Play time has been over for a while now but events this past week has really put in stark terms the renewed sense of urgency that needs to take root amongst black people world wide concerned about the welfare of the race as a whole. When recent events in the Dominican Republic and the shooting in America on Wednesday are put in wider global perspective, an eerie ambience and echo fills the air. A sense of foreboding engulfs me. There’s a pattern to these attacks, a pattern some people are perhaps failing to fully grasp the magnitude of for a variety of reasons.
The fight for African people to preserve their dignity and humanity, to be respected as an equal member of the human family is not a new one. This is an age old battle. This fight did not start when Europeans came to the shores of East, West, North and South of Africa looking for slaves to capture to plough the plantation fields of South America, North America and the West Indies. This fight dates back and perhaps even further back to thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt when King Menes drove back the white and Asian hordes, reunited Upper and Lower Egypt and began the greatest dynastic civilisation the world has ever seen, the achievements which remain unsurpassed to this very day. Despite the achievements of that civilisation it still had to battle for the right to rule and be independent. And now despite the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, Decolonisation in Africa and the Caribbean, African people worldwide are still collectively at the bottom of the human map. Still mistreated, still catching hell, still battling to be seen as human, still crying out that our lives matter too. One wonders how much more can a race of people take.
Events in the Dominican Republic where the actions of that particular repugnant government – as black and as African by anyone’s but theirs’s delusional judgement, is threatening and seems determined to deport hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent back to Haiti due to a racist policy and the result of a societal psyche thoroughly intoxicated by the foul and inhuman ideology of white supremacy – must be viewed in a global context for the real significance of what is taking place to fully take hold. In Israel you have African migrants either forcibly deported or forcibly sterilized. After the destruction of Libya by NATO forces, hundreds of black Africans have been lynched, a refugee crisis has emerged, thousands more everyday are fleeing across the Mediterranean to the perceived salvation of Europe in boats akin to the conditions their ancestors suffered through during the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. When they are not thrown overboard and brutally abused during the voyage, when they do reach their destination they are either turned back or detained in what can only be reasonably characterised as concentration camps. All over Europe and North America attitudes are hardening against migrants and refugees, the march towards deliberalisation is accelerating, visa restrictions are been tightened towards citizens of Caribbean and African countries.
For the discerning the writing is on the wall, the writing is on the wall for our oppressors also, but unlike us, they are most adept at taking care of themselves and making sure their interests takes priority. Europe is in debt, many of its member states are an economic basket case and soon they will be swept aside by the tide of their own greed and financial gluttony. When that happens what is our plan? Although groups here and there are putting in the necessary work a mass collective movement is still yet to take root. The coons are still having a merry time distracting, distorting, shocking and jiving to a boisterous banjo dance. The music must stop. The banjo drums confiscated. The tap dancing shoes put back in their shoe box. The clown paint wiped off.
Events in the Dominican Republic and then the white terrorist massacre of peaceful adults and grandmas at a African Methodist Church founded by an African revolutionary who was on his way to leading the largest slave revolt in US history and then escape to Haiti before been betrayed by other Africans should put anyone concerned with our collective welfare on red alert. Its time to work, playtime is over, its go time.