings the idea of superiority over the other groups. White people (is anybody really white?) or the people of the lightest colour believe that they are superior to other colour groups. Each other colour group believe they are superior to people darker than them, the darker the more inferior. At the bottom of the pile are the blacks. When the European adventurers came to Africa those many centuries ago and saw how and where our ancestors lived and their level of development and behaviour pattern it reinforced their belief that they were lower human beings hence they carried them away as slaves. But the truth is that they did not start slavery. The Arabs did. They came in from the Middle East to carry black people into slavery earlier. Later Hitler had the idea of using the blacks of Africa to fertilise the Sahara desert. Thank God he died before he could put it into practice. Hardly any other colour group of homo sapiens was massively carried off into slavery from their God given land.

The case of the Native Americans is also very pathetic. The white people came to their land from Europe and massacred them into near extinction. Why? They are not of the same colour and therefore an inferior race and the whites wanted their land. Unfortunately the surviving Native Americans have decided to accept their situation and remain in their little enclaves of reservations. But the blacks of the United States of America had nothing after their ancestors had been dehumanised by the whites as slaves and since they could not go back to Africa they have had to fight for every little thing they have had since the slave trade was abolished. They are still fighting and that is why our white brother human beings have now been embarrassed into a sing song, ‘say no to racism’! Google is undertaking to make people of colour thirty per cent of the leadership of their workforce by 2025. Microsoft, Bank of America and so many other companies are promising to actively promote racial equality by making one concession or the other. One company is even promising not to advertise its skin care products as skin whitening or darkening! Lloyds now regret providing insurance for the ships that carried the slaves across the Atlantic! In The English Football League, EPL, before each match kick off players kneel in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter. Much of the gestures are forced on the mega companies and sporting organisations also because blacks are now becoming a force to reckon with especially in sport.

But as I have stated above racism has been with us since human beings were created. Each human colour grouping prefer to live together, associate withing their group. I remember as a student in the nineteen sixties in London I was astonished when I visited Hayes in England’s Middlesex when I saw Indians milling around the place, hardly any white or black faces. Most of the buildings and businesses were owned and occupied by them. It was like a town in India. If blacks begin moving into an exclusive residential area occupied by whites the whites begin moving out. In London in the sixties I saw blatant notices in shop windows or vacant rooms that said, ‘sorry, no coloureds and no dogs’. Blacks were equal to dogs! Then prominent politician, Enoch Powell, kept insisting on television, ‘give those blacks ten pounds each and send them back where they came from’!

Racism, tribalism as we call it in Africa, discrimination, will never end. All we can do is to lessen a few public manifestations of it. Even though the spectator in an EPL football match believes the black players are akin to monkeys he must not make monkey chants during a match. He should keep it to himself otherwise he is banned from the stadium. The mega companies now want to make conscious effort to employ blacks, support businesses owed by them. Confederate flags are being removed in parts of the USA and certain monuments will go and so on. But, in the final analysis, you cannot erase what has been engraved in peoples brains from time immemorial. Racism is part of humanity.

Folks, the genie escaped from the bottle long ago. The things being done now to eradicate racism are simply superficial. What are our white brothers going to do with the English language which has been forced on African Americans and West Indians and many countries in Africa as their lingua franca? Many of these blacks have lost their original native languages. What of the names African Americans and West Indians have been forced to bear? They are not their original African names. What can our white brothers do about the dictionaries, Chambers, Oxford, Merriam Webster and so on. In them negative things are said to be black. ‘Black leg’, ‘black sheep of the family’, ‘black list’, ‘blackmail’, ‘paint him black’. These are just a few of the expressions contained in them and which are commonly used in spoken English that cannot disappear. Above all, what colour is ascribed to the high and mighty devil? BLACK!!! Will the devil ever stop being black? NO!!! Racism is alive and well and will be for ever end ever!!!