We cannot solve collective problems without having genuine conversations. Many people have been conditioned to follow the path of political correctness so as to get as many likes on social media as possible. We don’t write to get likes, we write to get affirmative actions and change what is wrong in society. You do not have to like what we write about or the conversations we want to have, but then if you address the issues and fix the problems we will have nothing to write about.
I thought that God created us one race – the human race; and He made us in different shades and colors. Don’t you see the beauty in the different shades of our colors, cultures, accents etc? Everything that God created is beautiful and that includes humans in their different colors. When He said ‘subdue’ the earth He didn’t intend for one color to subdue the other. There is no way you could justify what we have now from scriptures, unless you are talking about a different kind of scripture.
Racism is man’s creation. I suggest that the reason was economics and that is the main reason it lingers. All the discussions around race, racism, equality, civil rights, etc have not been able to yield desired results because the people on the different sides of the aisle are not on the same page – the political will needed to eradicate racism is lacking. Those who are favored by the status quo do not want any change and will do everything to maintain status quo even if it has to be justified and proven from scriptures. After all people in the Bible days had slaves, are you for real?
As far as we allow history to go back, most of the black people were brought here as slaves. Someone was needed for hard labor to work the farms and make the slave masters wealthy…it has always been about economics and economic interests. Then there was need for police to supervise and monitor the slaves in a bid to ensure they work their fingers off if possible. Minimum laborers but maximum output was required and these slaves had to be made to do what the policemen that monitored them could not do. So it appears the police was primarily focused on the slaves to ensure compliance with labor and productivity targets. And the black man was the chief laborer, unfortunately.
Fast forward, the abolition of slave trade, the end of slavery, the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on, the black man has been trying to gain freedom and independence but has not yet been able or allowed to play on the same level field. Although he has come a long way, now black men marry non black women, there was a time a black man went to prison for staring at a non black woman. It was so bad that black women kept their men at home and went to work so he wouldn’t get into trouble for ‘nothing’ or rather for being black and a man at the same time. It was almost enough crime to be man, black and free.
It was and still is some kind of territorial behavior of the white man who saw the black man as the intruder in his space and as a competitor with him for the good things of life…wealth, women, land, etc. Everything to deny the black man access to wealth, fame, women, land, and property would be the ‘norm’ so they don’t begin to compete or maybe rule. So instead of the supremacist to step up his game and show superiority of wits – that will be too much work – he has to lower the pedestal for his most dreaded competitor…the black man.
Everything was designed to keep the black man in check…if more of them are in custody then there will be less of them to compete with, in this ‘limited’ space for wealth and women. Some black women play to the gallery of the competitor when they hand the black man over to the police and accuse him sometimes ‘falsely’ for battery or abuse or whatever…the system readily adopts by default that the black man is guilty (and sometimes he gets a chance to prove his innocence). How many black men are in prison for offenses they have no idea where, when and how they were committed? How many black men get maximum sentences for the same offense for which white man got minimum sentence? Are we not familiar with these? Do we not see the effects of these systemic racial practices on black families and the generation next?
If a black man has a business plan and business idea, and wants to get loan to fund his business, his chances of success will more than double if his name sounds ‘white’ so long as he doesn’t have to show up in person otherwise his loan application will be denied. Even with a credit of 725 and lots of money in the account for equity ingestion a black man still risks being denied because the business plan appears ambitions, or the location of the business is too black to be approved or the logo of the business is not beautiful or there are too many competitors (of the favored race) or the economy is not looking good enough for black success. There is always a reason to say ‘no’ to a black man and keep him working for the white man.
I believe that the greatest emancipation for any man is achieved when he is able to take up his own destiny in his hands and put his talents to work for himself. But we don’t operate in a vacuum and laws are enacted with intentionality. If a level playing ground is established legally the black man will take over the show and run the world. It is enough that slaves were freed without the tools to create wealth. It was similarly repeated when Biafrans that lost the war got ridiculous 20 pounds to start life in 1970 regardless of how much they had in the bank before the war….what a world! Which war did the black man lose in America?
When the Israelites left Egypt after as long as it took for slavery to be abolished here, they spoiled the Egyptians. They didn’t go empty handed. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the system in a way that makes it easier for the black man to be fairly treated in this country, and be able to access the tools to create for himself the American dream. Those who suggest that perhaps black men should go back to Africa will need to be treated as racist as the police who kills the black man. Perhaps if that be the case then the black man should be asking for reparation and payment for several hundred years of labor. Perhaps the black man should ask for the whole land of America as adequate reparation so that all non black people pay rent to the black man. If asking for equality is too much, then maybe we need to rethink and come up with something more tangible and more costly to ask for.
While we support the work of the police in keeping us safe, every now and then they miss it. But people who are not police miss it too, every time at the workplaces with all manner of hate comments and racial rhetoric. So I do not think that all police are racists but there are racists who became police and brought their racist ideologies to the job. Those are the ones that need to be weeded off. Nobody is born racist, the family and society teach it. If we could come up with some kind of lie detector, there should be racist detector test too which every person that wants to be police or judge must pass in order to be allowed to discharge those duties. Maybe that will start separating the weeds from the corn.
It is good to protest but there has to be some other actions taken to drive home the message that black men are sick and tired of being brutally murdered in this country and elsewhere especially by people who swore to protect the people. We cannot solve this problem by looting anybody, you cannot get revenge by breaking into people’s homes or businesses. Simply tendering official apology for killing us does not fix it either. Protesting is good and could go on for as long as it takes to see law makers move motions that are capable of addressing this malady.
The next time we go to the polls let us vote politicians who do not have racist tendencies, maybe racism could be put on the burner and hammered into shape accordingly. How about that? Whatever we do or do not, this racially colored police brutality and violent murder of black men must stop. Enough of institutionalized racism, perpetrated by people who condemned apartheid and uphold a constitution that begins with ‘We, the People’. When those words were written, were black men included in “we” or “the people”? If so, then where is justice, common defense, general welfare and the blessings of liberty as enshrined in the constitution of the United States.
Mezie Okolo is a leadership analyst @ www.mezieokolo.com