“Follow me,” was all the Russian had to say. He did not need to show the women his bank statement.
He did not have to prove his sanity. Countless women followed him helplessly into his bedroom.
The spell he cast on them was that he was just another white man.
When news of the Russian who recorded his escapades with some Ghanaian women came to the limelight, many fumed at the women. Some called them sluts. Others labelled them as cheap.
When a society has a problematic adage that daringly compares God and the white man, the only God in that society is the white man!
We have grown up with a despised identity. The movie producer prefers fair women to black ones. In school, the role of the devil is forced on the boy with the darkest complexion, while the fair boy plays God. In church, the white visitor sits next to the Bishop and demons are often cast out of the black ones.
You walk into a Ghanaian company with a brilliant proposal. The administrator tosses it over into the bin. You go fetch a white man as a partner and return to the same office.
You are immediately led to the chief executive officer. He nods to everything your partner says. He signs an agreement right away, not because of the depth of the idea, but the skin colour of another man.
Gradually, you come to terms with the ugly truth. Your identity is your curse. It is the reason another black man will deny you an opportunity and hand it over to a white man. You begin to accept that you are a victim of your identity. As long as you stay with it, you will perish with it!
Of a truth, a man is his identity. Hidden inside that identity is his destiny. If you want him to freely give away his destiny, first steal his identity. Identity gives a man value. Identity crisis, thus, is a crisis indeed.
A man brings value to the table when he knows his value on that table. Skin colour is not a value. To those with low self-esteem, however, it is.
This is why a bleached skin, for instance, is a by-product of a damaged identity. When the goat is ignorant of his identity, he seeks validation by associating with the sheep. No matter how much the crow paints itself white, it can never look like the dove.
The Russian exploiter did not take advantage of weak Ghanaian women. He exploited a society bedeviled with an identity crisis ― a society of deep-seated low self-esteem that has created weak women.
He took advantage of a society that lives to die for the white man ― a society that puts the white man at par with God. He exploited a society that knows not the value of its identity. He took advantage of a society where black is a symbol of death and white, a symbol of purity and joy.
Intentionally or unintentionally, our minds are still under slavery ― a self-inflicted slavery that makes a white man the head and us, the tail. We have somewhat concluded that every product from abroad is good and every local one is not.
The white man is our God and our fellow countrymen and women have become our devil. Little wonder the picture of God is a white man, while Satan always remains the black man with a tail.
A young woman from southern Ghana will hurl stones at a suitor from the north. Her reason? The north is too far. This is a woman praying fervently for a suitor who lives abroad.
When we say Ghanaians are hospitable, what does it mean? Sometimes, low self-esteem is what has been repackaged as hospitality. How we treat people from different tribes is a measure of our hospitality, and not how we treat people with a different skin colour.
Colonialism may have ripped our identity apart, but it is our responsibility to stand for ourselves today. The past cannot continue taking the blame for the present.
We do not need validation from others to know our worth. Until we know the value of who we are, we will always seek validation from others.
Is it a surprise that almost every Ghanaian musician badly wants to win a Grammy? Is it a coincidence that many Ghanaians measure a creative’s success by how many foreign platforms they have been on?
There is nothing wrong with yearning for exposure from another world as bait to enlarge the boundaries of your craft.
The problem, however, is when we tie our worth to that world.
The black man must be free. A man is free when his mind is free. Freedom is not when the shackles fall off our feet. It is when the shackles fall off our minds.
A people are not truly free if their mind is still under bondage. Freedom, first of all, is mental before it becomes physical.
The black man must know that no one owes him liberation from his mindset.
The slavery of the black mind is for the benefit of others. It is the responsibility of the black man to liberate himself from any mindset that perpetually makes him a slave at the table of life.
Black is not a synonym of evil. We need to pull down the self-built system that has used our colour to represent every bad omen. We need to consciously destroy the foundation that makes the black man hate himself badly. He hates his own hair, skin, culture and even name.
He hates his hair. He will shave it all and buy another’s to replace. He labels his own culture as demonic. He hides his name and flaunts that of another. He screams that he doesn’t understand his dialect but can eloquently rattle that of another. If this is modernity, then many are still under colonialism. See what colonialism did to us!
I am a proud Ghanaian. I flaunt my roots because my identity is my destiny. A white man is my co-equal. Unlike the adage, he is not my God.
The writer is the Chief Scribe of Scribe Productions (www.scribeproductions.com) and Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com). His playwriting masterclass is slated for Saturday, March 28th and Sunday, March 29th, 2026. Call 0546098082 for enquiries.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh