Baba Kadiri,
Words, words and more words.
You must admit that training in cultural sensitivity "should go a long way in helping to solve the insensitivity problem, even if you think that the problem is more deep-seated and systemic..
Hopefully, this will cool the temperature a little further:
King Charles III invites Ngozi Fulani to Palace after racism row .
Just imagine, she's actually going to be an honoured guest, sipping tea with His Majesty!
I'm also impressed by this poem that was posted to this forum earlier in the day :
Maya Angelou : On the Pulse of Morning
I'm sure that you can't read it and remain the same old Baba Kadiri
That poem followed by the heartbreaking news about what's happening in Haiti and to Haitians at the hands of other Haitains is enough to radically change anybody's day and to change our perception of the unholy hullabaloo about Baroness Hussey's quiet interrogation of a guest at a garden party at Buckingham Palace - by comparison , a triviality - although the Buckingham Palace "jamboree" was meant to be a serious gathering of activists concerning the issue of Domestic Violence - so, naturally Baroness Hussey has her dark fears and wanted to know more about where Ngozi Fulani was coming from.The issue cannot be downplayed and this too, is not racism :
Ngozi Fulani: Black women don't want to risk their abusers being murdered'
Strong Words - a strong poetic line :
"And I laugh because one cannot bend a dry fish just as one cannot convert an octogenarian racist." ( Baba Kadiri)
Thanks to Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites by J. Ọmọṣade Awolalu, more than twenty years later, thanks to Ojogbon Falola's Counting the Tiger's Teeth and much earlier on , thanks to Wole Soyinka's " The Road", one got to know that the dog is Ogun's sacrificial animal, Ogun "the patron saint of Taxi drivers'' , daredevils who are committed to doing that extra mile just to sacrifice one to their deity. I had a direct experience - witnessed this sacrifice actually taking place once and that was in a brand new Volvo Car speeding from Omoku to Ahoada, - at the wheel an Ekpeye Prince - me at in the front seat beside him, in the back seat my Better Half, my son and one of our Swedish guests, a young lady from Stockholm - suddenly there appeared on the road an object which I first identified as a python which - in a flash metamorphosed into what looked like a giant rabbit from " Watership Down" - at which point the prince put his foot down on the accelerator -as we say either in America or Nigeria, "gassed" ( we had been boozing heavily) and then there was a mighty thud as the car collided with the metamorphosed object and the Prince shot his clenched fist out of the car window and screamed. " I got her!" - what ? - " The bitch!" - it had been a dog - and the prince's reason for such gladness was that a long time ago in the annals of Ekpeye history, during one of the intermittent tribal wars, a female dog had sniffed out where an Ekpeye chief had been hiding, and since that day dogs are forbidden in Omoku which is in Ekpeye-land. AS you may or may not know, " female dogs" are not allowed at Mt. Athos either.
Such a long preamble…
I wish I knew what the saying is in Yoruba, to wit,that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" .
Please smile : The old Buckingham Palace Professor of His Majesty's Modern English who has a penchant for correcting everybody about his new modern mother tongue being moreover a fanatic for context - hence the Varieties of English known as " Nigerian English" will probably say " Wrong again Mr. Bacon - not kosher . therefore treif and hence vermin , that the female gender of dog is "bitch" ( female dog) and hopelessly compromised, and not wanting to be as fastidious as our grammarian friend ( you can't teach old monkeys like him new tricks either) so we should just have to shrug our shoulders, confident in the knowledge that , after all , "a dog is a man's best friend" and ebonically speaking some of the booty referred to as " bitches" are also some men's best friend, and leave it at that.
As you and I can testify, for the dark-looking immigrant or even one who has ordinary dark hair, "Where do you come from ?" is an everyday question in Sweden, most often asked out of curiosity, with no offence meant. When I intuit unhealthy curiosity or racist offence, I have a variety of ways of dealing with that kind of question - depending on the situation - at e.g a job interview, followed by the other question,"How do you like Sweden?" or just talking to Peggy Sue who may have some more loving intentions or ambitions, the answer could be different. Sometimes, if I smell a racist the answer is " South Africa!" - a man has got to draw a line . Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the same kind of " incident" occurring in Sweden would have resulted in that someone resigning…
This idea of " microaggression " used to characterise that absurd piece of theatre staged by Baroness Hussey and Ngozi Fulani, I daresay that if it had been a man - e.g a real rastaman with heavy dreadlocks like Benjamin Zephaniah, Baroness Hussey pressing him on exactly where do you come from and who are your people? It would have started with this expletive : " Up yours " or "Bomboclaat !
