Could Morata be in Danger of Becoming Football's Nearly Man?

Alvaro Morata almost scored with his first touch on his debut for Real Madrid.

Jose Mourinho was manager of Real Madrid at the time. It was December 2010, and the club was locked in a battle for La Liga with Pep Guardiola's Barcelona.

Mourinho threw on Morata—a tall, strong centre-forward from the youth academy—in the 89th minute against Real Zaragoza at their stadium, La Romareda. Morata was only 18 years old. He had it all.

"My abiding memory of Morata was his conditioning," Roberto Rojas—who played with Real Madrid's first team in the late 1990s and later coached at La Fabrica, the club's youth academy, for six years—told Circletalkslive

"He had such an impressive physique. He was big, very powerful and very fast. Technically, he was a good player, too—good in the air, could play with both feet. He scored goals. He was a complete player in spite of his height, about 1.90 metres tall. He had everything."

A minute after his introduction against Real Zaragoza, Morata broke free of the defence, but his shot on goal was parried at the last second by Zaragoza's advancing goalkeeper. Morata nearly scored. It could well be the story of his career—football's nearly man.

Real Madrid won the match, 3-1. Gabi—who was playing at Real Zaragoza in between the two spells that made him an icon at Atletico Madrid—scored Real Zaragoza's consolation goal.

After the match, as tears streamed down his cheeks, Morata presented his Real Madrid jersey to his father, Alfonso Morata, who said afterwards on Cadena SER, the radio network where he worked as a director: "I would not sell[the shirt] for €20 million."

Real Madrid did, however, sell his son for €20 million a few seasons later to Juventus (with a buy-back option).

Morata had impressed in the minutes he was given at Real Madrid and came on as a substitute in the victorious 2014 UEFA Champions League final, but he could never get ahead of Gonzalo Higuain and Karim Benzema in the queue for the club's No 9 position. In the same year he won his first cap for Spain, he was moved on to Turin.

During his first season at Juventus, he flourished, managing to nudge Fernando Llorente out of the starting XI. Morata scored several important goals in the 2014-2015 UEFA Champions League knockout stages, as well as one against Barcelona in the final as Juve came up just short in a thrilling campaign. Great things were expected in his second season with Juve, but he never kicked on. 

Ig@circletalkslive

"Morata seemed to annoy [Juventus manager] Massimiliano Allegri rather than convince him that he should be a regular starter," Adam Digby, author ofJuventus: A History in Black and White,told B/R. "Ultimately his second season was very disappointing, but because of the promise shown in his first season, everyone was really disappointed that Juve didn't hang on to him."

Morata's two closest friends at the club—Simone Zaza, who was fourth-choice striker at Juventus, and Llorente—came and went. 

"Zaza and Morata were two single guys, both living in Turin," says Digby. "They stuck up a really good friendship, hanging out on days off, shopping together, messing around at training together. There's a video of them doing ridiculous slides in the mud one day when it was pouring rain in training. Perhaps that played into Morata's[mindset]—he wasn't one of the kids messing around on the training ground anymore. He was the club's first-choice No 9. A lot more was expected of him and he didn't do it.

"Maybe not having Llorente, too—who picked Morata up at the airport and did things like taking him to the dentist because he didn't know the Italian words for 'toothache' and so on—meant Morata was taken out of his comfort zone. He's a sensitive guy and a really quiet and shy kid as well."

During his time at Juventus, Morata struck up a relationship with the club's goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon. Morata looked to Buffon as a mentor.

Buffon took Morata aside one day after witnessing Morata crying to their physio because he was sad, as noted by Sid Lowe in the Guardian.

"Afterwards [Buffon] took me aside, alone, and said that if I wanted to cry, do it at home," Morata said. "He said the people who wished me ill would be happy to see that and the people who wished me well would be saddened by it."

Morata returned to Real Madrid in the summer of 2016 and again scored decisive goals for the club as Real Madrid won their first league title in five years (as well as another UEFA Champions League crown).

He was then sold to Chelsea at the end of the 2016-17 season for a club-record fee of €80 million, which represented a profitable piece of business for Real Madrid—like Jese, who went to Paris Saint-Germain for a reported fee of €25 million a year earlier—on one of their academy graduates.

