Goats in WHITE Masks: Privileging Whiteness as Our Progress

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“Local timber contractors say they have been thrown out of business because prime lands in forest reserves have been allocated to expatriate loggers” (MyJoyOnLine.com, March 5, 2010).

In Ghana

Leaders, officials, government, elders

Those who should lead us

Have sold their conscience, integrity

To greed

To neocolonialism, dependency

To anyone in kaleidoscopic white skin

To even goats in white masks

In Ghana

Our educational system is about whiteness

Christianity is about pure whiteness

Our radio stations are about whiteness

Our TV stations are about whiteness

Our names are about whiteness

So we privilege

Worship, revere, deify

Anyone with “white” skin tone

Lebanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian

Even goats in white masks

Goats in white masks are privileged

In Ghana

Our trees are harvested by foreigners

Gold, diamond, bauxite, water, fish

All in the crafting hands of foreigners

Of foreigners

Foreigners who abuse us

Foreigners who disrespect us

Oh! OBURONI

The divine intervention agency

Our gods, saviors

OBURONI, the white man

Lebanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian

All exploit us

Marginalize us even in Ghana

In our own land

In our homes

In the land of our birth

In the land of our ancestors

We have become outsiders

Strangers, tenants, share-croppers

Slaves, cheap laborers

Exploited, abused and used

Debt-bondage

Pawning our birthright

In Ghana

Ghanaians

Held hostage by selfish leaders

Leaders, chiefs who ennoble greed

Officials in the pay of foreigners

Mercenary educated elites

Held hostage

To fascination with white skin

To gifts, bribery, graft

To bottles of Schnapps

To crates of beer

To dollars, pounds, Euro, Yuan

Foreigners have it all

Goats in white masks have it all

Tearing our forests and gold

Torn from Ghana’s womb

In Ghana

We worship OBURONI

We venerate Oburoni things

And so it has come to pass

We import chicken legs, wings

We import tomatoes, onions, peppers

The craze is WHITE onion, pepper

We import rice

Perfumed rice is the BURONI one

Local TUO SAFI is no more

FRIED PERFUMED RICE is here

Sweet lavender carcinogens

Cancerous rice in Ghana’s womb

In Ghana

When we need local school uniforms

Foreigners are summoned

They know our dress code and style

Our style of adoring foreign things

Our style of dependency

In Ghana

We import “chewing” sticks

Tooth-picks, perfumed sticks

To sweeten and WHITEN our teeth

In Ghana

Our leaders

Those who should lead us

Have sold their conscience

To greed

To neocolonialism, dependency

To worshipping goats in white masks

Our greatest bane

From misty colonialism

To nasty neocolonialism

Dependency is our foreign policy

Whiteness is our signifier of being

Whiteness is our new ontology

Whiteness in kaleidoscope

Indian, Korean, Chinese, Indian

Even goats in white masks

Feed freely from our local palms

Freely feed on our trees of life

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com