Now it__ clear to me, I haven__ understood as well as I should, the cracks on the ground we stood. A blast ignited through ballot boxes by the choices of unsuspecting and innocent Nigerians has rippled across the country and has torn the curtain open to set the stage for these cracks to grow into magnified quakes now swallowing us up._ - Dami K.

Our route had now obviously been completely blotted out and here I reckoned less of our chances of survival. We__e like a voyage ship veered off course by a ruthless storm now left with no radar or compass. Ours is a sorry tale of an unpredictable adventure. One moment it seem like we__e going home to mama__ warm embrace and tears of joy, the next moment we feel helplessly immersed in the blackness of hopelessness._ - Dami K.

Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn - at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.

Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance.

No truth, no equality. No equality, no justice. No justice, no peace. No peace, no love. No love, only darkness.

Compassion is the signature of Higher Consciousness. Non-violence is the tool to evolve into the Higher Consciousness.