In the 50s and 60s, when there was established consciousness,
Continental Africans and African-Americans were gradually forging a powerful UNITED
FRONT against Euro-oppressive powers. We had the likes of Nkrumah and Muhammad Ali coming together for the common good of Africa and the future of the entire 'Black World'. Long before them, we had W.E.B DuBois, Marcus Mosiah Garvey among others who postulated and fervently pursued the concept of Pan-Africanism and the economic emancipation of Africa.
Scholars like Papa John Henrik Clarke, Amos
Wilson and others gave us the blueprints. Malcolm X was available with his fiery stance. Kwame
Nkrumah was on ground to articulate and implement. Nnamdi Azikiwe was available
to think along the continental line. The African-Americans were at the forefront
of the battle. They were fighting three wars simultaneously: The war to free Africa,
the war for the unity of the 'Black man and the Black woman' and the war against destructive
racism in the Western hemisphere. Great ones!
Suddenly, the bullets began to fall. Martin Luther King Jnr gone.
Malcolm X fell. Lumumba killed. Nkrumah deposed and left to be dejected. Steve Bantu
Biko exterminated and in later years, Thomas Sankara. As this confusion reigned,
the unity began to tear apart. Handshakes were no longer seen between the African-Americans, Africans in the Caribbean and the Continental Africans.
To set the record straight, Continental Africans are the major
problem of the 'Black world'. We are the ones whose people sold some of the ancestors
of the African-Americans into slavery. Whenever African-Americans are killed, we
do not speak up for them. Even when the likes of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jnr were fighting for us,
we were busy selling our resources cheaply to the same Supremacists and oppressors.
The truth hurts but it must be told. Our grand slavery of the mind tore up every
possibility of creating a better African world.
Whenever they are killed in America or elsewhere, we do not stand up for them yet they do not hesitate to lend their voices of protest whenever calamities happen to us in Africa. If anything happens to any Jew anywhere in the world, the state of Israel stands up for them. When South Africans proposed to get back their stolen lands back, Australia spoke first in defence of the European immigrants and apartheid villains (Whites) followed by Donald Trump. They will defend one another anywhere but this is not the case for Africans.
This is the reason why many Africans in diaspora prefer to stick with the 'Black Identity' than the 'African Identity'. We have the African civilisation (Nubian, Kemetic, Benin, Ife, Dahomey, Zulu, Xhosa and others), the European Civilisation (Greek, Roman and others), the Asian Civilisation (Chinese, Indian, Japanese and others), the Arabian civilisation and many more but not a 'White Civilisation', 'Yellow Civilisation' or 'Black Civilisation'. In a bid to move away from anything associated with Africa, some of them now believe they are 'Black Indians' who had inhabited America before the coming of Columbus. We cannot blame them. They need an identity.
Rather than court the African-Americans to come and invest so we can build together, Africans will prefer to sell their lands into European and Chinese slavery. The African-Americans and Africans in diaspora have the capability to join forces with us and lead us out of our quagmire. Take our music industry for instance; it was those from Jamaica and the Caribbean (Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and others) that moved Reggae. We followed them. Fela Anikulapo Kuti was influenced by Malcolm X, the politics of the Black Panther Party and he was tutored by an African-American woman (Sandra Smith) before he became conscious.
Our modern music industry copied from the African-American hip hop and rap. Our modern scientific discussion and advancement cannot be separated from the Africans in diaspora. They are our surest link and lifeline if we really genuinely want to break the shackles of mental slavery and embrace development. Had we listened to Garvey, we would have been economically liberated in Africa.
The pride of African culture today remains the African-Americans
and the Africans in diaspora in general outside of Africa. Here, we hate ourselves, we loath
our cultures, we lack thinking, we are basically everything associated with leeches. Rather than look at the cultural beauty in our various ethnic groups as a platform to unite and be creative, we tune to the frequency of hate and insults. We call the African-Americans names because we lack basic sense of history; that they did more for us that we can ever
do for them.
It is a known fact that our current crop of leaders are puppets, sell outs, coons and 'house Negroes' who will do anything and everything to please their European and Chinese masters. They are perfectly mentally enslaved and psychologically effete to lead us out of our morass. The youths must begin to have a rethink. We should use the power of the information age to reach-out to our brothers and sisters in America and in the diaspora, connect with them and stand up for them when necessary for us to be able to rebuild our Africa. The African-Americans and Africans in diaspora cannot afford to give up on us. Together, we can create a better African world. We should always remember our motherland always. 