A painting of enslaved Africans, some dancing, some sitting, of all ages.

The Tongue We Never Lost at Sea

The civilization of a People lost…
in hell upon the arrival of a strange man
whose idol described our traditional
practices as the evil bedeviling us —
and the roadblock on our way to
his father’s house of many mansions! . . .

President of Nigeria Buhari and US Secretary of State Blinken

Dis Naija na banana republic

“Dis Naija na banana republic”, is what the cab driver said to me during our trip. While the banana industry may not be the main benefactor of widespread and deepening corruption in Nigeria (it’s the oil), there is a general lack of class analysis and revolutionary consciousness owing mostly to decades-long imperialist propaganda and baked-in capitalist ideals across much of Nigerian society. The driver, a worker like myself, can point out these stark problems through generalizations e.g., ‘dis politicians dey benefit from how tings don spoil’, or can bring up specifics related to long fuel queues or poor power supply. . . .

An African woman studying black history

African History – An Underused Weapon for Liberation

Mama is excited. She grabs her husband’s arm and smiles broadly as their daughter marches proudly to the microphone. She is perhaps 11 or 12-years-old, but at this moment, with her head held high and her perfect erect posture, she possesses the poise of a young woman twice her age. What happens next is magic – at least it is in the minds of the girl’s adoring parents who have been mesmerized from the moment their pride and joy first emerged from stage left. The young orator places her portfolio on the lectern, and while making her best efforts to . . .

African nationalism on display in Guinea

African Nationalism is not European Nationalism. Stop Projecting.

Everyday, everywhere on Earth, some European is coming into spaces with African people (or Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere) to express their perspective that nationalism is a primitive form of human consciousness. Even most of these people who claim to support national liberation for colonized people still see any semblance of national identity as reactionary and contrary to forward human progress.  We have the European socialist left to primarily thank for this racism disguised as class analysis. How and why do we call nationalism racist? Mostly because the basis of this inept analysis is that the history of Europe . . .