Welcome to June, which is usually one of my favourite months. Not only June, though. As a receiver of the monthly deception called salary, I love every month that has only 30 days because its distance to the next deception day is usually shorter than January, March, May, July, August, October and December, which are punishingly and frustratingly long, and their additional one day gives the journey the stress of a trek across the Sahara. The friendliest month is February. It has a heart of gold. It doesn’t tax the salariat like the harsh 31-day-months do. So, always my mood brightens up exceptionally once May is about to be interred to herald the birth of June.

But this June has been made to arrive with much tears and innocent blood sorrow and pain all over its face. This June has arrived with a heavy heart, with a fresh bruising of the ungoing scar of slavery on the face of humanity. I can’t help watching the TV, especially given the lockdown condition. And yet each time I’ve watched the TV since the bestial murder of the African American George Floyd, handcuffed and pinned down by a racist knee to his neck, I also lose breath, as the innocent poor brother pleads for a morsel of life. The grief is beyond words; and each time I watch the scene, I feel like apologizing to the friends in the wild whom we describe with racist condescension as beasts, especially on the National Geographic Wild TV station. Those aren’t the beasts. We, humans, are the real beasts because our relationship with one another has often gone outside that orbit of decency and fellow-feeling that we ascribe to ourselves as so-called higher animals. We are the real beasts because our silent friends in the wild never go outside their feral law to destroy one another. Lions and hyenas and wild dogs and tigers and cheetahs devour other fellow members of the wild for food; but they never have to kill and store for the far future as we do, always at the expense of fellow co-wayfarers in this one space called a world.

The entire season is one of hurt. The raging covid-19 pandemic has revealed the systemic racism in both the US and the UK in terms of the high disproportionate ratio of casualties of Blacks to Whites, which is a net manifestation of the underlying inequality in these otherwise civilized societies. This ought to be enough embarrassment for any modern society that has anything to teach the rest of the world about civilization. Indeed, this yawning gap along racial lines in access to opportunities and quality of life points to the failure of democratic ideals in the two countries that have often acted as the policemen of the rest of the world. Naturally, what one expected was some frantic, deliberate efforts by the governments of the two countries to quickly cover this shame by stepping up the living conditions of the oppressed minorities. But not so in Donald Trump’s America in which, perhaps in his best mood he sees nothing wrong with the situation; and in his worst, he would wish to prolong the sojourn of covid-19 among the Black communities to assist his police force in eliminating more of the Blacks.

Some solace comes, however, when we find both Blacks and Whites protesting on the streets against this bestiality. Hence, the pain eases a little when it is realized that the racist hound of a police officer, Derek Chauvin, has actually pinned down the neck of the entire humanity, and the whole world can’t breathe now. Yes, we all can’t breathe now. Not even the phenomenal grand racist, Donald Trump, himself is breathing now. Or how can he breathe when he now hides in a burrow like any rodent, peeping about him in fear of the slightest noise, frightened by the roaring anger of those he hates. The pain in our heart is immense. The pain around the neck of the world is suffocating in its sharpness.

Yet, there is still another species of the pain: the shameful silence of Africa and her treacherous leaders at a time when the streets of the United States and of the United Kingdom and of Germany are filled to the brim with Blacks and Whites who, like George Floyd, can’t breathe. Africa, the natural home of this great soul freshly wasted by a blood-thirsty racist hound in uniform, is silent. The streets here are breathing. The mouths of the leaders, choked with borrowed funds from the West and China, are breathing fearfully lest their racist creditors to whom they have mortgaged the Black race, notice that they, too, like the rest of the world, have stopped breathing like George Floyd. There is absolute, shameful silence as if it isn’t the same country (in the case of Nigeria) whose citizens did take to the streets over the killing of an Iranian General the other time. This is the secondary level of the pain. Yes, of the pain. So, poor June of 2020, like others before you, you had meant well. You hadn’t added that extra day of pain to your usual civilized 30 days. Rather, it is American racism that has poured sand into my garri to make you a sour month for me and the rest of us who can’t breathe because the racism is on the prowl, like a lion, like any predator animal, like Derek Chauvin. O Africa, my Africa! O Africans, my fellow Africans, this is another death, another round of betrayal of our long-lost sisters and brothers. I have to stop here now because I can no longer breathe. Derek Chauvin’s and Trump’s knees have pinned my neck down even here in Nigeria, in Africa, and I just can’t breathe!

Joseph A. Ushie