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It was supposed to be another usual practice of the United States police: to end a black life for pleasure. After all, is it today that the black lives will start to matter to the white man? Unfortunately, this officer of the law was caught by the wrong camera and exposed. Now the black community and other non-black freedom fighters everywhere are on their feet to fight for justice because 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’
My concern at this moment is just to figure out one thing: is the white man the appropriate person to tell us who a terrorist is? In any case, what is even the connotative difference between terrorism and imperialism, fascism, racism, colonialism…..
When the White Indies could not stand the harsh conditions of slavery, Bartholomew de las casas suggested the use of Africans as slaves because ' they were destined to work.’ That was the very foundation of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. The aftermath is what the world is still trying to settle today. Couldn’t this evil gesture earn him (Bartholomew de Las Casas)a respectable role in the executive board of terrorism?
Centuries later the whites lied to the world that they had stopped the trade because it was inhumane. The truth was that they invented machines that could work faster and better than humans. If truly they stopped the trade because it was inhumane then they would have known that disenfranchisement, economic injustice, political and social injustices were much more inhumane.
Literary pieces like Native Son by Richard Wright was written against injustice. Activists like Martin Luther King Jnr, Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, etc rose against white supremacy and the white man-made their lives terrible. Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated. Any African leader who would not kowtow to their whims and caprices was either directly or indirectly overthrown, imprisoned or even assassinated. Just ponder over what happened to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya some years back.
To cut the long story short, the whites have no basic qualification to say who a terrorist is. No, not when they continue to tag some as gunmen, shooters, extremist etc. Do you remember the man who shot and killed over 40 people in New Zealand? Well, the whites never tag him a terrorist because he was one of them. By the way, have you ever heard of the Ku Klux Klan (kkk) in America before? Its mission was just to kill Black people in America. Find time and read about it and you would wonder why you have never heard of it.
Their (whites) establishment of individuals or groups as terrorists might be an attempt to fuel their evil machinery. For centuries now, all that the black man longs for is to be treated as a fellow human being and you still cannot grant that.
Moomin Abdulai Sensew
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