Blackness, Africans and African Americans

College of Arts and Sciences Author

09/12/2019 Added

123 Plays

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When an African and an African American meet, solidarity is presumed, but often friction can be the result. By asking what happens when two peoples suffering from double consciousness meet, Mukoma Wa Ngug an Associate Professor of English at Cornell University will explore how historical forces including slavery, colonialism, pan-Africanism and globalization have colored how Africans and African Americans see each other politically and culturally.

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[00:00:04.190]My name is James Garza.
[00:00:05.800]I am the director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies.
[00:00:11.030]On behalf of the Institute,
[00:00:13.940]I would like to begin by acknowledging
[00:00:15.810]that the University of Nebraska
[00:00:17.670]is a land grant institution with campuses and programs
[00:00:22.530]on the past, present and future homelands
[00:00:25.360]of the Paiute, Ponca, Otoe, Missouria, Omaha,
[00:00:28.900]Dakota, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne and Kaw peoples.
[00:00:33.260]As well as their relocated Ho-Chunk,
[00:00:35.700]Iowa and Sac and Fox peoples.
[00:00:37.890]Please take a moment to consider the legacies
[00:00:40.710]of more than 150 years of displacement, violence,
[00:00:44.010]settlement and survival that brings us together here today.
[00:00:48.540]This acknowledgement and the centering of indigenous peoples
[00:00:51.410]is a start as we move forward together
[00:00:55.359]for the next 150 years.
[00:01:06.890]As it says on our website,
[00:01:08.650]at the Institute for Ethnic Studies,
[00:01:10.490]we look closer examining the world
[00:01:13.210]through a social justice human rights lens,
[00:01:16.160]that only tells part of the story.
[00:01:18.800]We are an interdisciplinary unit
[00:01:20.890]in the College of Arts and Sciences,
[00:01:23.170]with two majors, six minors and a graduate specialization,
[00:01:28.500]that we offer to complete an interdisciplinary comparative
[00:01:34.130]and integrative education,
[00:01:35.780]that is focused on race and ethnicity,
[00:01:38.960]including international origins and connections.
[00:01:42.280]We also offer a rich program of guest speakers.
[00:01:47.650]The first of whom you are going to hear from tonight.
[00:01:53.500]We have two majors and six minors and as I have mentioned,
[00:02:00.140]one of those minors, is a minor in African Studies.
[00:02:07.170]Our next event is on September 24th, at 4.00 p.m.
[00:02:11.830]in the heritage room across the hallway,
[00:02:14.500]and that is a talk by Dr. Justin Castro
[00:02:18.930]from Arkansas State University,
[00:02:20.830]who will be delivering a talk about the Mexican Revolution.
[00:02:26.840]All this information will be posted on our website
[00:02:29.360]and will be sent and tweeted.
[00:02:33.130]And that information will also be posted on our website.
[00:02:37.620]Now to introduce our guest speaker for the evening,
[00:02:40.150]my colleague from the Department of English
[00:02:44.330]Professor Kwame Dawes.
[00:02:47.357](audience clapping)
[00:02:58.827]Good evening!
[00:02:59.660]Good evening.
[00:03:02.371]It's good to see you all here, you never know (laughing).
[00:03:13.650]So, my task is to introduce Mukoma wa Ngugi.
[00:03:19.457]And I'll do so at this point.
[00:03:22.350]My introduction shouldn't be too long,
[00:03:24.500]it'll be about about 40 minutes.
[00:03:29.370]Don't worry, it's okay.
[00:03:30.270]He's only gonna speak for about 15 minutes.
[00:03:32.150]And then you buy books because that's the whole point,
[00:03:36.380]right, buy the books, the books are all there
[00:03:39.080]and please read them and so on and so forth.
[00:03:40.950]Frankly, I think it's a very exciting thing
[00:03:42.760]that Ethnic Studies is doing.
[00:03:44.730]And I think it's wonderful that this event is happening
[00:03:48.340]and thank you all for coming out this evening.
[00:03:50.360]Really appreciate it.
[00:03:52.440]In 2013, New African magazine named Mukoma wa Ngugi,
[00:03:57.590]one of the 100 most influential Africans.
[00:04:01.770]This is no modest achievement
[00:04:03.630]especially coming from a family like his.
[00:04:06.940]We all know about his amazing father,
[00:04:09.000]but it is bewildering to know that Mukoma's siblings,
[00:04:12.100]have produced between them numerous works of literature
[00:04:15.570]and are trailblazers in culture and arts in Africa
[00:04:19.350]and around the world.
[00:04:21.090]Now, I will admit that my indebtedness and admiration
[00:04:24.920]for Ngugi wa Thiongo, his father,
[00:04:28.060]makes me inclined to like his son, even if he were a bum.
[00:04:32.603](audience laughing)
[00:04:35.570]Fortunately, Mukoma has freed me of that ethical dilemma.
[00:04:40.190]For his part, Mukoma who was born in the U.S.
[00:04:42.910]and raised in Kenya has held up his end of the bargain,
[00:04:46.530]and has earned the right to be introduced
[00:04:48.400]without mention of his father well, kind of.
[00:04:52.670]After all, it's hard for him to resent mention
[00:04:55.160]of one of his greatest and most unabashed fans,
[00:04:58.270]that is his father and I've come admire
[00:05:00.580]and respect the affection, good humor and respect
[00:05:04.260]that I have witnessed between
[00:05:05.370]these two important African men.
[00:05:07.800]So onto Mukoma, Mukoma's literary productivity
[00:05:11.130]has been prodigious, even as it has been varied.
[00:05:14.330]He has published impressively
[00:05:16.070]in fiction, poetry and criticism.
[00:05:18.390]And while his work as a journalist and commentator may be
[00:05:21.450]what he's best known for in many quarters of the world,
[00:05:27.300]his influence extends beyond just the books,
[00:05:30.430]articles and stories he has written
[00:05:32.800]to his function as a literary activist,
[00:05:35.240]someone intent on expanding and giving attention
[00:05:38.690]to the literary landscape of Africa.
[00:05:40.990]He'll be called a trailblazer of a man
[00:05:46.960]and there is something to be said for that.
[00:05:49.500]His fiction represents some of the earliest examples
[00:05:52.320]of genre fiction in African literature,
[00:05:54.600]crime is Mukoma's genre,
[00:05:56.700]and he has opened the door for many other writers
[00:05:58.760]interested in exploring new approaches
[00:06:01.270]to African literature, whether it's crime, fiction
[00:06:03.760]or sci-fi, or other sort of genre focused work.
