Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1619 project

hi biko

i am not sure how to think about this. i do not take it as a sign of disrespect not to capitalize words. i don't capitalize because my fingers tell me to go quickly, not to hit that shift key, and i don't reflect when the words come out. how could i disrespect someone or people without intending to do so, without, conveying disrespect. i gather that the disrespect will be inferred because i don't write Africa? but if i then capitalize only Africa, or Biko, am i not showing deeper disrespect because of singling it out as if it were special, meaning different, meaning needing not to be offended, until the meaning becomes a kind of special pleading which is an insidious way of disrespecting africa, as i see it.

i do the same thing with the word god. no caps. no dash, like the orthodox, who write G-d, which i frankly hate, or they write Ha-Shem, which means "the name" since you are not supposed to write the name of god, which fails as a strategy since Ha-Shem becomes another signifier for god, or for God, or for yid hay vav hay, which is the hebrew spelling for a word that can't be said.

cornelius once asked me to write in caps, because it became hard to understand what i was saying. it's not my fault, the fault lies in my stupid fingers that take control of my brain.

to be serious, biko, for close to 50 years all i have really known is africa, african thought and literature and then cinema, so when i think of examples for whatever people want to know, say about destiny, my thoughts turn to heremakhono or yeelen or even chahin's le destin. i think of okonkwo's destiny, not kurtz's. i think of cinema first in african terms. how could i be disrespectful of this, my mother and father of what i want to speak about?

what have i written about, and taught, for all these years? i know only pieces of other places, including american history or lit, but can speak about african this and that, and debate it, defend it if need be, argue with it, turn it around and around with you and others, and then get my dessert.

tonight is our holiest of eves, kol nidre, time to turn and repent.

we say, have a good and sweet year

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: bikozino via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2021 10:23 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1619 project

 

Hi Ken, 

Your espanol preference for lower case spellings of every proper name jars when you apply it to a whole people who have been denigrated in history. What will it cost you to show some respect to Africa and Africans when you write our names the way we have always  respectfully capitalized your own father's name?

On the alleged kidnapping of all the 1619 captives only from Angola, where is the evidence for that from the pirates who double-crossed the original kidnappers? 

The human traffickers probably started kidnapping people from West Africa before their ship had no more space to squeeze in more in Angola which they mistakenly called West Africa. See my review of Four Hundred Souls in Choice Review.

Biko

On Sep 15, 2021 9:02 AM, "Harrow, Kenneth" <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

not to mention another lacuna, the earlier arrival of the spanish and slaves in florida. and probably in the southwest.

i hate to say it, but african history/literature in english sometimes acts as though what happened in the francophone or spanish or african languages worlds was non-existent.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma) <yahaya.danjuma@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2021 6:23 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - 1619 project

 

𝑺𝑰𝑿𝑻𝑬𝑬𝑵-𝑵𝑰𝑵𝑬𝑻𝑬𝑬𝑵 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑴𝒀𝑻𝑯 𝑶𝑭 𝑹𝑬𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑵 (𝑯𝒐𝒂𝒙?)
        In August 2019, the New York Times launched its "Sixteen-Nineteen Project" under the direction of Nikole Hannah- Jones.    Black peoples' enslavement is central to American history; But when and where?   At the end of the year, Hannah-Jones and actor Boris Kodjoe appeared together on CBS's The View.   Kodjoe's focus was on Ghana, his father's country of origin.  He had gone there with a host of African American celebrities and dignitaries with the aim of dispelling old stereotypes.  Indeed, Ghana seemed to be the perfect place for a prideful origin story.  Its government proclaimed a "Year of Return" and earned millions.  Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas linked the Ghanaian government's initiative with the 2017 passage of the "400 Years of African American History Commission Act." The mandated setting up a commission to funding for activities marking the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown. The "Year of Return, Ghana 2019" coincided with the biennial Pan African Historical Theatre Festival (Panafest), held in Cape Coast, home of Cape Coast Castle and neighboring Elmina Castle. Members of the Black Caucus visited, as did Representative Nancy Pelosi, who proclaimed that "This is where the African-American experience began." 
     In truth, in 1619 no ships left Ghana bound for Virginia.   Portuguese-built Elmina was already over  one-hundred and twenty years old. The men and women who arrived in Jamestown in the 1619 had been kidnapped by the Portuguese in far-away Angola.  Their destination was Mexico.  As the New York Times' "Sixteen-Nineteen Project" shows us, popular history can be forged out of hurt, pain and a desire for a usable past—usable and saleable.  The Times launched a media juggernaut to "reframe" Black history. What does this say about the commodification of our history ? And who controls the narrative? Have we been bamboozled? 
      Read the full article published for the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University in Transition Magazine by Indiana University Press.  Download the PDF
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.130.1.14__;!!HXCxUKc!ihkFk-97jmk0qoryljzUD5SLtvD1tYnYgjcvMzNcceVu3Qq7qlprgLFtlS-IhA$ …

by Ibrahim Sundiata

(my own institutional access to JSTOR doesn't include this article, but I have always found the author's works stimulating and informative, and I thought others here might be interested. -JEP)

John Edward Philips
International Society, College of Humanities, Hirosaki University
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." -Terentius Afer
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781580462563/writing-african-history/__;!!HXCxUKc!ihkFk-97jmk0qoryljzUD5SLtvD1tYnYgjcvMzNcceVu3Qq7qlprgLFu8mGH4w$ >



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