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Colonized R Us

January 23, 2011

Having suffered ineffable cruelty for hundreds of years at the hands of fair-skinned foreigners through their many exploitative schemes, brigandage, and naked savagery, some given glorified names to suggest a larger African role in the crimes than was the case, commonsense would suggest that Africans would be reticent in dealing with such people. After all, some wise person told us long ago that “once bitten, twice shy.”

Having suffered ineffable cruelty for hundreds of years at the hands of fair-skinned foreigners through their many exploitative schemes, brigandage, and naked savagery, some given glorified names to suggest a larger African role in the crimes than was the case, commonsense would suggest that Africans would be reticent in dealing with such people. After all, some wise person told us long ago that “once bitten, twice shy.”

We Africans are yet to get the shy part right.

Most of us today write or speak of the various African Slave “Trades,” without realizing that the age-old adage of the “victor writing the history” is really what is at play. When we use these terms, we’re merely repeating the storyline our victimizers have put out ostensibly to justify the evil they did by highlighting native complicity. (Of course, there were native collaborators – as there were collaborators among European Jews vis-à-vis Hitler up to his very end. The point is, the native collaborators were few, and in many cases, operating under trickery or unfair inducement.)

Anyhow, controlling the narrative has been particularly easy for outsiders to do because there are so very few native African scripts in which to tell our stories. Our lack of a writing culture made it easy for others to not only define us, but tell us what our history is. Some noted western intellectuals in fact openly state boldly that African history started with our contact with Europeans.

Tragically, like most things holding us back, the culprit is us. We are our own worst enemy. Through our own behavior, we reinforce all the negative stereotypes outsiders put out about us. Those stereotypes range from descriptions of us as an innately juvenile people incapable of behaving in a matured fashion; to a violence-prone people; to the oft suggested “dim bulb people” -too dull to be able to create decent societies and nations like others have.

These are the subtexts to almost all discussions about Africa on the world stage. The irony is, the do-gooders or pro-Africa outsiders often cause as much heartache as the open skeptics or detractors. It is worthwhile to note that western Liberals and Progressives actually do a lot more damage than their euphemistically named “conservative” racist brethren, by doling out patronizing platitudes in their call for “understanding” or explaining the “African condition.” But like I said, the problem is us.

You see, we Africans are an utterly colonized people where it is most pernicious: in the mind. The European colonialists may have left Africa decades ago, but in many ways, we are more enslaved to them today than at any other time in our history. We don’t value anything unless Europeans say so. We continue to imitate them blindly even in their self-indulgent and destructive narcissistic ways. Like poodles, we scurry around them seeking their approval (Brownie Points,) for what we want to do or how we want to live our lives. There are countless manifestations of this colonized mindset.

In countries like Senegal, skin bleaching to look European pink is a sign of sophistication. Almost every woman in the top tier of Senegalese society bleaches her skin to some degree. And one would wish  the Senegalese are an exception.

As for skin bleaching, so it is with the “modern” hair-do. Our women put themselves through so much hassle, and expose themselves to so many chemicals –some no doubt untested and dangerous, that one has to wonder why the European look is so important to them. But oh no, they cannot allow themselves to look African “nappy.” Some even try to do the impossible:  don hairstyles for which they lack the hair. Pass by any African party or church gathering, and you’re guaranteed to see some woman donning a western hairstyle that invites ridicule. The things we do to ourselves.

In South Africa, black African girls only seventeen years removed from the slave plantation that was apartheid, are now creating a thriving industry for enterprising white people through their determination to look like western white models in physique. I read somewhere that some are openly ashamed of their famous African hind bump and go to extraordinary lengths to try to change their shape. Apparently, their idea of a New South Africa entails Europeanizing themselves as thoroughly as they can. However unnatural that may be.

Complicit in this shame, is the role of the new Black Middle Class man of South Africa. But then, there is really no surprise with that category of African man. They are the very ones who have been looking the other way as their poorer half continue to harass, denigrate, and violently assault their fellow Africans who stood by them for decades offering all the support they can muster – be that financial, military logistics, shelter, emotional, or moral. Shamefully, our well-to-do South African brothers now help prostitutes from China, and Eastern Europe to settle and ply their trade in South Africa in peace. But they shun our own people from Zimbabwe, DRC, Mozambique, Botswana, and the rest of the continent. Most shamelessly use the same contemptuous and dismissive terms their former Boer tormentors use to describe the rest of the continent. How soon we forget.

The size and proportion of the female hind bump is what separates the girls from the women in many African societies –including in the Diaspora to this day. The rapper-turned actor Ice T recently tweeted his fans that some white guy asked him why black men love women with sizeable behinds, in direct reference to his voluptuous white wife who has the “complete black package” in all the right places, and his reply was: “that’s where the impact is.” I think a better answer would have been: “we black men are man enough to handle real women.” In other words, unlike some other male species, we black men can earn our women’s respect where it matters. This is no mean feat. It’s something to be proud of. Only our colonized mind makes us apologize for this.