"Morata has a very good reputation at Real Madrid," Joaquin Maroto, a journalist with Diario AS who has been covering Spain's national team for 30 years, told B/R. "At the club, he had the same problem that a lot of players have who come from the academy—often they go on to play as internationals, but at Real Madrid, they are reserves.

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"Players like Juan Mata, who is at Manchester United now. He was a player at La Fabrica but he played with Spain at the [Santiago] Bernabeu before ever playing with Real Madrid at the stadium. Alvaro Negredo is another. What happened to Morata is happening now to Isco, who is a starter for the Spain national team and a sub for Real Madrid. For a young guy like Morata, it was difficult."

Gabriele Marcotti, ESPN senior writer and a Times columnist, concurs. Morata faced a trying time at the club that nurtured him. Even though Morata scored 15 goals in 14 starts during Real Madrid's 2016-2017 league-winning campaign, he could never expect to supplant the club's front three—Gareth Bale, Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo—as a starter.

"Morata's trajectory above all says a lot about Madrid," says Marcotti. "Here you have a guy who has come through the ranks, who is very much steeped in the club. He breaks into the team when they have won La Decima [the club's tenth European Cup]. There's a very expensive, very entrenched frontline of Bale, Benzema and Cristiano. In 10, 20 years, we'll look back on this Real Madrid era and that front three and how they were really untouchable. For them to get dropped from the lineup they had to basically get hurt.

"Morata is faced with the dilemma: 'OK, I'm here. I'm young. I'm promising. Do I stick around and try to impose myself knowing that in the front three are two of the most expensive players of all time and a guy in Karim Benzema who has been there forever and who is very much the president's man, who is very popular with Florentino Perez?'

"From the club's perspective, they send him to Italy, telling him, 'Do well and you'll come back.' He goes to Italy, does well. He grows. He comes back. He scores a ton of goals off the bench, but the club makes it obvious to him that Bale, Benzema and Cristiano are mainstays, and, 'Sometimes we'll play with Isco in the front three, so off you go to Chelsea.'"

Robbie Jay Barratt - ig/circletalks

After initially impressing at Chelsea, which included an early season hat-trick against Stoke City, Morata's performances have tapered off.

According to Cope (h/t the Express), he's been lined up to go on loan. He has only just turned 26 years old, but his career is drifting.

Digby makes the point that Morata has trouble assuming the mantle of being the boss. A player like Ronaldo, for example, grows with the responsibility of being a team's franchise player; it seems that Morata wilts in the role.

"Morata can be devastating in spells," says Digby. "He can surprise people when little is expected of him. Once the expectation is there, it really shows. We saw that with his second season at Juve. Then he went back to Real Madrid in 2016 and he was quite good again. He obviously convinced Chelsea to invest heavily in him, and he's failed to live up to that, too. 

"That weight of expectation of being the main man in attack has plagued him ever since. He was fine being the backup to Llorente at Juve. He was fine being the backup to Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. When he was made first-choice at Juve and again when he was the main man at Chelsea when they spent all that money on him, he's struggled to live up to the hype. I guess that's kind of who he is."

Happiness, Top Secret To Healthy And Successful Life

Happiness like it is said, is when the things you do, the things you say as well as the things you think about are in harmony. Happiness goes beyond positive mood, it is a state of being that encompasses a good life, that is to say, with a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction.
Happiness enlightens a person and opens up a persons mind to positive thoughts and thereby helps one to grow effectively. In contrast to happiness, anger, the state of emotion that is characterised by antagonism towards something or someone can be quite dangerous as it triggers the adrenal glands which floods the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. When these is in circulation, the brain shunts blood away from the guts and towards the muscles, causing heart rate, blood pressure to increase, respiration also increases, the body temperature rises and the skin begins to perspire leaviing the hairs on it standing. The mind becomes sharpened, focused and determined.
Although getting angry can help in exposing out the truth and also helps people to know how bitter a person feels inside thereby helping you as a person too to correct mistakes and be as good as careful, but it doesn't matter how good it might be, happiness is always a far more better option to it.

