Forget not Matthew 7: 3

What  can you do with a speck? 
Well,  you can polish it and look good. 
You can point it out, shout loud out let the world see how righteous you are and look good. 
You can create a ban round the speck with others who saw the speck, and heck, you can change that part of the world and look good. 

Even the stars can see the speck, no doubt
But is it really the Pareto choice with most clout? 

I grew on tales of the evil white man with his long nose. 
I grew reminded I'm a "nigger" and the whips will crack on my back, seize my foothold, banish my dreams, and tears pouring out my flat nose. 
I grew on the black-washed history of the transatlantic slavery which tells of the buyer and torturer of my brothers for centuries and more. 

I didn't hear of the North African slave trade, nor the Congo-Ghana one, 
Nor the fact that "lenwa" in my village is a slave. 
I didn't hear that Africans sold Africans for slavery but through Christian abolishment they earned better lives
I didn't hear that Eddie Murphy lives a better life than most Cameroonians, or that Lupita Nyongo won't have the same chances had she stayed on the continent. 

I grew on the falsehood that a "nigger" like me cannot be racist
And that "White man, white man, white man with his long nose"
Is just fun as "Black man, black man, black man with his flat nose" 
Would be. 

Then I learnt that "nigger" is a bad word I learnt to rap to. 
Then I learnt that I would be nothing, I would not get a job because of my skin colour. 
Then I learnt that the white families who welcomed me didn't exist. 
That my white friends were actually blacks in disguise...otherwise how could they be my friends? 

And I shut my ears and eyes. 

For while all were focusing on the speck of reparations 
(Which should be paid only to children of slaves, by the buyers and 
The African countries who committed the abomination of trading 
Humans for whisky, guns and other silly gimmicks)
I'm looking at the plank of single parenthood, 
Erosion of any viable belief system or value system
Widespread corruption, poor governance, 
Electoral fraud, business fraud, educational fraud
Victim mentality and "reverse" racism...if such a word exists. 

Racism is racism, and to see black and white and yellow and red and blue and purple on human skins is to be in a race on mushrooms. 

I see one humanity, striving to make the present better than the past. 
Striving to make this present prosperity pervasive and make it last.

(c) nyonglema