[00:06:07.320]But at the same time the work is is wittily
[00:06:10.150]and complexly political and also dealing with some
[00:06:13.160]really, really interesting socio political issues,
[00:06:16.100]even as he's just writing about killing people.
[00:06:21.750]His commitment to decolonization has manifested itself
[00:06:24.950]in his co founding of the "Mabati Cornell Kiswahili prize
[00:06:29.647]"for African literature," that is bringing Swahili language
[00:06:33.570]fiction and poetry to a wider audience.
[00:06:36.270]He's also, his mic is on (laughing)
[00:06:43.640]I forgot.
[00:06:47.560]He's also co-director
[00:06:49.160]of the Global South Project at Cornell
[00:06:51.750]and their express goal is to I'll quote them,
[00:06:54.667]"Facilitate conversation among writers,
[00:06:56.747]"scholars from Africa, Latin America and Asia,
[00:06:59.117]"as well as minority groups in the West."
[00:07:01.610]His list of books speaks expressly about the scope
[00:07:04.970]of his contribution to World Literature into world thought.
[00:07:08.370]I just give you some of the titles,
[00:07:09.657]"Conversing with Africa", "Politics of Changes,"
[00:07:11.920]which was published in 2003 when he was 12 years old,
[00:07:15.477]"Hurling Words at Consciousness", in 2006.
[00:07:21.200]And then most recently, "The Rise of the African Novel,
[00:07:24.277]"Politics of Language, Identity and Ownership",
[00:07:26.890]which is published by Michigan and that book is out there,
[00:07:29.050]came out last year.
[00:07:30.570]His novels include "Nairobi Heat", "Black Star Nairobi",
[00:07:34.737]"Killing Sahara", "Mrs. Shaw," Mrs. Shaw is a novel."
[00:07:39.220]So some of these works are actually on sale outside
[00:07:42.180]and they look very enticing and delicious.
[00:07:44.660]And finally, to show that he's a human being
[00:07:47.350]of the highest order, he published a collection of poems
[00:07:50.070]called "Logotherapy" with the University of Nebraska Press.
[00:07:54.920]So any poet is a high form of humanity.
[00:08:01.110]And if you're not, then you're not.
[00:08:05.830]So just some quick biographical details,
[00:08:08.410]Mukoma holds a PhD in English
[00:08:10.010]from the University of Wisconsin Madison,
[00:08:12.120]an MA in creative writing from Boston University,
[00:08:14.720]and a BA in English and Political Science
[00:08:16.890]from Albright college.
[00:08:18.140]You can see the whole mix, that's happening there.
[00:08:21.010]He was for some years, a columnist
[00:08:23.080]for The BBC Focus on Africa magazine.
[00:08:25.840]And in addition, he's published political essays and columns
[00:08:29.590]in the LA times, radical history review,
[00:08:31.970]world literature today and magazines, newspapers,
[00:08:37.080]periodicals all over the world,
[00:08:38.330]especially in Africa as well.
[00:08:40.970]So here's why we are well advised
[00:08:42.770]to pay attention to Mukoma.
[00:08:44.650]He says things like this, to quote,
[00:08:47.637]"I always find it funny that as men, we can label ourselves
[00:08:50.867]"as Marxist, Leninist, democrat, Republican, Bernie Bros
[00:08:56.137]"and so on but get uncomfortable
[00:08:58.127]"with considering ourselves feminists.
[00:09:00.497]"I do consider myself a feminist,
[00:09:02.367]"a radical black male feminist
[00:09:04.017]"meaning that I'm a man interested in the interconnectedness
[00:09:07.327]"of struggle in the tradition of say, Angela Davis.
[00:09:10.457]"That is feminism as an ideology of resistance.
[00:09:14.777]"This is where feminism is a theoretical tool
[00:09:17.627]"that helps us tackle sexism, racism, homophobia,
[00:09:20.997]"and political and economic exploitation.
[00:09:23.597]"To put it another way, I cannot relate to say Sarah Palin's
[00:09:27.387]"brand of racist pro military industrial complex feminism."
[00:09:32.270]Smart, provocative, thoughtful and sharply inspiring,
[00:09:36.450]it's my great pleasure to introduce Mukoma wa Ngugi.
[00:09:40.254](audience clapping)
[00:09:56.130]Yeah, he wasn't joking
[00:09:56.970]when he said he would take 45 minutes. (laughing)
[00:10:01.770]Yeah, also I should add I have no modesty.
[00:10:03.710]I wouldn't mind if he repeated the introduction again.
[00:10:07.781]But thank you so much for that actually.
[00:10:11.170]It does make one realize that you know, that I've been busy.
[00:10:15.415](laughing)
[00:10:18.160]Yeah, but also let me begin by thanking of course,
[00:10:20.470]Professor Kwame Dawes and Professor Alice Khan who is here.
[00:10:24.690]And also Professor James Garza and Mikki Sandin
[00:10:28.730]who arranged the logistics.
[00:10:30.810]Yeah, for making for making this possible.
[00:10:33.750]I've been here now for not that long.
[00:10:37.293]I think I came on Sunday, then I leave on Saturday.
[00:10:41.040]I do have to say, that I tell people I'm in Nebraska,
[00:10:43.360]they asked me what I'm doing there. (laughing)
[00:10:46.130]I don't know why Nebraska has that reputation,
[00:10:47.940]but I'll go back and report to the rest of the world
[00:10:50.690]what I found here, like any good explorer. (laughing)
[00:10:58.350]Yeah, so I'll be talking about the relationship
[00:11:00.140]between Africans and African-Americans.
[00:11:03.812]And I use the word complex beauty,
[00:11:05.840]because, it's a beautiful relationship
[00:11:11.966]in terms of our struggle.
[00:11:13.610]But at the same time, it's complex,
[00:11:14.770]because actually, that's what I'll be talking about.
[00:11:17.860]But maybe to capture that,
[00:11:19.500]let me begin by a quote from Oprah Winfrey.
[00:11:22.760]Who says, she was asked why she started a school
[00:11:26.740]in South Africa that cost millions of dollars.
[00:11:28.430]she was asked, why did you start a school in South Africa
[00:11:31.460]as opposed to here in the U.S. where of course,
[00:11:33.580]it could be needed as well.
[00:11:35.420]And she said,
[00:11:36.253]"If you ask the kids here what they want or need,"
[00:11:38.930]the kids here and really she's talking about black kids.
[00:11:41.827]"If you ask the kids here what they want or need,
[00:11:44.157]"they will say an iPod or some sneakers.
