They Sold Us a White Savior
They sold us a white savior With blond hair and blue eyes Porcelain skin so clear And beard so perfectly groomed He was everything we were not And represented everything we couldn’t be So we latched on to his saving power And hoped that one day We just may qualify To be and look like him Then curiosity came calling And wrapped her musk around us Subtle at first Overpowering as she held our hearts in her hand And we began to ask The questions fear had forbidden us from searching How could he be white? When he was from The place where the sun woke Where hair was so black It shimmered of living fortresses Where the sun kissed skins To a burnt earthy gold Where eyes were enveloping Like the hug of midnight And when a prominent forebear of his Was like the flames of fire, ruddy But beyond that Curiosity directed our gaze To a more salient part of the art That was the story we had been sold Why were we so quick to accept The white savior sold to us? To believe we needed his salvation? To believe we were so unworthy That we needed the alabaster skinned savior To make us feel loved? Was it because Before we were sold the white savior We were put in slavery first Beaten, abused, raped Sent to the field to work Fed with leftover food like dogs And had nothing of our own? Is it because our names were replaced Our heritage erased Our culture deemed ‘barbaric’ And our gods made to naught? Or maybe because we saw That as our siblings graduated From coal to tawny They got better treatment From our Massas We believed that Ivory Had to be right And ebony all shades of wrong So if we couldn’t be washed physically (and not from a want of trying) Then maybe we could be saved From the stink of our s(k)in And finally be good enough For the white Massa who owned us. Emboldened some more We took the lead this time And curiosity followed Knowing she has lit a raging fire If white Savior was so right Why did he allow so much evil Under his watch? Why did he allow his adherents to Pillage our lands Abuse our women…and men Sell us like property Treat us even less than animals Denigrate our humanity Our essence Our worth? How could he be ‘love’ When he only left hate and pain and sorrow In his wake? The more we looked The less appealing white savior became The more we saw The clearer the tapestry became And we could tell for ourselves That white savior was A beast A savage An aberration of everything that is good And we knew we didn’t want him How could we When we had only been told Of the white savior To help a group of people Lord it over us? And then… we looked around Searching for a new savior Someone who loved us For ourselves Ebony skin so black It rivaled midnight’s caress Or body so sensitive and freckled We call it Albino In essence Flaws, perfection and all So we looked around us again Over and above Here, there and everywhere And we found no one It wasn’t until we looked inwards Into ourselves That found for ourselves Our own savior! Knowledge rushed in And then we remembered That there was a savior Who indeed was From the land where the sun wakes A savior to his people But one who the world needs Not for the color of his skin But for the words he spoke And the character he epitomized The love he showed And the death he died Because he completely believed That we should Love the LORD And love each other Like we do ourselves If that isn’t the greatest thing We wonder what is And so we have decided That his GOD will be our GOD That his life, our blueprint His death our sacrifice And his legacy our heritage We never needed a white savior All we needed was To look inward And find bits of the still small voice Saying ‘I love you’. Ramatu Ada Ochekliye 15.04.2017 Image: Jesus in Glory