A good poet or playwright could write a really witty dialogue between Benjamin Zephania and Baroness Hussey, arising out of that kind of situation….,
"In my humble opinion, Ms Ngozi Fulani overstretched the racist implication of her dialog with Lady Hussey," Michael Afolayan wrote. How did Ms Ngozi Fulani overstretch the racist implication of her dialog with Lady Hussey? Michael Afolayan explained thus, "For crying out loud, if Ms Fulani had answered the octogenarian the first time she asked for where she came from and stated that she was Briton but of an African or Nigerian extraction, her parents being Nigerians, she would have nipped the matter in the bud." Employees at Buckingham Palace are life-employed, if not Lady Susan Hussey, an octogenarian, would have gone on pension, at least, a decade ago. It is noteworthy, that she is godmother to Prince Williams and as such she would have met a lot of people from different parts of the world in the course of her service in Buckingham Palace. Ms Ngozi Fulani, was not at Buckingham Palace to seek employment but for a social event to which she was duly invited. Therefore, Lady Susan Hussey had no right to interrogate her about where she came from. In a respective manner, Lady Hussy should have introduced herself to Ms Ngozi Fulani stating part of UK she hails from and Ms Fulani would courteously have reciprocated in like manner by introducing herself to the baroness.
The racist behaviour of Lady Hussey to Ms Fulani is being belittled by Michael Afolayan by suggesting that she should have answered the racist query of the baroness without hesitation. If the tone of Lady Hussey's enquiry had been friendly to Ms Fulani, she would have responded friendly too. What Ms Ngozi understood from the tone of Lady Hussey's query to her was: you are not supposed to be here; and why are you here? The octogenarian, Lady Hussey, was in the Buckingham Palace when Prince Harry and her wife, Megan, alleged that the Royal Palace wondered loudly to their hearings what colour their impending child would bear because Megan is bi-racial. Counsellor Michael Afolayan honestly want Buckingham Palace to re-employ octogenarian Hussey but before then to send her to undergo training in cultural sensitivity. And I laugh because one cannot bend a dry fish just as one cannot convert an octogenarian racist.S. Kadiri
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 04 December 2022 11:25
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ngozi Fulani and Lady Susan Hussey: Much Ado About Something Here?Sonny Rollins (Earl Coleman) : Two Different Worlds
One thing that we can be sure of is that it's not the sort of mishap that's ever likely to take happen at e.g. the Nobel Banquet , always a very international gathering, the seating so well pre-arranged, a festive occasion followed by some ballroom dancing, cheek- to-cheek , till the wee hours of the morning…
Methinks that we've got to be equally fair to both the oversensitive Ngozi Fulani and Baroness Hussey. The context , place and time, not the Isle of Man, Yaounde, Dakar or the Republic of the USA but early in December 2022, the stars shining at a Buckingham Palace reception in Merry England, and if we're lucky we could possibly view the whole event from surveillance cameras or on Sky TV, to note exactly what happened. I think that we've got to give the Baroness a break: Here comes the high-stepper Ngozi in style, hair piled up a mile high and looking like a thing that the cat brought in from outer space, the poor Baroness still in grief and not too good at remembering new faces and names must still have other odd memories of e.g Meghan - another one from somewhere or other , and Ngozi is an honoured guest in the palace and under royal protection no less than King Charles III saying to President Buhari ( as reported by Mr. President himself) you have a home in the UK, please feel at home: you're most welcome.
But be generous, let's make some allowance for the Baroness' pedigree, her upbringing, and age, curiosity, an inevitable part of her human nature, who does she want to get to know better?
Ngozi!
What could be so wrong with her persistence? According to the transcript
Lady SH: "Where are you from?"
Ms Fulani: "Sistah Space."
SH: "No where do you come from?
Ms Fulani: "We're based in Hackney."
SH: "No, what part of Africa are YOU from?"
Ms Fulani: "I don't know, they didn't leave any records."
SH: "Well, you must know where you're from, I spent time in France. Where are you from?"
Ms Fulani: "Here, UK"
SH: "No, but what Nationality are you?"
Ms Fulani: "I am born here and am British."
SH: "No, but where do you really come from, where do your people come from?"
Ms Fulani: "'My people', lady, what is this?"
SH: "Oh I can see I am going to have a challenge getting you to say where you're from. When did you first come here?"
Ms Fulani: "Lady! I am a British national, my parents came here in the 50's when…"
SH: "Oh, I knew we'd get there in the end, you're Caribbean!"
Ms Fulani: "No lady, I am of African heritage, Caribbean descent and British nationality."
If Ngozi had lost her cool and opted for a tit-for-tat, the dialogue could have gone something like this:
Lady SH: "Where are you from?"
Ms Fulani: "I was born in England , like our Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Where are you from? "
Lady SH: "I beg your pardon? "
Ms Fulani: " I asked, "Where are you from ?"
At which point Baroness Hussey would have probably shrieked or hissed under her breath, " For goodness sake, can't you tell I'm British?"
Ms Fulani : " Cheers! So , we're sisters!"
--On Sunday, 4 December 2022 at 09:37:24 UTC+1 toyinfalola wrote:
Farooq left the site because of Cornelius!
Cornelius also, for some time, left the site because of Farooq.
It is by God's intervention that Ken and Gloria are still with us.
