Dedicated to the girl with the red beret. To dissing me for writing about celebrities lately.

Rumor goes that, in Chicago, they shut down the predominantly Black/Latin@ bus routes early to keep us away from the white spaces. Route 80-Ashland, Route 70-Division, just to name a couple, make it hard to experience the nightlife of the metropolis on foot patrol. Philly’s going through the same thing; they got two major train lines that call it a night a few minutes past 12. It’s the story of our lives: the free movement of our bodies causes too much of a security issue to not curb. No don’t tell me that there’s justification, because you’re gullible enough to permit these institutions to classify the crimes of a few individuals as knowledge about the lives of colored people. If this talk is real then you should know that the management of colored people in motion is embedded in a world view.

Step your game up on colonial studies as it’ll help you understand why “the world”— since eurocentricism swears Europe is the only continent of the Earth—must arrest people of color. Recently, Desmond Tutu, a South African activist and retired bishop, invited the Dalai Lama to celebrate his 80th birthday with him. Of course the Dalai Lama needs a visa, but South Africa is stalling the green light.

Reason being, the government doesn’t want to jeopardize its new membership in China’s BRICS organization, an alliance with the up and coming 3rd World. What does a night out between two officially retired political leaders have to do with South Africa and BRICS? Apparently more than what meets the eye, but specifically it has to do with the Dalai Lama’s instrumental work with trying to get Tibet from under China’s tyranny.

Now you know Tutu is pissed, his government is fooling around with his friendship and birthday plans because it’s too comfortable with China’s paternalism:  “I mean, it’s so sad to think that we have had a kind of experience of repression that we have had, in that we should want to kowtow to a hugely repressive regime that can dictate to us about freedom and things of that kind.” Although this situation blurs the color line, it is nevertheless true that colored people limiting other color people only exaggerates the racist world view.

I’m with Tutu, such a place with such a deep legacy of colonialism should have a commitment to the liberation of colored folk above everything else. For an independent country to have to be too conscious of its private matters, in light of an economic giant, smells too much like neocolonialism. Tutu is right; I guess we all will be shooting ourselves in the foot, since colored people will remain glued to a well defined space, complete with the utmost oppression and oppressor.