These Freedoms

Open letter to God: Why are they culling us and are You still here?

8 Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus: “Dispersed among the nations throughout the provinces of your kingdom, there is a certain people living apart. Their laws differ from those of every other people and they do not obey the laws of the king; so it is not proper for the king to tolerate them.9 If it please the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them; and I will deliver to the procurators ten thousand silver talents for deposit in the royal treasury.” – Esther 1:8-9

In recent months, I have been at my wits’ end, plunging into the deep stupor of massive despair as I have tried to make sense of all the endless reports of violence meted towards people that look like me, people of colour. Today, I write this open letter to the Higher Being, a lamentation of sorts about the endless injustice that my people face globally.

As I pen the letter to our Divine Leader, it is reminiscent of two powerful biblical instances where divine intervention were enacted when Moses and Esther looked upward during their respective times of perilous danger. Perchance, as I look up, He will likewise, respond.

Charles Davis, columnist of United States (US) Insider Business reports that on Tuesday, 173 congressional US Democrats demanded an “immediate investigation” by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general into reports that women have been receiving hysterectomies without their consent at a detention facility.

The investigation would follow leads into a whistle-blower’s claim that the immigration agency known as ICE has been sterilising immigrant women. The doctor behind this heinous unnecessary and unrequested medical gynaecological procedures had been dubbed the “uterus collector.”

Such open criminality and disrespect of people of colour are rampant in the US, leading to countrywide protests under the platform Black Lives Matter. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, Atitiana Jefferson, Michael Dean, Melvin Watkins and Channara Tom Pheap are a few recent incidents of killings in plain sight of unarmed black people (predominantly men), by white police officers.

White hate on black is not a new phenomenon. It stretches deep into the vile un-erasable stench of slavery. The marks of slavery are visible with the treatment of the white race on the black race on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although sometimes people separate slavery and the experience of the enslaved in the Americas from the experience of the people of the African continent who underwent colonialism, the experiences are similar. The end result similar though vastly different.

The enslaved black man in the Americas has not led a life of roses. Slaves brought to the US have led a life of hatred meted toward them, unpaid labour, lynching, segregation laws and now institutionalised killings that threaten to cull the population of black people living in America.

Likewise, the black people in Africa have not been living a life filled with potpourri. During the colonial period (1800-1960), white people  subjugated black owners of the continent, technically enslaving the entire continent (except Ethiopia and Liberia). British, French, Portuguese, German, Belgian and Dutch colonialists instituted vile living standards and relations with Africans.

Both experiences exacerbated by the white race against the black race on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean is laced with humongous racial injustices.

As white police officers in the US find themselves again and again at the end of a gun fired at a black person, the sad truth about Africa is that of the being availed, given easy access to guns that have led to bloody power disputes and coup d’états or the quest for control of minerals. Black people are caused to kill black people using guns manufactured and sold, not on the black market, but legally, by White gun manufacturers, marketers, and imperialist manipulating rulers.

Oh my God! That You would stretch down Your hand and end the unjust justice systems that want to wipe out the black race, which is a part of Your creation!

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