Below are detailed reasons why you should try being happy,
* Happy people are more productive:
 Take for example, in a place of work, when the boss is a playful person who always puts on a happy face rather than a mean one, the workers tend to be closer and thereby create a close relationship with the boss which can in turn helps in improving the working standard, creates an arena for clearer and better understanding of what is expected to be done. Similarly in a plan were the boss is always mean and angry, the workers would be afraid to ask the person some questions where necessary because they are afraid if what the result could be. So being happy is just the coolest feeling because when you are happy the people around you will be happy and these will lead to a higher yield or productivity.
* It improves the physical health:
 Research has shown that Happiness helps a person to battle against stress, helps reduce the risk of heart attack (high blood pressure). It also helps the mind to settle and also slows down the rate at which cells die.
* Happiness makes a person to work at best: Everyone can attest to the fact that when a task is carried out with love and happiness, the whole thing will go smoothly, but when it is carried out by an angry person, may be due to the fact that the person was forced to do just what he/she was doing the task can end up being a total disaster.
When you are happy, everything seems possible and everything done seems just so easy but when anger is there, every single thing becomes so hard and tough to deal with.
* Happiness creates success much more than success creates happiness:
This section is in fact self explanatory. For instance, when you are promoted in your place of work, you'd be very happy that you can even throw a party.
In the same way, if a person just feeling so happy gives out a job opportunity to individuals who really need it and cab fut to the space, then the person will not just put smile in one persons face, rather he/she will end up putting smiles and sharing Happiness to so many people. So therefore it is proven that happiness creates success even more than success creates happiness.
In conclusion, happiness should be attained by all cost, we shouldn't joke with it. No matter what the situation might be, I strongly believe that if it is handled properly and taken care with a happy face instead of an angry or an odd face..
So never joke with it, never compromise it and never forget to share happiness around. Remember that good things shouldn't be kept to oneself, but its best enjoyed when shared among others. Thank you for reading this article.
Author: Ezra Bassey

Effective Communication, A Tool For Sustainable Development

It is so appalling that the number of educated people has been sideland by the number of the uneducated. In our daily activities we get to meet with lots of people, some good, some bad, some rich, some poor, some black, some white, some tall, some short etc. We get to interact with them, we argue, we exchange languages, we learn as we also teach and so doing we communicate a lot of problems into ones head, at same time give possible solutions to some unanswered mysteries.
COMMUNICATION
Communication, the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or usage of some other medium has played a vital role in most of the discoveries and inventories in the world so far.
   With it you can now go places with ease and do quite lots of things so easily.
 Communication can only be met, when the people in the medium can understand themeelves effectively.
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Effective communication is about more than just exchanging information.It's about understanding
the emotion and intentions behind the information. As well as being able to clearly convey a message, you need to also listen in a way that gains the full meaning of what’s being said and makes the other person feel heard and understood.

Effective communication sounds like it should be instinctive. But all too often, when we try to communicate with others something goes astray.
We say one thing, the other person hears something else, and misunderstandings, frustration, and conflicts arouse. This can cause
problems in your home, school, and work relationships.
Communication is not something of the 21st century, it has been, its still on and will always be, its age is as old as man itself.
For we to effectively communicate or convey information and messages there are certain skills one should acquire. This skills range from
*Engaged listening
*Nonverbal communication
*Managing stress in the moment
*Asserting yourself in a respectful way.
 As an individual, there is high need for effective communication, these will not only help you to convey message effectively but will as well help you to have a full understanding of concepts when you are communicated to. Having full knowledge of concepts is the bedrock for exploitation, thus communication is a problem solver and a search tool for uncovering mysteries.
   Let's see how engaged listening can actually help us yo communicate effectively;
When communicating with others, we often focus on what we should say. However, effective communication is less about talking and more about listening. Listening well means not just
understanding the words or the information being communicated, but also understanding the emotions the speaker is trying to communicate.
There’s a big difference between engaged listening and simply hearing. When you really listen, when you’re engaged with what’s being said—you’ll hear the subtle intonations in someone’s voice that tell you how that person is feeling and the emotions they’re trying to communicate. When you’re an engaged listener, not only will you better understand the other person, you’ll also make that person feel heard
and understood, which can help build a stronger, deeper connection between you.
By communicating in this way, you’ll also experience a process that lowers stress and supports physical and emotional well-being.
Lack of effective communicating skill has cost the world so much, because it is one of the major contributor to the rate of unemployment when it is related to mobility in the labour market.
It is only when you are able to understand and absorb the contents of the information conveyed yo you that you can put the information into use, and the lack of these understanding is what is slowing the rate at which things are done and executed.
The ability to effectively communicate is what will solve most of the problems we have in life. So any one who hasn't been able to understand the beef for effective communication is still having a Kong way to go, if he or she wants to be heard and remembered.
To solve life's problems it is therefore necessary to study the above listed communication skills.....
Author: Ezra Bassey
Reference: Helpguide

Information Management, The Source Of Everything...

