ALL HUMAN BEINGS, BLACK AND WHITE, MEN AND WOMEN, CHILDREN AND ADULTS, ARE MOTIVATED BY FEAR AND GUILT. AND ARE COWARDLY IN THEIR BEHAVIORS!
By Ozodi Osuji
Gradually, it dawned on me that Igbos, Nigerians, Africans, and African Americans are cowardly for not fighting and dying to prevent slavery and colonization. At some point, I had contempt for them and didn’t respect them.
This did not mean that I respect white folks. I admired their science and technology and focused on that aspect of them and ignored their other behaviors that I did not approve. I looked forward to the day that Africa would have universities in every county (there are 714 counties in Nigeria, which means, at least, 714 universities in Nigeria and thousands of vocational schools) and produce Nobel Prize-winning scientists and world-class technologists.
Given my nature that since childhood I think and establish the truth in my mind and strive to live it and not pay attention to people who ask me not to listen to my truth, well, I convinced myself that if I lived in the age of slavery I would have fought it and if killed that would be fine with me than to live as a slave.
My great-grandfather, Njoku, fought the British, who were trying to colonize his town in 1902, and they killed him. He died the last African in my genealogy.
His son, Osuji, later baptized as Joseph Osuji-Njoku, resisted the colonial administrators in his world, but willy-nilly was now in a world controlled by the British. He later got married and sent his children to the missionary schools set up by the Anglican and Catholic missionaries in his town.
My father went to the Anglican elementary school in his town, and thereafter, his village life ended. He left it. He is an amazing guy, still, a teenager, he was all over West Africa, from Dakar, Senegal, to Lobito in Angola, trading. The man was all over Africa and finally married and settled in Lagos, where his children were born.
Father, Johnson, did not look or behave like his fellow Nigerians. He sought out the company of Brazilians and African Americans, Liberians and Sierra Leoneans, Africans who had experienced slavery and came back to our town, Lagos. He spoke many languages, including Igbo, Yoruba, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. His music was American Jazz and gospel music (mine, from age eight, is classical music…like father, I am kind of weird; I used to go to Austria and Germany specifically to attend Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach concerts).
Naturally, father’s children were socialized in accordance with the new cultural dispensation of his time. We are Catholics. We went to our neighborhood elementary schools and then to boarding secondary schools and universities (me, in the USA).
For our present purposes, I used to fancy myself a warrior like my great-grandfather and would prefer death to obeying colonizers. I quit many jobs when the alternative was to obey white bosses (and they fired me in some of their jobs because they are not used to an independent-thinking black man).
Lately, we entered the age of Donald Trump, and I witnessed what was always there but had eluded my observation. White men fell in line and obeyed the man. The military obeyed what seemed to me an unlawful order and kidnapped the President of Venezuela and killed the Ayatollah of Iran.
I watch as the man transforms my beloved America into a dictatorship, authoritarian, and totalitarian society. The newspapers, radio, and television all fell in line and published what they believed the emperor in Washington, DC, would approve. People simply self-censored and did what they believed the new political order would approve.
And what is the new political order? Madness. It is a delusion that white folks are superior to black and brown folks, and their desire to remove them from America and preserve America for white folks.
I had expected white folks to rise and resist Trump’s usurpation of roles reserved for Congress, and because they did not do so, I relegated white men to the place I had placed black folks; cowards heap and lost all respect for them. Just like I used to have total contempt for black people, I developed total contempt for white folks.
Actually, it was easy for me to understand racism because I came from Africa. In Africa, there is tribalism; this means that some tribes believe they are superior to others and act accordingly.
My people, the Igbos, believe that God created them special and that they are superior to all human beings. My grandfather considered white folks not even worthy of untying his shoes.
Are we superior? Of course, not. The point is that I understand the nature of tribalism, which is what racism is.
I know for sure that all people are biologically the same. Any talk of inferiority and superiority is delusional. In the real world, people have delusions, and since the deluded person can do any work in his society and the only mental disorder, he has is that little false belief in his and his people’s superiority, he appears normal.
The rise of Donald Trump and the ease with which white men fell in line with his insane orders finally led me to see that white men are also fearful and cowardly.
Thus, now I know that all human beings are fearful and cowardly and would not stand up and fight for justice.
Professor, Dr. Helen Schucman of Columbia University, New York City, in her book, A Course in Miracles, says that when people are separated from their real self, the union of God and his sons as oneself, they develop fear and guilt.
I am not going to try to explain her book here; let us just say that it impacted me perhaps more than the philosophy that was the solace of my teenage years.
Now I know that all people are fearful, cowardly people; so, what do I do with that knowledge? I don’t know yet.
All I know is that at the personal level, I do what I believe is right. Love is what is right. Love is the union of all people, man and woman, black and white, child and adult, as one. I treat all people as one, with love and respect. That is where I am as of today.
Ozodi Osuji
March 12, 2026
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