We Are Africans: Racism Doesn't Exist Among Us

A few years ago, while going through old papers-magazines, newspapers, bulletin and some story books I saved for some reason I can’t utterly fathom in my family house storage room, I stumbled upon a magazine dated August 7th, 1999, featuring a striking image of a younger Oprah Winfrey on the cover, looking just as breath taking and confident as the Oprah I know today. I read through various articles, including the hackathon program within that time frame somewhere in New York, medicine, and even an ad for new lingerie, clothes lines and car dealership. I remember settling in one of the older dissented chairs in my medium sized room directly located to my family sitting room. It was sunny, the harmattan season was sore but it knew how to be friendly in the south. However, what caught my attention was a segment about the memorial held on August 5th, 1999, in honor of the Columbine massacre, Isaiah Shoals the main target, a teacher and 10 other children who were mostly colored kids of Columbia high school, killed by 18 years old Eric and 17 years old Dylan, both white and Hitler loving extremists. I wrote an article about it titled "Requiem," which I later submitted in my first year in Uni for our school journal but was rejected for being out of place in an African context. it was unconcerning of the African people with racism, there was no need for such an article in a school paper that didn’t discuss Africa or pointed racism to Her. However, I resubmitted it to an essay competition and won.

As Africans, we believe that we cannot treat people differently based on their skin color because we all come from the same race, race wasn’t a thing in Africa, a non-racial continent, people molted with the same skin, painted alike. However, while we may not approach preferential treatment based on skin color, we still know how to make others feel sternly that they do not belong, and this is just as damaging as racism. We may not call it racism, but it manifests in the form of intolerance, corruption, bigotry, tribalism, religious fascism, ethnicity, and disunity.

I have witnessed such behavior firsthand, such as when a neighbor refused to hold a baby belonging to a Fulani woman because of their perceived smell. I have also heard bigoted comments, like when some men said, an Igbo man cannot rule Nigeria and was unfitting. These incidents may not be overtly racist, but they demonstrate the same language of exclusion and discrimination.

This type of behavior is not unique to Africa; it has occurred throughout history and continues today in different parts of the world, such as during the apartheid movement in South Africa in the 1940s, and today, there is still a high level of violence among black people in South Africa, as well as xenophobia towards Nigerians in 2019. In Nigeria, there was the inhumane deportation of Ghanaians by Shehu Shagari in January 1983. In Uganda, there was the Asian Ugandan attack in 1972 when Idi Amin came to power, as described in Hafsa Zayyan's book "We Are all Birds of Uganda", or reading Chinua Achebe book on “There was a country” where some well-meaning Igbo men where lynched, property destroyed far up north even in the south as close as Rivers state, just before the start of the Biafra war in 1967, millions of people including children starved to death during the war led by Yakubu Gowon. Additionally, many African states constitutional chambers who are supposed to make laws protecting all lives, no matter their gender or gender orientation, enacting laws that target some group of people because they do not fit into the orthodox believe system, the list is inexhaustible howbeit we are not racist, we don’t play the race card, we just do not treat people differently because of their skin color, we do because they look like us but do not belong.