OPINION
By Zemdena Abebe
I was in the midst of a lovely concert at the Stade Mamadou Konate organized and sponsored by Orange (a French telecom provider) here in one of France’s former colonies, Mali, when the news of the Paris attacks surfaced. I was trying to share a video from the concert on my social media page and asking for translations, when the singer on stage sang “Franci….”( a Bambara word for France) going on to say something else I couldn’t decipher.
I asked my Malian friend what was being said, wondering, is the singer hailing and praising the former colonial master? Is she singing, “I want to go to France”? What could she be saying? Is she saying all of these things because the event was organized by a French company and she felt pressured? After all, whoever feeds you controls you, right?
These were random thoughts going through my head when I stumbled upon the news on my timeline about the horrendous act that took place in Paris. At first, I read 30 deaths, the numbers escalated as time went by and so did the plethora of information and condolences coming from all over the world. It seemed like the world was at a standstill. It felt almost like when the 9/11 attacks occurred, a similar eerie feeling.
Like something evil to the whole of humanity had happened, almost like an alien attack from Mars or something. To my mind that had been fixated on chilling on a Friday night, it did not make sense; it did not add up, it had not sunk in yet. I was still confused as to what exactly happened. Thus I was really in a hurry to go home and see what made the Paris attacks so unique, so horrific, so disturbing, so shocking, so relevant, so painful, so unimaginable, so pathetic, so ruthless, so VISIBLE.
On my way home I decided to stop at a local bar for food (maybe it’s the shock that made me very hungry. Had dooms day arrived?) I was astonished to see a room full of handsome men, a few women, mostly drinking and chatting, some smoking and some old school hip-hop playing in the background. I was digging the vibes despite being a bit uneasy at the lusty yet smile-coated gazes that were undressing my womanhood.
It was in an effort to avoid the male gaze that I looked up, and that was when when my eyes landed on the flat screen TV. It was showing live coverage of the Paris attacks! That astonishing rare circumstance caught my eyes! It was bewildering. I have noticed that clubs and bars usually play a backdrop of music videos on their plasma screens but never in my nightlife experience have I seen the news at night being shown in a bar/restaurant.
After all, aren’t those places where one tries to escape the gruesome realties of life, particularly the news and the pain of this world and find solace in music and heal oneself in the complete sense of temporary freedom? At any rate, all I wanted to do was to go home as soon as possible, charge my phone and dig deeper, unravel the truth of the matter at hand and deconstruct the doom that had occurred against humanity.
What on earth had happened in Paris? What was the most defining factor? What made it capture this amount of attention? Why was it any different? What had happened that seemed to unify the world in mourning? Was my suspicion true: was humanity under threat? Why did the aliens choose the ‘romantic’ city of Paris, of all places in the whole wide world?
I don’t expect much from Facebook and Western media. After all, they are there to promote their agenda, interest and cause. Western media (new media, social media included) is a tool for Western imperialism. I cannot support these imperial power structures that loot my continent, I am not attracted to its power when the rape, devastation, agony, blood and tears of my people make up its power.
There must be a clear distinction between forces of the state apparatus and the people. The same power created by the control, dehumanization and oppression of the African and our resources. The white world lives off Africa, profits from our deaths so our lives mean very little to them. But have we forgotten our own lives? Does our death mean nothing to our own selves? In fact, we are conditioned to believe that our lives mean very little; so do our deaths.
All of this goes back to the mentality of the slave. We see ourselves as less than human. The years and years of dehumanization by slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, western education, western media, western production of knowledge and worldviews and the African’s own sense of not staying alert have made us devalue our bodies both alive and dead. The forces of transnational white supremacist capitalist patriarchy exploit, dehumanize and erase a people but so does our ignorance.
White lives matter more than our own. I am not here for selective empathy! Looking at my timeline on all of my social media pages it becomes apparent that a lot of us still don’t get it and that makes me very sad. How can we exclude ourselves from the compassion we seem to show?
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