For most of the developed world, slavery has been outlawed for more than a hundred years.

International singer and humanitarian advocate Akon thinks this is reason enough for Black Americans to finally move past the bitter history.

In an interview with VladTV, the West Africa-raised mogul said people from his country have completely liberated themselves from the inferiority complex bred by holding on too much to the past.

“In Senegal, we’ve kind of overcome the thought of slavery, we don’t even think about it,” said the ‘Locked Up’ singer. “People have lived and moved way beyond the slavery concept idea and mind state.”

Go Big Or Go Home

The Grio highlighted that for Akon, Black Americans can only truly move forward once they free themselves from the immense weight of what their ancestors experienced.

Even the rapper knows that this is easier said than done, though, which is why he has a proposition for every African American who remains in U.S. soil: just go home.

“Do you want to stay here and continue to be treated this way?” he asked. “Or just go back home, where you’re no longer the minority.”

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Akon himself has been pretty busy bringing the so-called American Dream to Africa. In 2014, he brought electricity to 15 countries in the continent, under a project he called Akon Lighting Africa.

This year, the musician is building his Akon City in Senegal, a fully sustainable territory that’s expected to bring new energy to fuel the country. For Akon, this is the kind of thing Black people should focus their energies in, instead of waiting for reparations that will never come.

“[The people in the U.S.] are not sorry. They don’t care. It’s obvious,” he said.

Backlash

According to Atlanta Black Star, the backlash that followed Akon’s interview came fast, and in huge numbers.

“South African here: I missed the part where this pop singer became the spokesperson for all Africans,” one person wrote on Youtube.

“Akon does not speak for all Senegalese when he say shit like black Americans need to move on from slavery and forget about it Na fam... I’m a Senegalese that still think about it cuz it created decades of destruction,” tweeted another one.

The crooner has yet to respond to the flak -- not that he is obliged to. After all, everything he did was to tell African Americans to “understand their worth” and simply accept that they cannot force America to make redresses for its racist history.

You can watch the rest of the interview here: