Black Racism

Recently I attended an interview, the panel was all African, not that I am an African supremacist but my hopes were high on steroids. I had the papers and experience. My opposite number was a white backpacker on tour. I was wrong. Things took a turn for the worst when I was made to wait outside the interviewing room. ‘’What are we waiting for?’’ I asked the lady.”Ouh, just be patient, ‘’she answered. It would be worth noting that coincidentally,top on my reading list that week was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Minutes later the white boy arrived (let the hunger games begin) the lady who had ushered me in the makeshift lobby ran as hell towards the boy (poor thing).”We have been waiting for you,” she said. Schmoozing and acting all nice like she had just come into contact with a V.I.P of some sort. I wondered if I was say in Brussels, Copenhagen or London for that matter and was the only black interviewee in the room would I be accorded the same priority? My hopes fell knowing that I stood no chance of winning, if one of the interviewers, the HR as I later learnt was behaving like this, what hopes did I have for a transparent process. Downcast and fatigued I blindly went through the interviewing process and went home. The African trade deal has just come into play at the beginning of the year but unless we change our mentality, we are going nowhere. Most of us are Africans with a Eurocentric mind set; we should propagate more Afrocentrism in our mindsets to spur independent mindedness. Our standard operating procedure should not be set by those who consider us inferior. I do not blame the lady. Parents in schools would prefer a white person with no teaching skill compared to a black professor in the discipline, this colonial mentality was imposed on us through a multifacet of srategies,first our curriculum and socialization, you would rather your friends know you went to Paris for holiday than visiting your local Accra beach or the one in Mombasa. Media houses would rather employ brown 'influencers' with no journalistic bone in their stead than a dark skinned sister with 10 years’ experience in journalism; after all it is what people want. Unless we embrace what negritude proponents like Leopold Sedor Sengor and Black consciousness movement activists like Steve Biko stood for we are a long way from decolonising our minds.