I had to think about this for a while, I could not figure out the right approach to the topic, I had to ask a few conscious people that I know just to get a feel of their views, I got solid answers from them but I was not satisfied with the details I gathered from them. Then I saw Burna Boy's interview on Sway in the morning where he basically said “ if Africa is viewed the way it is meant to be viewed, then most of the problems in the world today might not exist”, and he also mentions how Africans and African Americans have been disconnected from their roots by this misconception or misinformation from a foreign world. I heard that and I realized I just found the missing piece I needed to enrich the details I was trying to put together .
Africa and the Afro culture has been polluted by foreign entities, making Africans around the world submissive to a system political or otherwise that does not work for them. Imagine the United State of America viewing a country like Nigeria the way it views Russia, the situation will not be called racism it will have a different name, I name that comes with fear for the mind and achievements of the black race. If a country like Ghana should obtain nuclear power the negotiation tables will turn, disregarding that as a violent example what about industrialization, Africa is the richest continent in the world, but somehow Africa's riches is not enough to take care of its population if Africa is as industrialized as China, it wouldn’t be a competition of whom the great powers should be.
There is a verse in the Bible that goes “ if the foundation is weak, what can the righteous do”, Racism, Segregation, Racial violence , white supremacist , all these can be avoided if Africa steps up. Africans and people of color generally have been living through time using history as a manual script i.e we have allowed the stories of our fathers and their fathers to determine the trajectory of our lives. I am African and I know for sure the continent has not grown beyond the legacies of Pan- African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kenyatta, Awolowo, Nkrumah. Likewise the African- American community has not grown beyond the legacies of Martin Luther jr, Malcolm X, Sojourner Truth , we are basically leaving through the elements of history while our roots continues to decay.
In my conversation with my friend Anthony on this topic, we talked about our definition of roots , we concluded that it is the authority to be as human as you can and we described history as a guideline that we use to power through our lives . Anthony’s view is concrete, we living as we were born differs from living based on our yesterday. Our Afro-culture faced a lot of detriments for centuries , from slavery to colonialism to segregation to appatheid, the black man as been decentralized in every way unappealing to the concept of humanity, but we still live we that history , that burden, we still get that pity from the white man while they still believe we are not equals. For every colored man or woman your skin color is a sin outside the African border. Hence, Racism will remain a prominent factor until Africa rises to the occasion .
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