It is difficult not to get angry when hearing the "Go back to Africa" argument. This argument is not about Africa but the so-called kindness of white America. It assumes: white America has been very kind and offered the best parental care ever to Africans, besides the European powers. Black Africans were enslaved and sold by their own African brothers. Chattel slavery was immoral wrong, but whites ended it. Racism ended when Jim Crow laws were abolished. We even voted for the first black president, Barack Obama. Racism is a done deal -- get over it! If black Americans are still suffering, it's their own fault!
But Malcolm X was among the first people to expose this lie: in his speech, Bullet or the Ballot: "Well, we're justified in seeking civilrights, if it means equality of opportunity, because all we're doing
there is trying to collect for our investment. Our mothers and fathers invested sweat and blood. Three hundred and ten years we worked in this country without a dime in return - I mean without a dime in return. You let the white man walk around here talking about how rich this country is, but you never stop to think how it got rich so quick. It got rich because you made it rich," he said.
"Your and my mother and father, who
didn't work an eight-hour shift, but worked from "can't see" in the morning until "can't see" at night, and worked for nothing, making the white man rich, making Uncle Sam rich. This is our investment.
This is our contribution, our blood," he continued.
"Not only did we give of our free labor, we gave of our blood. Every time he had a call to arms, we were the first ones in uniform. We died on every battlefield the white man had. We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who's standing up in America today.We have made a greater contribution and have collected less," He added.
Also in his book, CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE AFRIKAN HOLOCAUST, John H. Clarke argues: "Thus, Africans were major contributors to the making of the New World, and they did not come culturally empty-handed. Many of the Africans brought to the New World such skills as iron working, leather working and carpentry.
Before the breaking up of the social structure of the West African states such as Ghana and Songhai, and the internal strife that made the slave trade possible, many Africans, especially West Africans, lived in a society in which university life was fairly
common and scholars were held in reverence.
...In that period in Western African history, the university of Sankore at Timbuktu was flourishing, and its great chancellor,
the last of the monumental scholars of West Africa, Ahmed Baba reigned over that university. A great African scholar, he wrote 47 books, each on a separate subject. He received all of his education within Africa; in fact, he did not leave the Western Sudan until he was exiled to Morocco during the invasion in 1594.
My point is this: There existed in Africa prior to the beginning of the slave trade a cultural way of life that in many ways was equal, if not superior, to many of the cultures then existing in Eu-
rope. And the slave trade destroyed these cultures and created a dilemma that the African has not been able to extract himself
from to this day."
Similarly to South Africa, where the white Afrikaners go around boasting that "they have made South Africa rich." Africans made little to nothing. We should consider the fact that apartheid South Africa was built on the backs of enslaved Africans. The fact that many Africans worked in white industries to make the Boer richer, happier and healthier is forgotten. Amilcar Cabral wrote the following about apartheid: "This is also the case with the so-called theory of apartheid, created, applied and developed on the basis of the economic and political domination of the people of Southern Africa by a racist minority, with all the outrageous crimes against humanity which that involves. The practice of apartheid takes the form of unrestrained exploitation of the labor force of the African masses, incarcerated and repressed in the largest concentration camp mankind has ever known."
Instead of asking how much
(Europe/America has "helped" the African
(and Africa), they should ask much they have been helped by Africa to achieve the privileges, power and wealth they possess.
References
1. John Hendrik Clarke. "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AND THE AFRIKAN HOLOCAUST." Pg 82.
2.
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