What must be done?
/DR
The month of Ramadan is coming to an end this week. Some few days left during which most Muslims will still avoid feeding their body and desires during the day. Far from home, this holly month has undoubtedly a different taste for me. All my friends, who just like me in the UK are expats, know what I am talking about. The opportunities provided by the British system and culture are not always sufficient remedy to make a Frenchman not feel homesick in Shakespeare’s homeland. The news from home are however, not brilliant at all, either. The few articles I had the chance to read about France are not at all encouraging for any black or Muslim folk living in the Hexagon.
Life in France has become tremendously difficult for the non-whites of the second and third generation born in France. The black little boy I once was; and who thought himself as part of the multicultural rainbow that most Western societies tempted to promote as the success story of their democratic system has clearly come back to his senses. Illusion has given way to realism and despair.
Realism tells me today that Blacks’ life matters for blacks only. For the Whiteman who centuries ago thought himself invested with the Whiteman’s burden, any domestic dog deserves more care and compassion than a black man. If earlier this year the massacre of some nine French cartoonists gathered some 50 head of states from different countries in Paris in a march against terrorism and for the freedom of speech; in the United States a massacre of the same nature costing the life of some nine Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, last month clearly fell short to arouse the same degree of indignation and compassion. Not even a minute of silence was organised in the French and British state schools in solidarity of the victims. France and Britain have always auto proclaimed themselves as the countries of justice and democracy by excellence. Facts are however contradicting the theory.
The biggest contradiction regarding the Charleston massacre came, however, from the president of the United States: Barack Obama. In his first public declaration after the tragedy, the first black president of the United States pointed out the second amendment to the American constitution as the first responsible for the massacre; thus eluding the racial motivations that urged 21-year-old Dylann Roof to perpetrate his awful attack. The FBI does not still recognise the carnage as an act of terrorism and it is still investigating on whether or not the crime must be regarded as a hate crime.
In Paris, shabby towns have resurfaced in 2015 with hundreds of undocumented migrants living in tents in the North East districts of Paris. These new illegal migrants exclusively from Africa are the new victims of the twenty first century slave trade system engendered by the impoverishment and despoilment of the African continent. For the black people “born under the sign of the hexagon”, as singer Renaud Sechan would put it in his song “L’hexagone”, the situation is only slightly better. High unemployment as a consequence of racial discrimination, which also engenders despair and therefore delinquency, is by excellence the main characteristic of their common and daily life. Looking at my own experience and that of those I see around me, I can testify that in France, in general, blacks tend to be undoubtedly ten to fifteen years behind their white counterparts when it comes to career progression and promotion.
It is indeed hard to have respect for a society that voluntarily enables such injustice on the grounds of a never pronounced but quite obvious attempt to preserve white European supremacy. France is clearly, by excellence, the country in the Northern hemisphere that has opted for its own decline provided that power remains a Whiteman’s thing; a suicidal ideology dating back to the period some have wrongly considered as the Enlightenment period.
The philosophical advancement of the West was built on racist ideologies that are still the pride of countries such as France.
A culture whose foundations are the very fruits of racism can only give birth to a naturally and unconsciously racist population. Over sixty millions of racist souls spreading their racist ideologies within the rest of the world, here is another definition of what the expression French connection means. Ethnic minorities, and Blacks and Muslims born in the hexagon in particular have been suffering from racist and xenophobic attitudes over more than three decades. The professional career of many of them was somehow curtailed and spoiled because of the absence of laws seriously tackling racism and islamophobia. On top of that, institutionalised racism also largely contributed to the alienation of these populations within society.
But “What must be done?” as Brother Louis Farrakhan would say it. Understanding the situation and being aware of the role some have decided to play in the history of humanity is definitely a starting point. It is a priority for the coloured man to play it wise and never forget what under the Whiteman’s supremacy he suffered. “Be organised and above all love your brothers and sisters” is my advice to those who suffered more than a holocaust; from the Native Americans and Australian Aborigines to the black Africans. A Whiteman’s world built at the stake of the coloured ones, such is the world. This is indeed a Whiteman’s world, but it would be nothing, nothing, without a black or a brown man.
