It was a bubble. Bubbles are always very attractive. In summer they shine like mini-rainbow, but they have a very thin veneer.
Just as they float in orbital bliss they are soon punctured and fizzle into thin air. To sustain the flow of a bubble, it is released in hordes.
America the bubble has subsisted for a while with catchy soubriquets. It has survived every attempt at cracking its code by reinventing itself as a land of opportunities. We Nigerians who like to name the things we do not make even took liberty a step further calling America – God’s Own Country! When Prof. Farooq Kperogi punctured that appellation, some felt unhappy.
Yes, it is true that America is the mini-globe, having welcomed every race and creed. If you have no “cousin” in America, you do not exist. The land that Christopher Columbus “discovered” was built on seismic fault lines. It attempted to wipe out the First Nations’ people it met on ground. After subduing the land, it discovered it would need strong hands to build its empire – except it would n ot name it so, after watching Great Britain, its parent die an empiric death. Guns, the American totem, could win wars, but is never used to build anything sustainable.
So, America welcomed human trafficking and glamorised it as slave trade. Calling it slave trade sustained the erroneous notion of a mutual exchange of merchandise. The merchandise here were the black race’s strongest, bravest and best. Africa was humanly decimated long before the socio-economic pillage began.
By the time a United States was proclaimed, it had become obvious that the black race would just not die. To free “slaves” while denying them rights or any compensation was to free them to die. Colonial America underestimated the resilience of a race determined not just to subsist, but live and thrive.
By the close of the 1890s, black America had reinvented itself, leading in commerce and dominating in economics and writing. Towns like Wilmington, North Carolina with its predominant black population and a black press was danger to the new America. Blacks dominated the Republican Party with a press that countered racist and xenophobic narrative word for word in opinion, as well as in oratory. But the white establishment feared its own shadows. It soon hijacked the predominantly black Republican Party with guns and bayonets, burnt down the black press and classified it a treasonous history, until lately.
The Republican Party that emerged from that uprising was built on lies, deception, subterfuge and brute force. It became the foundation for apartheid, widened the racial divide and laid the foundation for racial inequality. Its press expunged the proprietary rights of black inventors to their scientific innovation. It created a narrative of a race that needed to be watched to prevent it polluting the earth.
The “negro” might have had no history written down, it passed the horrendous stories of lynching, white inhumanity to man other inequalities down to generations. The subtle resistance led to the civil rights movement of the early 60s. The undermining of black consciousness, the divisions, the sponsored targeted elimination of vital black voices and the cold-blooded murder of people of colour have continued to this day.
From Luther King and Malcolm X, to the murder of Rodney King; from the senseless killing of Emmett Till to slaughter of Trayvon Martin; America controlled the narration and limited the expression of black anger using its powerful media. In the media narrative, a gathering of black protesters is a riot. A predominantly white one is a protest.
When a black person is murdered, the expression of righteous anger is dumbed down with the news of black-on-black violence. Even in the protests of the past two weeks, there are white urchins leading the arson on police vehicles and looting of shops, including an iconic picture of a uniformed officer with his hands full of stolen merchandise. Without phones and camera, all evils are blamed on black people.
A Ku Klux Klan leader from Virginia drove his truck through a crowd of protesters. In Salt Lake City, one racist came to the protest with his bows and arrows telling the press he was tackled for shouting – all lives matter. Two white girls spray-painted an LA Starbucks with graffiti and attempted to tackle those who confronted them. Black-faced white supremacists torched and looted stores – all captured on camera.
When America voted Barrack Obama over a decade ago, it had a chance to nail the final coffin on racism. Instead, Obama became the victim of an establishment bent on destroying the legacy of any black leader. Imagine a racist America armed with half of the sexual and other scandals hanging on a Donald J Trump!
It was the election of Donald J Trump that burst the American bubble. Trump has finally nailed the coffin on America’s pretence to democratic ideals. What he could not do constitutionally, he did with executive orders. Anything challenging the Trump narrative is met with tantrums and hard tackle. Where words could have calmed nerves, Trump issued wrongly spelt tweets that inflamed passions. If there had been no mobile phones and social media, Trump would have censored the murder of George Floyd.
Kudos to those who marched for black lives from across the globe and threw the vestiges of slavery into the sea of oblivion. If Germany would not erect a monument for Hitler, Britain should have no excuse honouring slave masters.
The protests are as moving endorsement of the emancipation of the black race. But they are one very small step. There is work to be done to counter the 300 years of institutionalised racism and lack of economic opportunity. There is a lot to be done to change narratives, teach history and its lessons. There would never be emancipation without economic power. An emancipated people are not a people tolerated, but a people with power to analyse their present and determine their own future. Here is one small step for emancipation and one big opening for economic empowerment.
