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NOBODY OWES BLACKS ANYTHING: TRUTH, HONESTY AND FRANKNESS
In 2000, I was invited to Morgan State University, in Baltimore, Maryland, as the keynote speaker at their Bill of Rights/Trans Africa Convocation, held in the Carl Murphy Fine Arts Auditorium. Dean Burney J Hollis awarded me the Distinguished Achievement Award, for my work as âInternational Diplomat, Editor and Authorâ. This is his introduction to my keynote address.
His Excellency, Dr Chika Onyeani, is a man for all seasons â an international diplomat, a pace-setting journalist and a distinguished author. For over three decades, he has been a pioneer and a pathfinder, a beacon and a trailblazer, and a commander and a mighty warrior. From his current post as editor-in-chief of the African Sun Times and his various stations in the worldwide Pan-African movement, Dr Onyeani has achieved singularity, and honour, as one of Africaâs foremost statesmen.
Whether during the 1960s, when he was Nigeriaâs youngest diplomat and served in diplomatic posts in London, Dublin, Brussels, Paris and New York, or, later, as the founding editor of the African Sun Times, the largest and only weekly African newspaper distributed nationwide in America, or as founding chairman of the United African Congress, the umbrella organisation for all continental Africans in the United States, and as current interim chair of Africans for Democracy, Dr Chika Onyeani has brought to his work an unshakable devotion to truth and to Pan-African unity. He has been a courageous and forthright advocate of excellence and achievement for peoples of African descent around the world, and he issued this year a stentorian call for Black people to rise above being dependent and complacent consumers and become independent, reformed producers â of culture, language, food, clothing, values and economies.
In his landmark publication, Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success, he issues an angry, but compassionate, cry for Black people around the world â especially African leaders â to wake up to the reality of their own enormous potential and become economic warriors in the world. He has penned a historic and ground-breaking economic, political and cultural treatise that, according to one critic, is the âdefinitive book on the Black Race that every Black person would like to have written, but didnât have the courage [to write]â.
Over the last three decades, Dr Chika Onyeani has been recognised and applauded across this country â by the media, by the business community, by social and fraternal societies, and by local governments.
This morning, Morgan adds its name to those around the world who have recognised and praised the good work and the visionary leadership of this man for all seasons. So, I am pleased today, on behalf of our university community, to present to His Excellency, Dr Chika Onyeani, the Morgan State University Distinguished Achievement Award for 2000, in recognition of outstanding contributions to African-American and African and Pan-African history and culture.
My keynote address, entitled âNobody Owes Blacks Anything: Truth, Honesty and Frankness, followed Dean Hollisâs introduction.
Good morning,
President Earl Richardson, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters. I feel especially honoured to be here today, in this great institution. I must thank Dean Hollis for inviting me to come here today.
In fact, the last time I was in Baltimore was at the Middle-Atlantic Writers Association conference, and I had been invited by Professor Grace Coffey to speak about my book, Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success â A Spider Web Doctrine. My African sister Yahne Sangarey, a member of the African Sun Times staff as well as Curator of the African Museum here in Baltimore, had arranged for me to participate in âGlobal African Writers: The Ties that Bindâ of the United Nations African Project. The book was well received, and when Dean Hollis offered to bring me here to speak with you, I wasnât sure that his colleagues would have the courage to agree with his selection of an author of such a controversial book and viewpoint. The fact that I am here today is a testimony to the courage and progressive thinking of the members of this institution. I thank you all, and especially Dean Hollis for his bold initiative.
A lot of times when we present our polished resumĂ©s, we forget to mention the humble environment we come from. Of course, I am no exception. But I would be remiss if I didnât tell you a little bit about myself other than what is in my resumĂ©. I come from Ohafia, a warrior group of the Igbo national group in Nigeria. It is in a very remote area of the country. When I was growing up, we attended school in makeshift mud huts. Then, as today, we didnât have running water, and now the electricity we have hardly works one day in a month. For most of us, books were a luxury, but when we got hold of one we made sure that we knew what was in it to pass our exams and move to the next class. In fact, I am exceptionally lucky because I was one of those who hardly had books, even exercise books â what you call notebooks here â not because my parents did not provide the money for them, but because of my uncleâs partiality to my cousin, who started school with me.
Needless to say, my cousin was three classes behind me when we finished, and even then I had set a goal of becoming somebody. I gave you that very short resumé just to say that, no matter wherever you come from, or from whatever circumstances, you can achieve whatever goal you set your mind on. And, looking at you all, I know you are all very special and goal-oriented; otherwise you would not be sitting where you are now. Thousands of others have abandoned their goals even before they started. I applaud you all.
My topic today is the Black Race. It is not about Africans from the continent, or Africans in the diaspora, or African West Indians, but about the Black Race. My discussion is about truth; it is about honesty and frankness. It is about no more lies, no more hiding the truth, and no more blaming others for what is happening to the Black Race. It is about accepting responsibility for our actions; it is about playing the same games that others are playing and becoming very successful.
It is about being intelligent about how we make decisions on where to spend our hard-earned money. It is about no more playing the blame game, and the victim-mentality game. In this 21st century, we have to accept the truth of our situation, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. There is nobody more qualified to debate the state of the Black Race versus others than you and I. We cannot, as usual, in our lackadaisical manner, abandon this debate to others with better access to the media.
