The Black Man's Burden - in Black and White
As the title suggests this book is about the black man, those in sub-Saharan Africa or else in the African diaspora. By extension, however, it is also all about the marginalized, disadvantaged, oppressed, traumatized, downtrodden, dehumanized and aggrieved segments of the world's population. Not only does this include the dark-skinned inhabitants in different continents of the globe, it also counts with the diverse remote aboriginal and indigenous groups, many nomadic tribes, low-caste untouchables, the displaced and dispossessed, and even women (who have traditionally been victims of harassment, sexual misconduct and gender-based violence in almost all cultures). The plight of all these disparaged categories of hapless people is exemplified in the book, to one extent or the other, by the burden and experiences of the black man (not just in tropical Africa but Afro-descendants in the Americas, the Caribbean or elsewhere in the world).
In that sense, the book is not really about race, but the painful experiences of diverse peoples, epitomized in this book by the people of African descent. Theirs is a story that, sad as it is, has remained untold to the full, a story that continues to unfold in daily news items highlighting their sufferings and victimization from unlawful killings, police brutalities, mass incarcerations, unfair judicial systems, institutional racism, racial profiling, discrimination, and all forms of inequities and mistreatments, a story for which the "Black Lives Matter" mantra has lately become a rallying cry of all the abused ones of the earth.
While the historical, legal, social and political perspectives of the black man's misfortune are generally well understood, even if at a superficial level, the religious dimensions do not seem so obvious to most. Yet the deeper causes of the black man's travail are religious - the reader might be a surprise to learn.
To religion then this book turns, not only to explore the causes and circumstances of the black man's travail but also in search of the ultimate solution.
In summary, the book is both about the travail of this branch of the human family, the black man, but also about the triumph of the human spirit and of the human race as a whole. So in that sense it is a book about the entire human family and its forward march towards an inclusive world community, a community characterized by love, mutual understanding, reconciliation and wellbeing for all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The author does not write about black and African people as an "outsider". He is a full-blooded black African himself and hails from Cape Coast in the south-central coastal region of Ghana in West Africa. Cape Coast is where one of most prominent slave castles of Africa is situated. Known as the Cape Coast Castle, it is even on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. Thus Cape Coast played a crucial role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
He is familiar with issues blacks are generally confronted with, having travelled widely across Africa, met blacks in Brazil and Colombia, and experienced what blackness means while visiting or sojourning in other continents.