In the world today, the real power is not in muscle nor determined by the strength deposited in oneself, it is the amount of information a person have or have gathered. Information management is in fact the bedrock for any establishment one can ever think of, it is the reason why they say "knowledge is power".
In the society, we can attest to the fact that everything carried out around us is as a result of generated information, it is as a result of what was thought and then given out and circulated.
Information:
Information is any entity or form that provides the answer to a question of some kind or resolves uncertainty. It is thus related to data and knowledge, as data represents values attributed to parameters, and knowledge signifies understanding of real things or abstract concepts.
This meaning of information is gotten from wikipedia, and to the best of my understanding; I see it more profound and more complete than any other meaning given to this concept.
  For information to be useful it must be properly managed and utilized. A lot of people holds some amount of information that should have changed their lives but its just quit unfortunate that they lack the sense of managing the information, thus they live with ignorance and therefore be termed as foolish. If you have an information, it should be able to change yourself, and every one else around you.
Information Management:
Information management ( IM ) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it.
Information management embraces all the generic concepts of management, including the planning, organizing, structuring, processing, controlling , evaluating and reporting of information activities, all of which is needed in order to meet the needs of those with organisational roles or functions that depend on information. These generic concepts allow the information to be presented to the audience or the correct group of people. After individuals are able to put that information to use, it then gains more value.
Well said, for information to be a valuable one it must be of use, its not all information that are useful so it us important to always gather information that will be useful to humanity.
Why Information is Important
Like earlier said, everything today is as a result of information that was utilized, and applied in the right way.
For we to break limits, we need information, for you to be more intelligent you should be able to explore and inquire more facts about your concept of study. These is also applicable to life, for we to make the world a better place we need lots of information and not just gathering those information but passing it, utilizing it, structuring it and most importantly solving problems with it.
" Being smart is not using varieties of information to change yourself, it is the ability to use  just a piece of information to change the world "-Ezra Bassey.
 It is not the amount of information you have that makes you a genius but what you can create out from the little information you have is what makes you a genius, the amount of people that gets to benefit from your information is what makes you a genius; that is why I say that TEACHERS are the most important people on earth, because it is from the information that they deliver, we have the doctors, the engineers, the judges and so on....
Isaac Newton didn't have to learn everything before the world could benefit from him, so what he did was to allow the world to benefit from the little he had.
Michael Faraday didn't invent everything but today we almost can't do without his invention.
These people are so numerous, they have done it and the world is still benefitting from their information.
The funny thing about useful information is that, they never get worn out, they are always just as new as from its origin. People have done it with just a piece of information, you don't have to know everything before the world benefit from you, cause the opportunity might never come, so use that little information you have today to change the world.....
If they have done it, its a hope that should tell you that it is possible for you to do even better, what you need is I formation and nothing more, so treat it with care, find it with aim and utilize it for the better....
Author: Ezra Bassey

Tales of Russia 2018

Russia 2018, the long awaited event planet earth has ever longed for. It has been on, It is still on and it will continue to go on. 

This event is historic, it is another way through which the world can test their ability, not just technologically but as well with relation to their talents when it comes to the field.

Russia 2018 is here now, it has brought people from all works of life together to witness the most dreadful competition going on, on earth.

A lot of world cup competition have been played, but I believe that no one has ever witness this such. At times I begin to think its just the nature of the year, looking back at the champions league knock out stage, how the unbelievables happened and how easy they looked.

I guess the same fate is after Russia 2018, the question is, is this just how it wants to happen or can we start believing what our minds might be telling us already?

The world cup kicked off on 14th June 2018 with Russia its host against Saudi Arabia, it was indeed a fair play as the Russians belittled the Arabians sending them off the pitch with (5) unreplyable goals, which is so far the best stat so far in the game.

The game became a top story when Ronaldo single handedly crashed Spain sending them to a 3:3 draw. That was in fact a spectacular display but every one was much ready to see Argentina's display.

Argentina kicked off on the noon of Sat.16th June 2018. Just twenty minutes into the game Argentina was already on the lead with 1, not long when the re-equalizer came in just 4 minutes from the first goal and the game went down a 1:1 draw, but with Messi blamed for the draw due to an opportunity of which he missed a penalty.

