This is a serious discussion, and I heavily encourage others to share their input and opinions on this prompt. Where will the Somali community and the African diaspora be years from now? What future are we leaving behind for our descendants and future children?
I've been doing a lot of reading on African issues, mainly consuming the material of scholars, intellectuals and consuming a wide variety of academic corpus, pertaining mainly to the projected future of people of African descent. Frankly, I'm worried and here's why:
1. **Climate change, Environmental Migration, and Rapid Population Increase** \- Africans will be the ones to be the most affected by Climate Change as well as the Caribbean. More widely, climate change and global warming is expected to trigger a mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa, to Europe, and the United States. With the African population expected to double by 2050 from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion people, this will be disastrous, especially since the continent is already experiencing rapid desertification, flooding, decreasing crop yields, poverty and weak institutions. Rising sea levels and increasing temperatures are causing stronger hurricanes and longer dry seasons in Caribbean nations. I am in STEM and currently studying topics related to this, and quite frankly, the projected outlook is extremely scary and bleak. I don't want to get into technicalities or else my post would be VERY long.
2. **Lack of Wealth /Permanent Underclass**\-
Africa is developing quickly however it is still struggling to close the gap between developed countries. There is historical context for this (colonization, resource curse, civil wars etc). However, there are stats that show the gap between rich and poor nations are going to continue to widen in the future thus leaving some nations as a permanent underclass
3. **Africa is not a superpower** \- a Nigerian author called Chigozie Obioma theorized that one of the ways that racism can only be alleviated is by the development of Africa, because racism is at its core, about economic power. Jamaican writer Franklin Johnson also corroborated this, saying that racism is about power, and because of this (black people -particularly Africa’s) lack of worldwide power, we are the most discriminated against. Take Asian nations, for example, and how East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China) and their people are generally respected (strong institutions, great infrastructure etc) world-wide but the poorer, browner southeast and east Asian countries are not.
“Chiogozie Obioma (article snippets)”
“In the wake of fresh deaths at the hands of police officers in the world’s greatest nation, we, the people of the black race, are once again the object of renewed worldwide attention. Questions of injustice in the United States have been duly raised and protested. And, once again, the black cultural elites in America have seized various platforms to air their grievances and are mostly — and rightly — talking about*** https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...f03364-4542-11e6-bc99-7d269f8719b1_story.html racism, discrimination, racial profiling, and hate, among other issues. But one issue that has hardly been talked about is the core reason why black people have remained synonymous with the denigrating experience of racism. It is, I dare say, because of the worldwide indignity of the black race.***
...Early African-American intellectuals and cultural elites saw that the future of their race could not be advanced by endless protests or marches of “equality” or “justice.” It could only be done through the restoration of the trampled dignity of the black man. Great men like Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X all knew that a people is only respected when it has a nation worthy of respect. A man who lives in a shack cannot expect to be treated with respect at a palace. They knew that for us to reclaim power we must first reclaim dignity and that this comes through the construction of a solid black state with a demonstrable level of development and prosperity — and which can stand as a powerful advocate for the global black.*
>
...Racism is not limited to the Unites States. There is no nonblack nation, even among the most liberal ones, where the black man is dignified. History dealt us an unforgiving blow in the incursion of foreigners into black lands. The Arabs enslaved tribes and nations and then colonized and evangelized them. Then came the Europeans, who, persuaded the Africans were of an inferior race, divided up the continent over lunch in Berlin in 1884. They carted off a large population of its people — sometimes leaving entire villages almost empty — and brought those who remained on the continent under their rule. So complete was the transformation that no black nation retained its ancestral nationhood, national language, or national identity. And today we often hear of how* [*I*]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/19/ozy-china-taking-over-africa/9277413/ India or China or some other nation is “taking over” Africa economically. There is almost no nation whose majority is of a different race that has not spat on the face of the black person, at one time or the other.*
>
>*....Be assured, the indignity will continue. Black elites and activists across the world have adopted a culture of verbal tyranny in which they shut down any effort to reason or criticize us or black-majority nations by labeling such attempts as “racism” or “hate speech.” Thus, one can be certain that any suggestions that our race may indeed need to do something to remedy our situation will not be aired — not by the terrified people of other races.*
>*Today, no such state exists.*
....Thus, it is no surprise that in the absence of any healthy black nation — in the midst of chaos, senseless wars, corrupted religiosity, violence, and economic collapse — African and Caribbean people leave home en masse. They beg on the streets of Greece, prostitute in the red-light zones of the Netherlands, and make up 40 percent of the migrants flocking to Europe. As they turn up in these countries, helpless, unwanted, starved, or maimed, they are treated like dogs.*”
**4. Breakdown of the Family and growing and strained Gender Relations ** \- The effects of single-parent households, the absence of a father etc have on children are well-documented https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF14K19.pdf. This is strictly anecdotal, but have any of you also noticed a growing gender divide between us, especially online? I see a lot of “somali men vs somali women” discourse on various platforms, and even in real life.
5. A self-critical lens: We Lack Unity and Focus on the Wrong Things (“Cultural” as opposed to economic power”- I think globally, Black People lack unity as other groups do. We can’t unite. Various European and Asian groups might not like each other, but they where it counts (EU, system of white supremacy and power). It’s the truth. There’s always some diaspora war.
I also think a lot of us focus to much on our cultural/ moral power (“They steal our culture!”, cultural appropriation, gender wars etc) and not enough on gaining economic power and independence , developing strong institutions and countries and military might.
I've been doing a lot of reading on African issues, mainly consuming the material of scholars, intellectuals and consuming a wide variety of academic corpus, pertaining mainly to the projected future of people of African descent. Frankly, I'm worried and here's why:
1. **Climate change, Environmental Migration, and Rapid Population Increase** \- Africans will be the ones to be the most affected by Climate Change as well as the Caribbean. More widely, climate change and global warming is expected to trigger a mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa, to Europe, and the United States. With the African population expected to double by 2050 from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion people, this will be disastrous, especially since the continent is already experiencing rapid desertification, flooding, decreasing crop yields, poverty and weak institutions. Rising sea levels and increasing temperatures are causing stronger hurricanes and longer dry seasons in Caribbean nations. I am in STEM and currently studying topics related to this, and quite frankly, the projected outlook is extremely scary and bleak. I don't want to get into technicalities or else my post would be VERY long.
2. **Lack of Wealth /Permanent Underclass**\-
Africa is developing quickly however it is still struggling to close the gap between developed countries. There is historical context for this (colonization, resource curse, civil wars etc). However, there are stats that show the gap between rich and poor nations are going to continue to widen in the future thus leaving some nations as a permanent underclass
3. **Africa is not a superpower** \- a Nigerian author called Chigozie Obioma theorized that one of the ways that racism can only be alleviated is by the development of Africa, because racism is at its core, about economic power. Jamaican writer Franklin Johnson also corroborated this, saying that racism is about power, and because of this (black people -particularly Africa’s) lack of worldwide power, we are the most discriminated against. Take Asian nations, for example, and how East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China) and their people are generally respected (strong institutions, great infrastructure etc) world-wide but the poorer, browner southeast and east Asian countries are not.
“Chiogozie Obioma (article snippets)”
“In the wake of fresh deaths at the hands of police officers in the world’s greatest nation, we, the people of the black race, are once again the object of renewed worldwide attention. Questions of injustice in the United States have been duly raised and protested. And, once again, the black cultural elites in America have seized various platforms to air their grievances and are mostly — and rightly — talking about*** https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...f03364-4542-11e6-bc99-7d269f8719b1_story.html racism, discrimination, racial profiling, and hate, among other issues. But one issue that has hardly been talked about is the core reason why black people have remained synonymous with the denigrating experience of racism. It is, I dare say, because of the worldwide indignity of the black race.***
...Early African-American intellectuals and cultural elites saw that the future of their race could not be advanced by endless protests or marches of “equality” or “justice.” It could only be done through the restoration of the trampled dignity of the black man. Great men like Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X all knew that a people is only respected when it has a nation worthy of respect. A man who lives in a shack cannot expect to be treated with respect at a palace. They knew that for us to reclaim power we must first reclaim dignity and that this comes through the construction of a solid black state with a demonstrable level of development and prosperity — and which can stand as a powerful advocate for the global black.*
>
...Racism is not limited to the Unites States. There is no nonblack nation, even among the most liberal ones, where the black man is dignified. History dealt us an unforgiving blow in the incursion of foreigners into black lands. The Arabs enslaved tribes and nations and then colonized and evangelized them. Then came the Europeans, who, persuaded the Africans were of an inferior race, divided up the continent over lunch in Berlin in 1884. They carted off a large population of its people — sometimes leaving entire villages almost empty — and brought those who remained on the continent under their rule. So complete was the transformation that no black nation retained its ancestral nationhood, national language, or national identity. And today we often hear of how* [*I*]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/19/ozy-china-taking-over-africa/9277413/ India or China or some other nation is “taking over” Africa economically. There is almost no nation whose majority is of a different race that has not spat on the face of the black person, at one time or the other.*
>
>*....Be assured, the indignity will continue. Black elites and activists across the world have adopted a culture of verbal tyranny in which they shut down any effort to reason or criticize us or black-majority nations by labeling such attempts as “racism” or “hate speech.” Thus, one can be certain that any suggestions that our race may indeed need to do something to remedy our situation will not be aired — not by the terrified people of other races.*
>*Today, no such state exists.*
....Thus, it is no surprise that in the absence of any healthy black nation — in the midst of chaos, senseless wars, corrupted religiosity, violence, and economic collapse — African and Caribbean people leave home en masse. They beg on the streets of Greece, prostitute in the red-light zones of the Netherlands, and make up 40 percent of the migrants flocking to Europe. As they turn up in these countries, helpless, unwanted, starved, or maimed, they are treated like dogs.*”
**4. Breakdown of the Family and growing and strained Gender Relations ** \- The effects of single-parent households, the absence of a father etc have on children are well-documented https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF14K19.pdf. This is strictly anecdotal, but have any of you also noticed a growing gender divide between us, especially online? I see a lot of “somali men vs somali women” discourse on various platforms, and even in real life.
5. A self-critical lens: We Lack Unity and Focus on the Wrong Things (“Cultural” as opposed to economic power”- I think globally, Black People lack unity as other groups do. We can’t unite. Various European and Asian groups might not like each other, but they where it counts (EU, system of white supremacy and power). It’s the truth. There’s always some diaspora war.
I also think a lot of us focus to much on our cultural/ moral power (“They steal our culture!”, cultural appropriation, gender wars etc) and not enough on gaining economic power and independence , developing strong institutions and countries and military might.
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