One day, I will receive a medal for keeping together a million voices!!!!!!!
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, December 4, 2022 at 2:15 AM
To: Usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <yoruba...@googlegroups.com>, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>, Farooq Kperogi <farooq...@gmail.com>, Moses Ochonu <moses....@vanderbilt.edu>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ngozi Fulani and Lady Susan Hussey: Much Ado About Something Here?Ngozi Fulani and Lady Susan Hussey: Much Ado About Something Here?
I wonder where the agents provocateur of our USA-Africa Dialogue group are when I truly need them the most. I know Oluwatoyin is too busy, fully preoccupied with the intellectual excavation of our heritages – the dilapidated states of our ivory towers, the desecration of our palaces' celebrations of entry, and the endangerment of the historical landscapes of our cultural relics. I can forgive Oluwatoyin. But how come we have not seen Ken Harrow express his usually objective and deep analyses, on this particular issue? I have not read something coming from Cornelius whose humorous interjections often kept me thinking and rethinking the realities of issues that we had thought we could walk by and ignore. Farooq has not spoken for some time; neither have I heard much from Moses from Vanderbilt. I miss those voices. Could it be that one or more of these people have not heard of the brouhaha coming from the Buckingham Palace concerning the alleged racist interrogation of Ngozi Fulani, the CEO of the domestic violence charity against black women, called Sister Space? Here is the synopsis: It so happened that Lady Susan Hussey the godmother of Prince William insistently asked Ms Fulani where exactly she came from. The latter felt offended and walked away from her role as one of the advisors for the Palace. I forgot the cartoon character that used to ask the question, shaking, "Am I missing something?"
I know racism when I see it. In fact, if you are a black man, and you lived in America for more than four decades, as I have, and you still don't recognize racism, then you have a serious problem, which might be psychological, if not psychiatric. And, trust me, when I see one that is a mere mirage of objective reality, I also almost always recognize it.
Some thirty-something years ago, in my past American life, I directed a Title VI center, where one of my primary responsibilities was to travel or send folks around the country correcting biases, myths and stereotypes relating to Africa and the peoples of African descent. This was the peak of the Ethiopian crisis, and insults and assaults were being thrown left, right and center about Africa and Africans. I can't count how many times my office was called as expert witnesses in court cases relating to asylums, race matters and other ethnic imbroglios. In all reality, this case of Ms Fulani would certainly not fall within the paradigm of biases and stereotypes. For years, all I wore were Nigerian attires, even if I had to wear winter coats over them in the frozen tundras of the Upper Midwest winters. I expected folks to ask me where I came from. I looked (still look) very African/Nigerian/Yoruba. My accent never changed (I know this could not be the case with Ms Fulani given that she was born in the UK). She would be like one of my children (all four of who are now adults, born and raised in the US). One of my daughters takes pride in introducing herself as a Nigerian American. In my humble opinion, Ms Fulani overstretched the racist implication of her dialog with Lady Hussey. It almost reminds me of a "big" case in which my office was called upon when an African American woman sued a fellow worker to court because the colleague, a white woman, came to work one day wearing an African attire. I did not go as an expert witness but sent a note, for which the litigant called me an "Oriole" a euphemism for a black man whose soul has been sold to the white establishment (black outside, white in the inside- just like the oriole cookies). For crying out loud, if Ms Fulani had answered the octogenarian the very first time she asked for where she came from, and stated that she was Briton but of African or Nigerian extraction, her parents being Nigerians, she would have there and then nipped the matter in the bud. Honestly, I sympathize with Lady Hussey and if I were a counselor to Buckingham Palace, I would request that she be restored with apologies, but just made to undergo training in cultural sensitivity, knowing full well that there would always be some folks out there waiting to make a big deal out of issues of this nature. Whatever you say could and would always be misconstrued as offensive. She would learn to stay away from such folks in verbal exchanges - a sile and/or a handshake would truncate explosive altercations of this magnitude. As my father would always say, "The most difficult person for you to wake up is someone who is pretending to sleep." Even in Nigeria, Ngozi Fulani's name would invoke curiosity. I don't know how to ask for her ethnicity without becoming a lightning rod for thunder and brimstone.
Mind you, I am not minimizing Ms Fulani's experience. She probably might have seen enough of verbal exchanges that brought back memories of unpleasant human hate. But, I am sorry, in my judgment, this one does not fit in that category. It is a classical case of making a mountain out of a proverbial molehill.
I stand corrected.
Yep, feel free to call me anything and ask where the heck I came from - I'm African/Nigerian/Yoruba (and, lest I forget, a naturalized American). I won't be offended. But, in the words of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti (1972), please "Don't Gag Me!"
Michael O. Afolayan
(Transitioning in London, UK)
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1002931479.637183.1670097193589%40mail.yahoo.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/2ba6a139-9ce7-4be4-a149-d80927deec38n%40googlegroups.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/b12cef06-8e3a-4071-a644-5422049bfb83n%40googlegroups.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment