ONE OF THE LEAST talked about topics is the psychological impact colonialism had on Africans. For colonialism to work, we were led to believe that the white man was superior to Africans and even though today things are different, we still give white people some preferential treatment. I remember that in high school white, mixed-race, or Asian students were allowed to keep their long hair while African students were told that their kinky curly hair is high maintenance and ugly, and therefore they need to cut it off. This might seem like a small thing but it speaks volumes as to how we treat our fellow Africans and how we let the white man walk all over us in our own country. We learn English in school which I appreciate, but what I don’t understand is how English or any international language for that matter, is used as a measure of intelligence. When a white person makes the effort to speak Kinyarwanda with a terrible accent, we think it’s cute but do the whites feel the same way when we speak broken English, or do they just think that we are ignorant for not knowing their language. Even when we speak their language we have to do our best to imitate their accent to sound more professional or educated, but very few white people make the effort to speak Kinyarwanda with our accent. This delusional mentality carries on to how the youth perceive the western world, almost every high school graduate is struggling to get a chance to go abroad and stay there. They somehow think that working a minimum wage job for 60 hours a week is a better lifestyle than coming back to Africa. For some Africans who come from countries with political and security instabilities, it makes sense why they want to stay abroad but for a Rwandan to think that way is delusional. Don’t get me wrong, Life outside of Rwanda can be amazing but I believe that with a change of mindset we can build that life we dream of having abroad here in Rwanda. Is the white man’s world that perfect though? Take the USA for example, more than half a million people are homeless, 300 people get shot every day with at least a third of them dying after getting shot, others ending up with permanent injuries, and finally, with more than 2 million people behind bars, it makes America the country with the highest prison population and most racially biased incarceration system. Their interference with global politics is also questionable, take the example of the withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation and the war on terror leaving the Afghanis defenseless against the Taliban who were able to overthrow the democratic government in less than a month. I bring up all these flaws to encourage the youth to wake up and see that even these developed countries have their problems even though they keep pointing their fingers at developing nations and their shortcomings. The western media does a good job of hiding all these flaws by keeping the world distracted with endless political fiascos and celebrity drama. Theres a lot we can learn from the West but trying to copy and paste everything is going to end up in a total disaster. As individuals we learn and grow by looking up to our role models and heroes, we try to implement their best values into our daily lives but we dont try to be exactly like them. As a country with its own identity and history, it is crucial that we understand our identity as Rwandans on this journey of growth and prosperity or else we shall cease into oblivion. For the youth, the journey starts with us recognising that we need to unlearn a lot of the ideals that have been pushed on to us by the west through their movies, music, books, and social media. We need to understand that what is in most movies is the reflection of Western reality and acknowledge that we live in a different reality here in Africa. Girls of our generation need to understand that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors and that it isnt defined by the Kardashians. The boys need to understand that their masculinity isnt defined by how many girls they have slept with. The Rwandan youth need to understand how much power they have in shaping the future and decide if they are going to keep letting the white man influence it or if they will rise to the challenge and make history by being the generation that breaks the psychological shackles of colonialism. Giovanni Paolo Iradukunda is a high school graduate from Lycee De Kigali. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
