Vanguard: Feminique
Redefining our blackness
By Angela Agali
For the past three weeks, Dr. Femi Olugbile has focussed on the need for the
black man to reconstruct his consciousness for a more positive change. He
talked about the possibility of having a black Pope and of developing our
sense of technology as well as making a strong statement in the black
diaspora. His articles couldn't have come at a better time.
In a nutshell what he is striving to say can be reduced to three questions:
What were we? What have we become? What do we want to become? These
questions become very pertinent especially given a process of globalization
that presupposes a formidable centre that continuously seek to integrate the
margin. Yet, all over the world today, people are fighting and seeking for
their distinct identities. Most of today's wars have this issue of identity
at the centre.
People want their own land, their own language and even their own cultural
ethics. However, some of us Africans are still oscillating between who we
are and who we want to be. Now, if you do not know who you are, how can you
know what you want to become?
One important thing he noted was that some African-Americans are even more
conscious of their black roots while some of us here strive more towards
being un-African. Now we are supposed to be lucky because at least we can
identify with our roots but the African Americans are neither here nor
there. Most of them long to be rooted so they bear African names, wear
African clothings, and resort to African religion. Last year, Ishmael Reed,
a writer and multi-culturalist talked about Jesus as Orisha. If an average
Nigerian had voiced such a thing, he would definitely be branded a
blasphemer and yet somewhere in your mind you wonder whether Orisha is not
the same thing as deity.
For us to achieve those things that will lead to constructive changes in
black-life, we need to redefine our stance concerning our roots. We need to
really understand who we were before the "civilizers" came. We had our own
world and technology, then the white man came and we became soul-less. Yet
these soulful human beings were civilized enough to think up guns and bombs.
They were so civilized and sympathetic to our darkness they brought us God
and ruin. We had our spears and arrows; yet in spite of our imposed darkness
we never thought about more evil technologies that would destroy other
worlds. It is funny when some people emphasize the fact that blacks sold
their fellow blacks into slavery. Even if we have a situation where every
black refuses to sell his brother; the gun would have taken care of such a
situation. The gun it was that took care of other situations, like
resistance.
We should however always bear in mind that evil is a universal concept, just
like goodness and truth. Slavery or not, we would have still connected with
other worlds somehow.
You cannot expect somebody to love you and believe in you when you do not
love and believe in yourself. Belief and love means that you are willing to
transcend the self by harnessing all your positive potentials to make better
the whole which you are part of. And believe me this thing starts with very
little things. Now, we all have been through a very rough time here in
Nigeria.
Thinking about this country, there is no way one will not be bitter,
especially this generation. It is not enough to always hurl that cliche at
us of thinking about what we can do for our country. Our country should also
think about us, because without us there won't be any country.
Government has continuously failed us because of misdirected policies and
greed. It would seem that only the crooks are meant to survive, so everyone
seeks to cheat every other person. This tendency as funny as it sounds is
more evident within the masses, who to survive has devised every crooked
means to cheat a fellow poor man. This digression becomes necessary because
we cannot rule out of what such bitterness does to a person's psyche.
You are more concerned with assuaging that perennial hunger than in asking
questions about a root that has been obscured by existential problems. In
other words, since we cannot even afford basic needs like electricity (I am
writing with a candle light in spite of the senseless bill dangling on my
head), employment and water, it then follows that we cannot do anything
right.
It should therefore not be shocking that some people believe that the white
man's rule was the best. Theirs worked at least. Yet like I pointed out
earlier, believing in oneself can be achieved, in spite of government.
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