This is not an attempt to put down women less endowed on the backside. It’s just an acknowledgement of the type of female that get most of us African male going. While it would be pretentious to assume that there is a single strain of taste when it comes to African men and women, I think it’s safe to say that we African men generally gravitate towards the ones “with bumps in their back.” When they pass us sitting, we subconsciously look at each other and go: “did you see that?” Call it Bottom Power if you want. Not to take anything away from Iman, the Somalian supermodel, but she wouldn’t make my list of the One-Thousand most beautiful African women. She simply lacks what gets this writer’s juices flowing. Other races or people have their preferences. And that is ok.

The staying power of the half-term Governor, and know-nothing celebrity of Alaska, Sarah Palin has much to do with her physical looks –at least among her male admirers. In western terms, she is the ideal woman – skinny, petite, and stylish. Some conservative types have in fact confessed to commentators and at least one opinion writer (Katherine Parker, now at CNN,) that Mrs. Palin helps them pleasure themselves at the thought of being with her when they see her on their TV screen. My point is, they can have their Sarah Palins, as long as some of us are not expected to see her as a model in terms of feminine beauty. There are different standards of beauty.

In Nigeria, the Thisday Newspaper of Lagos has an annual ritual that sometimes seems to be the gathering place for washed-up, “has-been,” American artists. In the past several years, we’ve seen everyone from Diana Ross, to Snoop Doggy Dog, to Lionel Richie. The cast of characters couldn’t be more ridiculous. I watched Lionel Richie’s performance and I was struck by the fact that he couldn’t pronounce Lagos right. He kept promising that he’ll be back in Largos (he pronounces it like Key Largo – Florida.) And I  kept thinking to myself, some smart Nigerian saw it fit to pay this brother hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote Nigeria. Only he cannot even pronounce his host city’s name right!

Like I suggested, the geniuses that organize these extravaganzas do so to promote Nigeria and Africa. Yet music is the one area where African artists are second to none. But somehow, the many dozens of widely acclaimed artists we have in Africa are not good enough to do what Thisday’s festival organizers want. How do you promote your country by showcasing other countries’ talents? Isn’t that what the despotic Mobutu Seseseko tried with the gangster Don King in the 70s? Look how that turned out.

And as if that isn’t enough, the same Thisday people saw it fit to invite some of the most discredited western politicians of the modern era to Lagos, and other places to give meaningless speeches on well-trodden topics – no doubt at exorbitant fees: George Bush, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, John Howard, Dominique de Villepin. And this is bandied around as some sort of accomplishment. Any fool with money to waste can get a retired western politician to speak on any topic for a fee. In many cases, those people don’t even pretend to be interested in anything but the hefty fees they collect.

George Bush, who has a history of leaving destruction in his wake in both his private and public roles, left the US economy in such bad shape that even racist Americans were scared enough to vote for a smart black man to take over from him instead of giving the job to another Bush-like white man.

Tony Blair is the most over-rated politician to come out of England in the past generation. He’s heavy on glib, and light on substance. In addition, it’s Tony Blair’s racist attitude that pushed Robert Mugabe to do what he is now being condemned for. Not only did he Blair reneged on The Lancaster House agreement that his predecessors honored by paying for land to be purchased from white farmers and redistributed to Zimbabwe’s majority, he egged on white Zimbabwean farmers to disrespect Mugabe and his government, and to sue them. Old Bob showed him he couldn’t be outfoxed. Very few of us bother to tell Mugabe’s story to counter the false narrative Tony Blair and his acolytes have been spreading about him.

John Howard, the Australian, is even more of a racist than Blair. What that man has done to black people (the so-called aboriginal,) is a matter of public record. Even the usually impotent UN was jolted into condemning Howard for his inhumane and racist policies.

Dominique de Villepin is an old “African hand” on the French side. It’s French like him who have been working tirelessly to prop up their puppets throughout Francophone Africa. They want to be in control without being apparently in control. Conniving, evil, manipulative type of character. Enough said.

For Condoleezza Rice, one can only pray for that sister. This is a woman who has lied countless times in order to help George Bush and company skirt US and international laws in the pursuit of policies that are at best very questionable legally. Not to mention that much of what they did was in defiance of world opinion. There’s a reason the sister isn’t married.

Most progressive organizations in the west won’t touch any of these characters with a barge pole.

Yet these are  the sort of people Thisday people invite to speak to us for large fees. What do they know about our condition that our native professionals don’t? Everything these highly paid guests said in their speeches have been said or written many times before by title-less African professionals in different media. On any given day, your average commentator on Nigeria Village Square or Sahara Reporters could give one better pointers on what is ailing Nigeria and Africa – for free. Why isn’t Thisday tapping into this Mind Spring? It’s much cheaper to get a Think Tank set up and convened from available native talent than the expensive annual events featuring high price foreigners.

Our problem in Africa is not lack of knowledge regarding what to do, it’s lack of political will and leadership. Our politicians are either too ignorant or arrogant to listen to the skilled ones among us by virtue of their positions. How paying western politicians hefty fees to  tell us what we already know will solve our problem  beats me.

But the Dog and Pony show continue. We continue to look to westerners for validation. We’re desperate to conform to their ideas of what is beautiful, or worth pursuing. Or listening to. To get anywhere, we must first conquer our own colonized mind.
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