I’ve just finished reading “The Sellout” by Paul Beatty. I am lost for words to describe the razor-sharp humor and subtle outbursts that touch your nerve if you are even a wee bit sensitive. This book had been in a series of my readings of the atrocities unleashed on certain races by what is the “Policeman of Human Rights & Fair Play” globally. It is strenuous to go through some of these books as the human toll and sufferings appearing on the pages are unparalleled and one wonders how fellow men stoop to levels that are even beyond the wildest imaginations of wild animals. In parallel, I have borrowed “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah from my son but that’s a totally different ball game.
In case you would like to get your hands on some of these writings then I would recommend, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Water Dancer, The Nickel Boys, The Underground Railroad & The Color Purple. Was I aware of this?, yes quite a bit; I spent four and a half years in Houston during my undergraduate days and saw first hand what can be politely referred to as “Raw Poverty”, African Americans scavenging trash bins looking for food, yes this was Houston, Texas in the United States. I had also seen dilapidated homes and miserable eyes that spoke more than words, words of sorrow and despair and even then, and that was 1988, I wondered if this is the country that boasted of technological advancements and a grand stance against communism, bringing the mighty USSR to its knees and standing tall as a savior for the free world treated its own citizens with such disregard.
And then I left the US after graduation, that was in 1993; now after all these years with a two-term African American President during whose term the BLM movement sprang, I and a lot of people across the so-called “3rd World East” looks at this circus of oozing racism in disgust.
Is there inequality in the lands where I live? Maybe; Is there poverty in the 3rd world; Yes there is.
Are people struggling to get access to clean water and medical facilities; Yes.
But in this great drama called life in the 3rd world, are we also dodging bullets? No
Are we afraid to send our kids to school for the fear of them not returning? No
Are we as people shelving communities like Lego pieces in localities? No
Social media is bad, its bad for the conventional high stakes corporate media houses that are nothing but a propaganda mouthpiece of the very powers that have taken over as the new colonialists. We as people; humans of the lesser gods can now risk airing our ideas and words through the many channels available to us.
Coming back, we in the east are people as well, not just a number and we are functioning as well as we can with our limitations and shortcomings. Many of our nations have jerked the yoke of colonialism fairly recently and in many cases are still ruled by the appointed viceroys of the ex colonialists. However, the young generation, the flowering buds in Asia, Middle East and Africa aren’t bogged down by the weight of slavery. They are free and are thinking for their future, a life that is going to be defined by their own rules and not by shoving the ideas of “The White Man’s Burden”.
Here we are in the so-called 3rd world countries looking in amazement the many mass shootings in the United States, the demonstrations by African Americans to justify their existence as equal human beings, of the attacks on Asian Americans, and the so many *Phobia attacks on selected communities, children being snatched and separated at the Southern borders & so much more.
Here I would like to offer the “Civilized World” to come and visit us on a passenger plane with pens and paper rather than Fighter Jets with laser guided bombs to decimate innocent civilians and see the cultural mix “WHERE ALL LIVES MATTER”. People of all shades of skin live seamlessly without prejudice and even the slightest pretext of a physical threat. Is there prejudice, yes we have prejudice but no one attacks you with a Taser gun on the street because you come from a certain community.
In one of the passages from “THE SELLOUT”, the author relates a joke where a Red Neck, Hispanic, and an African American chance upon a magic lamp, and a genie appears asking them of one wish that he would fulfill. The Hispanic asked to be flown to Mexico, The African American asked to be flown to Africa; In the end, the genie asked the Red Neck, he raised his head and asked “Is the Ni@#**& and the Wet%$# gone”, the genie said yes, he said then just get me a Coke. What the author referred to was the notion that today the whites in the US or a certain kind among them regard all their problems originating from minorities.
For us in the east this is all too funny, while the west digresses in human rights and values, we are quite happy keeping ours even in the worst of situations. We pity the deterioration of the social system in the west and would like to request it to keep away from us with its regular hostilities. In case you would like to barter then we can teach you how to live in exchange of your technology that we are anyway paying for from the natural resources that you are primarily snatching away from us.
What is the reason for this post, maybe nothing and maybe everything.
Nothing as it can just be a frustrated rant.
Everything because we are now tired of your lectures and interference and would like you to back off and fix your own home.
We are buying your Teslas, using your MS Windows and while browsing the Internet on our Iphones we despise the regular news of Black Life Matters on CNN.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
