Sir: ‘I am skin colour-blind. I use my colour blindness to create friendliness amongst humanity. We are a constituent family in human space. Mutual love makes life beautiful’— Yahaya Balogun.
It was a great honour for me when Professor Philip Alalibo, a Nigerian-Canadian scholar, requested to use a line from one of my published articles in his new book “A Day in Our Skin: A Struggle Between Race and Resilience.” It was a humbling experience to know that my words resonated with him enough to be included in his book. This recognition of my writing skills and aspiration to be an expert in writing has inspired me to continue sharing my thoughts and ideas with others.
“A Day in Our Skin: A Struggle Between Race and Resilience” is a book that delves deeply into the complexities of race relations in America and Canada. Its conception was born out of the tragic murder of George Floyd and Professor Philip Alalibo’s experiences with African counterparts who still struggle under the yoke of neo-colonialism.
As I read through its pages, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that the world of Africans was not changing for the better despite our collective efforts. But even in the face of this harsh reality, the book offers a glimmer of hope and resilience. It reminds us that change is possible and that we can create a better world for ourselves and future generations through our struggles and perseverance.
It is pertinent to remember that George Floyd was an African-American resident of Minnesota. He was arrested in a US convenience store in 2020 for a “fake” 20-dollar note after the store attendant called the Minnesota Police Department-MPD. A White police officer-Derek Michael Chauvin of Minneapolis-PD, racially mistreated and slayed George Floyd. The death of George Floyd sparked global outrage and protests. Derek Michael Chauvin is a former white American police officer. Derek Chauvin has since been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murder and a racial crime against George Floyd.
In his “A Day in Our Skin: A Struggle Between Race and Resilience,” Professor Philip Alalibo chronicles his experiences as a black man in the conscious and unconscious biases of white people against black people in the Western world. And how Africans have consistently had an inferiority complex and subjected themselves to the superiority complex of the white people.
Furthermore, my piece, “Neocolonialism is eviler than colonialism. Neocolonialism has eaten deeper into the mental palace and consciousness of Africans.” The Canadian Professor quoted the work above in his newly minted book and formed the onus of his masterpiece and archival book. Without being hyperbolic, African people have incapable minds of governing themselves. We see this sad axiomatic manifestation every day in the lives of African leaders.
Meanwhile, the continent of Africa is a resourceful land. African land is abundantly endowed with human capital and natural resources. But the crudity and enslavement of the physical African beings have transformed into a flurry of mental slavery. An average African will like the subservience of his low complexity to the superiority of the biased white people. This inferiority complex in the minds of a typical African is a leverage for the consciously narrow and superior complex of their white contemporaries.
Until African countries remove or uproot the foundational evils and machinations of brutish British colonialism and Neocolonialism, Africa will perpetually remain surreptitiously enslaved and subservient in thought process and cognition to the whims of white superiority and the Western world. Hence, Professor Chinua Achebe’s quotation below remains instructive to today’s bleak lives of Africans: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Intuitively, only a deep thinker can deconstruct the late Achebe’s axiomatic expression above.
Last but not least, Professor Philip Alalibo’s book elucidates suggested prescriptions on how to deconstruct and de-emphasize the mental confinement of the African people. “A Day in Our Skin: A Struggle Between Race and Resilience” is a resourceful book that will restructure and re-situate the mental formations of the Africans who are still battling and unconsciously corded with nuances of slavery, colonialism, and Neocolonialism. Professor Philip Alalibo’s new book is written with professorial lucidity. The book is an explosive, instructive, educative, evocative, and conscientised read. It is a must-read for inquisitors and those who want the dismantling of racial inequality and conscious and unconscious biases in our world.
•Yahaya Balogun lives in Arizona, the United States of America.
