A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir

by Jason Timbuktu Diakité

Over the course of almost four hundred years, between twelve and twenty million people were taken from Africa and transported across the Atlantic; millions of them died on the passage across the ocean.

African American author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in his article “The Case for Reparations” that in the United States in the nineteenth century, aspiring to be able to afford slaves was as natural as saving up for a house or a condo today.

“Anyone who challenges the West, I’m for. The oppression they’ve subjected the nonwhite world to for so long, it has to fucking stop. Whatever the cost. Just look at ISIS. They’ve really given the Western world something to sink their teeth into. The US and Europe have no fucking clue how to take that bull by the horns. The world has changed. There’s so much more fear now, everywhere. The white man still wants to present himself as innocent. As if nothing is his fault.”