Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

Adepoju:

The questions you pose lead you to a certain set of answers.

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 6:57 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

'' Black issues may be seen as  addressed through showing Blacks competently active in prominent positions.''

im not suggesting that is adequate, from what ive seen so far, in the first season. i'm only trying to interpret the ideology of a film  most of whose characters are Caucasian or have skin like those of Caucasians, that term being the best i know.  

 

 

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 11:45, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:

I was subconsciously hoping for an effort at a balanced analysis  like that one from Ochonu.

Responding to Cornelius, the history of Nigeria's various ethnic groups is not identical with the history of Nigeria.

I was asking about Nigeria as a nation constituted by those ethnic groups.

There are a good no of inspiring aspects of Nigerian history.

To what degree are these aspects achieved in spite of the system or because of it and to what degree have they been sustained, demonstrating socio-economic and historical continuity?

That film does not celebrate isolated achievements in US history. It celebrates the country as a system that works through the efforts of various people working to advance the nation.

I'm yet to see any reference to Native Americans and the dispossession of their land that has made the US possible. Black issues may be seen as  addressed through showing Blacks competently active in prominent positions. 

 

One may argue that mythology and nationalistic ideology are central to making a nation.

The cinematography of that film, its use of visual elements, of images of landscape, architecture and painting, in particular, dramatize a running embedding of the film's action in symbols of US history, in visual evocations of great moments and iconic figures and locations in that history,  symbols that I expect many Americans identify with.

A recurrent image is that of Lincoln, a portrait of him permanently located in the Oval Office, if i recall correctly, and the President in the film often shown positioned in relation to that painting, a visual centering reinforced by at least two quotes from Lincoln in the films first season, where i am at the moment.

Im asking myself, is there any Nigerian head of state or President I can relate to the way i expect a good no of Amerians or those of them who know US history relate to Lincoln, who has become such a mythic figure that he ranks with such American folkloristic characters  as Brer Rabbit, various imagined adventures constructed  for him in US folklore, as one article puts it if i recall correctly?

Can I point to any nation defining vision by any Nigerian leader at that level akin to even if not identical with Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address declaration, if i have the name right, ''Government of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the Earth''?

IBB once used a term that struck me ''realistic visionaries.'' Does IBB's political trajectory inspire me?

Can Buhari, for example, and I have the same  or similar or correlative heroes in Nigerian history? To what degree  are such founding figures of Nigeria as the Sardauna, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo and Zik nationalistic or ethnic heroes?

The film also celebrates the FBI. 

I expect a significant part of that celebration is factual.

To what degree can I be proud of Nigeria's DSS, given clear state complicity in the persistence of Boko Haram Islamic terrorism and Fulani imperialist terrorism? 

Im reading on this thread about social mobility. I hope its realized that many people in Nigeria do not have water provided by the state and often have to generate their own electricity? 

 

thanks

 

toyin


 

 

 

 

 

On Tue, 18 Apr 2023 at 08:42, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Ken:

From my observations in various Western countries, including France (especially north of Paris where you see Africans selling tomatoes by the street side), Peckham in London (a slum similar to Agege in Lagos) [apologies to Agege as it is one of my favorite places to understand Nigerian politics and relate to "Area Boys" where I collect street language], African immigrants may be better off in the US than in Europe:

1. Poverty and low income are usually homogenized but not so in practice. The poor/low class in the US is better than in other locations. They are still poor in the context of where they live, but the representation may move them to the lower middle-class/middle class in other locations.
2. Educational opportunities provided by trade centers and community colleges allow the acquisition of skills that translate to social mobility.

My two points above are based on quantitative data I have collected but will write about in the future.

 

TF

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 2:30 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

I've learned somewhere or other than climbing the social-economic ladder in france—and probably in europe—is actually easier, more common, than in the u.s. the gulf of privilege moses alludes to in the u.s. keeps social and economic classes much more rigidly apart than elsewhere.

