How can so many white people use (and claim to understand) the term decolonization when they have never imagined what it means to be colonized?

Let me help y'all understand the paradigm of being a product of colonized land: It means crying yourself to sleep as you watch Lagos literally burn, and feeling every single bullet even when your body is not there.

Being a product of colonized land means being terrified that (once again) your family, their homes, and their safety in Abidjan will be compromised in the most violent ways because of political unrest which takes over our homeland everytime we have an election.

Being a product of a colonized land means having to listen to French Presidents + British Prime Ministers speak empty promises + fake ass statements of solidarity when most of the chaos happening on our continent is because of their violent and limiting colonial paradigms.

I am a (recovering) colonized being, I was born on colonized Akan land. There is no white person on this planet who should ever talk to be about decolonization until they get to know the engulfing fear it means to live the way I do.

So enough with using the term decolonization in your everyday life. No more panels on it, no more articles, no more from white people who have no idea what it means to be colonized, what it feels like. What the impact is on our mental health.

Once white people globally, especially those occupying unearned positions of power, have a bit of understanding of the manifestations of colonization, THEN they may see why we will risk it all to become free, liberated Black people who never want to be shackled to whiteness again