[00:11:48.096]"In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys,
[00:11:49.867]"they asked for a uniform so they can go to school"
[00:11:52.550]So already you can see she has that idea of,
[00:11:54.930]I guess, the good African and the bad African-American.
[00:12:04.390]Then another quote from Martin Luther King.
[00:12:06.330]This was after he went to Ghana,
[00:12:07.740]he was there for the independence celebrations.
[00:12:10.720]And a lot of people don't talk about Martin Luther King
[00:12:12.530]and his involvement with African progressive politics.
[00:12:18.030]But I guess I'll do today.
[00:12:20.690]So he says, the speech he gave is called,
[00:12:24.240]The birth of a new nation.
[00:12:25.847]"Ghana something to say to us.
[00:12:27.287]"It says to us first, that the oppressor never voluntarily
[00:12:30.107]"gives freedom to the oppressed, you have to work for it.
[00:12:34.007]"And if Nkrumah and the people of Gold Coast
[00:12:35.876]"had not stood up persistently revolting against the system,
[00:12:39.587]"you would still be a colony of the British Empire.
[00:12:41.927]"Freedom is never given to anybody."
[00:12:45.370]So let me just leave those there and then hopefully,
[00:12:47.370]they'll be relevant as we move on.
[00:12:53.090]A lot of the work I do comes from my own biography.
[00:12:58.100]So I was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1971,
[00:13:01.030]we left when I was very small,
[00:13:02.020]I have no memory of the US at all.
[00:13:04.860]In fact when I came back in 1990,
[00:13:07.267]I'd like to say when I first came back,
[00:13:08.650]'cause I have no memory.
[00:13:09.960]I identified myself an international student,
[00:13:12.350]which really was unfair to the real international students
[00:13:14.490]'cause I had my papers in order. (laughing)
[00:13:17.860]But that's how I felt, I was actually a little bit ashamed,
[00:13:21.830]of my Americanness, if you will.
[00:13:24.640]But then after some point,
[00:13:25.740]I think I'd been here for more than half my life,
[00:13:28.750]I realized I had to confront, call it a dual identity.
[00:13:37.668]And part of the questions of,
[00:13:38.501]as most first generation Africans actually asked
[00:13:40.970]when we were here, am I African or African-American?
[00:13:45.670]Do I belong in the US or do I belong in Kenya,
[00:13:47.660]then at some point, I decided that is okay to declare
[00:13:51.010]you have multiple homes,
[00:13:52.320]and to be responsible for both of them.
[00:13:55.770]There's no decree anywhere,
[00:13:57.100]that you can only have one identity
[00:13:58.450]in fact nobody has one identity to begin with.
[00:14:03.220]Because of those questions then,
[00:14:04.840]I've been wrestling with the question of Africans
[00:14:06.747]and African-Americans for a very long time.
[00:14:10.750]And you will find it appears in my novels.
[00:14:12.750]So Nairobi heat, which has an African-American detective
[00:14:16.250]who goes to Kenya to investigate a murder,
[00:14:19.410]because of that he has to deal with issues of race,
[00:14:21.360]and identity and so on, and so forth.
[00:14:24.420]Right now, and this will be relevant soon.
[00:14:26.060]I'm working on a book called, what is it called?
[00:14:30.450]Does anybody know, it's not out yet? (laughing)
[00:14:34.194]What I know, it's called "Somewhere
[00:14:35.077]"Between Black and African," a biography of my skin.
[00:14:41.060]But really, all these questions started in 1990.
[00:14:44.720]When I first came back to Albright college,
[00:14:47.490]and I was at a keg party, if you're young,
[00:14:50.830]you should be invited, you guys shouldn't be here.
[00:14:55.680]And at the party, a fellow black student
[00:14:58.670]who was African-American asked me if Africans live on trees.
[00:15:04.316]I was surprised by the anger I felt,
[00:15:06.740]the feeling of betrayal and so on and so forth.
[00:15:10.070]And later I was asked by white students,
[00:15:12.230]that question was very popular in the 90s, it turns out.
[00:15:17.050]But I didn't have the same sort of visceral anger.
[00:15:20.534]So at that point, we almost came to blows actually.
[00:15:23.184]We almost came to blows.
[00:15:28.510]But there was an older, like a junior,
[00:15:31.530]an African-American student as well,
[00:15:33.490]who is essentially set us down and,
[00:15:35.470]trying to make us see how silly we are being.
[00:15:40.710]And she was explaining that
[00:15:42.370]or what I took out of it years later was that,
[00:15:45.810]it's as if we are acting out history
[00:15:49.120]without even knowing.
[00:15:52.010]So the way I understood that was that
[00:15:54.950]when I was growing up in Kenya,
[00:15:56.730]all the images I saw of the U.S.
[00:15:59.293]and the African-Americans are the negative ones.
[00:16:01.940]Essentially the racist version of caricature,
[00:16:07.490]if you will of African-Americans.
[00:16:08.940]And then African-Americans here of course,
[00:16:12.600]would see Africa in that negative light as well,
[00:16:14.300]because that's images that are being consumed.
[00:16:18.435]And what eventually I had to see for myself is that,
[00:16:21.190]in that in that moment, standing by the keg,
[00:16:23.540]almost coming to blows, we are looking at each other,
[00:16:25.780]we really weren't seeing each other
[00:16:26.770]because we're looking at each other with the eyes of racism,
[00:16:31.180]or the lens of racism or the veil of racism, if you will.
[00:16:36.530]And this has been an ongoing theme, in New Jersey.
[00:16:42.820]When we first came, we lived in Orange, New Jersey,
[00:16:45.520]which was an African-American neighborhood.
[00:16:47.840]And there was a large Kenyan contingent,
[00:16:50.750]large enough where we could have our own bar.
[00:16:54.210]That was a success as immigrants.
[00:16:57.020]Anyway, the bar was called Safari Club
[00:16:59.050]and it was in an African-American neighborhood.
[00:17:01.800]And at some point, the tensions were so palpable,
[00:17:06.260]just so much tension between the Kenyans
[00:17:09.575]and the African-Americans.
[00:17:10.408]At some point, a physical fight broke out
[00:17:12.100]and people had to be hospitalized.
[00:17:14.350]I wasn't there, I should say.
[00:17:19.140]These are real questions on campuses as well.
[00:17:22.300]On campuses, the tension is there,
[00:17:25.180]and I think what makes it more...
[00:17:31.230]The reason why I'd get that feeling of betrayal,
[00:17:34.380]is because I was expecting a solidarity.
