Someone posted a quote from this citation on my You Tube channel and could hardly believe it was written by a Nigerian man. I’m reposting it, knowing some folks are going to accuse me of hating black men. That’s not the reason I’m going to do it. Some of what he said reflected a vast empathy for black women (especially American black women) and the unequal situation that plagues the black community.

May I have to do I have to do a quick ego-stroke and say not all black men are losers? In this case, I do. What this man says is true, but a very, very hard pill to swallow. But these conversations are necessary and simply aren’t happening enough to be impactful. Surely this man has been shouted down.

Read, and let’s discuss. The bold emphasis is mine, because it was so damn awesome.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE BLACK MAN? By Michael Oluwagbemi II

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
Malcolm X.

In recent times I have been pondering over this question (indeed inspired by contributions of certain NVS and NIAcontributors)…and have been lost for a single answer. Not as if I think that a single answer exists but try I will still try. Think about it, in every society the black man finds himself, he is at the lowest wrung of the society. Lowest in income, education, and health in America (perhaps the world) and highest in every available negative index: crime, prison stewardship, poverty, HIV etc. It so sad, that even beyond America they are the lords of distant lands that are the epitome of poverty, disease, corruption, and bad government. The black man of the world, is basically is a walking laughing joke- a buffoon. We sit over the world most mismanaged economy from Caribbean (read Jamaica and Haiti) to Africa (read Nigeria and Zimbabwe) and even Australia (read Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands). Anywhere we find our selves, we have been a disgrace to manhood and a symbol of everything wrong with the human race.

The black man has lost respect for his person and has such sacrificed respect even amongst his peers. We traded our kinfolks and then whined about slave trade. We submitted sheepishly to the master’s orders and complain about a lopsided World Economic Order. While the Indian, Mulatto (Brazilian), Chinese and Russian male freed themselves from global inequality by the power of their brain and brawn, the black man is still held hostage to himself. We have been left behind in the latest wave of world economic development. How then can we stake claim to a thinking mind, as someone recently posited? It is so bad that the few ones respected amongst us have to either go to jail or get shot multiple times. You doubt what I just say? Please think Nelson Mandela, Olusegun Obasanjo, and 50 Cent (Gracing Forbes –white man capitalism – magazine this month). All “ex-jail men” or ex-ER room patients!

A race without leadership is doomed and headed to perdition. The black man has ceded his birthright position of leadership in our communities to no one but our women. We blame it on everything but ourselves. Some say is slavery, some blame feminism and other invincible gibberish. How about ourselves? What role did we play in getting into this quagmire? We have been out-maneuvered, outfoxed, and out-meandered in the global world economic and political order that we have been left with our pants hanging. Women respect three things in men: knowledge, money, and power. We have lost on those three counts to our women- at least in America – the melting pot of the world. More black women graduate in college than black men…at the last count with a three to one advantage. In addition, this boosts their earning power when they leave school and make them really not need any black man. Who needs a dead beat or a jail bird? We are rotting in prisons across the country while the black woman is expanding in knowledge, seeing the world and really just envisioning us as stud machine! Haba! The only logical reason the black woman will ever go into bed with us this day is for the common good: so that the black race will not become extinct. What have we to offer?

In the sphere of money and power, it is so easy to see why we are playing catch up with our women in God’s own country: America. America is a leveler many will say- we do not have the advantage of selfishness, oppression, and arrant madness going on in our respective land of origins. Be it Africa, Pacific, or the Americas. In the United States of America, Uncle Sam is the boss and the black women don’t have to answer to anyone! Not even you Massa. What is the end result? The richest and most powerful black people in America and perhaps in the world today are women. Ditto, read Oprah Winfrey and Condi Rice: the richest black person in America and Madam Secretary of State respectively. Now you see why I think the lot of the black man is a losing proposition.

What is wrong with the black man? Even in Nigeria, our women are showing us up; they have proven to be better managers and have earned the trust of the general public in their exemplary public service in the current democratic dispensation. Go to the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs, Education, Solid Minerals, Due Process Unit, NAFDAC, Transcorp-NSE and you will see how Nigerian women are cleaning up the mess left by their ignoble men. Of course some of the few capable men have taken the easier route of taking comfort in the ease of life created in foreign lands by other male species of different color. We have become been-to, tokunboh and other terms used for us including hyphenated nationality; people without identity and pride of place. All in exchange for developing our guest homes while our own rot away in total oblivion handed over to men whose only claim to manhood is what dangles between their thighs. We have handed the key of the armory to the enemy and lost the respect of our women. Which kind of man runs away from his trouble?

Bad part of course is that many amongst us will not even acknowledge we have a problem. Oh, we blame everyone but ourselves. We blame the system, we blame the hate. Everyone hates the black man we are quick to say. We walk around with victim mentality. Once upon a time it was the white man conspiring against us, now it is so hard to prove that the Indian, Chinese, and Brazilian men were into that conspiracy as well. We now throw the books at our women: we blame them for being assimilated by the destructive ideology called feminisms but we don’t see our culpability of leaving them with no option. At least we gave them cause to move to the West when we destroyed our respective homelands; so how can we turn around to blame them for choosing to put their brains where their livelihood is? How many of us are contented with what we have and don’t live everyday as if it were our last? We don’t invest, or expand our horizon. We splurge money on big this and big that to reflect on our inferiority complex while we make the white man and his peers around the world richer. We are buying drugs and destroying our youths, yet we leave the drug routes and drug business infrastructure to the Mexicans and Columbians. Why? We are the best athletes in the world, yet the white man is getting rich being the NBA commissioner, sports club owners and promoters! Vis-à-vis for music; we loathe ourselves so much and we are locked in a cycle of fratricidal killing- Biggie killed Tupac and Abacha killed Yaradua. From Nigeria where the policeman shoots his fellow citizen men at random to America where the inner city black male is killing his contemporaries in drove, we are killing each other like no tomorrow. We hate each other and have an endemic complex. We buy foreign goods and treat our own with contempt; how else will you explain talking down on Aba while its counterpart in Taipei is frequented by your ilk?

For the progress of the entire black race, positive change is inevitable. Once upon a time, the black man was king. In the time of the black Pharaohs who ruled Egypt and those that sat over the affairs of Nubia, we reigned like men should reign. We lead the world. It has not always been like this – once upon a time we were the custodian of civilization, technology, and good government.It is time to return to Nubia. Hence, we must turn a new leaf and enter a new era. We must take back first the leadership of our homes and be called “real” men instead of the sissy mentality we are currently exhibiting. We must be responsible for our actions and free ourselves from what the Abami Eda called “Colomentality”. We must stop blaming others for our actions and see through our own folly. We must go back to school and apply what we learn for the development of our homeland. We must stop the self hate, understand the concept of cooperative domination, and that investing in the future involves making the hard decisions of self effacement and discipline right now. We should not expect the black woman to hand leadership back to us: we must take it back. It is a capitalist world, and you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate and work hard for. We must demonstrate that as black men we deserve the leadership we have abdicated in the past. We can only succeed when we put our best foot forward.

Last Line:

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. It’s not viewed as a serious continent. It’s a place of strange, bizarre, and illogical things, where people don’t do what common sense demands.
Chinua Achebe