THE IGNORANCE OF BLACK AFRICANS. By Zik Gbemre
Africans as Slaves |
"The Blackman has a basic complex. He feels inferior, a failure to the Whiteman." Gbemre.
And this is the major problem. When you don't have confidence in yourself, something has gone wrong."
The Blackman has a basic complex. He feels inferior, a failure to the Whiteman.
And this is the major problem. When you don't have confidence in yourself, something has gone wrong.
The West, Europeans, Asians assume superpowers. Whatever they do is right, whatever we do is wrong. And as Black Africans, we subconsciously pander to the choices of the Whiteman. That is a warped mindset.
In Nigeria today, if you marry outside the church or the mosque, you are considered not to have married or married without the blessings of God. Your marriage is a fetish.
Incidentally, no biblical marriage in the time of Jesus Christ was conducted in the church. No bride price or marriage rings were paid or exchanged in the church. In the case where Jesus had to turn water into wine, the marriage was done right in the home of the parents of the girl.
Ignorantly so, our lawmakers have not realised this shameful oddity and the need to amend the Marriage Act. So, if today a Nigerian married without going to the church, without going to the Registry, it means that marriage is illegal, useless.
So a Blackman duplicates his marriage. One marriage will go to tradition, go to Registry and go to church. Something is wrong with the black Africans.
Every Sunday if don't go to the church, Fridays if you're a Muslim and not found in the mosque, you're the worst sinner in the world. You're a sure candidate for hell. You will not go to heaven.
Are we saying our forbearers, forefathers didn't do proper marriages, never worshipped the all faithful, universal God? Of course, they worshipped God.
Our forefathers served and reverenced God. They practised their faith in God, calling it religion before the coming of the white people. Today the Whiteman religion is most superior before Black Africans. It amazes me that this is the same Whiteman who came with the bible and guns in their hand, dethroned our traditional authorities, deposed and deported African monarchs, killed our people who resisted their imperialism. His religion must be superior to ours.
Today, Black Africans, have by their inferiority complex, self-stagnation, rendered selves useless, totally dependent, subservient to the whites.
Is it about the borrowed languages that we speak today, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic? We just can't help copying everything the Whiteman throws at us. The Blackman has sold out his conscience, yet we keep debating what is right and what is not right, without giving thought to the root causes.
Because of this inferiority complex, the Whiteman sees black Africans as a people without direction, no self-esteem, no culture. Culture is not just about putting on clothes, eating food, claiming blackness. Culture is about reserving your heritage, your self-identity.
Do Africans have a culture to preserve right now? We have rendered our cultures inferior and we copy everything White. We prefer the Whiteman church, prefer their food, their cutlery, fashion. We copy everything White. Their language, education, technology, drugs, what have you.
Imagine Nigerians swallowing Garri, Starch, Amala or Fufu with spoons and forks? Has the Chinese or other Asians abandoned their chopsticks for forks when it comes to eating noodles? They will never.
Disappointingly, it is the fellow black Africans who will mock you as ignorant and timid if you refuse to compromise your culture.
A few months ago I visited a friend along with my youngest daughter. I was proud of her when she told the host she does not know how to swallow garri with knives and forks and that she does not want to know any other way other than her using her fingers to swallow.
By the self-mockery of considering the black African culture inferior to Whiteman's culture, we render ourselves inferior before them. So why should we complain when they treat us as lesser humans?
See what is unfolding in Ukraine. Black Africans are maltreated and discriminated. That is what we have made them believe, that we are inferior. Without them, we cannot survive.
Imagine teeming Nigerians settled in Ukraine to study, with all the language barriers. All because we don't have an education system that works to the extent that people are willing to die in war-torn Ukraine than to return to a failed Nigerian state.
We must change our attitude as Black Africans. Unless we change, we will continue to stay inferior and be so treated before the Whites.
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