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BLACK RACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY - THE IMPERATIVE OF TRUTH
By Chika A. Onyeani (African Sun Times - Jan. 16-22, 2003)
This is the first day of January, in the year 2003, of the 21st century, and
of the third millennium. In the just completed 20th century and second
millennium, the Black race suffered the most horrifying humiliation,
discredit, disgrace and dishonor, that as we enter this 21st century, the
wounds are yet to heal and the scars might be quite difficult to erase for
many of us. In the last millennium, we became the most conquered, the most
oppressed, the most disrespected, the most despised, the most alienated, the
most influenced to acts of kindness and hospitality, and the least desirous
to acts of aggression on other fellow beings other than our own race. We
weathered the greatest acts of man’s inhumanity to man. It is a millennium
that we can never forget, we should never forget, and that should be
permanently etched in our consciousness and in those of our future
generations as we ponder what will happen and what would be the place of the
Black Race when this new century or the third millennium ends.
The most important question you and I have to answer is really whether we
understand what happened to the greatness of the Black race, a race that is
the origin of man, a race that brought enlightenment and civilization to the
world, a race that brought advanced learning and teaching to the world, a
race that had culturally impacted the world in every facet of our lives. The
other important question is how did the Black race allow those that they had
regarded as barbarians and savages to appropriate our knowledge wholesale and
use that knowledge to become our masters.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a time we have sat down to examine honestly
and frankly what went wrong, how did the second millennium become a major
albatross on our necks. The trauma we have suffered is so ingrained that we
would prefer not to discuss these questions as we would be confronting the
truth. There hasn’t been a time when Black leaders the world over decided to
get together to examine the beginning of the destruction of the Black race,
our present state and future course of action. At a minimum such a meeting
of Black leaders is necessary to at least halt the disastrous actions they
continue to take in impoverishing our people.
The greatest challenge facing us today is that of being truthful about our
past, our present and our future. Truth is very bitter, but if we are to
proceed further, we must need an honest, frank and ruthless discussion of who
we really are, and what our situation compared to the rest of the world is.
Frankly, we are already at the bottom of the valley. As the most oppressed,
the most disrespected, the most despised, the most alienated; frankly, when
you are at the bottom, and we are at the bottom, let's be honest with
ourselves, we don’t have anywhere else to go but up. Any first step we could
take to climb that ladder on our way back to the top is a major step forward.
But, unfortunately, we have lied to ourselves for almost 600 years. We have
deluded ourselves into believing that we have been climbing that ladder to
the top, when we have never acknowledged that we were even down. Denying the
position we are in can never help us in taking that first step; because of
our delusion, we will find that we are in thin air with nothing to stand on
when reality sets in. There is nothing like telling the truth to get the
monkey off of our back. We have to lift the heavy burden we have been
carrying for centuries, the burden of lying to ourselves.
My book, Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success, has been applauded for being
ruthlessly frank and honest with the Black race. The question is whether our
people want people like us to continue to participate in the lying game. But
some of us have decided that we would rather drink the bitter brew of truth
now than continue to lie to the detriment of the future generation of Blacks
to come. We have to be courageous, and some times downright tenacious or
rather nasty in no longer accepting anything but the truth and in so doing
set ourselves free.
The other day I was talking to a group of college students, and I asked them
whether they remembered when the Rev. Jesse Jackson acknowledged that if he
were to come out in the middle of the night and heard footsteps behind him
and turned around to see a Black man following him, he would be very afraid,
but the same thing would not happen if the person following him was white.
The Black community tried to crucify him for telling the truth, forcing Rev.
Jackson to cowardly retract the statement and said it was taken out of
context. We all of course know that Jesse Jackson was telling the truth; we
refused to acknowledge the truth that in our neighborhoods, the people who
may mug us are our own people. We refused to acknowledge the truth because
we did not want “others” to hear us acknowledge what they already know.
The point is that Jesse Jackson told the truth - but the question is why
was it so important for us to gang up on him to the extent that he had to
retract the statement. We did not feel comfortable discussing the issue in
public; we didn’t want to and still don’t want to acknowledge that in our
neighborhoods the person most likely to mug us would be Black.
The point I am making here is that we should accept this as a truism. Let’s
acknowledge this truth publicly. From there, we can discuss why this
continues to happen in our community; what are the root causes of our own
people mugging us, raping our women and in some cases even committing murder
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