The Mbaise Malady : The need for a way forward

It was not until I met a girl this evening that I began to take more seriously and quiet forcefully the Mbaise Malady or the Mbaise Pariah syndrome (MPS). We were discussing quite jovially in a very congenial atmosphere until I asked her where she was from. Her mood changed and she dropped her head in shame and said Mbaise.
As if she had done something wrong.
It is not just apologetic but quite fantastic that up to the present era, stains and markings of centuries begone should still scar a place, a people or a culture. Maybe I will have to research more on what it is with the Mbaise People of Imo state, but whatever it is, I don't believe that the marks of a negative cultural heritage should so Mar a person's identity in a modern world.
It is unjust for the society to give colouration and attach a pariah status to a segment of a society. But I feel that it becomes unforgivable and unfortunate when that element of the society become and accept the status quo of such pariah status to the point of denial. This in my view is the greatest act of cowardice. And this type of cowardice is the type that should be eschewed as much as possible.
Or how else can one imagine what it'll mean for a black man or woman, boy or girl to walk through the streets of Brooklyn or San Francisco or Los Alamos with the conscious consciousness that until not so many years ago he or she would have been a slave, grinding out energy and life on someone else's farm house.
Yet this isn't the case.
The case is that the blacks out there have dumped the trail of their background attachments which were unfavourable. Which had placed then on the fringe of the society and had fetched them a pariah status.
In fact the blacks so revolutionised the world's view of them that they didn't hesitate to push out a presidential candidate for the 'White' House. Of course on that the rest is history.
So I firmly believe that it lies with the Mbaise people or any other culture or people for that matter to rise above the cultural, historical and social trappings. It behoves on them and them alone to make coming from Mbaise or wherever a thing of vibrating pride.
This can only start when an Mbaise personality can speak up boldly and say, " I am from Mbaise."