Racism is a sleight of hand game. The best way to understand it is by exploring what my Yoruba ancestors call ìlara. In my culture and language, we say “ìlara ko gbo ògùn.” Ilàrá does not respond to medication or a cure. It is desiring someone’s essence out of profound admiration, even love, but in a manner that is twisted by the idea of scarcity; hence the need to obtain it by all means. It is the tragic, corrupted pilgrimage of a misplaced spirit seeking the beautiful essence of another that it doesn’t realise it already possesses within its own Orí.
Afrilition opens up the African world, and even though the book is out, life continues to evolve through the lens it contains. I received notice of the imminent release of the hardcover, which coincided with the tragic news of Professor Jason Arday’s death. He had recently resigned from the post he held in Cambridge, hounded for the crime of lacking merit to hold a PhD or even be appointed as a professor, despite the awarding university affirming his award after a completed investigation. He rests in the deepest love, and I extend divine solace to his family.
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Afrilition is about the place of African love in creating a space of abundance for humanity. It makes it difficult to focus on the individual experience only. At the Heart of Afrilition is a fundamental premise: we cannot build the future in reaction to racism or any pathology that will distract and detract from our intentional purpose. It is, however, legitimate to decimate any such element that stands in the path of our desired goal or destination.
As much as it is important to engage more in the creative thinking about the future that is Afrilition, it is also important to critically explore the racism that continues to reduce and dislocate the lives of people who share the African identity across the world. At the core of Jason Arday’s virtual ‘lynching’ is the university, which itself is of African origin. Between 857-859 BCE, when Europeans were centuries away from exploring higher learning institutions, a woman in Fez, in modern-day Morocco, started in a mosque what is now known as the University of al-Qarawiyyin. Her name was Fatima-al-Fihri and her creation is the oldest University, which still runs till today.
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Ìlara has caused the Western system to warp desire into hatred, in its effort to obscure insecurity and vulnerability. Watching the rehabilitation of Neandertals after years of denigration, to adjust for the presence of their DNA in Europeans, is a classic act. Worse is the idea that Europe is a continent, when it does not meet the objective standards that describe a continent. It is simply part of the Asian landmass. Yet, these are the keepers of meritocracy and the champions of objective standards.
It takes amazing gall and sheer audacity to borrow an African concept, whether Islamic or otherwise, and become the gatekeeper of its merit to the point of asserting the unworthiness of people of African descent to exercise access, agency, or leadership, without acknowledging the proprietary ownership that should be accorded to Africans. Not surprising at all, since the global hegemon that asserts its role as protector of democracy still gerrymanders votes racially in its own country, but thinks nothing of bombing and killing young girls in their school in pursuit of an alleged democratic ideal. Objective standards are tools used to oppress others but never applied to the gatekeepers and enforcers.
Racism is a sleight of hand game. The best way to understand it is by exploring what my Yoruba ancestors call ìlara. In my culture and language, we say “ìlara ko gbo ògùn.” Ilàrá does not respond to medication or a cure. It is desiring someone’s essence out of profound admiration, even love, but in a manner that is twisted by the idea of scarcity; hence the need to obtain it by all means. It is the tragic, corrupted pilgrimage of a misplaced spirit seeking the beautiful essence of another that it doesn’t realise it already possesses within its own Orí. This is the pathology that drives a world in which the most diverse, genetically and culturally, are reduced to objects of perpetual attack, reduction, and ridicule, for supposed inferiority defined by pigmentation.
Ìlara has caused the Western system to warp desire into hatred, in its effort to obscure insecurity and vulnerability. Watching the rehabilitation of Neandertals after years of denigration, to adjust for the presence of their DNA in Europeans, is a classic act. Worse is the idea that Europe is a continent, when it does not meet the objective standards that describe a continent. It is simply part of the Asian landmass. Yet, these are the keepers of meritocracy and the champions of objective standards. Their history of adjusting accepted standards to ensure their primacy has no rival.
Mo Ló is effective use, and Afrilition offers insights and possibilities, not as competition to the Western scarcity model but as an alternative imbued in abundance; a recognition that there is enough space in the sky for all birds to fly. It is no accident that Africa is home to all modern humans because what it lacks in comfort it provides the two critical elements for human survival and evolution. It provides adaptiveness and resilience.
You do not build an entire global apparatus to violently subjugate a people, unless you are secretly, profoundly, intimidated by the power of their essence. This system is driven by what my egbon, Lawson Oyedokun Oyekan ( a ceramicist and sculptor), and I term “cannibaligame.” At the deepest level, racism is a systemic attempt to consume, extract, and possess the spiritual frequency of another group because the oppressor’s own collective Orí has become fractured and disconnected from the source. Racism understood as ìlara is a profound, civilisational heartbreak: a violent, multi-century tantrum borne of a group that looked at the spiritual and cultural essence of others, fell in love with it, realised they could not possess it internally, and decided to cage, classify, and consume them instead.
We Africans are in some way responsible for this, not just because of the completeness of the colonial experience and the oppressive nature of what we have now accepted as education, but also because of the virus of the ego that makes us seek validation from the very system that works to subjugate and relegate us, whilst extracting our very essence and appropriating it for sectional benefits. For the sake of late Jason Addy and all of us who seek to be Barristers or Doctors, titles and positions that barely register value compared to the inestimable value of our essence, we need to develop the Mo Ló of Africanness in its diversity and complexity.
Mo Ló is effective use, and Afrilition offers insights and possibilities, not as competition to the Western scarcity model but as an alternative imbued in abundance; a recognition that there is enough space in the sky for all birds to fly. It is no accident that Africa is home to all modern humans because what it lacks in comfort it provides the two critical elements for human survival and evolution. It provides adaptiveness and resilience. Rest well, Jason Ardy; tomorrow shines light beyond ìlara towards Afrilition. Tomorrow, there is an African world where our love is enough and our approval is the reward of our value.
Adéwálé Àjàdí, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of the newly released Afrilition: 21st Century African Manifesto, and Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.
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