Trapped by Tradition: The indoctrination of a lost identity
At the tender age of three, your parents send you to school, where you’re immersed in the white man’s language, history, and geography, all within an education system crafted by colonial masters
By Lydia Nabalikka
From the moment we enter this world, the cards are stacked against us. Before you can even open your eyes, you’re tagged with a name—often a “Christian” name like Sheila. But why? Why should a newborn, who doesn’t even know their head from their feet, be assigned a faith without choice? Who decided that?
As soon as you can recognize colors, you’re introduced to the glowing screen, a gateway to a world of strange yet mesmerizing beings living lives you can only dream of. The catch? They look nothing like you. This is where your fascination with Hollywood, America, and the Western world begins.
At the tender age of three, your parents send you to school, where you’re immersed in the white man’s language, history, and geography, all within an education system crafted by colonial masters. Here, you might be ridiculed, made fun of, or even punished if you dare to speak or love your ancestral language more than English.
You grow up in a system where your self-worth, survival, and future success—especially in landing that coveted “white-collar” job—depend on how well you excel within a foreign framework designed to colonize your mind and suppress your African spirit.
And when you’re not in school? Off to church, dear Sheila. Your parents decided your spiritual path long before you could utter a word. As a devoted Christian, Sheila learns about a white Jesus who came to save sinners like her, surrounded by twelve white disciples. If Sheila is curious enough to explore the opposing force—the Devil—she’ll discover that he’s often depicted as black, with fiery red eyes.
As a result, Sheila unconsciously associates everything Western and white with beauty, purity, and dignity, while everything black is seen as… well, less than.
Can we really blame Sheila if she views marrying a white man as a significant achievement? Should we fault her if she forgets her ancestral language and starts sounding like an American? Or if, after years of hard study and earning a degree, she abandons her life in her home country to clean the white man’s toilets, believing she’s lucky just to be part of the world she dreamt of as a child?
Do we even realize how deeply this brainwashing goes? Or are we, as a people, forever lost?