That was that for Argentina, kittke by little the drama was all gone not after Germany lost 1:0 to Mexico.

I t was somewhat like a shock, hard to believe but it sure happened, not too long it was time do Brazil to display and unfortunately the same fate got hold of them and they ended game with a 1:1 draw against Switzerland.

The whole thing is just getting twisted, 

Uruguay struggled to win Egypt,

Spain drew with Portugal,

France struggled to achieve a win too,

Argentina suffered a draw,

Same fate as  Argentina met Germany and Brazil... And there are still other shows yet to uncover....

Every one is now lost on who is in the best place to win the cup.

Original source: circletalks.blogspot.com

Put your comments below and share......

Always wondered how the brain works? New tech is here to understand how the organ functions

The human brain is composed of billions of neurons wired together in intricate webs and communicating through electrical pulses and chemical signals.
LOS Angeles: Scientists have created a new technique to map the network of connections within the brain, an advance that help scientists understand how the organ works.
The human brain is composed of billions of neurons wired together in intricate webs and communicating through electrical pulses and chemical signals.
Although neuroscientists have made progress in understanding the brain's many functions - such as regulating sleep, storing memories, and making decisions - visualising the entire "wiring diagram" of neural connections throughout a brain is not possible using currently available methods.
Using Drosophila fruit flies, researchers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US have developed a method to easily see neural connections and the flow of communications in real time within living flies.
The research, published in the journal eLife, is a step forward toward creating a map of the entire fly brain's many connections, which could help scientists understand the neural circuits within human brains as well.
"If an electrical engineer wants to understand how a computer works, the first thing that he or she would want to figure out is how the different components are wired to each other," said Carlos Lois, research professor at Caltech.
"Similarly, we must know how neurons are wired together in order to understand how brains work," he said.
When two neurons connect, they link together with a structure called a synapse, a space through which one neuron can send and receive electrical and chemical signals to or from another neuron.
Even if multiple neurons are very close together, they need synapses to truly communicate.
Researchers developed a method for tracing the flow of information across synapses, called TRACT (Transneuronal Control of Transcription).
Using genetically engineered Drosophila fruit flies, TRACT allows researchers to observe which neurons are "talking" and which neurons are "listening" by prompting the connected neurons to produce glowing proteins.
With TRACT, when a neuron "talks" - or transmits a chemical or electrical signal across a synapse - it will also produce and send along a fluorescent protein that lights up both the talking neuron and its synapses with a particular colour.
Any neurons "listening" to the signal receive this protein, which binds to a so-called receptor molecule - genetically built-in by the researchers - on the receiving neuron's surface.
The binding of the signal protein activates the receptor and triggers the neuron it is attached to in order to produce its own, differently coloured fluorescent protein.
In this way, communication between neurons becomes visible.
Using a type of microscope that can peer through a thin window installed on the fly's head, the researchers can observe the colourful glow of neural connections in real time as the fly grows, moves, and experiences changes in its environment.

Secret to boost brain activity? Try solving physics problems

 WASHINGTON DC: Parts of the brain can become more active when it is exposed to physics problems.

According to a research conducted by Drexel University, the brain's activity can be modified by different forms of instruction.

The researchers marked the areas that become more active when completing a physics reasoning task, both before a course on the concepts and after.


"One of the keys seemed to be an area of the brain, the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, that generates mental simulations. This suggests that learning physics is an imaginative process, which is not typically how people think of it," said Brewe, an associate professor.

The aim of the study was to further explore how the form of teaching called 'Modeling Instruction' encourages students to use their own mental models to understand new concepts.

According to the research, the brain networks are associated with learning math and reading. But mental modeling lends itself to physics.

Black Panther And The Debt We Owe Black Americans

Black Panther And The Debt We Owe Black Americans, By Bunmi Fatoye-Matory

Customers swarmed Exotique, a boutique store in downtown Durham, North Carolina, last week. Exotique, owned by my friend Lola and her husband, sells beautiful African textiles, dresses, jewelry, art and other products from the continent. Lola’s husband is a senior anesthesiologist at the Duke University School of Medicine who travels all over Africa on medical missions, also bringing back gorgeous products for their store. Lola and her husband are alums of the University of Ibadan where she trained as a physical therapist, and he, as a doctor, in the great University of Ibadan College of Medicine.

