Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president

Ola,

This isn't about the verisimilitude of what the president said; it's about the reckless, boneheaded misuse of his symbolic power to perpetrate a stereotype. As president, Buhari has disproportionate symbolic powers to define and redefine national identity--and to entrench and exacerbate hurtful stereotypes. 

Because immigrant Nigerians in the UK are already on the social and cultural margins of their new host communities and don't fit easily into the dominant, prevailing imagery of the society--like other marginal groups elsewhere--the infractions and transgressions of their compatriots tend to be unduly magnified and, worse, externalized to all members of the group. That's why it's dangerous and irresponsible for the president to lend symbolic imprimatur to superficial stereotypes about his people.

 If a Briton, for instance, were to commit a mass murder this moment, his crime would be individualized to him. No one would be suspicious of all Britons. Britons won't lose sleep over the heinous transgression of one them because they enjoy a symbolic social and cultural privilege that normalizes and individualizes them. Not so for members of marginal groups; they always have to bear the vicarious burdens of the transgressions of their members. 

That's why Muslims almost always have to apologize each time a Muslim perpetrates a terrorists act. That's why members of the Korean community in America had to apologize and live in ice-cold dread after one of them perpetrated a detestable mass murder of innocents at Virginia Tech some years ago. The examples are legion, but the point I am making is that marginal groups often feel a heightened sense of insecurity and vulnerability when any member of their group commits a crime because such instances often provide a vent for bigoted people in the host community to exteriorize their pent-up prejudices against them.

 Members of of dominant, mainstream groups never have to deal with this. They never have to apologize for the crimes of people who share their incidental primordial identities.

I am saying all this to make the case that when the president of a country goes to another country where some of his compatriots have reterritorialized--and often on the margins--it is profoundly hardhearted, even conscienceless, for him to call attention to negative stereotypes about them. The only thing such ill-advised statements do is to ossify the stereotypes against his people and authorize the mistreatment and injustices the people may suffer as a consequence of the stereotypes.

This is all the more painful because in spite of Nigeria's reputation for crime and fraud, it isn't even in the top 25 most crime-infested countries. This is not to say, of course, that there are no Nigerian criminals in Nigeria and elsewhere. There are--just like there are American, Malaysian, British, French, Senegalese, Chinese, etc. criminals.

A 2014 story shows that Poland has the highest number of foreign prisoners in British jails. This is followed by Ireland, Jamaica, Romania, and Pakistan. Nigeria is a distant 6th. There is no record of any president from Poland, Ireland, Jamaica, Romania or Pakistan going to the British media to talk about "some" of their citizens being criminals.

Buhari's utterance was irresponsible and out of line. There is no way to sugarcoat this.

Farooq Kperogi

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Kennesaw State University
402 Bartow Avenue, MD 2207 

Social Science Building 22 Room 5092

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperog

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 10:24 AM, olakassimmd via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

 

Dear All:

 

The Nigerian protesters are not criminals;

their only problem is they can't comprehend

written or spoken English language very well..

 

President Buhari did not refer to Nigerians residing

and working abroad as criminals.

 

What he did was to acknowledge in open forum that

that there are too many of us in jail in foreign

countries. This is an undisputable fact.

 

Even though one can protest and refuse to acknowledge the truth,

such denial is unlikely to change the truth into falsehood.

 

The first step in the healing process is to accept that one has

a problem. The rest follows in a short order!

 

Instead of protesting Diaspora Nigerians should be acknowledging

the truth and brainstorming amongst ourselves to find solutions to a

 pervasive problem

which is giving Nigeria a bad name throughout the world.

 

Bye,

 

Ola

 

 

---- Original Message ----
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 9, 2016 10:10 am
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - fwd : 'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president

'We are not criminals' Nigerians tell their president

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