[00:17:36.390]I was expecting immediate solidarity
[00:17:38.624]that neither of us had actually earned.
[00:17:45.240]And this has been going on.
[00:17:48.977]I really, really recommend "Barracoon".
[00:17:51.190]Can somebody keep time for me,
[00:17:52.120]'cause at this rate, I won't go very far.
[00:17:56.010]But I really, really recommend "Barracoon".
[00:17:59.090]Because it's about an African-American.
[00:18:03.290]He was enslaved, he was captured when he was 19.
[00:18:07.670]And then he came to the U.S.
[00:18:09.600]he was brought to the US.
[00:18:11.340]And it's about sort of duality, vicious duality if you will.
[00:18:17.579]But he talks about how when he came, he was a late arrival.
[00:18:21.260]And then he talks about how the people
[00:18:23.827]who have been enslaved for generations,
[00:18:26.210]would call the new arrivals uncivilized.
[00:18:31.180]Of course, there are many other things
[00:18:32.100]we should read it for.
[00:18:34.260]That to mention that these issues don't begin
[00:18:35.950]in the 1950s or in the 1960s.
[00:18:38.600]But, in "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes",
[00:18:44.570]Maya Angelou narrates how, in 1962
[00:18:46.490]when she was looking for a job as a journalist.
[00:18:49.540]She came over to this Broadcasting Corporation
[00:18:53.560]asking for advice, the conversation turns out
[00:18:56.150]to be frustrating to say the least,
[00:18:58.620]because the African receptionist first asked her,
[00:19:01.640]when she sees I need help, she asked Maya Angelou,
[00:19:05.687]"Why don't you know whom you want to see?"
[00:19:08.200]Then they go back and forth for a while.
[00:19:12.910]And then Angelou gets frustrated
[00:19:15.243]and tells the receptionist... (buzzing)
[00:19:17.570]Hello, okay no, I'm joking.
[00:19:21.569](all laughing)
[00:19:26.440]So she gets frustrated and she tells the receptionist,
[00:19:30.157]"You silly ass, you can take a flying leap
[00:19:31.977]"and go straight to hell."
[00:19:34.670]To which the recession is promptly responds.
[00:19:36.697]"American Negroes are all screwed."
[00:19:39.290]Angelou continues, "I stood nailed to the floor.
[00:19:41.417]"Her knowledge of my people could only have been garnered
[00:19:43.217]"from hearsay, the few old American movies,
[00:19:47.737]"which tacked black characters as awkwardly
[00:19:50.287]"as a blinded attach paper dolls who don't get caricatures."
[00:19:53.850]In other words, the African Secretary sees Angelou
[00:19:57.360]in the image formed by American racism.
[00:20:00.720]Angelou introspects further and writes,
[00:20:03.217]"The woman's cruelty activated a response
[00:20:05.227]"which I had developed under the exact in tutelage
[00:20:07.127]"of masters, her brown skin, full lips,
[00:20:09.907]"white flange nostrils withstanding,
[00:20:11.767]"I had responded to her as if she was a rude
[00:20:13.367]"white sales clerk in an American department stall."
[00:20:19.750]Maya Angelou's interaction with her
[00:20:20.980]was mediated by whiteness.
[00:20:22.490]So was that of the secretary...
[00:20:25.412]First we know had been a white person asking for help
[00:20:28.610]at the broadcasting station,
[00:20:30.370]I'm sure she would have been more forthcoming.
[00:20:33.480]Then there's also Maya Angelou's expectation of sisterhood,
[00:20:35.690]and she does in fact write that
[00:20:37.657]"The receptionist and I could have been sisters
[00:20:39.377]"or in fact might be cousins far removed.
[00:20:41.957]"Yet her scorn was different from the supercilious
[00:20:44.317]"rejection of whites in the United States."
[00:20:46.650]Again, that sisterhood was mediated by the racism.
[00:20:55.740]So at the heart of what I'm trying to answer here is,
[00:20:57.580]what happens when you have two people meet,
[00:21:00.680]both of them propelled by their own versions
[00:21:02.190]of double consciousness.
[00:21:04.690]So in Maya Angelou's case, she's been propelled
[00:21:08.813]by African-American double consciousness as a result
[00:21:10.580]of slavery and segregation, and so on and so forth.
[00:21:15.140]And in the case of the secretary,
[00:21:18.470]hers is being propelled by a history of slavery,
[00:21:21.840]and then also colonialism, and so on and so forth.
[00:21:31.781]The best thing and the best example actually
[00:21:33.010]is when you think about Obama.
[00:21:36.847]When Obama, there was a question about his blackness.
[00:21:38.180]But anyway, but eventually he
[00:21:39.013]was embraced by African-Americans.
[00:21:42.510]And seen as an African-American, first black president.
[00:21:45.580]Whereas the Kenyans, Africans generally,
[00:21:47.880]but let me talk about Kenyans,
[00:21:49.710]the Kenyan saw him as the first Kenyan president of the US.
[00:21:53.880](laughing)
[00:21:56.560]But he was so popular,
[00:21:58.807]that there was a beer a named after him.
[00:21:59.787]It was called the senator.
[00:22:04.991]And each group was claiming the part they wanted.
[00:22:07.630]But really, we didn't use him as a bridge
[00:22:09.960]to have these larger conversations.
[00:22:13.220]But there are historical reasons why that's the case.
[00:22:18.142]I'll start with the most divisive actually,
[00:22:19.840]just in case we run out of time.
[00:22:21.340]Actually Kwame had told me if I wanted to,
[00:22:22.710]I could talk for 10 minutes and ask you to buy my books.
[00:22:25.731](laughing)
[00:22:28.550]So let me start with the most divisive.
[00:22:30.790]And that's the question of who sold who.
[00:22:36.321]And this works in several ways.
[00:22:39.370]I think what somebody in my classes today was saying that,
[00:22:42.310]that the idea that Africans sold other Africans into slavery
[00:22:45.500]is something that's used by white people as well to say,
[00:22:47.347]"Hey, you guys sold each other,
[00:22:48.307]"we just happened to be willing to buy you."
[00:22:51.920]But more so, it creates a lot of unresolved tensions
[00:22:54.890]between African and African-Americans.
[00:22:57.280]And let me read you...
[00:23:05.663]The problem is I don't follow my notes.
[00:23:09.777]Okay, let me follow my notes,
[00:23:11.770]okay, so let me begin with the good stuff actually.
[00:23:13.770]Okay, yeah, sure. (laughing)
[00:23:15.150]Let me begin with the good stuff.
