ALL LIVES MATTER

   Black lives matter is a fad, and like all fads will die eventually, inevitably because it is a form of approval seeking that is as ephemeral as a band aid on a bullet wound. For me it is another form of slavery and an exception to the 13th law of power which says we must appeal to people self interest rather than their mercy. Slavery have happened and nobody cares, and whatever you do or say, today’s white folks had nothing to do with, They might enjoy the benefits of it, but that is none of their business nor will they feel sorry or make their very ephemeral life here on earth miserable because of it. In truth all I can say is if a man carries a ship some gin, mirror and umbrella in exchange for your brothers that man is not your equal. Moving on, where does that leaves us as black people today, constant sulking, approval seeking and what the hell is a 10 second kneel going to change, how does that help us as a people, how does that create the much needed evolution going forward. This foolishness is still to me a form of slavery ingrained in the minds of black people for generations. 

What, Are we going to deny the immigration of blacks to Europe, the thousands that die on the straits of Lampedusa, the dried out corpses of those who follow the Saharan desert and die out of thirst, how does this help in improving our general image, What of all these lives don’t they matter too?

Black intellectuals have over time tried to explain away the racial inequality talking trash about how hard they have had it, and what have you, but it’s been 400 years why aren’t you complete, why aren’t you adequate in yourself why do you still feel that the word “Nigger” is derogatory or insulting (mind you this is a word whose origin is the farted out thoughts of a dead man) why haven’t you moved past it, why do you still think that monkey sounds are insulting, if not that within you know that truly you are a monkey and sub-human. 

  Let me put it in context using Nigeria, the white man colonized us for a number of years, some 60 years after our independence from them Nigeria couldn’t have been in the worst ways possible, what'[s the amount of slavery that can’t be washed off in 60 years, is 60 years not enough to improve on what you are after the fact, is 60 years not enough time for us to have accountable leadership and good development, to say that Nigeria was better during the colonial years is a very big understatement, Why? Because the fact that a man is white or black have nothing to do with his ignorance, without education people will transfer the same hard earned folly to the next generation who will spill out the same drivel to a group of gestalt monkeys hard wired to react senselessly to mindless talk and actions, and it is only through education that people can evolve beyond the "limitations" of skin colour, Check out Nigeria's budget on education for the last 20 years.

  Let’s not digress, the issue at hand which is the fad “Black lives matter” and yes I Know George Floyd was killed, I can’t breathe and what have you”, Accepted! But It is in that same country that Barrack Obama became President I bet he can count the amount of knees he has had on his throat on his ascent to power. The question is why aren’t there many more like him following his footsteps.

You can’t change people’s mind, you can only change yours, and Yes they are racist, move on. What has that got to do with you? Reading Robin Skynner’s book on Psychology on Family and How to Survive them, it made me realize that people will try to relate certain experiences with object and with  people; it’s a kind of reflexive reaction towards things and people like when you see fire you think about heat, a kind of mental synesthesia that is attached to the black skin that have made everything about it seem unattractive, sinister and disgusting, Now how do you change that. How do change a kind of disassociation from anything black, how do we as black people make black attractive again. 

These white people are always going to be racist so why protest if they haven’t change in over 400 years why do you think they will change now, oh because you are more radical, 

Racism itself is a social construct they fact that you believe in the accursed marginalization of your skin colour proves that truly it a thing of the mind, 

Now let’s go back to the Jazz renaissance of the 50’s when Miles, Parker, Gillespie, Hancock, Dolphy et. al where the definition of cool when they brought the beauty of Jazz to people, yes racism existed in that time, but these men were and are still respected for who and what they are not just because of the color of their skin, they were not patronized or pitied they were respected and loved for they were masters of their craft. and these men not only did they not face racism but they found a way to live besides it and mind their own business doing what they love, My point is you cannot make people love you but you can live your life in such a way that it matters beyond the ignorant hate of another.  So you have Miles Davis, you have George Floyd, the same skin, the same hate, different lives. 

Why won’t I kneel, it seem so stupid to me that a group of myriad, beautiful, intelligent, cultured, diverse, advanced and wonderful people be reduced to a gesture of 10 seconds we are more than just a stupid kneel. It belittle us as black people and deny the world a progress, it seems as if the shackles of slavery was passed from father to son to son, why do you think that an ape knees and raises his hand in submission that gesture is beneath me, and I hate it. What will children who are born today think when they see their fathers sons of former slaves 400 years later kneeling not to pick anything off the floor but to tell a group of people with a different skin color who see them that Please my life matter, oh what a sack of bull, they are your equals, we are gods, we kneel to no one not even God. The black man is as sophisticated, intelligent and diverse as the white man which is why I hated Kendrick Lamar’s song “Element “where he recanted stupidly about beating up and slapping up others as the black man‘s element. Our element is not violence and we are not Israelites we are not a group of rapacious individuals who steal other peoples land just because a stupid book says so. While we are at it, Free Palestine!

For me as a black man living in Lagos I believe that all lives matter, not just black, but also white, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese Surinamese, Mulattos, Mezitos, and others. All lives matter for no life is greater than another. Hate is hate regardless of skin color let us treat it as such rather than pile us up and literally bring us all to our knees 

All lives matter because your celebrities who pander this folly are celebrities because a white man invented a medium of communication for them to feel and enjoy relevance, all lives matter because the Chinese people work tirelessly in sweatshops to produce these phones in mass for your to join in and participate, All lives matter because it is the Chinese that are producing in large quantity the T-shirts that you wear to pass your messages, and they have got problems of their own too, Do you even stop to think about that ?

