The black man never quits in catastrophes.
During the beginning of the black African civilisation, the Chad Basin metamorphosed into empires, kingdoms, city states and republics.
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The black man’s tearful history did not stop there.
A South American country systematically wiped out all blacks through gruesome murder, poisoning and drowning.
The Nazis used captured black American solders for target and bayonet practices before throwing their bodies to carnivores in zoos.
To test the destructive capacity of a nuclear device, a country used an African desert resulting to the deaths of many blacks and maiming of millions of them.
Of recent, to test the effectiveness of a vaccine for COVID-19, a European suggested that the vaccine be tried on Africans first before any race.
Racist socio-biologists claim that blacks have low Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EM).
Racists claim that blacks are genetically predisposed to violence and crime.
No any nationality from other races will be killed the way Floyd and others were killed.
The above recount is very necessary because Winston Churchill once said, “The further backward you look, the further forward you can see.”
No race has passed through these denigrating and humiliating experiences and descriptions, and it appears there is no end to it until black Africans stop it.
Tearful history is not peculiar to the black race, but that of blacks is much more tearful.
Arabs went through horrible experiences under the Mongols.
The Chinese were forced by an army and navy to exchange their tea for opium.
Today, Hong Kong is a symbol of those humiliations.
The Jews went through holocaust under the Nazis.
But the surprising thing is that none of the other races has been deliberately suggested or targeted out of contempt, disregard or disrespect to be laboratory animals in recent history except black Africans.
Going back history lane, our civilisation, empires, kingdoms and city states competed favourably with others.
During the periods of the prophets, our son by name Bilal Ibn Rabbah was an active participant in the theoretical and physical interpretations of The Message.
Our two sons by name Bilal Mohammed and Ayuba Diallo took Islam to the USA the way Europeans brought Christianity to Africa.
With all these feats, COVID-19 and the murder of Floyd have revealed the contempt others still have for blacks.
British thinker, Isaiah Berlin, said, “To be the object of contempt or patronising tolerance on the part of proud neighbours is one of the most traumatic experiences that individuals or societies suffer.”
The trauma endures, hence no time is better than now for a renaissance.
To restore the boldness, aggressiveness, audacity and purity of our values and regain our lost glory, we must overcome challenges that include illiteracy, insecurity, international competition, necrophilia/inferiority complex and disunity.
The major instruments of national power are economic, technological/informational, military and diplomatic.
Developed countries have absolute advantage in each. Complacency on our part caused all the demeaning treatments.
Lack of education was used against the blacks and it is still being used against the blacks.
Insecurity is a pandemic and is impacting on all activities in the world; like COVID-19.
What most blacks belittle is the competition we are facing from other races and countries.
They want to maintain absolute advantage because they know that blacks are capable and have the power to spring a surprise.
To continue to lead, the western world built a resilient long-term strategic economic, political, cultural, technological and scientific architecture that has more competetive edge over any other architecture.
In an analysis, Mead (2007) said, “In 300 years of warfare,…the Anglo-Saxon powers did not just win wars, they changed the way the world lives, thinks and organises itself as much as any of the great civilisations of the past.”
Our multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Chad-Basin civilisation was one of the great civilisations of the past Mead is referring to, and the one the Anglo-Saxons for long wanted to replicate.
A regeneration of the African civilisation will not auger well for them in the present gig and space economy.
Blacks must be aware of these facts and recognise that our enviable past and the honour, integrity and privileges it conferred on us have been the envy of the rest.
Another challenge is what researchers refer to as necrophilia; which means a passionate love for dead and ineffective political idea.
Others still suffer from inferiority complex and exhibit patronising tolerance; hoping against hope.
They turn left or right depending on where the carrot swings.
Malcom X had this for such people: “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
For such people, they must know the general feeling among the White-Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) in America on their claim of the pollution and de-legitimisation of Americanism by recent immigrants and others; including blacks.
To WASP, such immigrants were not part of the founding fathers that fought war of independence and the civil war of unity.
But black men and women fought in World War I and II, other wars and the cold war that brought America to fame.
Immigrants are seen as people coming to US for greener pasture.
Even the blacks that patriotically fought for America’s independence and were the major pillars that built America since pre-independence have not been fully integrated into the American system.
The project: Nigeria is an opportunity and will be the pivot around which all other black man’s activities to rejuvenate the black man’s glory revolve.
What obsesses the Chinese and Indians now is the restoration of their dominant civilisations about 200 years ago.
They have realised that complacency writes off potential for innovation and creativity; hence their huge investments in innovation and creativity.
Blacks, particularly Nigerians, have rich sources of inspiration and wings, but we need wind below or under the wings to fly.
Nobody will supply the wind for us.
We must create our winds. For those suffering from inferiority complex, they must restructure their mindset to believe that all races are born equal and that blacks made giant strides when others were not in existence.
Egypt was once under the control of the black Nubian Republic.
We are a race with rich historical sources of inspiration, a culture and a reason for being.
We have taken a long holiday from history and we are paying a huge historical price for it.
The time for renaissance is now.
Ayuba Buba Kinafa is a management consultant in Gombe State.
