Beyond #BlackLivesMatter and #NoToRacism -By Segun Ogunlade

The recent murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in the U.S. state of Minnesota by a police officer who knelt on his neck for over eight minutes has sparked protests in many cities across the world. His killing has seen fresh verbal attacks against racism as engendering injustice and inequality against the black people in world’s most powerful country. Many people have condemned police brutality and demand for justice. Black American actors and actresses, football stars, talk show host, basketball stars, etc., have all condemned the treatment of the blacks in the U.S. as they join the rest of the world is waiting to see what punishment would be given to Derek Chauvin, the officer that was responsible for George’s death and the three officers.

In the midst of the protest and waiting for the court to sit on the case, some people have advised that black Americans should return to their homeland and develop it. According to those that favour black Americans returning home to Africa, you can’t force people to accept you if they are not willing to. Besides, they believe nobody will discriminate against them here in Africa because of their skin colour. No police officer will kneel on their neck or choke them thereby forcing them to gasp for breath.

Many things have been said about racism and many of those talks have been centered on it being white Americans resenting Americans of different the Blacks for who they are and not what they have done. That is true to a large extent thing. Inasmuch as there is evident discrimination against the blacks, it is because the white Americans are fighting to protect their space. They fear the minority groups are gradually taking over their country. Like every other native anywhere in the world, they feel they entitled to their land. The number of black Americans and others in the U.S is increasing, meaning it is only a matter of time before they outnumber the whites that are not Hispanic, Latinos, or mixed race.
According to a report on the population of the U.S., the country will become minority white by 2045. In another report by United States Census Bureau, white Americans constitute 76.5 percent of the total population; Blacks constitute 13.4 percent; American Indian and Alaska natives constitute 1.3 percent; Asians constitute 5.9 percent; Hispanic or Latino constitute 18.3 percent, and white alone that are neither Hispanic nor Latino constitute 60.4 percent; Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander constitute 0.2 percent; while people of two or more races constitute 2.7 percent. This shows that after the Hispanic and Latinos, black American is the next most populated minority group in Asia and black Americans are the most populated non-white ethnic group.

This gradual increase is no fault of the blacks. Why the minority groups are increasing in number is because of the low birth rate recorded among the white Americans. A good number of them marry for love not for raising children. It wasn’t the blacks or the Hispanics that stopped them from reproducing their kinds. That choice was made by them. Now, they fear the blacks are taking over their space and they are not happy with it.

Well, this type of persecution of the minority by the majority for fear of a future take-over by the former is not new. For example, the Christian Bible has a similar narrative in the Exodus where Pharaoh ordered the killing of every Jewish male that was born in Egypt for fear that the Jews are increasing in population and they could one day turn against them by using their numerical advantage to upstage them. By killing the male children, the Pharaoh at the time was trying to weaken the Jews and made them subjective. Everything that happened to the Jews according to that account was not as a result of any fault of theirs but because the Egyptians fear the Jews were taking over their space and that needed to be checked (at least that was the biblical account showed). Like the Pharaoh in Exodus, many white Americans loathe black Americans because the latter is growing in numerical strength while they are not. The belief is that they are entitled to dominate affairs in their own land. Any shred of threat to that belief is met with strong indignation. Nobody that has ever been in control is ever willing to relinquish it especially if he has the means to keep it.

In the face of all this, should we tell the black Americans to return to Africa where they would not be dealt with unjustly because of their number and the colour of their skins? I believe the answer to that question is dependent on the individual that was asked. For me, it is easy for us to say they should return to Africa. But is Africa ready to receive that type of population? The African continent is nearing population explosion and by 2030, half of the people living in the world would be in Africa. There are many theories about these countries. One of them is that there is no nation dominated by blacks that is prosperous. It is also clear that many African states are failed state with the current population. Even the ones with the smallest population are incapable of managing their resources well to the benefit of all and sundry. Adding to that number will not be very wise.

Besides, many of these black Americans don’t see themselves as Africans. Some of them prefer their American heritage to their African heritage. Of course, that is natural. That is their place of birth and there is no crime falling in love with one’s place of birth. They have a lifestyle that is distinct from that of their fellow blacks living on the African continent. But the fact remains that no matter how they attach themselves to this American heritage, live the American dream, and act like white Americans in building the country, they still have a history of being descendants of slaves. As such, many of their white counterparts couldn’t see them any better than usurpers and people who come from another continent to live in theirs.

But beyond the unhealthy treatment of Black Americans by white Americans, equally important is how black people treat each other all over the world. For every black person killed by a white police officer, about ten to fifteen black persons have been killed by blacks themselves. Blacks fight against blacks and take one another’s life in south-side Chicago as they do in London whenever fight broke out between rival gangs. In the African continent, the report is the same. Blacks arm themselves and kill one another in their homes and in their farms. The Rwanda genocide in 1994 was reported to have claimed about a million lives. That particular war was between the majority and the minority both of whom were of black origin. Boko Haram insurgents have killed thousands of people in Nigeria since 2009. Also in Nigeria, there is a great onslaught by Fulani herdsmen and bandits across the states in Northern Nigeria. In South Africa, the natives kill foreigners because the latter has allegedly taken most of the opportunities in their country and they are left stranded. All these are inhumane attacks by blacks against blacks.

Thousands of lives are lost yearly in the African continent due to acts of terrorism and communal clashes. Yet, none of these have sparked worldwide protests. The blacks oppressed themselves in their own land as much as the whites do in America. Anytime we don’t agree on a thing, the next thing to do is to abuse and curse each other’s ethnic groups and labeling each other with various names. The black race obviously has an inherent problem that they are not looking at.

We are always quick to blame other people for our misery. But what about the inhumane we meted out on ourselves? What about the ethnic distrust? What about the communal clash leading to hundreds of people dying as if their lives don’t matter? There are so much disunity and cold treatment among black that all it takes for a black man to hate another black man is to be born on either east coast or west coast in the US or to be born in either northern or southern Nigeria. Caribbean blacks loathe African blacks and the black folks in downtown London don’t have regards for one another.

You see, people won’t take the Black race seriously if we don’t take ourselves seriously. People can’t love and treat us better than we do to ourselves. Black lives should matte everywhere whether in the place where there is systematic killing, where the killing is motivated by xenophobia, or by ethnic and religious differences. Whether in Minneapolis, New York, or Chicago, whether in Durban or Pretoria, whether in London or Birmingham, whether in Kaduna, Kaduna, or Benue, whether in Haiti or the Bahamas, black lives should matter. We should not only be concerned when the killing of a black is done by someone that is not from the black race. If we stop killing and hating one another for mundane, perhaps other races would start respecting the sanctity of our lives. The death of George Floyd is very unfortunate but his death is as bad as that of innocent citizens in Southern Kaduna, Benue, Zamfara, or Katsina. They must all be condemned because after all said and done black lives don’t really matter to fellow blacks. That must change if we must lead a successful campaign.

Written by Segun Ogunlade