I don’t justify the killings , kneeling on a man‘s kneck for a long period can kill him but rather than roiling up inner wussies, we could isolate the situation as a individual case of hate and treat them as they are; bad people regardless of skin color. Why, Hatred exist everywhere even here in Nigeria,  it goes to show that hate is not race specific. The Police here kill people who have better clothes than they do, have better phones, drive better cars, they recently threw a footballer off a moving vehicle and killed him for no reason at all. We don’t protest the killings here in Nigeria because we don’t even have a civility to ply on, we going out on the streets make us target practice for a group of disgruntled police men who will fire at will with no consequences whatsoever. Bad people exist everywhere, and so does racism, and so do you. Are you bigger than the current conflict, does your life have more meaning to you than what they say or do, won’t you navigate through the depravity of the world and find the little happiness where you can, Do you know what Nina Simone was going through when she wrote “I got Life” Why don’t you stop waiting for the white man to stop being racist and find comfort that you at least know where to thread.

Everybody deserves justice you might think , but Einstein once said stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it have been proven that you will not get this justice with the Kalief Browder story, so why bother?

I personally don’t think Bob Marley or Peter Tosh would take a knee for they didn’t care how the white man saw them they were content in themselves. We as black people must learn how to respect ourselves also, find pride in our own, rather than lackey up to the white man for acceptance  Even when Harvey Milk was killed people who saw the killings protested quietly with candles and moved on for they know what the world was, it is filled with hate and hate filled ignorant people, a candle light procession for George Floyd would have been better shown more empathy, and prove that we are a better people than the “oppressor:” Rather than give a group of Corona-bored people a chance to destroy things and create a needless mayhem 

  This in addition is a call for the re-education of the black people to give them a sense of self, that make their lives feel more useful than a senseless protest that serve no purpose but to create drama and attention for a while, it doesn’t actually solve the inherent mindset of certain people, the destruction and mayhem do the opposite, it further reifies them and prove to them that they are right in the first place 

For the problems they face in a country that recently just gave them a welfare check of 1200 dollars cannot be more than what the Rohingas are facing, the Uighurs, Tibetans, Yemenis, Iraqis and other countries without even basic amenities and ten times the deaths which is why I said All lives matter 

So when you take a kneel ask yourself, what does this do for me as an individual, what does this do for my children, how does this effect any kind of social change, how does it affect the general problem of climate change, am I not pandering to a propaganda that make me just another statistic do this destruction of property bring change in the mindset of certain people or further harden them towards me, am I conscious of the fact that slowly and surely most white people are moving past race, Is the destruction worth it?

At least you have a good justice system your votes count you can elect people into office and have power of dissent, you can openly criticize your government and call a boycott . In Nigeria we don’t even have half of that and still face open oppression from our law enforcement agencies even without the basic amenities, to put in context, Fela’s mothers Mrs Olufunmi Kuti was thrown off a building by an unknown soldier, that is the equivalent of throwing an aged Rosa Parks off a building, If it is racial what then do you call what we face in Nigeria. Nigeria is unique because even among blacks we are biased against due to our Abrahamic greed we tend to bring the worst out of people anywhere we go leading to Xenophobic attacks in country like South Africa, Mozambique and recently Ghana, so Hate is just hate, enveloped in ignorance. 

The destruction of property is quite counterproductive for most of these companies and malls, employ black people as the bulk of their staff and as such many people will lose their jobs as a result of the recklessness, it is just hate which is as a result of ignorance, I don’t want to sound cynical but if we have half the basic amenities America can boast of in Nigeria for the amount of people that get killed here daily, It would be good country, I will use Nigeria as my case study and comparison because it is the reality I find myself and with the way our government treat us, and the level of ignorance that is our mainstay in this country we contribute to the growing racism against black people in general as many of our unplanned youth become unemployed and recourse to cyber crime, the bulk of their victims are white people in other country who will never ever want anything to do with a black person as a consequence. You see this thing called racism is an image problem as long as their blacks being backward the whole race will be seen as backward and a collective kneel will not change that.

In finding common ground let us not be blind to the lackadaisical attitude of the blacks in some country they live stupid lives of debauchery, gang affiliations and petty robbery, they live lazy lives based on welfare, failing to comport theirselves. Especially in America where they destroyed the port city of Baltimore and turned Chicago and Los Angeles to war zones, leading even Chris Rock to say he is afraid of certain black people, these are also some of the reason some white people are racist towards the black: the crabs in a barrel mentality, the inability to see the bigger picture and a stupid way of life might also not be far off; 

Just be attractive, attractive in the sense that through the improving of yourself your life have meaning, by doing that you improve the general black image show that your life have purpose and means more to you than the senseless hate around you. Like the Japanese find what you want and who you are within yourself and people will be interested in you. The attractive nature of a people depend on what they do and who they are with what they have, a sense of self and accomplishment like the bad cats of the 50’s, because if we don’t know, the way the media have painted the black man and the way many leaders of our country have impoverished us, we might not blame some white people if they attach us to every thing bad, delimiting and damaging in our society, for when you see the way our own people treat us, why do you think they should do better. 

We should change the way we are represented, all those songs about how we gon run up and do all kinds of wrong should just stop, gang banging and stupid senseless debauchery is not the element of a blackman and when such music get airplay and music videos that support such lifestyles are rewarded and copied a bad check might seem too sinister. 
My advice for black people and other oppressed people in general is don’t lose your immigrant’s fear, Dress properly, improve yourself, listening to Reggae music and other kinds of music that uplift and inspire you, mind your own business, be respectful, treat every stranger like a child and expect the worse or the best at all time, be stoic be calm fnd habits, hobbies and interests. Be attractive, and evolved, you have it better than you think, and with empathy and transcendence you can see that all lives matter for as one lives one learns, and unlearns the shackles of slavery and the attainment of gnosis. this is for all lives, working together,and loving each other, and for you adjusting in interim.

by

Victor Samuel