The myth of the american dream…. 

Ken

 

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2023 8:55:37 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

 

To whom it may concern :  The Tragedy Of White Injustice by Marcus Mosiah Garvey

 

 

On Tuesday, 18 April 2023 at 01:35:07 UTC+2 Emeagwali, Gloria (History) wrote:

This is a version of the claim

often made by  colonial apologists

 that  Africans should 

thank  the colonizers for 

independence since African 

nationalists made use

of tools acquired from

colonial rule and agents,

such as missionaries -

a rather twisted, convoluted, 

circular argumentation. Since 

Africans have "agency," Ochonu's 

pet term, wouldn't Africans not be

sensible, rational, and normal

 enough, to resist and fight against 

forms of oppression, 

 including the toxic legacies of 

colonization, through

decolonization processes

and methodologies.

 

In any case, a system should not

be congratulated for unwittingly 

sowing the seeds of its own 

destruction.

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>

Sent: Monday, April 17, 2023 3:21 PM
Cc: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way is that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

im also puzzled when at times reading the way African scholars working in the West address the subject of decolonization of the Western academy.

Im yet to see recognition of the growth of that system as the primary enabler of its own decolonization, by giving room for such scholarship to exist and thrive within it. 

 

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 20:16, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

''I asked Falola those questions in response to his focus on US negativities while neglecting the positives that led him and others like him  there and are keeping them there.'''

 

 

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 19:15, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:

"you take advantage of the 

technological power underpinning 

those military potencies and 

initiatives….. as 

part of the globally dominant 

Western culture".

 

 

 

 The simplistic version

of this is -why do you 

criticize the West, if you

live there? By implication,

sycophancy and "obedience"

(that could lead to fascism 

according to Biko) are 

prerequisites for living in

a region.

 

 Really?I totally disagree.

 

Interestingly, the series"Designated

Survivor" is a favorite of mine,

but for opposite reasons, namely,

the exposure of the intrigues, 

guile and deceit

underlying " the mythologies

of power," as TF states it.

 

 

 

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2023 5:59 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

 

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Oga TF,

With all due respect, sir, a  problem with your response may be summed up as ''how should the possessor of a nine fingered hand respond to discussions of such anomalies?'' adapting a Yoruba proverb Abiodun invokes in Yoruba Art and Language.

Please allow me explicate this delicate point. 

Your response to my post about US self celebration of its Presidency, history and institutions in that film, describing it as idealized but significantly factual, wondering if i can be proud of my own country along similar lines,  is

1. '' Hope you are not proud of how that power and office promoted slavery'' yet, you, who as a historian are better informed than me about that inhumanity, chose to leave the motherland you and I share in that continent that provided the source of the US's dehumanizing trade in slaves across centuries, reverberations of which continue to resonate till today, to spend most of your adult life in that very country that so brutally enslaved our people.

Why?

The answer to that question will help us assess  to what degree  the Americans' glorification of their Presidency, history and institutions are mythologies of power.

 

 

 2. ''Hope you are not proud of how that power and office promoted...racism'', yet, after witnessing the recurrent unjustified killings of Black people by police in that very country, after witnessing how one of the most illustrious Black scholars in that nation, Henry Louis Gates Jr, was unfairly targeted at his home because of doubts that the home belonged to him, handcuffed and led off  by police since they were not happy with the response to their queries by the unarmed, middle aged man using a walking stick, the Black, but actually  half Black, half Caucasian President Barack Obama describing the polices' act as ridiculous but was later compelled to apologize to the police and invite Gates and the Caucasian police officer to lunch at the White House, you did not publicly respond in disgust to what some may see as that show of double standards and make a public protest, to the best of my knowledge,  talk less return to Nigeria, where such an anomaly is most unlikely to occur.