Exotique is a labour of love for the couple, their effort to establish an African presence in Durham. There is no better place to do commerce than downtown Durham, which is currently undergoing a renaissance with property value going up exponentially. The customers, all African-Americans, were in Exotique on this day to buy African outfits to celebrate the opening of Black Panther, an Afro-futuristic super-hero film based on the Marvel comics. They wanted to pay homage to Africa. With a black production team and a mostly black cast, a first in the movie industry here, this excellent film has now generated $700 million worldwide, and is projected to hit the elusive stratospheric billion-dollar mark soon, leaving competitors in the dust.

The Black Panther film is set in a fictitious African Kingdom called Wakanda. It is a wealthy, independent, and self-sufficient kingdom, where beautiful dark-skinned female warriors fiercely defend the kingdom, and the princess is a geek who creates the most awesome technology to power the kingdom, using their natural resource, Vibranium, not found anywhere else in the world. In this movie, African-Americans imagine Africa as a place of prosperity, a continent that could thrive through technological ingenuity, using its natural resources. They imagine Africa as a continent that engages the rest of the world on its own terms, and not a place to be plundered for its human and natural resources to develop other people’s lands. The young African-American director, Ryan Coogler, and the costume designer, Ruth Carter, Hollywood veterans, said they traveled around the continent and found inspiration in so many cultures in making this intelligent and awe-inspiring movie.

While African-Americans have this global vision of black life, many African immigrants in their thinking and assumptions, show a surprisingly lack of “wokeness”, a lack of social and political consciousness, about the relationship between Africans and African-Americans, and their collective position on the global stage. They do not seem to be aware of the huge debt we owe to African-Americans for our very presence in the United States, and for the environment they helped create for us to thrive and prosper. According to the U.S. Census, African immigrants are the most educated immigrant group in the United States.

Nigerians, especially, hold more advanced degrees than white Americans and, at four percent, hold more Ph.Ds in comparison to the one percent in the general U.S. population. None of this is surprising, giving the huge investment of Nigeria in education during the oil boom era. Nigeria expanded educational opportunities for many generations of Nigerians, with free education for people who studied at home and abroad. Even before the oil boom, the passion for education was so high in many parts of the country that people were willing to go to the ends of the earth to seek opportunities, the Golden Fleece, they called it in those days. Secondly, people who migrate are self-selected. Immigrants, according to research studies, are found to be some of the most driven people in the societies that they live in; and are hardly the norm. American immigration policy deliberated targeted the most skilled and educated in our societies. Also, the continent is so far to the United States that it takes considerable efforts and financial resources to emigrate, which many poor and uneducated people can simply not afford. Comparing these selected immigrants to the general African-American population is fraudulent. As clichés go, it’s like comparing apples and oranges.

In spite of this very high level of education, many Nigerian immigrants are uninformed about the history of their host country, why things are the way they are, the epic battle fought by African-Americans, whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. as enslaved people, and whose unpaid labour and skills, for centuries created the wealth that powered the industrialisation of this great country. Without this free African labour of ten generations, we won’t have the prosperous and powerful America we have today. After slavery was abolished, African-Americans in the milieu of Jim Crow laws (like Apartheid South Africa) came under extreme oppression, discrimination and physical violence by white people who established a racial caste that intended to see black America live in poverty and servitude in perpetuity. But these mighty people pushed back and fought for their rights and humanity. All legal and extra-legal structures were put in place to ensure that the humanity of black Americans was thoroughly subjugated: they could not own property, they could not vote, they could not live wherever they liked, there was violence perpetrated on their communities by racist police officers and some white citizens. In short, all rights and privileges given to white America were denied them, and they had no recourse to the Courts to seek redress. Until the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the eloquent leader of the Movement, but it was the work of thousands of African-Americans; men, women, and children who put their lives and livelihoods on the line, and who organised and challenge the inhumane system. Many paid dearly with their lives, but the freedom and opportunities gained after this struggle is what we (including other non-white immigrant groups) enjoy today. Their struggle led to the 1965 immigration policy, which opened the doors to Africans, Asians, and Middle-Easterners, to emigrate and contribute to the growth of the United States. Before this, the immigration policy only favoured European immigrants.

