Sunday, March 25, 2012

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Jeffrey Goldberg: "A Small Not on Teju Cole's White Savior Industrial Complex"

"Blaming the white man" is a red-herring. Many of the NGOs are white-controlled. They aren't all bad--I think we all agree on that. But many our predatory. That seems to be the point. Blaming specific entities is very different from what you trivialize as "blaming the white man." And how is blaming the black man a superior position? Moreover, is blaming the black man any different from what has been done since at least the 1400s?

"Africans (or African Americans) are uncivilized."
"Africans (or African Americans) can't govern themselves."
"Africans (or African Americans) are like children." 

Blah, blah, blah.

Most of Africa's resource wealth winds up in the Western world. Further, Euros had a direct hand in creating instability in Africa--from slavery to colonialism to the current neo-colonial order. WHITE PEOPLE undermined and/or killed selfless leaders like Sankara, Nkrumah, Lumumba, etc. American American leaders have met similar fates--some of whom have been in prison since the 60s. Yes, there is African/American American complicity. So it seems to me that we should hold all parties accountable.

I will just highlight two additional problems.

White people will kill if necessary to secure African resources. That history is clear. If Africans woke up tomorrow on one accord and decided to use African resources for African development, that would lead to World War 3 (see Du Bois analysis of how a previous world war was centrally about Africa's resources). Are we willing to fight and die for self-determination? 

The other problem is that western-style "development" is not sustainable. That is to say if the rest of the planet used resources at rates similar to, say, the US, the world's finite resources would be exhausted. Americans and Africans and the Rest need to rethink the meaning and practice of "development." kzs

On Saturday, March 24, 2012 1:47:02 PM UTC-4, Ikhide wrote:

"A second, small observation: When Mrs. Goldblog and I were living in Liberia, one of the best jobs to be found in Monrovia for actual Liberians was at a makeshift car-washing center near UN headquarters, where, every day, dozens of brilliant-white SUVs -- Toyota Landcruisers, mainly - belonging to the dozens of NGOs in town were scrubbed clean of mud. It was a bizarre thing to see, these $50,000 vehicles belonging to "non-profits," flyspecked by Liberians the NGOs were ostensibly there to help.  

There are brilliant people working in development all over the world, of course, but the system of incentives is worth examining, and so too are the assumptions about the utlity of many aid programs. More on this when I return from my travels."

- Jeffrey Goldberg


The Empire continues to talk back, albeit sheepishly and timidly. But they are in on our game... Jeffrey Goldberg tries to remind us here that The White-Savior Industrial Complex=The African-Victim Industrial Complex is real and symbiotic. They all feed off of each other. There is no excuse, we don't have to be beggars, scrambling for crumbs at the white man's table. But we are there. And blaming the white man for dragging us there! What chutzpah!
 
- Ikhide
 
Stalk my blog at www.xokigbo.com
Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

 

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