[00:23:17.506]So it's not that there has been an absence of solidarity.
[00:23:21.090]Examples are many, I recommend Kevin Gaines
[00:23:23.617]"African-Americans in Ghana,"
[00:23:26.780]and Nemata Blyden's just came out this year
[00:23:28.817]"African-Americans and Africa."
[00:23:32.730]If you think of solidarity, you can think of
[00:23:34.080]W. E. B. Du Bois in Ghana.
[00:23:37.271]And really there are ways you can think of Accra Ghana
[00:23:39.330]as a center of blackness
[00:23:40.640]in the same way that Harlem is a center of blackness.
[00:23:44.320]By that I mean, that you have
[00:23:48.800]I know you're just watching us at Thomas Sankara,
[00:23:51.130]for example came to Harlem and give a speech there.
[00:23:54.280]So did Nkrumah, so have countless
[00:23:58.722]from Guinea Bissau Amica Cabral,
[00:24:00.620]and then vice versa, I mentioned
[00:24:02.910]that Martin Luther King in Ghana,
[00:24:05.230]in Accra, Malcolm X also did a tour of Eastern Africa
[00:24:11.917]and also Western Africa, I'll get to that shortly.
[00:24:14.990]And so on and so forth.
[00:24:18.480]In fact, Thomas Sankara when he comes to the U.S. in Harlem,
[00:24:21.050]he says that, "His white house is in black Harlem."
[00:24:25.710]There's a a very conscious,
[00:24:26.970]at least for those leaders,
[00:24:28.070]there's a very conscious solidarity,
[00:24:30.600]political solidarity, radical solidarity, if you will.
[00:24:35.800]I just want to mention briefly because I was in Ghana,
[00:24:39.208]and again, we'll get to all this.
[00:24:42.763]And the guide, who was showing us around
[00:24:44.600]the W. E. B. Du Bois center, actually said
[00:24:48.270]and then I looked it up later, actually Du Bois
[00:24:51.070]was more radical than, Du Bois himself.
[00:24:54.550]And again, this is just an aside
[00:24:57.664]that we don't talk about Shirley Du Bois enough,
[00:25:01.740]but she was one of the editors of "Freedom Ways".
[00:25:03.690]If you're interested in the internationalism
[00:25:05.700]that was happening around that time,
[00:25:07.560]look up this journal, its called, "Freedom Ways."
[00:25:11.190]And today I was looking, I could only find one biography
[00:25:12.977]about it, so definitely there is work to be done
[00:25:17.095]on the question of genres and also on Shirley Du Bois.
[00:25:21.600]So you have all these two centers.
[00:25:25.051]And a radical understanding
[00:25:30.317]of what emancipation should look like.
[00:25:32.620]So I'm interested in Martin Luther King.
[00:25:36.700]So there are several Martin Luther Kings as we know.
[00:25:39.666]There's a pleasant Mandela like, Martin Luther King.
[00:25:44.110]In the same way actually,
[00:25:44.995]there's a very, very radical Mandela.
[00:25:47.270]But the one we know is the good African
[00:25:49.990]who speaks in proverbs.
[00:25:51.970]So there's that version of of Martin Luther King as well.
[00:25:56.410]But he was actually one of the first people
[00:25:59.860]to call for sanctions against South Africa.
[00:26:06.260]So he gave a speech in 1964.
[00:26:09.170]Where he said, "Clearly there is much in Mississippi
[00:26:11.807]"and Alabama to remind South Africans of their own country.
[00:26:14.827]"Yet even in Mississippi we can organize
[00:26:16.577]"to register negro voters, we can speak to the press,
[00:26:19.167]"we can in short organize the people in non-violent action."
[00:26:21.727]"But in South Africa, even the mildest form of non-violent
[00:26:23.857]"resistance meets with years of imprisonment.
[00:26:26.647]"And leaders over many years
[00:26:27.727]"have been restricted, and silenced and imprisoned.
[00:26:30.117]"We can understand how in that situation,
[00:26:31.837]"people felt so desperate
[00:26:33.457]"that they turn to other methods such as sabotage."
[00:26:36.030]And he had made a similar statement about Vietnam.
[00:26:42.760]He doesn't give up his non violence,
[00:26:45.440]but I don't think a lot of people,
[00:26:47.260]would imagine Martin Luther King saying oh,
[00:26:49.490]but we can also understand why,
[00:26:50.990]under these circumstances, people resort to violence.
[00:26:54.350]On to Sanctions he says, "When it is realized that
[00:26:57.107]"Great Britain, France and other democratic powers also
[00:26:59.287]"proper the economy of South Africa,
[00:27:01.677]"and when to all this is added the fact that the USSR
[00:27:04.007]"has indicated his willingness to participate in a boycott,
[00:27:06.837]"it is proper to wonder how South Africa can so confidently
[00:27:09.677]"defy the civilized world.
[00:27:11.577]"The conclusion is in its capable, that it is less sure
[00:27:15.007]"of its own power, but more sure that the great nations
[00:27:17.477]"will not sacrifice trade and profit to effectively
[00:27:20.987]"oppose them, the shame of our nation is that
[00:27:23.617]"it is objectively an ally of this monstrous government
[00:27:26.197]"in its grim war with its own black people."
[00:27:30.128]And that's a very radical statement to be making then.
[00:27:32.732]And then of course,
[00:27:35.140]talking of solidarity, then you have organizations
[00:27:35.973]like Trans Africa forum, study by war by Robinson,
[00:27:39.450]that will take up the course for South Africa.
[00:27:43.290]So you have organizations like Africa Action
[00:27:46.390]that lobbies radically out there,
[00:27:48.620]I dunno if they're still around,
[00:27:50.420]but lobbies for African interest in the Congress.
[00:27:53.550]And so on and so forth.
[00:28:00.532]There are countless examples,
[00:28:02.911]there's a South African writer called Soth Flaga,
[00:28:06.147]who in the in the 1900s came to the U.S.
[00:28:08.652]At that point I don't know if it was called apartheid,
[00:28:10.935]but at (mumbles) he was very conscious
[00:28:11.768]of the racial politics in South Africa.
[00:28:13.610]And he came to the U.S. and met with Du Bois
[00:28:16.760]and Marcus Garvey.
[00:28:18.494]And so, we are not lacking for examples of solidarity.
[00:28:21.730]But with that said, there is also a lot we don't know right?
