Wassa,
I was not the one who originally shared Sabella’s article on USAAfricaDialogue. I reacted to it. I deliberately mentioned the thumb to reinforce my reaction to Sabella’s piece. I am glad you have also noticed that one cannot bypass the thumb to eat or untie a knot. That was my point.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Wassa Fatti
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 7:08 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - To be black, to be African
Kissi,
Thanks for sharing this article by Sabella Abidde. It is noted in the piece that: "All the fingers on the human hand are not equal in height. In fact, the thumb is even short and ugly and points in a different direction." The inequality of the fingers on the human hand indicated its beauty. No finger on the human hand is ugly due to biological realities which demonstrates its functions and relationship with the human brain. In the process of human development/evolution, the role of the fingers on the human hand played part in our cultural production and eventual separation from the animal kingdom. So biologically, if the fingers were equal, it will never function. Therefore, the inequality is the beauty which shaped our humanity. We need to thank the thumb anytime we grip a spoon to eat what fingers produced for our survival. We need to thank the thumb anytime the it breaks the kola-nut in our weddings and ceremonies. The thumb is not "ugly and pointing in a different direction". It points to our being. The rest of the article is not for me to digest.
Wassa
From: ekissi@usf.edu
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; AfriCanID@yahoogroups.com; malawi_lawsociety@googlegroups.com; talkhard@yahoogroups.com; wanataaluma@googlegroups.com; NigerianID@yahoogroups.com; naijaintellects@googlegroups.com; NigeriansnCanada@yahoogroups.com; wanabidii@googlegroups.com; wanakenya@googlegroups.com; wanazuoni@yahoogroups.com; youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:45:54 -0500
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - To be black, to be African
Sabella Abidde’s depressing portrait of “Africa” here reminds me of the proverbial casual observer of a forest from a distance.
From a distant place, the casual observer of a forest might see it as one giant tree of wilting leaves. But, get closer, and a much clearer picture emerges; a picture of a collection of individual trees, some long, others short located in different spaces and thriving or wilting depending on the nutrients beneath them. If you mistake a forest (Africa) for one big oak tree (Nigeria) you might spend your life traumatized by a distorted and distant perception of reality. The Africa that I know; I study; I lived in; I have visited and have recently talked about with senior policymakers of 14 African countries is a very different from the Africa that Sabella portrays here.
Let us get real, folks! All the fingers on the human hand are not equal in height. In fact, the thumb is even short and ugly and points in a different direction. I do not expect Accra to become like Cape Town as I saw Accra in August 2012 and Cape Town in September of the same year. Neither do I expect Asmara, Eritrea, to become like Salzburg, Austria, within the next year or two. I have lived in and/or visited Ghana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa and although I wished I had seen and enjoyed the pleasures that I am used to as a Ghanaian living in the USA, I was impressed with what I saw in these African countries. People and governments are working hard, against the greatest of odds, to build their nations. It is one thing to live at the river’s edge, where water and fish are readily accessible, and wish life on the mainland were as enjoyable as life on the bank of the river. On the mainland, people are virtually squeezing water from stones. But “development” of the American and European variety may not be the fairest yardstick for measuring Africa’s progress, but rather “survival” in the midst of little.
Go and talk to the senior representatives of the Ministries of Education of the 14 sub-Saharan African countries I met in Cape Town, South Africa, in mid September 2012-----men and women policymakers from Benin; Burundi; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Cote D’ Ivoire; Ethiopia; Republic of Mauritius; Namibia; Kenya; Rwanda; Senegal; South Africa; Tanzania; Togo, and Zambia----and you will be impressed by what each country is doing to add value to the lives of their citizens. People and governments are not vegetating in Africa; resigned to some mythical “collective fate.” They are working hard, even as their best and brightest have left them for life abroad, to build their countries. I had the unique opportunity that I presume Sabella has not yet had, to meet these members of African governments, on the invitation of UNESCO, to talk about “education-for-peace” in sub-Saharan Africa.
I got the opportunity to meet policymakers in Africa who are building nations. I listened to each of the representatives there and was impressed about what Rwanda, for instance, has done and is now doing to build a sustainable post-genocide society. In fact, from a historical perspective Rwanda has done better, at a short duration of time following what happened there in 1994, than what it took post-Holocaust Germany to reconcile victims and perpetrators. I learned about what South Africa has accomplished, so far, in its post-apartheid society. The Mauritius delegates presented a reassuring picture of what a nation can do to pursue educational policy that incorporates the historical experiences and cultural aspirations of the nation’s constituent ethnic groups. In short, in Cape Town, I heard concrete stories about progress in Africa. I saw specific trees in the African “forest” thriving in their own peculiar soils.
I was impressed, amid my own bruised conscience as a Ghanaian scholar who has lived abroad far longer than I should, by the sacrifices that other Africans who chose to go back home to build their countries have made in the service of their people and their continent. If there is any such thing as Africa’s “collective fate”, it is one of rising up from unimaginable depths of disadvantage. Sabella ought to remember one of Kwame Nkrumah’s admonitions to those who revel in negative presumptions about Africa. That those who judge Africa by how sluggish its pace of progress has been in the family of nations should pause to reflect on the depths from which its constituent nations came to even stand at the rim of sight.
