Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Status does not insulate against Racism



Yes, indeed—though I quasi identify such "approval" or "validation" as Complex Inferiority Complex by Default (aka CIC by D), a naturalized dislocation of one's essential identity.

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On May 30, 2020, at 11:09 AM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



Moses:

My views on this have become repetitive, which extends not just to your itemized "physical characterization" below but to a larger problem: validation. What you call "approval" is what I call validation.

 

Any time a group of people or individuals or race seek the validation of another, it has already lost substantial grounds and set up standards that cannot be met. That validation will never come. The one doing the validation simply takes one member of the seekers and enhances the status to the level of difference, using that difference as evaluative criteria: Tiger Wood is better, Kabba is not like them, Falola is combative, Falola is arrogant, Jacob is wonderful. And then, people begin to accept the labels and assertions imposed on them. I hear this nonsense in conferences and feel sorry for the young people. They even say, Cooper likes my book; I cannot publish in Ghana as the journal in New York is the best!!! You know my conference in Lagos is attended by ten white people!!! Do you need Cooper to like your book? If you write about Ghana to generate development in Ghana, what is your business with New York? So, why should you care about people from England attending your conference in Abuja?

 

You cannot be a Muslim and be seeking the validation of a fundamentalist Christian, it won't work.

You cannot be writing a book on Nigeria and be seeking the validation of Chinese readers, it won't work.

You cannot be seeking your own development and be seeking the validation of another place, it won't work.

 

Validation is a mental process that already undermines the body, the mind, and the self. Self-worth is tied to what you called "approval."

 

If you are dark-skinned, and you already think that the lighter skin is more beautiful than you, you have already destroyed yourself, ruined emotionally. You have traumatized yourself.

 

Thanks for the piece.

 

TF

 

 

A few quick thoughts as our anguished reflections on the tragedy in Minneapolis continues.......

 

 

Do not be deceived. Success, however defined, and good education can no more insulate a black person from racism than it can cure a white person of racial prejudice. 

 

George Floyd could have been a Harvard University Professor and it would not have made a difference to the racist cops who murdered him. 

 

It didn't make a difference for Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. when he was racially profiled in his own home; nor did status and accomplishment protect countless black celebrities and successful men and women from being racially harassed. 

 

Even Oprah was racially profiled at a high-end store in Switzerland, even though she probably has enough money to buy the entire store and trash it for fun.

 

Success and good education did not stop Amy Cooper, a white liberal investment banker, from trying to get a black man killed by cops in New York's Central Park.

 

As Ibram X Kendi argues compellingly in his book, STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, the idea that black people can buy the approval of white folks and thus get a pass from racism by uplifting themselves morally and socioeconomically to reassure the white power structure--what he calls uplift-suasion-- is not only wrong but is itself a form of racism.

 

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