Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

I can see where both views represented here are coming from

I have had first hand experience of the African American position represented by Kwame expressed to me in a Black college.

All I can say is that we can not allow ourselves to be unnecessarily diverted, distracted and divided by such leanings across the Atlantic.  I welcome the decision of Dubois and brother Kwame to move closer to the mother continent (As well as the philanthropic  outreach of sisters like Oprah).  I would like to solicit Kwames support to help shape the trans-Atlantic tradition toward a genuinely Afrocentric focus such as his and DuBois. 

What I mean is whereas tendencies such as Kwame are gravitating towards an Afrocentric determination (even more than many African immigrant academics) when many African Americans are given the options of which language to choose to fulfil college requirements an o erwhelming majority prefers Eurooean languages.  Language is key to cultural acquisition and resentment toward Africa by such African Americans can be checkmated by a drive to question pedagogical linguistic standards by African Americans in general. Brother Kwame is eminently qualified to lead this drive.   This can lead to massive active  cultural exchange between African Americans and Africa in an active perennial basis.  Then and only then can brother Agozinos position make greater sense in its usefulness.  It would then not matter whether  it's African American youngsters that are being admitted to Cornell or children if African immigrants.

We should all adopt a cohesive multi pronged approach to combating and neutralizating racism which in agreement with Kwame is often too toxic to African children brought up in part in largely mono ethnic backgrounds situated within larger polities in Africa.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: kwame zulu shabazz <kwameshabazz@gmail.com>

Date: 25/10/2017 12:19 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

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Kwabena, 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
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THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
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EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kaparry@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwameshabazz@gmail.com>
Sent: October 24, 2017 3:15 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Brother Biko,

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

We must be clear that the aim of white supremacy, institutional or otherwise, is to destroy Black, Brown, and indigenous people and create passive assimilated bodies who don't challenge said systems. Indeed, the Movement for Black Lives is an example of a long continuum of Black resistance to domestic white terrorism. African American resistance to white racial terror was a necessary struggle in 1917 and it is no less necessary in 2017. The author's effort to gloss over that fact with the phrase "victimhood" is racist and offensive. There are Black political prisoners who have been in prison since the 1960s. Assata Shakur and others have been in exile nearly as long. Is it the author's position that Assata suffers from "victimhood"? What about 12 year-old Tamir Rice? Tamir was executed in less than two seconds by a police officer. Do we blame Tamir's murder on "victimhood"? There are millions of stories of black people who have been terrorized generation, after generation, after generation. The outcome of white racial terror are vast race-based inequalities that an educated immigrant can side-step by looking straight ahead, getting good grades, causing no controversies, and raising no uncomfortable questions with our white oppressors. 

Talented Africans leave their homelands because their aspirations are crushed under systems that were imposed by white people and now managed by black "matadors" (to borrow Chinweizu's phrase). Ironically, many of them wind up migrating to the very source of their problem--Europe and America. Many talented African Americans, by comparison, are crushed in ghettos created by white American racists. I don't plan of dying in America. But I have been fortunate to develop a longstanding relationship with an African nation (Ghana). Most African Americans don't have that experience. America, the land that hates them, is the only home they will ever know. Who will treat the centuries of trauma that Africans stuck American have endured? How can you treat the trauma if the oppression is ongoing? Given these conditions, we have no option but to keep fighting. "Success," then, should not be measured solely by standards created by white people to maintain white power. A better standard is to what degree do students agitate against the institutions aimed at destroying them. Du Bois was a "success." But after centuries of vicious harassment by the US government, Du Bois quit America and died in Ghana. The brilliant Paul Robeson was a "success." But Robeson chose to speak out against US imperialism abroad and racism at home. Robeson was also viciously harassed and probably poisoned by the US govt under the MkUltra program. Dr. King was a "success." But the US government literally tried to force him to commit suicide. See the pattern? The pathological US government murders, incarcerates, smears our most talented leaders and then that same pathological government labels Black people pathological. 

All Black Lives Matter, 

kzs 

On Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 2:05:22 PM UTC-5, Biko Agozino wrote:

A few have always risen against the odds and the few African African immigrant students who excel are not the rule. They come from populations with mass failures in examinations. About 80% of Nigerian students have been failing high school exams in Nigeria for decades. The theory of Chua and Rubenfeld missed this by overgeneralizing their convenient samples, one of their examples is Justice Sotomayor who was failing in high school until she asked a successful classmate to teach her how to study effectively. The missing link is lack of training in study skills. Our students are being given fish by teachers but they are not taught how to fish. Once students master study skills, they will excel even against the odds. African American students at Cornell cannot be labelled failures simple because they complain about institutional racism which is a reality that African African students should speak out against too. Any student at Cornell must be good enough to get there in the first place. The problem lies in the high school where every course is taught but not study skills. We have a proposal to experiment by working with failing high schools to teach study skills and then compare the learning results with control group of schools. We hypothesize that knowledge of smart study skills will achieve better results than the gospel of hard work. We have shared our action research design with many state governors internationally but no takers yet.

Biko

On Thursday, 19 October 2017, 05:32:40 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Cornell's Black Student Disunion

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/cornells-black-student-disunion-1508364848-lMyQjAxMTA3NTE4ODcxMjg4Wj/

A radical group calls on the university to disfavor immigrants.

Photo: istock/Getty Images

By

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Oct. 18, 2017 6:14 p.m. ET

159 COMMENTS

A century ago, colleges cared if your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Now some are demanding that when universities admit black students, they give preference to descendants of those who arrived on slave ships. Black Students United at Cornell last month insisted the university "come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students." The group noted, "We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country."

After widespread criticism—including a student op-ed with the headline "Combating White Supremacy Should Not Entail Throwing Other Black Students Under the Bus"—the group backtracked, sort of. It apologized for "any conflicting feelings this demand may have garnered from the communities we represent." But if the purpose of racial preferences is to promote "diversity," as the Supreme Court has held, why don't immigrants count?

The BSU argued that "the Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students. While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America."

There's a contradiction here. For years liberal writers have blamed black poverty and undereducation on racism—the experience of being more likely to be pulled over by police, to be looked at suspiciously in department stores, to be discriminated against in schools and the workplace.

But it doesn't seem to be the case, at least not to the same degree, among immigrants. "The more strongly black immigrant students identify with their specific ethnic origins, the better they perform [academically]," Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld observed in their 2014 book, "The Triple Package."

Anecdotal examples are easy to find. The website Face2FaceAfrica noted in April that Ifeoma White-Thorpe, a New Jersey teen born in Nigeria, had joined "a remarkable roll call of high-flying African-American students who were accepted into all 8 Ivy League Universities." Among them: Ghanaian-American Kwasi Enin, Somali-American Munira Khalif and Nigerian-Americans Harold Ekeh and Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna.

Why does racism not seem to keep black immigrants down? The answer is obvious: Black immigrant culture tends to value academic achievement and believe it is possible no matter what happened to your ancestors. As one business school graduate born to Nigerian parents tells Ms. Chua and Mr. Rubenfeld: "If you start thinking about or becoming absorbed in the mentality that the whole system is against us then you cannot succeed."

Groups like the Cornell BSU insist that the system is out to get them and they cannot succeed. This makes the presence of high-achieving immigrant black students inconvenient. Between diversity and victimhood as the highest good in today's academia, it's hard to know where to place your money.

Ms. Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.

Appeared in the October 19, 2017, print edition.     

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

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