[00:28:25.910]For me, I think as an intellectual,
[00:28:28.210]the most shocking thing for me was to realize
[00:28:29.923]that one or two years ago,
[00:28:33.034]that Malcolm X had come to Kenya.
[00:28:34.437]He came to Kenya.
[00:28:35.270]How many of you know Malcolm X went to Kenya
[00:28:36.500]so I'm not alone?
[00:28:38.030]One, two, three, oh okay, five.
[00:28:42.940]Okay, all.
[00:28:44.570]Do you guys wanna give the talk then?
[00:28:45.974](laughing)
[00:28:47.910]So, it was very shocking because he came to Kenya
[00:28:51.100]right, he came to Kenya.
[00:28:52.830]He met with the with the sitting President Kenyatta,
[00:28:59.430]then he also met with opposition,
[00:29:02.490]a better part of the government Odinga, Jaramogi Odinga.
[00:29:07.637]Then he went to Zanzibar he met with Babu,
[00:29:10.072]the Zanzibarian revolutionary.
[00:29:12.180]But in Kenya, he also gave a speech at the parliament right?
[00:29:14.750]So he wasn't just passing through in that sense.
[00:29:16.790]he gave a speech in the Kenyan parliament.
[00:29:18.640]And I was there, in February looking for this speech,
[00:29:21.450]I couldn't find it, right?
[00:29:23.170]But what I'm trying to say here,
[00:29:24.826]there isn't even a little plaque right,
[00:29:25.659]isn't even a little plaque of Malcolm X was here.
[00:29:28.330]It's as if that whole, his presence has been erased, right?
[00:29:33.500]Anyway something interesting happens.
[00:29:35.310]When he's in Kenya he meets a trade unionist
[00:29:38.300]by the name of Pio Gama Pinto.
[00:29:40.398]He was a radical.
[00:29:44.145]What is interesting is that they're assassinated
[00:29:46.660]within four days of each other right?
[00:29:49.290]I'm not saying that there's a conspiracy,
[00:29:52.567]anyway for me to have grown up in Kenya
[00:29:54.460]with a progressive father as Professor Dawes showed,
[00:29:58.750]and growing up within a tradition of radical politics
[00:30:02.880]to not know to me, it was of course an intellectual crisis.
[00:30:06.680]So I did what most people do.
[00:30:08.910]I called my dad (laughing).
[00:30:12.650]I called him and asked him if he knew about this.
[00:30:14.430]He said no, he didn't know right,
[00:30:16.836]and that now I've been going around just asking people,
[00:30:18.920]if they know about the Malcolm X visit to Kenya.
[00:30:25.710]Anyways yeah, so at the end then also other little things
[00:30:31.480]that might be of interest.
[00:30:33.330]An anecdotal anyway there is,
[00:30:35.640]a lot of people may not know this,
[00:30:36.930]but Coretta Scott before she became Coretta Scott King,
[00:30:42.010]when she was at Lincoln, there was another Kenyan
[00:30:44.050]by the name of John Kiano who would eventually
[00:30:45.880]become a minister in the Kenyan government,
[00:30:48.039]who proposed to her.
[00:30:49.060]Yeah, just to show there were these interconnectedness.
[00:30:53.974]John Kiano, this is an aside,
[00:30:55.930]John Kiano eventually married an African-American nurse
[00:30:59.120]and they went to Kenya.
[00:31:00.750]There's this really beautiful photograph,
[00:31:02.410]And maybe this (mumbles) PowerPoint,
[00:31:05.670]of him, and Ernestine her name is Ernestine Hammond.
[00:31:10.220]And at the point she'd just been given a Kenyan passport
[00:31:12.820]Now, so this is a beautiful photograph of them,
[00:31:15.150]them holding up the Kenyan passport.
[00:31:18.520]But the story doesn't end well.
[00:31:21.360]She was too much of a radical feminist, right?
[00:31:24.673]She's one of the people who started
[00:31:25.910]a Kenyan women's organization called Maendeleo Ya Wanawake.
[00:31:28.810]Anyway the the gist of it is that eventually,
[00:31:31.450]the Kenyan government strips her of her Kenyan citizenship
[00:31:35.040]and she's deported.
[00:31:37.100]Then Kiano marries a Kenyan woman
[00:31:38.610]then who takes over this organization
[00:31:39.950]and turns it into a tool for the government.
[00:31:43.910]Another interesting aside is that the same person
[00:31:45.690]who signed her deportation orders, Moi, would later sign
[00:31:49.260]the order for my dad to be put in detention.
[00:31:52.010]So there's that connection.
[00:31:58.333]I do not think generally that Africans recognize the role
[00:32:02.140]African-Americans have played in the liberation of Africa
[00:32:04.700]in practical and theoretical terms.
[00:32:07.420]For that matter, I'm not sure African-Americans
[00:32:09.480]generally are aware of that history either.
[00:32:11.530]But in the president of Senegal, this is a few years ago,
[00:32:15.270]wrote an op-ed for the New York Times called,
[00:32:18.477]"To our Diaspora Africa Awakening".
[00:32:22.360]In that op-ed, amongst other things, he's saying,
[00:32:24.907]"For much of the past 1/2 century,
[00:32:26.527]"the role that African-Americans play in Africa
[00:32:28.417]"has been more of lip service and rhetorical fealty
[00:32:30.497]"than reality, that is about to change.
[00:32:33.727]"Without much notice in the United States,
[00:32:35.257]"Africa, and the role that African-Americans can play
[00:32:37.227]"in promoting this development,
[00:32:38.747]"is undergoing profound transformation.
[00:32:41.387]"In the past, the connection between African-Americans
[00:32:43.273]"and the African continent
[00:32:44.357]"was largely an accident of history.
[00:32:46.587]"Not only did African-Americans come to the United States
[00:32:48.687]"in chains centuries earlier, but the civil rights movement
[00:32:51.667]"in America came to fruition at the same time,
[00:32:53.897]"as Africa's quest for independence."
[00:32:55.920]I mean, he's just clueless, to use a colloquialism.
[00:32:58.500]Like he has no idea what he's talking about.
[00:33:01.067](laughing)
[00:33:02.400]And he's the president at that point of Senegal.
[00:33:12.420]Part of my argument here is that so, we don't know
[00:33:13.920]this history right, but then on top of that,
[00:33:15.450]then we still get to the earlier question,
[00:33:18.460]of who sold who and how divisive that has been.
[00:33:21.860]And to get to that, I want to talk about Henry Louis Gates.
[00:33:25.460]I don't know if you heard the debate he had with Ali Mazrui.
