USA Africa Dialogue Series - Moderator's Intervention: Diaspora Intellectuals on the Middle Class

Dear all:

I have followed the debate, and I actually sent a short private note to Farooq who started it all. I usually don’t contribute.

To us all: what is the role of you and I in our location outside of Nigeria/Africa in this struggle? I see the language of “they” instead of “we”. I see a blame game from a great distance, as we are some kind of umpires in a primitive wrestling match. 

In critical moments in history, with abundant evidence to support my thesis, diasporan intellectuals have framed the discourse and trajectories of nationalism and transformation in host countries:

1. the rise of Israel
2. Belgian nationalism in the 19th century was constructed outside of the country
3. Nkrumah and Zik and other Pan-Africanists from the outside, framing Africa from a distance. The very notio of what we now call Africa was framed my Du Bois.
4. The West African Students Union in London and decolonization in Africa

Today,  Nigerian diaspora intellectuals come alive when it is the Igbo-Yoruba useless fights that lead everyone backward. Zik at Lincoln and thereafter in the US did not see nationalism in terms of what those of us today now see it, in terms of silly ethnicities. Solidarity becomes compromised by mutual distrust—this one is Edo, that one is Fulani, and this one is Biafra, as these definitions were there since the Stone Age.

Are we just careerists in search of food to put on our tables or are we agents of transformation who must fuse knowledge(s) from different sources to create liberation tools for Africa?

Do we write as convenient Internet Warriors without digging our legs in the mud?

TF