ikhide
i have been criticized for publishing attacks on what i called the Genocide Industry when it comes to films and books about the rwandan genocide. i don't think you can lump me in there with those whom you dub the "liberal orthodoxy" who see their role as helping the helpless african.
i will be a cheerleader for your son; i certainly don't imagine i know the right answers!
but it won't help to ask us to stop analyzing. analysis isn't paralysis, but maybe the cornerstone for actions that will ultimately be beneficial.
ken
On 3/22/12 9:13 AM, Ikhide wrote:
Ken,
I am glad you enjoyed the piece. I wondered what you thought of it. Your response has crystallized in my mind one of the powerful forces mitigating against meaningful progress in much of Black Africa. Let us call it Paralysis by Analysis. You and many thinkers on your camp would prefer an unending analysis of the African situation couched in cliches - tribal conflicts, physical boundaries,ethnic tensions, etc, social and historical context etc etc while the place burns. It is a money maker of course. There is the White Savior Industrial Complex (Thanks Teju!) and there is the African Victim Industrial Complex, there is an army of intervention forces outside of the NGOs - the UN, the AU, the World Bank, IMF [insert your favorite alphabet soup here]. Meanwhile Africa burns and you all scoff at any attempts to help by anyone you have not blessed. There are no angels but you all. Why, Jason Russell should go touch himself in a dark dank cave, how dare he offer an African child a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt?
Kenn, did you notice how many times the piece by this "Ugandan journalist" used the term "child"? I counted in the dark, so forgive me if they are a dozen. I counted once, just once. Once. And the journalist used it in the context of a "child-soldier." My 12-year old child saw children, an adult saw a child-soldier. I am surprised you do not find that offensive. This journalist unwittingly does two things -demonize the already traumatized - and perpetuates a stereotype. See what I mean?
Kenn, I am increasingly convinced that liberal orthodoxy is hurtful to the cause of the advancement of Africa. If a white child, just one white child had been hurt by a maniac, we would not be having this conversation. We would not be holding colloquiums, book readings and associated nonsense, celebrating the fact that the jerk has moved to Canada and so is no longer a threat to America! I mean, you guys sometimes, sometimes I want to holler.
I repeat: Orthodoxy in thought and action will not liberate Black Africa. Many in our generation of African writers have simply been caught flat footed and winded by the powerful winds of change sweeping the world. And the hypocrisy is galling. While many of us in Africa and in the West feed off of the African Victim Industrial Complex writing pathetic scrolls about the white man's perfidy, my 12-year old son is using his smartphone to link up with millions of other kids to do something for a child. THAT, Kenn, is new, we must get used to it or be ignored. The orthodoxy in thought is something, no analysis of the power of social media in changing the world, none, just carping about white intentions? Who cares? Not my son. There may be hope; the children many African writers have muttered about for fat pay from our white friends may get relief, wow. We sit here fed and burped by the White Industrial Savior Complex and explode in rage when they offer a drop of water to your children.
I repeat: If you have never given a black child a t-shirt you have no moral right to rail against a white man for giving said child a Lakers t-shirt.
The more I think about it, the more I can say what we need more than ever is fresh new thinking AND action. We talk too much and we say the same things over and over and over again. Paralysis by analysis. More worrying is that there is a powerful bloc of the pantheon of orthodox thinkers who seek to block new debate, wittingly and/or unwittingly. The good news is that the forces of technology are sweeping them aside with mean bear claws ;-) I am happy.
Be well ;-)
- Ikhide
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
dear ayo,
the editorial is well written, and has the sophistication we rarely see in u.s. news reporting on africa, that is, it actually explains what political power struggles accounted for the lra, whom it served, whose services it rendered, and who profited from it. it doesn't detail how other groups also used child soldiers. and above it, it certainly says kony is a problem, but not the problem alone. i don't think you could have read the piece if you can ask that question.
it was written by a ugandan who comes from n uganda.
ken
On 3/22/12 4:08 AM, Ayo Obe wrote:
If Kony is not THE problem, is he not A problem?
Ayo
I invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijama
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