[00:33:28.840]So Ali Mazrui, he's passed away now,
[00:33:31.690]he's an African political scientist.
[00:33:37.490]And of course, Henry Louis Gates,
[00:33:39.540]actually I don't know what he does.
[00:33:41.620](laughing)
[00:33:42.500]He's at Harvard, nobody knows (laughing).
[00:33:47.520]But anyway, he had gone to several African countries.
[00:33:53.400]This is Henry Louis Gates.
[00:33:55.730]He had gone to several African countries
[00:33:58.000]where he produced episode for, I think it was PBS,
[00:34:02.960]called Wonders of the African World.
[00:34:05.780]That in parts, and he actually touched on the question
[00:34:08.710]of slavery and who sold whom.
[00:34:10.920]So this is Ali Mazrui now, speaking of Gates,
[00:34:15.380]where he says that his TV series
[00:34:17.760]is virtually telling the world that the West
[00:34:19.470]has no case to answer.
[00:34:21.030]Africans sold each other,
[00:34:22.930]presumably if there's to be any reparations
[00:34:25.440]in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade,
[00:34:28.463]it'd have to be from Africans to Africans.
[00:34:31.340]Skip Gates succeeded in getting an African to say
[00:34:33.950]that without the role of Africans in facilitating it,
[00:34:36.530]there would have been no Trans-Atlantic slave trade at all.
[00:34:40.240]To this, Gates replied, he said,
[00:34:43.627]"The role of African collaboration in the slave trade,
[00:34:45.687]"though hardly a major part of my film series
[00:34:47.287]"is anguishing to me.
[00:34:48.637]"He, Mazrui, displays no such anguish.
[00:34:51.607]"While intellectually I know that kingdoms engaged in war
[00:34:53.473]"and sold their enemy captives to Europeans,
[00:34:56.127]"and that they did not think of these captives
[00:34:57.587]"as fellow Africans.
[00:34:58.837]"Still I wonder why the king of Dahomey forced his slaves
[00:35:01.577]"too much around the tree of forgetfulness
[00:35:03.027]"66 times counterclockwise, so they'll forget
[00:35:06.047]"those who had enslaved them into the horrors
[00:35:07.857]"they would face on the Middle Passage and the new world,
[00:35:10.327]"so that their souls would not return to Dahomey
[00:35:12.067]"to harm the guilty.
[00:35:13.717]"Does this sound as though those in Africa
[00:35:15.247]"were unaware of the depth of suffering
[00:35:17.477]"that the new world slavery held?
[00:35:19.437]"Does it not suggest that they felt guilty about it?
[00:35:22.307]"You decide, but don't ask me not to wonder
[00:35:24.807]"what in the world was on these brothers' minds
[00:35:26.777]"when they sold other black people
[00:35:27.927]"to the strange Europeans.'
[00:35:30.310]So and then, later, Mazrui in the same, back and forth,
[00:35:33.100]he accuses Henry Gates of Orientalism.
[00:35:39.980]So but Mazrui is denying what is historically true, right?
[00:35:44.980]That at the shores the Europeans couldn't go in,
[00:35:49.590]'cause of malaria, right?
[00:35:51.250]So indeed, it was facilitated by other Africans.
[00:35:56.689]Then this is when the discussion gets trickier, right?
[00:36:00.410]Okay, did the Africans think of themselves as Africans?
[00:36:03.560]And Henry Gates alludes to that they're right,
[00:36:07.042]or why they distinct nations, fighting a war,
[00:36:09.000]and then capturing people
[00:36:11.101]and then enslaving them.
[00:36:14.520]And Nemata Blyden talks about this in her book,
[00:36:16.560]that's why I highly recommended it.
[00:36:18.900]And she says that,
[00:36:21.848]first she reminds us that historically
[00:36:23.100]slaves have existed across cultures,
[00:36:25.070]so it's not an African thing.
[00:36:27.320]And then she says that it is actually the Europeans
[00:36:32.040]who racialized slavery, right?
[00:36:33.740]And then multiplied it, to what we know.
[00:36:36.110]And when you start thinking about it,
[00:36:37.800]you'd have to realize just how much,
[00:36:45.400]cities or cities or whatever in Europe had to reorganize
[00:36:49.240]because of slavery, right?
[00:36:50.910]Because of the economy, right?
[00:36:52.500]And if you think about the amount of people
[00:36:54.140]that would get involved, you can just think of,
[00:36:57.356]the only thing I could think of actually today
[00:36:58.300]was like building a ship right?
[00:37:00.210]Like all the people that would be involved
[00:37:01.810]from people who are going to get the lumber,
[00:37:04.898]the people who are selling the nails,
[00:37:06.780]the sales, then when they get the cotton it has to be...
[00:37:13.310]In other words, it was an economic system
[00:37:15.060]that involved a whole society.
[00:37:17.200]There is a good line from Eric Williams who says that,
[00:37:21.978]along those lines in his book, Slavery and Capitalism,
[00:37:24.100]who says that, "There's not a single brick in London
[00:37:25.817]"without some African blood on it."
[00:37:29.300]So in other words, slavery and its profits touched
[00:37:31.600]on every economic aspect.
[00:37:33.030]It was an industry as I just said.
[00:37:35.450]But really, this is where I'm going.
[00:37:36.710]So, for me it's easy to consider all that, right?
[00:37:39.480]But what we don't talk about to me is the most important
[00:37:41.840]question, which is what happened to the African societies
[00:37:43.760]that were raided and decimated,
[00:37:46.730]that had to somehow continue living with no closure,
[00:37:49.700]without bodies to mourn and bury,
[00:37:52.220]then there was no mourning the dead,
[00:37:53.600]they'd just disappeared never to be seen again.
[00:37:56.590]So in Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes,
[00:38:01.660]to my mind the most heartbreaking moment
[00:38:04.230]is when she goes to one of those communities
[00:38:07.180]that were raided for slaves.
[00:38:11.150]And when she gets there, actually let me find the passage.
[00:38:23.480]Okay, there we go.
[00:38:24.807]Yeah, so this in Keta,
[00:38:26.263]and I'll talk about Keta in depth in a little bit.
[00:38:28.162]So she's just about to leave Ghana,
[00:38:30.520]and she's just traveling around.
[00:38:33.030]She gets to a small village called Keta, right?
[00:38:34.980]And when she gets there, some women recognize her, right?
[00:38:39.390]But it's not her they're recognizing,
[00:38:40.760]she looks like them then they realize,
[00:38:43.720]she's African-American.
[00:38:45.410]And so she becomes a symbol of the people
[00:38:48.377]that were taken away.
