Richard Dela Sky Writes: Let me put it this way… Regarding the intransigence of those who believe that almost everything African must yield to foreign rules, definitions and dominance, I guess it is fair to say that some of us expect too much from a race that, almost always, still keeps and worships photographs of a caucasian movie star as Jesus, The Christ, despite all the available wisdom to the contrary.

The picture of this racist statue (below) in a Ghanaian Churchyard – of a white Angel and a black devil – tells the story of how deep the problem runs in our veins. It is not only “a hair” problem!

A response.

E-Lab has become so wary of people who have become so worried about racism they see everything in black and white.

If there are people who still put in their rooms a Caucasian Jesus seen in a movie, despite contrary evidence, it is more likely because there is no contrary movie.

What is at play here is not the power of a skin colour. It is the power of a single camera.

For boys have watched Spiderman and walked to school the next day like spiders. And no one has shaken his head in utter disgust at how humans have grown inferior to spiders.

If movie producers were to cast a Palestinian Jesus, it would still trigger an adoration of this Arab’s image to levels bordering on idolatry.

People, when they find other people or things or thoughts fascinating, have a natural tendency to adulate them as tin gods.

When some professors saw some dry bones, they built images of dinosaurs they have never seen and put them in temples called museums and invited all of us to come and adore.

There is an innate desire to always put an image to things we adore so much Muslims took the route to just bar images of Mohammed.

Men put faces to the heard voices of unseen women to create a reality only checked when beauty finally meets the beast.

Once you put an image to something adorable, you lose control over how everyone should adore the photo because once a woman pops out a baby she owns, she loses control over when the baby should cry.

The people who worship a Caucasian Jesus may or may not know Jesus was not Caucasian. But they do know Jesus ought to be worshipped. And that is enough.

If some extremely enlightened fellow shakes his head and accuses worshippers of Caucasian Jesus of inferiority complex, it comes across as a man accusing people of worshiping their birthdates because they love their birthdays.

It is like calling a woman who throws a party on that day an astrologists or numerologists or Pythagoreans. You are simply reading too much meaning.

They just wanted to celebrate their birthday.

It is like those accusing Christians of celebrating Christmas in December when they know the Christ could not have been born in winter.

But if there is a Christ to be born there is a Christ to be celebrated and when we fight over the date instead of even feasting on the day, we lose sight of the celebration much the same way that the government has haggled over the birthdate of Daniel Domelovo and lost sight of the fight against corruption and graft.

This image of a white angel standing over a black devil is another example of reading too much meaning into natural tendencies and a quickness to call our race inferior.

A black angel over a white devil would no less cause another outcry of racism.

And so it would appear the safer compromise is a colourless angel and a colourless devil. But even the great and mighty Richard Sky does not have that colour for colourlessness.

The black man is actually black because he enjoys too much light. He has melanin because he has the sun. The white man is actually white because he sees very little light.

So when we fight racism, it must not be cast as a black versus white or when we fight sexism, it must not be cast as men and women. It must be cast as human versus human, systems versus systems.

When we read too much blackness or whiteness into matters, we will find that we have traumatized ourselves so much we cannot use a white toothpaste or drive a car with black tires.

When we read too much racism into race, we become racist. When we read too much patriarchy into the natural relations of men and women, we because angry birds too traumatized to say simple Sir.

We must condemn racism without making it impossible for him to paint a picture in black and white. He must not erase colour out of him because he coloured us.

For no one forced out ancestors to wear black when a man is dead. And no one forced the British to use white as the colour of surrender during war. It is possible our ancestors lost the war with the British because they painted their faces white and made it possible to be easily spotted in the jungle by the British bayonets. We may have won if we were truly black that day.

All these are just conjectures. But they are to show that in some inordinate desire to show evidence of the subconscious inferiority complex of many of our people, some over enthusiastic Africans are exposing their own conscious inferiority complex.

And between subconscious inferiority and a conscious one, I trust we know which is more horrendous.

Racism exists because man is depraved not because a black man is black. Sexism exists because man is depraved. Bigotry exists because man is depraved. Inside him is a depraved nature even if outside him is a suit by Dolce and Gabanga.

This common denominator of the human condition must unite us to see that the man who shouted racism was sexist last week, and the woman who found evidence of racism and sexism is actually a bigot.

All this is coming up because of this hair cut matter of which too much has been already said. If hair is cut, it means there is hair to be cut. It may be left uncut. But if it is cut, it could mean a student is paying reverence to the hallowed walls of a school.

Afterall, our ancestors removed their sandals at shrines not because the ground was neat. But because the dirty sand was holy grounds.

And if we are being asked to reclaim our ‘Africaness’ in this hair cut matter, the easiest way is most likely that we should cut it.

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The writer can be reached via email at edwinology1213@gmail.com