Today’s Ghana is a better one than what I left in 1989. Go to downtown Addis Ababa, as I did recently, and you will be impressed. It is becoming like Budapest, Hunagry; in fact like Salzburg, Austria. Addis Ababa has its problems, but it is becoming like some European cities. So, let us not sell Africa short. Visit the continent. Talk to those who are making policy. I have done both, and I do not share the content of Sabella’s piece.
Edward Kissi
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Yona Maro
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2012 6:27 AM
To: AfriCanID@yahoogroups.com; malawi_lawsociety@googlegroups.com; talkhard@yahoogroups.com; wanataaluma@googlegroups.com; All Nigerians In Diaspora; naijaintellects; NigeriansnCanada; USAAfricaDialogue; wanabidii; wanakenya@googlegroups.com; Wanazuoni; youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - To be black, to be African
By SABELLA ABIDDE
Since 1619 at least, Americans of sub-Saharan African ancestry have had different racial classifications. The first was “negars.” Other classifications have included African, Afro-American, Black, and Black American. According to Collier-Thomas and Turner, in “Race, Class and Colour: The African American Discourse on Identity,” published in 1994, “From the 1830s to the middle of the 1890s, Coloured American and the more commonly used derivation Coloured were the most popular terms. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Negro gained considerable support as a generic term, becoming by 1920 the most commonly used expression of race. Increasing dissatisfaction with the term, Negro, most noted in the late 1930s culminated with the Black Power movement of the 1960s.”
But by 1988, all these changed when Rev. Jesse Jackson reclassified the group: “To be called African-American has cultural integrity. It puts us in our proper historical context. Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical cultural base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity. There are Armenian-Americans and Jewish-Americans and Arab-Americans and Italian-Americans; and with a degree of accepted and reasonable pride, they connect their heritage to their mother country and where they are now.” In the years since, the majority of Black Americans have embraced this categorisation; while many others have rejected it: they want to be known simply as American, or Black.
The most common argument many who reject the African-American label have made is that they do not have any kind of physical or mental affinity with the continent. For such individuals, slavery was a historical fact – a fact they nonetheless do not want to identify with. The fact that sub-Saharan Africa is their ancestral home is a non-issue. America and being American is all that matter. Perhaps, it is this line of thinking and attitude and expression that prevent many Blacks — outside of the African continent – from identifying with the Pan-African ideal and movement. In one’s everyday life, it is not uncommon to meet or hear of Blacks who, either out of ignorance, sour experience, or indifference, do not want to associate with the continent and or its people. Africa is an afterthought for many of them.
It should be noted that Black Americans are not the only ones with marked indifference and distance to the continent. Many Blacks from the Caribbean Islands, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, also feel and behave this way. Perhaps, the saddest part of this narrative is the fact that many Africans – especially Nigerians – who came to the US as toddlers or as teenagers, also tend to deny their African heritage. Many have gone on to anglicise their African names. It is also not uncommon to find those, whose parents and grandparents are Nigerians, say “my parents are Nigerians, but I am an American.” It is as if to be a Nigerian is a sin. To prefer the Black or American classification is one thing; but to deny one’s heritage is quite another. One rarely finds Americans of Asian, Latin America, or European origins deny their blood line.
Why do many Blacks, across the world, shy away from Africa and its people? Why do many non-Blacks across the world have contempt for the continent and its varied people? And why do many White Americans not think highly of Black Americans or blacks from other parts of the world who call America home? The answers are not as simple as one might think. And in fact, it may require a broader treatise to convincingly answer these questions. In general, however, one could posit that 500 years of slavery and 100 years of colonialism remind many of the weakness and impotency of the continent. After all these years, many have yet to overcome the residual effects of these inhumanities. And many more have not forgotten the agony and its misery. Why visit or revisit a place that caused so much pain?
In the last 50 years, at least, there has been significant improvement in race relations and racial equality in the US. Even so, America still has a long way to go (just as Europe has a million miles to travel in terms of racial equality and its goal of multiracialism). To be Black in the US is to be thought of as having a low IQ; of not capable of complex tasks; and of needing constant direction and supervision. In many cases, to be African is to be patronised and looked at with pity. It is as if the non-Blacks feel sorry for you; as if to be black is to be less human. Although one must admit that not all Whites, Asians and Hispanics are guilty of such disdainful attitude, still, the aforesaid mind-set is routine. At almost 15 per cent of the 309 million people in the US, Blacks are at the lower rung of every positive ladder.
At home and abroad, Africans are hired hands. In some African countries, the Indians and the Lebanese run the economy. The Lebanese especially are in charge of some of the most sensitive sectors of the economy. They hire and fire. In other African countries, the French and the Americans are in charge and they also hire and fire. The Chinese are beginning to make an inroad. It is also a fact that in many African countries, the elected or imposed presidents can’t make important decisions without seeking permission from Paris, Washington DC, or London. And lastly, Africans themselves do not make the continent attractive.
Images from Africa can be ghastly and disheartening. The images one see is of a continent and a people who are incapable of governing themselves, incapable of self-sustenance, and incapable of providing the most basic of all human needs. When the western media speak of war and excesses, they mostly speak of Africa. When they speak of dastardly acts, they mostly speak of Africa. And since 1980, there have been some 28 intra and interstate wars. There seems to be no end in sight to the rubbish that pervades the continent. But really, this needs not be our destiny; it need not be our collective fate.
http://economicconfidential.net/new/features/1144-to-be-black-to-be-african
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