AFRICANS: WHO ARE WE?

Are Africans truly free? We may not have physical shackles on our hands and legs but what about the invisible shackles - the shackles of the mind? Who is the mother of your worldly thoughts, views, and believes? What defines you as a person and where is its origin? If our culture is our identity and we look down on it, then who are we?

These days, being white doesn't rest on skin color alone. When a bourgeois isn't content with who they are and what they have, they aspire to be more fancy and sophisticated at all cost, even if their definitions of sophistication contradict who they truly are. The word "boojie" exists to define such people. Isn't this boojie attitude part of the reason we're in this economic mess? We want to live like 'oyibo' so we look down on locally produced commodities. Hence, we continue to import even the things we have a competitive advantage of producing. Unfortunately, the importation doesn't end on goods and services alone; we also shamelessly import identities and personas from those we actually want to be and live like. Today we wail that whites have no regard for black lives, and I don't see how they will since we don't really have regard for who we are and what makes us, us. And to be fair, who has a morsel of reverence for someone without an identity? Do you know in some cultures a child born out of wedlock is considered a bastard even when his father is known? That poor child goes through life feeling like a negligible second-class citizen because he doesn't have the identity that comes from being a product of a proper and lawful marriage. That's not all; sadly, that child also doesn't have the right to bear the family name. In the same vane, since Africa cheated on itself by screwing around with Western culture, it's producing children without an identity. Therefore, these children don't have the right to be called African. The pitiful part is they're ignorantly proud of it. But unfortunately for them, they end up wandering off, looking for where to belong. Now if the world sees us as mere bastards, tell me where the respect will come from. We are mental slaves to the West, and masters don't give respect to slaves; it's the other way round. That's why the West still control us; only this time, they don't need to waste precious time and resources coming down here - we're faithfully and thoroughly carrying out their bidding in their absence.

I ask again: who are we? What's our identity? Are we liberated or still slaves with masters by proxy? Oh, I've already answered that. So the real question is: when are we going to free ourselves from these invisible but effectively destructive shackles?