A letter from Africa to Black America

Black America,

We have been horrified by the inhuman destruction of African bodies in the USA. The brutal killing of George Floyd as he begged for his life has brought to the fore what you always told us – that black lives are deemed worthless in the USA.

We see parallels in how black lives in Africa are treated by African countries which are in reality are simply vassal states of imperial Europe. We know that in Africa the pale life is held as of more value than the black life. It is our collective lived experience. We see it daily as pale people saunter across Africa and are given free way to despoil and exploit Africans under state sanctioned protection.

Our fight as Africans is the same. Wherever we exist – in Africa, in the Americas or in Asia we suffer anti-black discrimination that deems the black life as disposable , as less valuable than those with fairer skin.

In Africa, we suffer white supremacy too- heck even color supremacy as even the Chinese, Arabs and Indians exploit our people up until this day. Sadly the African has been so thoroughly stripped of his sense of self-pride that anyone with fair skin is ascribed the same honor the white man has taught the people to give. This is why the paler races love to go to Africa. They receive respect they can never get in their home countries from the same Africans they exploit.

Your battles as African descendants in the western hemisphere is same as ours- it is the fight for Africans, those so-called negroes, the so-called black and whatever so-called -attached appellations of which he is referred: African-American, African-Latino etc., to be seen as humans and respected accordingly.

You must know that I am of Yoruba origin, and a so-called continental African and there are many like me who see the African-American fight as our fight.

We are all Africans- the so-called foot stool of the human race.

I know that you have received many insults from some Africans who discount your agitations for black lives to matter. They do not represent how many of us view you. These ignorant, short-sighted and dumb people who are present in small numbers in all communities across Africa fail to see the big picture. They are too simple-minded to understand that the reason Africans are so exploited wherever they are is because of white supremacy, historic Arab & Caucasian enslavement of black bodies and the ongoing commodification and exploitation of black minds, bodies and lands by the capitalist system of which now the Chinese and Indians are assuming ascendancy.

Pay these fools no heed.

Those of us with you are more than those of us who like house niggers prefer to side with the oppressor for crumbs off the table.

You are our blood and we will fight with you on this campaign for black lives to matter and all Africans wherever they are to be treated as humans.

Our fight is not to enslave and dominate others.

Our fight is to live. It is a just fight and a noble one.

And we respect our brothers in the Americas who continue to raise the standard for African liberty.

It is because of your resistance, despite 400 years of being separated from us your people, of being dehumanized, treated worse than animals and thoroughly exploited in all forms including being lynched for sport, raped at will and being bred like cattle to be sold off for profit, that we so-called continental Africans even have a chance to dream of migrating to create new lives in North America.

Only 150 years ago, you received your so-called emancipation. A freedom only in name. For despite 300+ years of enslavement, of which you made the Whites of the USA and the British Empire rich, you were set free with nothing. You were set free to hunger, to want, to destitution. No justice was served when those who enslaved you for 300 years, gave you nothing when they proclaimed your emancipation.

Even the Bible upon which the USA was founded and against which so many of its people swear, recommends that when evil has been done, the just recompense is to economically refund the losses incurred onto the victim. Yet after 300 years of despoliation, you were so-called set free with nothing. Only to be re-enslaved as low paid farm workers, factory workers, house, restaurant and demeaning front line service workers- a situation that has continued until today.

I can draw parallels from your experience these last 400 years with our situation in Africa over the same period. After 300+ years of invasion, colonization and theft of African peoples and our resources, 50 years ago, we were granted so-called independence without reparations even though our exploitation had made Europe insanely wealthy. I have numerous examples of how we were exploited like you by the White man. I can point to the Belgians who through their ignominious Leopold raped, looted and dehumanized our people in the Congo. The rape continues unto today. The Germans committed genocide against the Herero in Namibia. The Dutch stole the lands of our brethren across South Africa and Namibia and continue to exploit them. The French even after 200+ years of exploiting our people in West and Central Africa still continue to leech off their resources mandating them to pay interest on reserves they are required to save in Paris. Just like you the West made the wealth they currently enjoy which enables them dominate the world today off our backs and by exploiting our lands and people. Like you we deserve reparations for natural justice to be served.

