Supercharged Showerthoughts: on Migration and Race

Maybe later, I will come back to this post, and give it more nuance – but there is definitely something wrong with the world right now. Well; not the whole world; but Europe and America. I am talking about the racially charged caging of immigrants and the racial, jingoistic connotations behind Brexit and the rise of right-wing politics in the so-called developed world. And I have been moved to rush this right now, because the "leader of the free world" cannot stop spewing his racist vitriol on social media against his own people. Just because they are not white; and did not come from Norway.

Developed world, my arse. It is the greed of these people that got us here in the first place. Yea baby; people in Africa certainly did not maraud any place on a colonial rampage like the white people did when they bled their own lands dry of mineral and floral wealth. We were fine in Africa, and certainly did not need anything from anyone; and I do not think colonial visitors were need by the Indians in America and the people of South America either. No. We had our lives. We had our way of living. We had our culture. We were certainly minding our own business when the whites came and captured our fathers and our brothers as slaves, took our lands and turned us into captives on the very lands that our ancestors left for us. They uprooted our culture and indoctrinated into us that the white way was the only right way. They made us forsake our religion. They made us feel ashamed of our own identity. They made us inferior. They shames us into cursing the black pigmentation on our skins. Centuries and centuries of ingrained self-hate; we suffered from the Stockholm Syndrome before the Stockholm Syndrome became a syndrome. We found ways to excuse their murderous presence among us, because we believed they would allow us to be people too. 

Howe wrong we were. 

Now we are coming full circle. Illegal immigrants. That’s what the black person is when he tries to settle in Europe or North America right now (well; not all of Europe, and maybe not even in Canada. But Trump’s America, and Brexit Britain, the two countries that actually saw their fortunes balloon as a direct result of slavery and colonialism). America and Britain were not built by democracy – they owe their prosperity to the blood and lives of slaves and colonies they pillaged and forced to work for free for centuries. It is so ironic that these two countries purport to speak for democracy in the world today. These countries are responsible for the dictators we have in the third world today – because our corrupt leaders know that as long as they are on the good side of the colonialists (which you should read as letting the colonial corporates reap national resources at the expense of locals), it does not matter what they do to their people back home. They are responsible for our dictators because they taught them to be greedy to the point of not caring who gets hurt in their quest to amass as much wealth as they can. 

Faced with certain starvation at home, what can the local man do? He fought the imperialists out of political power, but they still returned and bribed the local leaders. Now it is the so-called democratically elected leaders that get their hands bloody on the colonialists' behalf when the suffering masses try to make their voice heard. The only option is to seek greener pastures in the lands of the free – which he will sadly find are not free at all, as he watches his life disintegrate while wearing a foil blanket in the cold welcoming cages at the US border; and being told to go back where he came from. 

Go back where you came from, they say. Go back to your own country. Libya, maybe? The same Libya that was doing pretty well until Gaddafi decided to unite Africa, and change the petrol dollar as the medium for petroleum exchange. Or Venezuela; the country that tried to eradicate poverty by nationalising the best resource it had – petroleum – but fell foul of the corporate barons of the West? Or back to Zimbabwe; a country that has been so ground right into the underground by sanctions that it can no longer afford to print passports for citizens looking to flee poverty - and the only options they have for ending poverty is by eradicating the poor themselves. 

So; what exactly do white people why everybody else to do? They do not want us to live in our own countries – not unless we give them what they want for free. And they do not want us to even travel to their lands; where they will declare us illegal aliens; when they are expatriates when they invade our countries. Would it not be simple for the west to just let these shithole countries be; and use their resources for the benefit of their own people? We could try it, and see if there would be mass migrations then. I bet one of the chief reasons why a few people choose to migrate to the third world is because they have it good back home, where nobody interferes with the affairs of their sovereign governments, and their governments are allowed to trade freely with whoever they want. Why then do these so-called democratic governments not want other countries to trade freely? What is so good about seeing other people suffer that gives them convulsive orgasms?

I get it; there are many racists out there who would rather black people and other non-white races did not exist at all. It is such a dispiriting time to be a black African right now. Your own government treats you like shit. And you cannot flee because the countries that stole your resources will not have you. But that is the state of our lives right now. We are here. We built your railways. We tilled your plantations. We were your slaves. You took our lands. But we are still here. If you do not want us in your hallowed countries, please do us a favour and leave us the fuck alone. Not just leave us alone to die while you exploit our countries again. But leave use the fuck alone. Remove your sanctions. Do not give dictators an excuse to be cruel to their people. Let the people run their affairs the way they think is best for them. Don’t you think you have taken enough already? Must we give you our souls too?

Let us try that for a second; and see if that solves the migration crisis.