• A serpent once had an egg pure and white, while that of the bird was speckled and dirty. The bird gave up the speckled egg to lay on the white one. The egg cracked open and out came a snake. The bird was eaten by the snake it hatched.
----Movie RAN, a Japanese adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear
Martin Luther King typified the Black American middle class. It marched and demanded to have what the white man had—the good life, meaning thinking white, going to white schools, living in white neighborhoods, dressing white, marrying white—basically, being white with the impossiblity of changing the various dark hues, big noses, kinky hair (which is straightened by several billion-dollar chemical industry), and the wailings in christian churches of refuge.
What the middle class fought for they they got. Thanks to affirmative action, the size of the Black middle class has grown. Various government set-asides has created some pseudo businessmen who are one government contract away from the poor house. Where are the artisans, the roofers, the dry goods mom-and-pop stores, and the carpenters who are the backbone any ‘hood? The most viable business now in the Black community is the hair salon and the barber shop. These are the only places where the so-called Black middle class come from suburbia to recycle the dollar with their own. Otherwise, their wages hardly spend a day in the community. If so, how can a people prosper from the bottom up?
That is the question Africa has to tackle if it is to go anywhere in its quest for development. If development merely means putting on a tie, driving sleek four-wheel vehicles, owning mansions, huge tracks of land, and otherwise mimicking wholesale the mindsets of the west, we will pay dearly in time. What is needed is building viable communities with sustainable values. The rest will come based on a strong foundation. The alternative is perpetual knee-jerk reactions and development by trial and errors on a journey to nowhere pleasant.
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Soko’s Classic Movie Pick: Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man. Sankara was a good man with good intentions for Burkina Faso and Africa. But the ends do not justify the means. Thus the imperialist agent in the guise of his friend, Blaise Compaore, had to liquidate him.
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