Revelations: Africa in Poetry

Language injustice

119 Language injustice All of us speak Even the speech impaired - the dumb - speak Only that we speak different languages From south to north From east to west We all speak Different tongues and clicking sounds But a hardly acknowledged reality, especially by our friends from the north! To us all their language they impose Their definitions of color they enforce They say they are white when in fact they are pink They define others as black when the others are in fact chocolate coated Is this by design or ignorance? That they fail to define the color of things Even the color of their own skin! Such, is language injustice In schools, the story remains They force us to change our traditional names And to learn in their foreign languages And encourage us to despise our own languages That we laugh at our own people when they wrongly speak the foreign language That we prize our own people when they fail to speak the language of their motherland 120 That we give accolades to our people when they deride their culture That we give credit to our people when they mimic foreign cultures And approve of our people when they speak languages unfamiliar to their own people Such is language injustice Rhetoric of democracy they preach But only to reveal their hypocrisy For where is democracy Where is equality When some languages are more equal than others? Such is language injustice ...