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Blacks matter.

I’m Oluwabukola which means ‘God adds to wealth’, I’m presently nineteen and already feeling like this world is not a happy place. I’m a Nigerian by blood and by heart, it doesn’t matter if I’ve left my country for five years now, Nigeria will always be my home.

I remember the day daddy told us we’d leave the country, I remember how happy he was because he so wanted to give us a better life he couldn’t get while he was still growing up. His smile was so big that it warmed my broken heart, my heart kept beating and I could already taste the hurt I felt, because deep down I knew everything would entirely change.

We left Nigeria to start living in New York, changed schools and it was a disaster cause I had issues with making friends unlike my little brother who was everyone’s man. I kept to myself for the few months we arrived, I didn’t even know who my neighbours were, that’s how closed off everyone seemed. No warm greetings, no knowing other people’s business like it was in Nigeria. Everything was so different and I hated it.

But what I hated more was the discrimination. A week after I and my family arrived, we were looking for a church to attend service and then we finally found the one we attended while we were still in Nigeria. We did that because it reminded us of home.

As we arrived at the church door to finally enter, we were suddenly stopped by the usher who told us in his own twisted way of being humble, that the church only harboured the whites and not the coloured.

Shock was written all over my parents faces, and I stood there glaring so hard at the so called usher. It was a church for crying out loud! I couldn’t fathom such stupidity, a church was established to draw people in, both black and white, not separate us like Jesus didn’t want our black souls too. I felt disgusted.

We left there disappointed and insulted. But it was never in our genes as Africans to give up. We moved to another church instead. After that day at the door step of the church everything changed. I started noticing things I didn’t notice before, started getting to know how twisted some people’s mentalities are. Funny, even some blacks here still think they are not Africans, they so happily deny their origin because they want to belong.

I started asking questions,a lot of them. Started reading books too, books that weren’t for my age. I remember my dad calling me a philosopher, because I so wanted to understand things that weren’t normal. Discrimination is abnormal in my dictionary and I wanted to get why. Why did people classify us a dirt? Why does our opinions not matter? Why are we separated from the whites in status and everything else?

I remember seeing a tweet one time, where a “Black American” like they so love to classify themselves, was insulting other Africans, even went ahead to ask how we get the money to buy iPhones. Now I started asking, does the ‘black’ in the black lives matter only stand for the Black Americans or the whole Africans?

Honestly, some black Americans are racists to Africans. I have seen and heard it. It only makes me wonder why people can’t just love instead of criticize and hate. I really don’t blame those black Americans maybe, just maybe it’s their own way of fitting in. But it’s wrong, we don’t deserve such cruelty because of our origin. Aren’t they tired? Cause we are, tired of been left behind because of our skin colour, tired of been tagged as ugly, tired of been shut out. We are people like the white and black americans. It’s just a colour and it’s just our nationality, start dealing with it.

#Blacklivesmatter

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Written by Faith Rotimi-Ibitoye (0)

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