More Shots out at Slavery: Senegalese Undocumented Worker
A single still image at left taken from Ousmane Sembène’s *La Noire de… *(Black Girl) shows to me the pivotal moment when our heroine’s colonial fate is sealed. It is not for me to explain to you the entire plot of this movie. It is a very sincere film and is not difficult to grasp for those with the information and home training. What needs to be said here is that this still image shows the moment when the “black girl” tells her mother that she is about to go to work for white people in France. It is at this moment when her mother could have provided some statistical information about the probability that her living conditions—especially what is called her “spiritual” vitality—in France will be generative and healthy. When I imply the root word statistics I am not trying to be cute and coy. One of the roles of our elders is to provide useful, homespun census data. Our elders are supposed to be healthy and thoughtful enough to remember people other than themselves. Here in North America, this is often not the case. It is so reactionary and rebellious how young people consciously disregard almost all information from immediate family. The elders teach us. Even when they are not teaching us they are still teaching us. We need to listen—even when we are not being heard.
The next still at right shows me the reasons why young people—especially African youth all over the world—ignore the family elephant in the room. This image shows two African young people, the “black girl” and her beaux, looking at “continental” magazine before her departure to France. These two are being entertained and contained by the marketing wizardry of the west. They are completely absorbed and preoccupied by images that have nothing to do with them. The power of analytical existentialism allows them to surgically remove themselves from their present situation and transport themselves to a location that does not exist. They are fantasizing about bullshit—but, just like many youth of today, they would insist that they are “keeping it real.” What is disturbing is that this fantasizing is being dramatized in 1966—over 40 years ago! This bullshit is still going on now on a massive scale! Billions are being spent daily!
What is even deeper is that this has been going on for so long that there are very few elders with the home training to tell the African youth that this way of thinking is completely alien to pre-colonial African people, free from the influence of Indo-European imperial thought. (Let’s not forget about the “Arabic influence” that is murdering African people in Darfur today.) For most of us, these oral traditions are long gone. When I read “The Male” written by a man in South Africa on April 21, 2006, I see this loss in the flesh. My accusation against this South African citizen is that he fails to understand that the generation of his parents and his parent’s parents were deliberately mis-educated. The opinion here is that his report in “The Male” is an account of the cultural toxic waste left over from such missionary mis-education.
There is an implied disrespect here for the humanity of their parents and grandparents. Here is the racist irony: In our “fight” against “racism” we often depend on the mental traps of racism: just because a person has a certain skin complexion and because they happen to live on the continent called ‘Africa’ we assume that they are an African—and whatever sexist or violent behavior this chocolate-colored person produces must be African. This is the racist, missionary-trained assumption the children of Africa make about their forbearers. It is this pitiful line of thinking that permits so many of us to overlook the possibility that pre-colonial African cultures were deliberately designed and carefully developed over generations for functional (and often technical) reasons. African culture was not originally meant for us to be “proud” of so we can scare white people—it was designed to be used, implemented, incarnated on a daily basis that we may be fruitful and multiply. Much respect to The Lord, that brought us out of imperial Egypt, that what these words here are saying are not new. The recommended reading here is Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta.
What continues to go unappreciated is the awesome power of white supremacy—most of this power is converted and refined from the human resources of “non-whites.” Too many Black people—and almost all white liberals—have very little respect for it. White power fossil-fuels one of the most profound mental/cultural revolutions in the history of the world. It is so powerful that it can reduce the healthiest “black girl”—selected by the universe to be fruitful and multiply with her dominant genes—to destroy herself. We don’t have to give away the plot in Sembène’s film. Let’s see the real “black girl” for a few sentences. Let’s start with her whole-hearted, indignant acceptance of the real toxic chemicals that weaken the strands of the hair on her head. Let’s start with the poison she calls food that she defiantly and indignantly places in her mouth on her way to diabetic obesity. White power is a triumph of the will over the laws of nature—and nature travaileth. It feels strange to remind human beings that they are ‘a part of nature’—such is the depths of whiteness. Whiteness is ready and willing for all takers of all skin colors. The West id the best. “Get here: we’ll do the rest.” For more appreciation of the work of Ousmane Sembène, see “David Mandessi Diop: To the Bamboozlers” here at kintespace.com.