There is this prickle feelings we get on our skin as blacks, be it Afro-Americans or black Africans, when racism is mentioned. It comes with a sentiment to begin imagining white folks using derogatory words against people of other races. Some might call that hangover of a slavery cum colonial but exploitative past.
But lately I tend to question the premise that ‘Racism’ is an exclusive preserve of our Caucasian brethren. Although, we might argue that when a mother calls the son a bastard out of anger; it is quite different to a total stranger using same word out of anger.
Invariably it means racist slur and what passes as one is subjected to the scrutiny of contextual usage. Over 400 years of complete human exploitation and extreme savagery deprivation of Africans. In the quest to use black peoples wealth to build the economic base of continental Europe and America vis a vis slave trade amongst other pillage.
This hasn’t only brought down morale of Africans in believing in themselves. Painfully enough assaults from the eurocentric scholars writings amongst which are Trevor Rooper, Rudyard Kipling et al, on the collective identities of Africans as a collection of peoples without history; as build up this solid base of anger by successive African generations.
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Sometimes back I was discussing with a colleague of mine, who hail from Akwa Ibom but grew up in Calabar. In the course of our talk, we touched on slave trade. At that point he made a very pointed statement “I hate white people’. Upon my probing he told me whilst growing up in Calabar he had visited the slave museum and that ultimately made him hate people of European descent. He said he look forward to marrying a white woman and treating her the way those native women in the museum gallery were treated. I did interjected by saying that would be racist and no woman should be treated as such. Then he was quick to ask me the following questions *Weren’t those white men racist when they stole men, women and children as slaves from African?
“Wasn’t it racism what the white South African exhibited during Apartheid?
That very moment my defence fell, and I felt a bitter churn in my belly.Regrettably I knew his racism was born not out of superiority complex (That in it self isn’t an excuse for racist and violent rhetoric against women); but rather out of an historic anger and frustration.
Indeed it’s high time we begin to engage in our history and talks with our people so as to heal the wounds of the past in a saner manner.
