The blatant racism of Chimamanda Adichie

By Jean Gasho

I have always defended black women when they are accused of bad attitude and being the angry black women. But recently on BBC Newsnight whilst discussing the alleged racism of President Elect Donald Trump, sadly Chimamanda Adichie became that angry black woman. I will take it further and boldly say she was blatantly racist.

Chimamanda had gone on BBC to discuss whether Donald Trump was a racist or not. Robert Emmett Tyrrell, a white man who was on the panel with her said he did not believe Trump was a racist. Chimamanda then told him that he is not allowed to define what racism is because of his skin color.

Whether or not Tyrrell is right or wrong about his opinion on racism, he is still allowed to express his views regardless of his skin color. In all fairness and honesty, if it was a white man who had displayed the same horrible attitude and uttered the same words Chimamanda said, there would have been world war three today. All black people would be up in arms that the racism that had been said on BBC was unacceptable.

The Black Lives Matter movement would have been busy this week. Oxform would have received complains and as we speak a racism investigation would be underway. By now the white person would have been forced to issue a public apology. But because it was a black woman who said it, today black people are hailing her as a heroine instead.

I have been recently accused by black people of selling out my own race by supporting Donald Trump. But I refuse to be bullied into submission and my support for Donald Trump continues.

I believe Chimamanda does more harm to the black race than the white man she tried to “shut down”. White people may display racism to us, I do not dispute that, but that is not the main cause of the suffering of the black race today. Today as it stands we are our own enemies.

The amount of time and energy we are investing in trying to get the white men to understand us is just ridiculous. When a white man simply offers his opinion on race that doesn’t agree with ours, we retaliate by being simply being the very people we are accusing them of.

Well Chimamanda, you may tell white people that they are not allowed to define racism. But I am a black woman, and let me redefine it for you. Racism is what you openly did on BBC. You used your skin color to undermine someone’s opinion because of their skin color. In other words you used your “black privilege” to be racist. The problem with us black people is we are too self righteous. We think everyone in the world is wrong except us. It’s time to move on and be the change we want to be.

It’s time to stop thinking with our emotions when it comes to race. It’s time to start using our God given intelligence to free ourselves. By being too emotional, Chimamanda was not able to hold a logical debate about race. In her desperate attempt to prove her point to a white man, she became the very person she was trying to fight, a female version of Donald Trump. And she has stirred up another racial storm.

She said Donald Trump was racist because he said a Mexican Judge would not judge him fairly because of his race. Yet she went on to tell a white man that because of his skin color he can’t define racism. How hypocritical.

I am a black woman and it has helped me a great deal to understand racism from a white point of view too. Half the time I do not agree with them. Some of them are very racist, but some are not. As a black woman I have chosen to stop complaining to white people about race because if I do, like Chimamanda I run a high risk of becoming the very thing I am accusing white people of.

Here in modern day England I was once in a church that was all black with only 2 white people in the congregation. One of the white women in the church became my closest friend as I had more in common with her than my black sisters. Most of the black women in the church were quite arrogant.

Because this was a black movement church, I watched my white friend experience the worst form of racism I had ever seen black people execute. She was often belittled and told she was a white slave to black people. In the end I had to leave the church because I could not stand to see my white friend being victimized because of her skin color.

So Mrs Chimamanda you can not tell white people that they can not define racism, some of them, though a few, have experienced it. Yes we can not compare it to how we have suffered the effects of racism, but saying that white people are not allowed to define racism was way out of order.

If they are not allowed to even define it, leave them alone and go talk to black people about racism instead! What Chimamanda did was counter productive, it does not help her fight of racism at all. She has just aided the stereotype of the angry black woman and It was sad to watch her racially insult a white man in the name of calling Donald Trump a racist.

You can follow Jean Gasho on her blog Just Jean