I CHOSE

I chose to write, For all those torn-off branches, For all those scarred backs, For all those dehumanized bodies, For all those centuries of persecution. I chose to read, To deconstruct racialist concepts, To destroy the carnivorous chains of slavery, To desacralize the supremacist missions of colonization, To uproot the alienation installed in my consciousness, brutalized by imperialist Westernization. I chose to educate myself, To denounce the negrophobia of the Republic of Enlightenment turned slave trader, To challenge the heirs of the enslaving empire of racist philosophers, To never forget the bestiality of the Code Noir, The savagery of the slave trades, The barbarity of human zoos, To never erase from my scorched memory the drownings of black bodies. I chose to turn off my television, To no longer listen to parrots singing the praises of xenophobia, To no longer be imprisoned by the conspiratorial diatribes of the fascist fanatics of the far right, To no longer watch the privileged squabble while fattening themselves on the taxes of the proletariat, To no longer pollute my mind, tormented by the misery of the cradle of humanity. I chose to fully embrace my Africanness, To never say that my ancestors were Gauls, Like those domestic blacks who champion the celebration of republican hypocrisy, To never curse Africa in my heart, Like those traitors who participated in the slave trades, slavery, colonization, and neocolonization, To never sanctify the banana republics of the sphere of influence of the so-called homeland of human rights, Which drives thousands of Sub-Saharans onto the deadly paths of clandestine migration, To never place myself on the same level as those racist, racialist, supremacist, and eugenicist complexes, Who sustain vile theories about the utopia of racial superiority.