kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2023 5:02 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Sabbath Musing on "the premise that racism is omnipresent " ( Moses Ochonu)
Professor Harrow wasted no time in laying out the conditions that would make him happy :
"Since moses sent us this piece, and unlike me is still teaching at a prestigious university, i would love to hear his take on the piece."
Moses, of course, rose to the occasion and wrote in the heavily guarded language that he believes a professor ought to employ when responding to these kinds of demands being placed on him, wrote as he thought fit, herein.
This is my own humble response to all that has been said so far in that thread, " A Black Professor Trapped in an Anti-Racist Hell" :
O me miserum !
For the past couple of days, my computer which is neither black nor white, or red, or blue, has not been feeling so well, and in these days of AI ( Artificial Intelligence) with AI writing poetry and composing music, you can or may talk about computers "not feeling so well", assuming that computers can be said to have feelings at all, like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
By Jove!
Although when it comes to human relations, we are and can be so chronically colour-conscious, we never refer to the computer as "my white computer", or "my black computer", but there's this famous poem by Wallace Stevens ( no relative of Siaka Probyn Stevens who was never known to truck with poetry): "The Man with the Blue Guitar"
BTW, I did not so much as touch either of my beloved guitars during the whole of the Holy Month of Ramadan. Sometimes, that's how it is with me, as in me and my guitar, and right now, through no fault of its own, inherent or otherwise, or maybe I may have been mistreating it ( the computer) just as we sometimes mistreat our fellow human beings, call them'' vermin", hurt their feelings, and that's why my computer which has no volition of its own but has probably been silently suffering much abuse and vilification of others at the keyboard, has been taking a hammering, shuffering, not shmiling and consequently has been feeling under the weather the past couple of days. When that happens or it ( he or she) comes to a complete standstill, such as when you get the dreaded Black Screen, the Black Screen of Death ( always such negativity attached to black) then, not without feelings, generally of sympathy - as when the obsequious House Negro sympathises with the plantation Massa, politely enquiring "We sick boss?", you know that you and your computer are in serious trouble, that your computer needs a doctor, needs repairs, and probably so do you and you must admit that most of us over 60, half way through the long evolutionary journey known as "life's pilgrimage" to the grave - and that includes Peter Gregory Obi, since he too could do better, much better, not worse, with a new hard drive, in his case better still a new overdrive and better luck next time, in a new election, and if his labour party hasn't gone to grass by then, he should be ripe or even riper, more mature, mature enough and more perfectly prepared for the battle and all the exigencies and obstacles that he and we may all encounter or be facing before, during and after the next Nigerian Presidential Elections.
The only point I want to make here with all of the above is that whether you are black or white or red or yellow or brown, whether you are SLPP or APC (Sierra Leone) APC ( Nigeria) or Labour Party ( UK) when your own computer crashes, you feel sorry. Just only a few days without a computer and a fast connection with the WWW, clinically speaking some people fall into a depression
This racism business.The racism bug. Bugger. Racism is a bugger. He who feels it knows. Over there in West Africa, there's hardly any "racism", it's tribalism that's the bugger. Tribalism bugs you, bugs me, he, she, we, them, especially if we're not from the same tribe. It's exactly as Prince Nico Mbarga complained about it, "Tribalism, chronic disease, everlasting sickness" But over there in the Oyibo lands of North America, Europe, and down south over there in Australia, it's the biggest bugger of all with a wide range and variety of targets since the individual targets are undifferentiated in terms of "race" / ethnicity/ tribe / varying cultural and religious backgrounds, some more glorious than others, Benin Bronzes, Golden Stool, etc, exactly as Richard Pryor joked,
"I think that niggers are the best of people who were slaves, and that's how they got to be niggers 'cause they stole the cream-of-the-crop from Africa and brought them over here. And God, as they say, works in mysterious ways, so he made everybody a nigger…he brought us all over here — the best — the kings and queens, the princesses, the princes, put us all together and called us one tribe: Niggers." — Richard Pryor, Wattstax (1973)
So, from the Oyibo point of view, all Black & Beautiful Tribes and glorious royal/not-so-royal pedigrees, are subsumed into the one category under this their distinct universal nomenclature, male and female created He them: "Niggers"!
Consider: In the wake of A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass, lo and behold, if any of us or all of us were to wake up tomorrow morning and look in the mirror only to discover that we had all ( you, me, Gloria, Ojogbon Falola, Professor Segun Ogungbemi, dear Farooq Kperogi, Baba Kadiri, Ogbeni Peter Obi, Jibrin Ibrahim, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and last but not least, President-Elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban) overnight, had all suddenly turned white - like Oyibos, from that point on we would all live to be telling a different story, our own unique stories about what happened next, where we are, or were. I'm sure that some, of course, not necessarily any of the aforementioned names, would even commit suicide on the spot or after a few days - but not if we had all miraculously metamorphosed into and thereby inherited any of the following ethnic identities and characteristics: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani Herdsmen ( I dare conjecture that if overnight, Tony Adepoju had metamorphosed into the latter -a Fulani Herdsman, in addition to taking the change in his stride - philosophically, it would probably cause him some serious mental issues/ mental problems.
In the wake or in the light of Moshin Hamid's The Last White Man, to imagine how. e.g Donald Trump, Joe Biden or Professor Kenneth Harrow would deal with the reality of metamorphosing into a bonafide Honourable Black African Man overnight, ought not to beggar description or overtax the imagination; in the case of Trump his political future would probably be ruined and in the case of Brother Harrow, I believe that apart from maybe living up to the cultural ideology of Negritude more intensely, he would probably be denouncing the ill report that he posted, about what's happening in Tunisia even more vehemently; to borrow the words of my most eloquent friend, Claude Kayat, "Racism in all its forms is utterly revolting and disgusting"
Here's
Needless to say, in my opinion, down here on mother earth with Apartheid in South Africa, long since under arrest, there are laws that are and ought to be in place, addressing the scourge of racism whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head. Racism, of course, is not just a black and white "thingy", equally virulent, these past 30 years or so I have been reading a lot of reports, opinions, and counter-opinions ( call it anti-racism if you like) about the scourge of antiSemitism on American campuses.
It's getting a little longish, although one has not even really started on this matter that could occupy a sizable portion of a black man's memoir/ autobiography, so until the next instalment, I'd just like to add this little note, that tribalistic Nigerians ( you know what I mean " tribalistic" - tribalistic at home, and tribalistic abroad) emigrate to the United States of America where some of them become little or big kahuna professors leaving behind them the mess that's adding fuel to the racism from which some of them say that they are catching hell because it's the mess and the messing up that causing the brain-drain and the forever looking for greener pastures elsewhere, pastures that are greener than the green in our national flags that's contributing to the racism the understandable ( I understand it) anti-immigration policies and all that unsavoury talk about shithole countries.
Now if the politicians etc had not been messing up big time back home, why would anyone be emigrating to the North or South Pole countries? For What? Looking for Ingrid Bergman, Eskimo ladies?
Of absolute relevance to the signifying monkey is the Chapter on Verbal Art from pages 245 - 429 of Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel
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