This is one of many reactions to video posted on TIM TV titled “Black lives matter is not a joke, Pamela Anchang’s response to Breitbart News and Nestride Yumga…”
TIM TV, by Marie N. Fongwa, PhD, MPH, MSN, RN
Pamela Anchang, you are truly the voice that immigrants need, especially where we are, the United States of America. Yes, your Youtube video walks the talk and you have rightly refused to stand on the sideline. Yes, based on the content, you are truly “woke” by Nestride Yumga’s comment. By sharing your well-grounded-in-facts and well-articulated video, you have “woke” up many especially those who have not seen the interview between Nestride and the specified news medium. I, a Cameroonian American, stand with you to speak out against the attitude (resides in a person) that allowed Nestride Yumga to express herself the way she did.
As you rightly referred to, unconscious racial bias is found everywhere including healthcare settings, stores, streets, etc. That hidden part of a person is clear through observable actions. How people feel inside can be measured in how they conduct the activities of their lives, say what they say and or do what they do and how they do them. Nestride Yumga, a Cameroon-related woman, expressed herself in the way she felt inside. She does not represent many immigrants that call this home and respect African Americans for paving the way for us to come and live in this country the way we do. One of my teachers in my early formal education years said that half education is madness. The master’s level degree that Nestride Yumga has is yet to transcend for human consumption, if at all.
However and as you, Pamela, said, some people including myself know, Nestride is not on the right side of the social phenomenon and she needs to “come back home” considering that she has the socially and color coded skin, black. God, Creator of all beings, gave her the skin shed and other humans gave her the color code, black. Skin colors such as black, white or others are socially constructed terms that came to life in the 17th century to differentiate between groups of human beings, particularly the slaves (mostly blacks) and free people (whites). These terms have deeper meanings than just what we see as colors. Before the color codes, people were recognized and or respected for their nationalities and ethnicities – Romans, Jews, Africans, etc.
Nestride’s message is truly “dead on arrival” because the time has finally arrived for all human beings to receive respect for who they are. Many times, people unknowingly allow themselves to be used to destroy themselves — outside forces helping people to pit against one another within – blacks destroying other blacks. That is a strategy that those who do not value others’ right to co-exist use – create and give a chance for those who should not exist to fight and kill one another. In that way, the oppressors’ hands are ‘clean’ but they created the toxic environment. We pray for wisdom to see when such dangerous baits are used to catch us. Use your God-given tiger’s eye to spot wolves in sheep clothing that are coming to get you!
We thank God for George Floyd’s life that was ended in such a heinous way and which is transcending the race divide in the United States and the world. Rest in perfect peace brother. Black lives matter because all humans were created in God’s image; there is no subhuman.
