The Reunion That Never Happened: Africa and Its Diaspora
A Moment That Lingers
From a post by Kio A, this stayed with me:
“What really hit me was the way Black people treated each other. The colourism was insane. I remember a beautiful light-skinned Black girl telling me I was too dark for her family, that her grandmother would have a heart attack if she brought me home. I told her straight: you’re a slave to a white man’s system.
And she was.”
A Clash of Certainties
It is difficult to write about this.Harder still to sit with it. Because it often feels… pointless.
It is like arguing with certainty itself.
Like telling an evangelical who offers full-throated support for Israel, regardless of the atrocities committed, “Forget heaven… you will not be there.”
You are certain they will not get there.
They are absolutely certain they will.
No ground shifts.
You are wasting your time.
Unless, of course, you step outside the frame entirely.
Consider the Doppler shift, the phenomenon that helped spark Albert Einstein’s thinking.
A wave appears blue as it approaches, red as it recedes. To one observer, it is moving toward them; to another, it is moving away.
Both are correct, simultaneously.
What changes is not the object, but the frame.
(Physics becomes a problem when one tries, as I often do, to use it to make sense of human affairs. Yet the analogy persists.)
Once you accept that different observers can hold truths that appear contradictory but are equally valid, you begin to see that resolving them requires an entirely new set of paradigms.
And those paradigms may settle (or unsettle) everyone.
Adaptation or Performance?
Seen this way, the grandmother’s attitude is not entirely irrational.
In a society where skin colour operates as currency, where proximity to whiteness confers advantage, why choose additional hardship?
Why fight battles you do not have to fight?
But then again…
Are you a person, or a character in someone else’s drama?
At what point does adaptation become performance?
At what point does survival become self-erasure?
The Original Meaning of “Hypocrite”
The word hypocrite once carried no moral condemnation.
From the Greek hypokritēs:
Hypo — under
Krinein — to interpret
An hypokritēs was simply an actor.
One who:
spoke from beneath a mask
interpreted a role not their own
projected a character to an audience
The question, then, is ancient:
Are we living, or are we performing?
A Broken Continuity
This question extends beyond the individual. It stretches across history.
For over 500 years, Africa has been a site of extraction, its wealth taken, its systems distorted.
Yet something curious remains:
There has never been structured, intentional economic collaboration between Africans on the continent and Africans in the diaspora.
What might have been different if there had been?
What if a defined percentage of oil and gas contracts had been allocated to African American firms, firms that in turn employed African Americans?
What if even a fraction of Africa’s extracted wealth had circulated within its own extended family?
Why was there never economic synergy?
Why Not Now?
Why not establish free trade zones designed specifically for African American enterprise?
Manufacture here.
Export here.
Sell here.
Even within the host country.
A Symbolic Beginning
Consider a symbolic gesture.
The broken promise of “40 acres and a mule” remains one of history’s enduring moral debts.
What if a new proposition emerged:
10 acres and a mule.
10% of Nigeria’s arable land is about 8.4 million acres.
That is 840,000 ten-acre farms.
An Invitation
It is yours.
Come.
Be part of the family.
Grow food.
Build communities.
Send your retired, but not tired, professors to strengthen failing schools.
Send doctors.
Send engineers.
Bring your children, not as visitors, but as participants.
To rediscover themselves.
To reinterpret their lives outside inherited scripts.
The Fair Question
Why extend this outward when internal needs remain so pressing?
Fair question.
Inertia and Force
I understand Isaac Newton more easily than Einstein.
A body remains at rest until acted upon by an external force.
Force produces reaction.
African societies, in many ways, resemble the pike experiment.
We tried.
We were blocked.
We tried again.
Blocked again.
Eventually, we stopped trying.
Even when the barrier is removed, the behaviour remains.
A Shared Condition
The same, in a different form, applies to Africans in the diaspora.
They have had to reinterpret themselves through the lenses of others.
Not Cancellation, But Combination
What happens if both are brought together?
Not cancellation - they are not matter and antimatter.
Something else else happens. Think of it like chemistry.
An atom with two electrons in its outer shell.
Another that needs exactly two to be stable.
Affinity. Combination.
Boom! A new compound is formed.
The Missing Electrons
African Americans are among the most remarkable people of the modern era.
Yet something remains incomplete, not in essence, but in connection.
I’m finna say what many avoid:
The missing electrons… are in Africa.
You Cannot Run From Yourself
As Bob Marley said:
You keep running, and running, and running away…
but you cannot run away from yourself.
I rest my case
Don Kenobi
#OldManInTheMolue | BigAgendaAfrica
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