The resistance to acknowledge and accept diversity in character, tradition and, you got it, race, is something that has been ongoing for decades.
The “white” world is still unable to accept the symbiotic relationship between peoples of different colours and races.
How do we handle malice directed at us, the non-white innocents, who are believed to be blemished at birth?
What do we do with suffocating anger stimulated towards us from far afield, from people we do not even know and who do not even know us and who have no business among us? How do we measure sanity or intelligence, which both have nothing to do with our circumstances and tradition, but both of which shape our behavior within the communities we live in but from which we are excluded?
We hear and see it every day from London’s Downing Street in the United Kingdom, from Paris’ Élysée Palace in France and from America’s White House and other places that consider themselves to be the centers of the universe, leaders of civilization… a lot of rubbish that leaves black citizens in all these countries open to abuse and murder.
Suicide by police is no longer when you threaten the police; it is when you are black and some white lucky “suspects” you of something, anything.
Month after month, I see and hear of the killing of a black person over issues that do not even warrant handcuffs.
I am appalled by what I see around me today.
This is not the America that I knew in High School and at university in Massachusetts those long years ago.
Something has happened to America and to Americans who should all be alarmed because they will soon lose the freedom of choice that they enjoy today.
Americans choose a leader to amplify their intentions and hopes; Americans never wanted to be told what to do. It is an interesting scenario that I see today.
Americans must understand that their freedom is tied to a government they elect and that sooner or later, the tables will turn.
I am appalled by the animosity and disrespect between the two major political parties and the deep chasm this has caused among the populace in the nation.
The absence of decency is frightening.
It is not a generational gap; not at all. Something is really wrong with America today and it is not the leader.
The president might mean well but he should also listen to the people, his people, regardless of their political affiliation.
It is just obscene that whenever a black person dies at the hands of the police, it has to cause rioting because the police themselves are protecting each other.
The offended, the victim and those who have suffered the loss see through the haze and demand some answers which never come. Breonna Taylor (Kentucky) was short by police at least eight times in her home. They said they were looking for narcotics and found none.
Aubrey Ahmad (Georgia) was killed while jogging, George Floyd (Minnesota) and many others dead under circumstances that do not make sense at all.
What has happened to America? What is happening to America?
America’s renewed hatred of black people is more than shocking. The killings of black people under “innocent” circumstances is just hard to understand because these killings are perpetrated by police officers who are caught on video. Then we have African leaders who are mimicking the bad things that are coming out of America and the world’s dictators when people just get abused with no consequences until people start to protest and proceed to riot after getting no response from authorities.
It is the people’s protests that caused the “arrest” of the white officer who had his knee on the late George Floyd. And people are still not happy because his three accomplices are still free.
Meanwhile, I wonder how America, which is courted by African dictators who abuse their people, will impose civility of governments when abuse of its own citizens is so rampart, public and deadly.
Something important is being ignored. And it is mostly those countries who want to make “the world great again” by subjugating black people to inhuman conditions and treatment.
America is offering a lot of aid to African countries.
The problem, though, is that people need to be free; people need their freedom.
People should not be bought with food to sell their souls.
The problem is that America is not putting as much emphasis on people being free as it should.
America is donating wheelchairs that have no wheels.
People in Zimbabwe are very frustrated because regional organizations never help the oppressed people in the region.
We watch and wonder whether black people will ever be safe in this world; we see what America is doing to black people. We see the blind eye that America turns away from as African dictators turn rogue against their own innocent people.
I dare ask the notorious Southern African Development Community (SADC) why it remains silent when women are abducted, beaten up and rapped just because they are members of an opposition party.
I was struck by the fact that Ambassadors to Zimbabwe from European countries, including from the European Union, signed a petition urging the government of Zimbabwe to thoroughly investigate the abduction of three young women from the opposition party, including a sitting member of parliament, and bring them before the courts.
No African country said such; SADC said nothing, and we are supposed to believe these idiots are watching over us?
Zimbabweans have suffered for decades while SADC protects the offending leaders. In Zimbabwe, people are continuously being abducted, beaten up, killed, with some never having been found to this day.
When people go out on to the streets to express their anger and demand some answers, they get shot dead.
I feel wounded by what is happening in Zimbabwe and in America. What I know for sure is never to threaten a people who have nothing to lose and who do not rely on a government for their survival.
“In the final analysis,” said Martin Luther King, Jnr, “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
But what is it that America has failed to hear for 400 years?
Please do not bother telling me where to run to and hide because all the odds are stacked against me, a black man.
But do not be surprised when I stand my ground because, you see, going rogue is the only way left for me to be legitimate.
I will use the language of rioting as a safety valve, not complying…in other words: “over my dead body”.