You would think African immigrants, more than any other group, would appreciate this important historical fact and be grateful to black Americans, but instead I see a lot we-are-better-than-them chest-thumping, willfully ignoring the monumental achievements of black Americans in medicine, law, the academia, literature, science, technology, arts, and sports. Their musical and linguistic culture is emulated all over the world. Their organising and political strategies are borrowed by other groups to agitate for rights and opportunities. The Women’s Movement in the United States, which opened the doors of opportunity for American women who are now leaders in every sphere, replicated the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement, invented by black people. Latin American immigrants, fighting for their rights, are also using the template from the Civil Rights Movement. Black Americans continue to bring glory to the United States in international sports competition. Even at the height of violent oppression in the United States in the 1930s, when a lesser people would have been completely paralysed, Jesse Owens, a black American, became the fastest man on earth in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, effectively destroying Hitler’s Nazi Aryan superiority ideology. The disciplined body of Jesse Owens did the work, but it was his clear vision and that of his community that showed a people who are unbowed by the injustices heaped on them. Hitler, humiliated by the fact staring him in the face, refused to shake Owens’ hand, as was due the fastest runner in the Olympics. Black America continues to produce excellent and brave people like this, unsung achievers and heroes, whose accomplishments are ignored or outright stolen to make others wealthy.

Many African immigrants succumb to the American ideology of casting black Americans as the “other”, a very unthinking and sad situation. Nigerian immigrants, especially, call them “akata”, a slur that is just as ugly as the “N” word, assuming the worst of characteristics about them. There is no doubt that some African-American communities are distressed and crime-ridden because of centuries of segregation and deprivation. But that is not the whole story of African-American life. I learnt, as a doctoral student in public policy, that for centuries every policy regarding all areas of life in the United States was crafted to exclude black Americans. If the competition was fair, even after slavery, African-Americans would be just as prosperous as white Americans today. We arrive in the United States to see the media representations of Africa as a place of corruption, wars, disease, famine and all human disasters. We chaff at these images, knowing that they are not true, and do not represent all of our realities. Those fleeing wars and disasters are miniscule in comparison to the general African immigrant population, but these are the images shown to the world routinely about our continent, either on television, film, or in print. We could process this as a form of media bias but we could not see that the same is being done to African-Americans; that the images we see constantly of the criminal element among them hardly represent most of black America. It is a construction.

There are a number of reasons why many African immigrants resort to this sort of thinking. On arriving in the United States, we experience the shock of being racialised. We suddenly encounter the oddity of our skin colour being the most salient factor in our identity. Our blackness which has been non-existent before emigrating becomes the only thing that matters to others, and blackness has been constructed in the most negative and destructive ways in the United States for centuries. To dissociate ourselves from the discrimination and maltreatment suffered by African-Americans, we join the band-wagon to badmouth and think less of them. It is short-sighted and self-defeating. In the global world constructed by Western imperialism for the last five hundred years, we have all been tribalised. What is Racism but Tribalism, with skin colour as the defining factor? The fact is that black people wherever we are in the world are joined at the hips. Even though it’s not of our own making, we have become a Tribe, the Black Tribe.

We owe African-American gratitude and respect for their courage, persistence, and ingenuity. We can show this by stop calling them derogatory names, and by acknowledging the hard work they did to make our emigration to the United States possible. Maybe we can repay this by creating a livable and prosperous Nigeria, a place of refuge and pride for them and us. Black Panther shows the depth, courage, artistry and sophistication of the African-Americans behind this movie. It shows the admirable wokeness of a people who could see large visions of black global life, who see Africa as a place of worth, beauty, power, and wisdom, and that a meaningful dialogue has to start between the descendants of Africa living in the Diaspora and those on the continent. We should be grateful to them for imagining Africa as a place of technological creativity and growth. Many young black people all over the world are watching this movie and this would define for them what Africa is and can be, the same way those racist and demeaning Tarzan films, which had Africans swinging from trees, formed the idea of Africa for many generations of African-Americans and other Americans in the last century. It is why many ignorant Americans ask you that irritating question of whether you live on trees in Africa. It is important that we, wherever we live as black people, stay woke. Many great things can happen when we all stay woke and work together.

Bunmi Fatoye-Matory was educated at the Universities of Ife and Ibadan, and Harvard University. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. She is a Writer and Culture Advocates

This piece was written by Bunmi Fatoye-Matory. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of circletalks.blogspot.com

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