Saturday 2 July 2011

People still wiping off their black skin to be white??!! and Are you for justice or for America/West by Philo Ikonya

My short note is comes from two issues I have reacted to and which I would like to hear more about..

One is our black skins at home and in Europe (NB: Do black men do this?)

I am walking around with my Jamaican friend. She is a super black .. hair, skin, lovely... Then she begins to cringe in the mall. I look across and I see this African sister in the city. Rich. Married here for ages. But she still has never heard of Song of Lawino.. or is it that no one told her she was beautiful at home? She has no skin.. she killed it with chemicals to make it white.. her hair must always be a wig.. and that lipstick style.. I know we can wear ours nicely.. man, it is on lips wrinkled by wine.. should I yell or whine? Shopping in the most expensive things in the best of malls and no one tells you your skin black and beautiful you must keep? Advanced they tell us this country is, the best to live in the world.. and why has not her husband kept her from yellowing.. and the in laws..!? Let me eat pumpkins!

The other is those who argue that the Hague should go for America...

Those who argue that the ICC should go for Amerika and support the AU in not arresting Gaddafi and Omar Al Bashir... the immediacy of your argument maybe clear politically but not at a human rights level. Go to your records and see what kind of cases the ICC takes up please!! If you keep on thinking it will go after a bombing that was agreed at the UN council you are lost. Besides, we cannot blow up a cloud of dust to lose all there is. Some finesse is required. You cannot allow injustice on your land by anyone or because the rest of the world is unjust. Think of it if we applied it to individuals there would be no courts of justice anywhere because all laws are constantly being broken everywhere. We could all even religiously hinge on Biblical injustice to justify all our injustice in the world. There is a whole lot of it there.. if you read it. The law does not exist because we are able to keep it. It is a reminder of our ideal. It is motivation as well as proof that things can be right. I do not think that we are redefining justice here and it means as they tell us in Latin ius... give each her or his due. You must not get frustrated when you see injustice in America/west.
Your work just becomes broader.. if you believe in justice not in America.. You see injustice with America .. you follow the channels that can reach America with your point. One of them is unfortunately not the ICC. USA is not a member state and has not committed itself to the Rome Statute. Pointing at other evils in order not to resolve another evil. It does not work like that. It never did. We are lucky that some thought of ICC.
I mean, look we could all be saying nothing matters since Israel and Palestine.. nothing matters after Auswitch. Nothing matters during and after a Darfur, a Rwanda.. A Pinochet and the Disappeared.. Choose justice and live in your times!

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