Now the Asians- Indians, Chinese and the all too familiar Arab have learned the art of plunder under the guise of neo-liberalism and are invading our homelands en masse, buying up lands and exploiting our people under despicable working conditions that involves whippings and low wages not dissimilar to sharecropping-which you are familiar with.

Yet you unlike us remain a more broadly enlightened people on this issue of global institutionalization of anti-black racial injustice. You continue to fight for your humanity and by association- ours as well, despite centuries of exploitation and immense suffering. In spite of western caricaturing, you remain a proud people whose brow remains unbeaten and who have now created a social culture that everyone else across the world wants to copy.

When you built your Black Wall street in Tulsa, the American Whites bombed and destroyed it. When you bought lands and farmed, in a bid to avoid labor hiring discrimination that gave you no jobs and paid you less than your worth, you were dispossessed of them.

Despite state-sanctioned violence against you and starting out with nothing having being ripped off your homeland and dispossessed of your heritage and social wealth (and unlike all other immigrants who must come into the Americas with some monetary and social wealth from their homelands), you have gone on to create $170B in Black wealth in the USA. Your per capita wealth while 10x smaller than White Americans is 2x bigger than those of your siblings in Africa.

You are right in your indignation when you say Africans must also take up the standard to fight black subjugation in Africa. Ours is perhaps worse because it is not just of the body like yours, it is also of the mind. Our people have been thoroughly stripped of mental self-reliance. Of pride to be our own masters without having some pale skin in the room to show us how to solve our problems. Heck when we cannot afford the white man, we will import Chinese and Indians to solve problems for us despite having masses of young engineers well educated and without work even though capable and willing to work. The White, the Chinese and the Indians will not allow the African sell business projects in their countries as they so freely do across Africa. We are of a situation where our people lack complete confidence in their own abilities to be masters of themselves. The White, Yellow and Brown races are ever so happy to continue to put their foots on our necks using subliminal messages in media and entertainment that paints the African as a bumbling simpleton. Perhaps you have heard of Chinese people who refuse to serve Africans in Africa, who whip them and who compare them to animals in exhibitions. Painful reminders of historic wanton Caucasian human rights abuses of Africans in and from Africa wherein our people were put into human zoos and put through so-called pseudo scientific experimentation to create a basis to justify African sub-humanity. Perhaps in this you can draw parallels as this is not too different from your own experience where African-Americans were also subject to scientific experimentation.

The good thing though is that your fight for human rights for the so-called black race in the USA has also spurred a new generation in Africa to begin to study these things. The colonial legacy of education sadly ensured that these historic injustices were whitewashed. The Europeans replaced our Gods with the white Jesus and angels. Our religious images have also inherited the devil as the black demon with horns. Ask any African to picture God and he is likely to serve you an image of the Caucasian. Ask him to depict Satan, and of course you will see the image of a negro. In fact why you hear so many negative words from many Africans about you is because of how western media and books portray the African American. What we know about you is what the White man told us about you.

Just as being anti-racist is a conscious process of evangelical re-education and activism, the process of decolonisation of the African mind must also be a deliberate process. Our so-called independence 50 years ago was in name only. We must now decolonize our media, our religions, our education and our minds and restore the African pride. We need Malcolms, Du Bois, King’s to rise up across Africa to decolonize the minds of our people as your martyrs have done in the ages past.

Many of us young African people who have taken the pain to research the history of race relations between Africans and the other races now realize that there are so many people out there who will for the black man to disappear off the face of the earth as they have willed for you to disappear from the USA. The Arabs were not content in enslaving Africans, they made them eunuchs to prevent them from pro-creating. The genocide of the Hereros and the Congolese by the Germans, Belgians and Dutch killed millions of our people. Yet we exist. To dominate us they must seek other insidious means including mind control through media that portrays the the African as always needing external aid to solve his problem or as always being condemned to be the entertainer or the worker in the back lines rather than as the leader. Your fight for your human rights is opening our minds to see that black subjugation in the USA legitimizes black subjugation everywhere else.