You are likely, like other Black members of the US  middle class, to have realized that your sterling achievements and social standing would not help much if you did not abide by certain unfair rules, and like one of Gates' Harvard colleagues described himself as doing, made sure that his house ownership papers are always in an easily accessible location near his door so he can show them when required, and like Nigerian immigrant scholar to the US, Sylvester Ogbechie  stated on his blog, made sure that his vehicle papers are readily accessible in his car so he could readily provide them when asked by police, and if he needed to produce anything from the car when demanded, he would ask permission first, while keeping his hands visible in full view of the police, all these to alleviate fears or claims that he could be reaching for a gun, rules Black people in particular, it seems, have learnt to follow, since following them could mean the difference between life and death.

In Nigeria, such horrors are much less likely  but you have not returned to live in Nigeria but prefer  to visit and return to the US. 

Why?

The answer to that question will help us assess  to what degree  the Americans' glorification of their Presidency, history and  institutions are mythologies of power.

3.  ''Hope you are not proud of how that power and office promoted...massive destruction of the world in several locations, the military-industrial complex and the storage of the bomb that can kill you in far-away Lagos!''

Yet, not disgusted with what seems like such an inhuman culture, such bastardization of human possibility, you take advantage of the technological power underpinning those military potencies and initiatives, of the human possibility amplifying construction of social systems of which that military power is one expression, built as it is on the contributions of a globally sourced conglomeration of immigrants, from the German WW2 rocket scientists eventually central to US rocketry after WW2 to Elon Musk from South Africa, you creating your own egalitarian research and publication near global empire within the belly of  US cultural and educational culture as part of the globally dominant Western culture and educational, social and technological system. 

Why?

Among your most recent publications in the last five years are stringent efforts to foreground non-Western and particularly African agency in the face of Western cultural imperialism, empowered as it has been by Western political, military and economic imperialism, a globally dominant force of which the US is the centre, yet these books are published by Western publishers, mainstream publishers, not rebel, fringe publishers explicitly distancing themselves from those hegemonic orientations, and yet you are likely being rewarded for those publications by the  US university you work in, an employment position greatly facilitating those productions.

Is this a contradiction or a creative integration of contraries into a unity?

The answers to these questions will help us assess  to what degree  the Americans' glorification of their Presidency, history and  institutions are mythologies of power.

 

thanks

 

toyin

 

 

 

 

On Mon, 17 Apr 2023 at 09:17, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Mythologies of power!

Hope you are not proud of how that power and office promoted slavery, racism, massive destruction of the world in several locations, the military-industrial complex and the storage of the bomb that can kill you in far-away Lagos!

TF

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, April 17, 2023 at 3:10 AM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?: A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

    Can I Be Proud of Nigeria's History and Institutions the Way that Many in the US Are Proud of Theirs?

                                        A Reaction to Watching the US TV Series Designated Survivor

                                                                Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                    Error! Filename not specified.

 

                                                The President in the film, centre, flanked by his aides

 

                                              Picture by Ben Mark Holzberg in Explore Entertainment

 

Watching on Netflix the fictional film Designated Survivor, a sheer celebration and idealization of the US Presidency through visual and performative symbolism, plot, characterization and speech projecting the Presidency as a noble institution rooted in the convergence of intimate,  heterosexual family values and humanistic personal integrity, radiating outward to pastor the American people and care for the world through personal challenges the President may face, through national and international crisis, at one point I started crying bitterly, asking myself if I could be proud of my own country's history, institutions and values the way that films like this one project those of the US, idealized projections, but demonstrating some truth, and  reflecting  how many Americans see their country, in my view.

Against the background of the recurrent quotation of words of that most iconic of US Presidents Abraham Lincoln, the pervasive use of images of past US Presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others, evoking for those informed about their symbolism, the glories they are associated with, and the recurrent showing of famous paintings dramatizing great moments in US history, I asked myself, are there any Nigerian Presidents or heads of state I can't point to as heroic, whatever their limitations, any events in Nigerian history that I understand as collectively agreed by the nation as great moments?

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