By Ugochukwu Godwin Nsofor
BLACK CROWS!!!
The tears drip, the mind hurts
The night is long, the days are short
The body is strong, the mind is weak
The dreams are gone,
The black cries
Black reigns
Criticism is not a failure, fault, or hate but actually, it’s one’s way of expressing or selecting a leader unknowingly or identifying a great person. This is an era we don’t say things the way we see them but how we think about them. This is tantamount to the animal lifestyle in the jungle, lions are highly revered because of their dubious and carnivorous nature towards other animals, and they’re still labeled the “king of the jungle”. But all animals act as if they hate them. If one is being criticized, sometimes it is because of greatness and dominance. You are dreaded today because they feel you will take over, control, and stand against.
To describe the deplorable crises blacks are facing today in a subtle euphemism is totally bad. We just have to follow the way we are led by our gut instinct with our head, not the heart. Slave trading was an agenda to destroy blacks and take over their resources and Ancestral home. Shrines, Benin Mask, and so many other artifacts designed as a relic of cultural importance and our channels of talking to God were destroyed.
We have lost many of our cultural significant ceremonies like male circumcision, pouring libations, masquerade dance, tales, and moonlight dance to mention but a few. Now they have all been demonized and laid to waste.
Let me tell you about the Mind and the body. If the mind is taken then the body is useless. Anatomically, the body is the strongest element on earth, but the mind is feeble, if one’s mind is taken out of the body, one will become incapable of doing something reasonable. The mind tells you when you are in pain, weak, sick, and emotionally drained. So beyond the physical, it is a battle of the mind. And so, Slavery starts from capturing the mind.
Black people fight; protest, and consequently, many black heroes have been jailed, killed, and condemned. But history does not forget, so these stories are told to the younger generation. Like the falcon that tricks and prey on birds, to steal the baby birds, they too fall to the same trap. Violent is never a solution to oppression, but wisdom and calmness can be.
Black live matter
Black don’t hate
Black live unique
Black is peace
Black is strong
Black never degenerate
Black reigns
Blacks are very strong people, intelligent, beautiful, energetic, and committed. These are people everyone’s speaking about, described in so many ways and their stories were greeted with derision and disbelief.
Black people are still people of value globally. One has to choose one’s purpose to continue the struggle or choose a subtle medium like art instead of violence. Have you seen the Black lives matter statue of Jen Reid by Mare Quinn, a spot reserved many years for Edward Colsten?
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That is the work of time. Should we also talk about renowned contemporary artists, Aniekan Udofia – muralist (USA) and his Black Heroes murals? Or the works of the Nigerian Sculptor, Phillips Nzekwe?
These stories have to be retold. It’s in the past that blacks waited for heaven in the sky. It is a tool of suppression and religion, and one must resist every form of teaching that supports black oppression, just as poverty is a tool. We must have to break the pattern, to rise above hate and ourselves. To rise above every form of prison that holds us down, so that even when they try to write us down, And yet, “WE shall rise”.
BLACK LIVES MATTER