In Africa, we have a saying: âWhen a child grows up, and he is able to wash his hands, he should sit at the same table and eat with his elders.â
The Black Race has grown up; we have washed our hands, but the question is: why are we not sitting at the same table to eat with our elders? Why are we not even sitting at the same table with other races to eat from the same table. Why are we still eating from the floor?
We have another saying in Africa: âYou donât need a mirror to look at what you are wearing on your wrist.â You see, you can look at your wrist and see clearly what you are wearing. You donât need a mirror to tell you what time it is or what kind of jewellery you are wearing.
But, unfortunately, we as a people, the Black Race, prefer to look at what we are wearing on our wrist with a mirror. Just try it, and you will see why we have a much-distorted image of our situation.
We are afraid of looking at the truth. We prefer the fuzzy image. We know the truth, but we donât want to talk about it. Yes, we say to ourselves, we cannot wash our dirty linen in public; we cannot talk about the truth of our situation, because white people are going to seize that as a weapon against us. We believe that they will say, âYou see, even the Blacks themselves are saying what we have been saying all along. They are lazy, they are non-productive, they canât govern themselves, they are unruly, etc., etc.â Well, let me tell you the facts of life. That era of our not looking the truth in the face is dead and gone.
This is the 21st century, and I am happy that there is a group of Blacks all over the world who believe that we, just like the Jews and others, must begin to wash our so-called dirty linen in public. Again, where I come from, there is another saying that âyou donât chase after a mouse when your house is on fireâ. Just take a second to digest that statement. Because you know what would happen if you started chasing after the mouse when the house was on fire. You would perish and the mouse would escape. I am telling you that the Black Race is like an inferno; we shouldnât be chasing after a mouse. What we need is water, no, we need a whole ocean, to put out the inferno.
The word âruthlessâ is regarded as a negative when used to describe somebodyâs actions. But, to me, it is a very positive word.
And that is why I decided to be ruthlessly frank about the Black Race in my book, Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success. No more hiding what people would say about us. Their opinion is irrelevant and meaningless.
Our situation is critical, and we need drastic action if we are to begin to discover and cure the seemingly insurmountable virus devouring our organs of life. The first bitter truth we have to accept, as I charged in my book, is that the Black Race as now constituted, though as endowed as the others, is a non-productive race. We have to accept the fact that the Black Race basically is a consumer race, depending on other communities for our culture, our language, our feeding and our clothing.
And despite our abundance of natural resources, we are economic slaves because we lack the âkiller instinctâ and âdevil-may-care attitudeâ of the Caucasian and the âspider web economic mentalityâ of the Asian. The Black Race is the most hospitable race of people I have ever seen. We have no difficulty throwing out our own brothers or sisters just to accommodate any other race other than our own. We would rather be poor â let our guests be comfortable.
But let me be totally sincere with you here. I am tired of a people who have one mindset, and who complain and whine about what others do to us. We complain and complain and whine and whine ad nauseam about what others have done to us and are still doing to us. We think the world owes us something. I am sorry to say that we are delusional. Nobody owes us a thing. Nobody is willing to give up what they have, on the excuse that we want it. If you want something, you have to go out and get it. You cannot continue to beg for manna to fall from heaven, my brothers and sisters.
Most African countries have been independent for more than forty years. The promise of independence is yet to be fulfilled. We thought that manna would fall from heaven. But, instead, what we have in Africa are wars, famine, disease, military dictatorships and human rights abuses. We have despotic leaders who prefer to loot the peopleâs treasuries for their own personal aggrandisement, leaders who prefer to force the adulation of the masses through the barrel of a gun rather than through the provision of simple amenities â like good roads, health care facilities and good environments for learning and opportunities for employment.
My brothers and sisters, I feel sad letting you know that Africa is worse off today than when the colonial masters left. Everything we use in Africa is imported. Do you know that we even still import candles from Taiwan?
Yet, more than forty years after independence, we still blame our colonial masters for everything that happens in Africa today. Our leaders are not man enough to accept responsibility for the abject poverty of our people. We accuse Europeans of plundering and pillaging the natural resources of Africa. But, tell me, who is inviting them to do this? Are they not our own people?
I am sure you have all heard of tyrants and dictators like Sani Abacha of Nigeria and Mobutu Sese Seko of ZaĂŻre (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Abacha stole more than $5 billion from the impoverished treasury of Nigeria and took that money and deposited it in Swiss bank accounts. Since his death, the Swiss authorities have âfoundâ only $1.5 billion of that money. For his part, Mobutu Sese Seko took $6 billion to the same Swiss banks. After he died, the Swiss told us that they had found only $7 million of that money. Tell me, which white man left Europe and put a gun to their heads and forced them to steal $12 billion from a continent where the per capita income is less than $500 per year? Do you know what $12 billion could have done for the starving and disease-prone children in those countries?
No, we cannot continue to accuse white people for everything happening to us. At a certain point in time, we have to sit back, look in the mirror and see the culprit of our misfortune. It is not the white, the red, the green, the yellow or any other colour. We are responsible for what is happening to us today.
As Capitalist Nigger has charged, the Black Race is drowning in the blame and victim-mentality game. We have three things we now wear as body armour: slavery, colonialism and racism. We use these as excuses for our failures. We blame all our failures on these three factors. In Africa, we blame everything on colonialism and racism. In the Western world...
