injustice knows no colour
I do not sign on with the Black Lives Matter movement although my skin is black as the moonless, starless sky. This is a decision I have made after visiting the tombs of and consulting with all my negro ancestors — the slaves abducted from their homes, shackled with heavy chains around their necks, wrists, ankles; toiled like an ox in the plantation; their backs flogged to their bare nerves; reduced to subhuman beings. I sat among them and proudly told them about Black Lives Matter and the strides it is making in terms of kicking out racism, improving black lives. I knelt before them, begged for their blessing to join the movement and their prayer for its success.
My negro ancestors turned their black faces away from me.
“But what does this mean”, I cried.
“You are not black”, they said, “there is never a black person. Nor is there ever a brown, yellow, or white person. There are only colourless people. We, human beings, at our core, are spirits. We are one whole colourless spirits, in black, brown, yellow, or white skins. Our differences are skin-deep, the different shades of pigment that our melanocytes secrete. Yet that difference defines, divides, polarizes us”.
“And so, there is never a person of colour, and no white person has ever done any harm on one”.
“Surely, you have not forgotten and forgiven, even in death”, I voiced my incredulity, outrage, “the brutality, inhumanity inflicted on you in the hands of the white, the serial existential rape you were subjected to over centuries”.
“All the injustice in the world is the work of the evil system the world runs on, the human consciousness,” they answer, “which we in our senseless, sinful lives have contributed in building. It induced in one race contempt for and cruelty towards another based on their skin colour, and rendered us powerless, defenseless against their onslaught.
That same system has now given the power over to you, fans the fire of indignation in you, turns you against them, as it is now pitting the sexes against each other. The system cares less about your skin colour, your race, but that you strife against one another. It feeds on the negativity that comes off that strife, all the distrust, hatred, animosity, bloodshed.
The system plays an evil game of seesaw upon us, wherein we are pit against one another in constant struggle to rise above the other in dominance and suppress, coerce the other. Child, do not get on that seesaw. While you may now enjoy a little power and that may encourage you to persecute your fellow beings, but know that somewhere down the line in the future, the power will tilt against your great grand children, in the game of seesaw that the system plays upon us and they shall bear the brunt of your sins. Break the vicious cycle instead.
Hence, you do not have our blessing to join the movement. We offer no blessing that which all the rest of the souls who lie beside us do not join us in giving”.