There are more Africans in the world than any other race. 1B+ in Africa. 40 million in the USA. 90 million in Brazil. 40 million in South America. 20 million in SE Asia, Andamans and Australasia. In essence, we represent 30% of the world population. We are not a minority if we come together.

Adebayo Alonge

The fight for us to live is an existential battle. It is a fight for our lives. We join you today in this fight. And there are more Africans in the world than any other race. 1B+ in Africa. 40 million in the USA. 90 million in Brazil. 40 million in South America. 20 million in SE Asia, Andamans and Australasia. In essence, we represent 30% of the world population. We are not a minority if we come together.

We must also not forget the state of our brethren in South America who have been habituated into the bottom of South America’s racialised and colorized social hierarchy. They have been thoroughly subjugated and made to accept their lowly station in life. Perhaps you have heard of the so-called Metis of the Dominican republic who maltreat our proud Haitian brothers on their shared island. And yet the Haitians like you having conquered the French continue to resist and remain a proud and un-dominated people.

Our struggle is the same. We receive hell in Africa for being black. You receive hell in the USA for being black. Our brothers in South America, the Carribbean and Asia receive hell for being black. We must therefore join hands as Africans and consolidate our activism for the human rights of all blacks under the banner of an organisation that unites all Africans from Africa, the Americas and Asia.

We must revamp our global societal value system from valuing human life based on wealth. Until we eliminate the conditions that enable Negroes (Africans) to be so-easily ‘commodified’ for profit and the valuation of human life based on wealth, global negrophobia and devaluation and debasement of the negro and his life will not end.

Adebayo Alonge

We must not forget that while this fight for Africans to be treated as human is a color problem, it is also an economic problem. And even though we have it worse, we share similar circumstances at the bottom of the global economic ladder as other poor people everywhere in the world. The Poor White. The Poor Asian. The Poor Indian is naturally an ally in our fight for all humans to be treated as humans irrespective of their economic status. Ultimately we must revamp our global societal value system from valuing human life based on wealth. Until we eliminate the conditions that enable Negroes (Africans) to be so-easily ‘commodified’ for profit and the valuation of human life based on wealth, global negrophobia and devaluation and debasement of the negro and his life will not end.

We must also not forget those Soldiers of Conscience who despite being of advantaged privilege join us to fight for racial and economic justice. You see them in the multi-racial allies who join us in the streets today to protest anti-black racism and who in years past fought for the abolition of slavery in the British Imperialdom and for civil rights in the USA. Not all White, Chinese, Indian and Arab is anti-black. And many join us today to seek justice.

Though our collective trauma has led to a shared deep grief and angst, it should not lead us to blinding rage that makes us generalize the ascribing of evil on a blank check to those who look like those who have hurt us.

Adebayo Alonge

Thus, though our collective trauma has led to a shared deep grief and angst, it should not lead us to blinding rage that makes us generalise the ascribing of evil on a blank check to those who look like those who have hurt us. Ultimately our fight is for the human rights for all Africans and so-called Black peoples to matter so that all human rights for all humans can matter and we can create a world where people are treated on the basis of their values rather than the color of their skin.

As an enlightened brother from the African continent, I speak the minds of other now awakening young Africans. You are not alone. You are not a minority. There are more with you than against you.

In closing, I say thank you for leading the standard in the fight for human rights for Africans. For creating a proud culture out of what was despised by the dominants as funk. For fighting, bleeding and dying to liberate spaces in the world for the African and indeed other racialised peoples to exist.

Many of us in Africa empathize with you.We love you. We respect you. And we are ready to join you on this long march to humanization for the African people after centuries of the global normalization of our dehumanization.

You are of us. We are of you. We are one. The African race.