Afrilition: Race and the false flag operation of creating difference, By Adéwálé Àjàdí

Our future is not about the boundary of unity enforced but about a holding space for the creative work of engaging our many different perspectives and expressions, so that we can disagree productively whilst creating more than the sum of its parts. Afrilition is about a space for this African process of using difference as the engine for exponential growth. The process will be challenging but founded in the respect for the Pan-African diaspora not being reduced to the trauma and pain delivered by notions of white supremacy.

Race as a construct has been a fundamental distraction to humanity. It frames a narrative constructed by the pseudoscientific desire for supremacy and dresses it up as natural human hierarchy. Unfortunately, this trumped up reframing of humanity uses the caste sensibilities that are maintained through the hard power of the dollar, the dominating military power of the US, the clear dispersal of the cultural power of Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Most seductive is the indoctrinating capacity of the need to hold a certificate from US and UK education institutions to get the labour market opportunities they create.

Across the African centres of the world, these constructs by the ‘colonialist bloc’ continue to reframe the inevitable diverse perspectives of Africa as part of failings to achieve some form of unified position. This is a distraction from the evolutionary and transformative trajectory that the African world would have fashioned around its unique spectrum of differences.

Unfortunately, our reactions against the colonial system and other traumatic experiences like the trans-Atlantic enslavement of Africans, which were brutally executed under the paradigm or construct of race, has become the framing of Africa and African socio-political world. It is from these that the desire for oneness is performed by oversimplifying and reducing people to ‘coloured’ or ‘black,’ while stripping them of their delicious differentiation and reducing their complexity. This is the idea of skin-folks being ideally kinfolk without the deeper understanding of what is lost in the process.

This is a truly tough issue to address. It is not made easier when pandering politicians like Mrs Kemi Badenoch are seen as voices for an alternative to a common platform based on ‘black experiences.  Her choice of audience and cheering section, however, makes her find ways to gratuitously dismiss the sensibilities of mass groups of people across the African world.

The African continent itself has more genetic diversity, which is about twice that of the rest of the world. If the rest of the world is wiped out in a nuclear holocaust and Africa remains, the world will still retain all its genetic spectrum. The same does not happen if Africa is wiped out and the rest of the world remains. The most narcissistic aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic was the projection of African devastation by some commentators, as if that would not be destructive to humanity.

In contrast one of my greatest teachers and mentors is Joel O’loughlin, who on his best days is Nevesian, meaning that he is originally from St Kitts and Nevis, with an upbringing in Birmingham, England. He remarks on Afrilition that “it takes a Griot like your kind to find the African in me” is one of his most kind and flattering comments. He is more African in his love for the world that is Africa and her children than most who feel entitled to the identity, and certainly more than Mrs Badenoch. We do not need to have one position as Africans but we must hold our connection worthy of respect to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

Afrilition is not for those who just claim Africa by virtue of birth nor for those who feel entitled to the classification under the pseudoscience of race. It is for those brave or courageous enough to choose African identity with commitment towards its evolution. Edward Wilmot Blyden, born in St Thomas in what is now the US Virgin Islands. A prodigious child with capacity that drove the Jesuits of his world to take the unprecedented steps to seek education for him, so that he could fulfill his potential beyond enslavement and a racist world.

Their first attempt was to put him in school in the US, but he was rejected simply for his identity of being of a visible African descent. He eventually thrived through the most unusual route for anyone from the Americas.  Educated at Fourah Bay College in Seirra Leone in the 1800s, his unique and amazing life went on to be the first to ever create a Pan-African personality before anyone else. He was African because he had to construct a world in which someone like him – the product of an heinous system of enslavement whose extraordinary intellect was never given room – had to come to the continent to be educated and fully express his potential.

He moved beyond being the subject of race to seeing his African self objectively. This came later through the prism  opened by WEB Dubios and Marcus Garvey, who were able to construct Africa beyond its diversity towards a single personality. 

In all the inevitable turbulence of African descendants journey of Afrilition, the disdainful games of racial animus along with the narcissistic process of dismissing concerns of Africans should not be excused or tolerated. However we must spend our better selves to dream, design and build excellence so that posterity lives fully and freely in its authentic Afrilition.

The African continent itself has more genetic diversity, which is about twice that of the rest of the world. If the rest of the world is wiped out in a nuclear holocaust and Africa remains, the world will still retain all its genetic spectrum. The same does not happen if Africa is wiped out and the rest of the world remains. The most narcissistic aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic was the projection of African devastation by some commentators, as if that would not be destructive to humanity. Thankfully, the continent did not have the speculated mass deaths and we still await the scientific reasons for this. The same is also true of the ethnic and cultural diversity in the African world, compared to all other places.

Our future is not about the boundary of unity enforced but about a holding space for the creative work of engaging our many different perspectives and expressions, so that we can disagree productively whilst creating more than the sum of its parts. Afrilition is about a space for this African process of using difference as the engine for exponential growth. The process will be challenging but founded in the respect for the Pan-African diaspora not being reduced to the trauma and pain delivered by notions of white supremacy.

In all the inevitable turbulence of African descendants journey of Afrilition, the disdainful games of racial animus along with the narcissistic process of dismissing concerns of Africans should not be excused or tolerated. However we must spend our better selves to dream, design and build excellence so that posterity lives fully and freely in its authentic Afrilition.

Adéwálé Àjàdí, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of the newly released Afrilition: 21st Century African Manifesto, and Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.