Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Dear Gary Younge, London does not need you!

Oga Ikhide, Hackney is one of the most impoverished boroughs in Western Europe! It's where West Indians and Africans live, alongside white working class folks. It's not a gentrified space like Notting Hill, Herne Hill, Chelsea or Westminster! I think you should visit London again! Meanwhile, enjoy your Caramel Frappucino!

On 3 July 2015 at 01:38, 'Ikhide' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

"But we do know, with gruesome certainty, that his number will come up – that one day he will be slain in cold blood by a policeman (once again it probably will be a man) who is supposed to protect him and his community. We know this because it is statistically inevitable and has historical precedent. We know this because we have seen it happen again and again. We know this because this is not just how America works; it is how America was built. Like a hurricane, we know it is coming – we just do not yet know where or when or how much damage it will do.

Summer is riot season. It's when Watts, Newark and Detroit erupted in violence in the 1960s, sparked by callous policing. It's when school is out, pool parties are on and domestic life, particularly in urban centres, is turned inside-out: from the living room to the stoop, from the couch to the street. It's when tempers get short and resentments bubble up like molten asphalt. It's when, to paraphrase Langston Hughes, deferred dreams explode.

This is not my desire; it is my prediction. You can feel it building with every new Facebook post, viral video and Twitter storm. You can hear it from conversations with strangers at post offices, liquor stores and coffee shops. It is an unpleasant prediction to make because, ultimately, these riots highlight a problem they cannot, in themselves, solve; and it is an easy one to make because, as one bystander in Baltimore put it when disturbances flared there earlier this year: "You can only put so much into a pressure cooker before it pop."

This is the summer I will leave America, after 12 years as a foreign correspondent, and return to London. My decision to come back to Britain was prompted by banal, personal factors that have nothing to do with current events; if my aim was to escape aggressive policing and racial disadvantage, I would not be heading to Hackney.

But while the events of the last few years did not prompt the decision to come back, they do make me relieved that the decision had already been made. It is why I have not once had second thoughts. If I had to pick a summer to leave, this would be the one. Another season of black parents grieving, police chiefs explaining and clueless anchors opining. Another season when America has to be reminded that black lives matter because black deaths at the hands of the state have been accepted as routine for so long. A summer ripe for rage."

- Gary Younge

Dear Mr. Younge,

Nice essay. You should not be fleeing to London. You should be fleeing to the ghettoes, barrios, and tenements that house brown people, to suffer in solidarity with them. We all should. We live in the comfort of beautiful suburbs and rail at injustice against people that look like us - from gentrified spaces. Enjoy your latte. Nonsense.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/gary-younge-farewell-to-america?CMP=share_btn_tw

- Ikhide

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Regards,

Shola Adenekan, PhD.

Postdoctoral Researcher in African Literature

BIGSAS   Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies   University of Bayreuth   D-95440 Bayreuth   Phone:	++49-921-55 5108   Fax:	++49-921-55 5102   Web:	http://www.bigsas.uni-bayreuth.de   e-mail:	olorunshola.adenekan@uni-bayreuth.de

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