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Can you imagine the terrible damage placed upon the psyche of African Diasporans
who seek to ignore or forget the tragedies of their past.
The world is bombarded with negative images of Africans through language, schools and society. It has affected us to such a extent that we can no longer identify with our traditional roots, some of us are even ashamed to call ourselves Africans.
It is our responsibility to rebuild our self esteem, how long should we continue to listen to our children growing up saying they are ugly because they are black. How long should we allow our children to be admitted into mental institutions because they cannot function in this society. How long will we watch our children hopes and dreams shattered as they are sent to prison.
Our social problems today are heavily influenced by the traumas of our past. Our low self esteem and lack of good role models is the legacy of our enslavement.
If our ancestors could see us now, if they had a voice, they would be ashamed of us.
We have become deaf to their screams, blind to their scars and dumb in their defence.
We have to come together and address our trauma collectively.
It is a painful process to look at our past, but we all need to look within ourselves to identify the traumas, to root it out so we repair the damage. Most importantly we need to do this for our children. Black on Black crime is the perpetuation of the distrust we had for each other during our enslavement. We need to stop the rot of our community now.
In reality the true horrors of slavery would render a normal person, violently ill, convulse spasmodically, sob endlessly, pull out all their hair, go insane and become totally incapable of functioning. The reality for the perpetrators would be significantly more severe.
We need to address the negative trauma we have inherited and continue to fuel as a result of our enslavement, so we may collectively raise our pride and self esteem.
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