The Conscious Bridge

When I began this personal blog, I initially thought I would write more on topics of Black Consciousness. Instead, I have found myself preoccupied with reflecting on my past, narrating it in my own terms to better understand myself. To be honest, I believe I need to continue this introspective process to achieve the level of wisdom I seek. However, for this particular piece, I would like to explore the subject of “corruption”.

When I lived in Malawi and witnessed how inconvenient life was compared to Japan, I would fixate on failures of leadership. The more consciously I consumed news, the more I encountered stories of government corruption. Democracy was a concept in which people placed their hopes, even there. It seemed to function well in Japan, where citizens have reliable access to necessities like water, electricity, and gas. In Malawi, however, it wasn’t working. I even wrote a university paper arguing that democracy fails in many African countries because voters are often not sufficiently educated, with illiteracy rates far higher than in nations like Japan. I was once told that in Japan, during the Edo period, literacy rates were remarkably high—some estimates claim near-universal male literacy in cities—which helped prepare the populace to build a modern nation. Observing Malawi’s realities at the time, I felt this foundational preparation was clearly lacking. I believed we needed to fund education urgently, get children off the streets and into schools, and secure a better future—if only the leaders who came to power were not corrupt.

This analysis, I now see, was itself a product of the very system I failed to perceive. It focused on symptom (local governance) while overlooking the foundational disease: a centuries-old campaign to deny African genius and reconfigure global power. Through my own conscious learning, I have come to understand that Africans are brilliant, a truth evident in our history. If we pay attention to the period of slavery during the early phases of Western domination, it is undeniable that racism was a powerful tool specifically designed to obscure this brilliance and drive corruption for the benefit of a powerful global few. From the removal of noses from African sculptures to the looting of kingdoms, the physical record of non-European civilizations has been systematically altered, neglected, or destroyed. This was done to ensure most people would not remember that the peoples we today call “Black” were once dominant forces in the world and profoundly shaped human intellectual evolution. Japan, it turns out, is no exception. Scholars point to a diversity of features in ancient Japanese art and anthropology, suggesting a more complex history of migration and appearance than the modern homogeneous ideal.

With that said, I believe our current understanding of corruption started with imperialism. It required propaganda, such as white supremacy, to convince people to be proud patriots and that anyone who did not fit a certain aesthetic or identity should be excluded and silenced forever. What happens when a country successfully colonizes another? It exploits its resources, including its people, drawing wealth only for those who orchestrated these actions. (Of course, that is not how they understood the situation.) The plot twist is that the public, who supported these actions in the name of patriotic love, derived little benefit. They are forced to continue participating in a capitalism that exploits them for the same leaders.

So when I look at what is happening in Africa, it truly moves me emotionally. An outstanding history, the pride in people’s memories, and the respect from the rest of the world keep fading before my eyes. The leaders on the continent are still corrupt, yes, but it might be that the anti-blackness which allowed the West to succeed in rewriting human history is so advanced that the only way to survive as a nation is to oblige the neocolonial system—a system that demands the continuous export of raw resources and political compliance to former colonial powers and global financial institutions, often at the expense of local development.

Speaking of anti-blackness, I want to be clear. Just because you love and appreciate Black culture—often referring to what African Americans have created over generations since slavery—does not mean you are not participating in anti-blackness. A good example is gyaru in Japan, a fashion subculture known for its bold, glamorous, and often tanned aesthetic. As a YouTuber noted, “We know Japan is a homogeneous society and has its own issues, but the fact that several gyaru are using black aesthetics and black culture as a ‘f-you’ to this society is just breeding anti-blackness—because why do black people have to get involved, and why are we catching strays in this?” (Ella Pastoral, 2024). This is especially true when these very movements are continuously looked down upon. This cultural borrowing, even in rebellion, becomes another subtle form of corruption—an abuse of the power inherent in a homogeneous society to commodify Blackness for shock value while the living conditions and historical contributions of Black people remain marginalized. It does not stop there. Excellent creations by contemporary Black people, such as music, are slowly but surely being erased, replaced by lighter-skinned creatives who are more palatable to, and often perpetuate, a system predicated on white superiority.

Back to corruption. In this essay, I define corruption simply as an abuse of power. Anyone who is powerless is a victim. Yes, even people who pass as white. Because the erasure of actual history keeps everyone from the truth, we continue to drown in the illusion that everything is as it is supposed to be. The urgency, of course, is amplified by the current administration in the United States—a nation whose political rhetoric and policies often embolden the very forces of white supremacy, historical denial, and global inequity that form the bedrock of the corruption I describe. As much as I want to focus on helping Africa’s future, more than ever, we cannot look away from what this superpower is doing. Nor can we ignore how much longer my own identities will continue to be disrespected.