[00:38:51.650]And this is now somebody,
[00:38:53.540]her guide explaining what's happening.
[00:38:54.750]So he says,
[00:38:57.602]"The first woman thought you are the daughter of a friend,
[00:38:59.457]"they know you remind them of someone,
[00:39:01.167]"but not anyone they know personally.
[00:39:03.987]"My guide now pulled me through oppressive bodies
[00:39:05.917]"until we came to a stall
[00:39:08.067]"where the owner sold the yams, cassava and other tubers.
[00:39:11.117]"Her wares were stacked on the ground in front of the stall
[00:39:13.737]"and rows in piles around the stool she occupied.
[00:39:16.747]"My escort began her litany to the sales woman.
[00:39:19.797]"Somewhere in the ritual, she said 'American Negro'
[00:39:22.117]"and the woman repeated the first stall owner's behavior.
[00:39:25.007]"Freida began putting yams and cocoa yams and cassava
[00:39:27.977]"into her basket.
[00:39:29.287]"The two women were rocking and moaning.
[00:39:32.117]"I said, 'Mr. Adadevo, you must tell me what's happening.'
[00:39:36.044]"And then he said, 'This is a very sad story
[00:39:38.692]"'and I can't tell it all or tell it well.'
[00:39:41.367]"I waited while he looked around.
[00:39:42.877]"He began again.
[00:39:44.976]"'During the slavery period Keta
[00:39:45.809]"'was a very good-sized village.
[00:39:48.336]"'It was hit very hard by the slave trade, very hard.'"
[00:39:51.846]Oh thank you.
[00:39:57.980]"'Yeah, it was hit very hard by the slave trade, very hard.
[00:40:00.480]"'In fact, at one point every inhabitant
[00:40:01.667]"'was either killed or taken.
[00:40:04.080]"'The only escape is what children who ran away
[00:40:06.060]"'and hid in the bush.
[00:40:07.722]"'Many of them watch from their hiding places
[00:40:08.897]"'as their parents were beaten and put into chains.
[00:40:11.624]"'They saw the slaves set fire to the village.
[00:40:14.044]"'They saw mothers and fathers take infants by their feet
[00:40:15.927]"'and bash their heads against tree trunks.'"
[00:40:18.620]That should recall "Beloved" as well right?
[00:40:21.440]Toni Morrison's "Beloved."
[00:40:24.010]So they wouldn't be sold into slavery.
[00:40:27.101]"'What they saw, they remembered,
[00:40:29.424]"'and all that they remembered they told over and over.
[00:40:32.107]"'The children were taken in by nearby villages
[00:40:34.127]"'and grew to maturity.
[00:40:36.265]"'They married and had children and rebuild Keta.
[00:40:38.861]"'They told the tale to the offspring.
[00:40:41.033]"'These women are the descendants
[00:40:41.866]"'of those orphaned children.
[00:40:44.109]"'They have heard the stories often and the deeds
[00:40:45.317]"'are still as fresh
[00:40:46.913]"'as if they happened during their lifetimes.
[00:40:48.849]"'And you see so you look so much like them.
[00:40:50.940]"'Even the tone of your voice is like theirs.
[00:40:52.887]"'They're sure you're descended from those stolen
[00:40:55.287]"'mothers and fathers.
[00:40:56.377]"That is why they mourn, not for you,
[00:40:58.080]"'but for their lost people.'"
[00:41:01.370]So then she continues.
[00:41:03.147]"A sadness descended on me,
[00:41:04.397]"simultaneously somber and wonderful.
[00:41:06.848]"I had not come consciously to Ghana
[00:41:07.757]"to find the roots of my beginnings, but I had continually
[00:41:10.657]"and accidentally tripped over them or fallen
[00:41:12.877]"upon them in my everyday life.
[00:41:17.710]Okay, I'm going to skip a bit.
[00:41:24.050]Okay, "The first woman continue leading me
[00:41:25.527]"from stall to stall introducing me.
[00:41:27.587]"Each time the merchant would disbelieve the statement
[00:41:29.927]"that I was an American Negro,
[00:41:31.117]"and each time she'd gasp and mourn and moan,
[00:41:33.747]"and offer me her goods.
[00:41:34.957]"The women wept and I wept.
[00:41:36.647]"I too cried for the lost people, their ancestors and mine.
[00:41:39.587]"But I was also weeping with a curious joy.
[00:41:41.497]"Despite the murders, rapes and suicides we had survived,
[00:41:44.387]"the Middle Passage and the auction block had not erased us,
[00:41:47.427]"not humiliations nor religions,
[00:41:49.197]"individual cruelty nor collective oppression,
[00:41:51.667]"had been able to eradicate us from the earth.
[00:41:54.077]"We had come through despite our own ignorance
[00:41:55.967]"and gullibility, and the ignorance and rapacious
[00:41:58.557]"greed of our assailants."
[00:42:01.821]So anyway, so what she's saying here,
[00:42:04.020]at that point I don't know if people
[00:42:05.984]are talking about inherited trauma.
[00:42:07.330]But really what she was talking about is inherited trauma
[00:42:09.290]where this generation after generation
[00:42:11.900]have passed on the story of the trauma really.
[00:42:16.860]So when I read that book, when I read that passage,
[00:42:21.640]I realized I had to go to Keta.
[00:42:24.290]So this January that's what I did.
[00:42:26.596]I went to Ghana. I went to slave castles,
[00:42:28.560]I went to Elmina and others.
[00:42:32.610]Okay, I don't know how much to tell actually, (laughing)
[00:42:36.680]but anyway, for every slave castle, literally,
[00:42:44.060]You have a church on top of a dungeon.
[00:42:46.580]So, you have a dungeon here then literally on top of that,
[00:42:51.710]then you have the church.
[00:42:53.040]Then you have another floor where it was a ballroom,
[00:42:56.008]where the slave auctions would take place
[00:42:57.860]or sometimes just good old fashion balls would take place.
[00:43:01.020]On top of that, then you had the governance floor.
[00:43:06.107]Then then there was a balcony where he'd watch
[00:43:11.130]slave women bathing and then, decides who you want to rape.
[00:43:15.011]And then if they refuse then, or just generally
[00:43:17.500]the punishment for failure to appease the governor,
[00:43:22.280]or trying to escape was to be put in a cell really
[00:43:27.120]and left there until you die.
[00:43:29.750]It wasn't for punishment, it was so you can slowly suffer.
[00:43:32.700]So I heard many stories, but I want to get to Keta.
[00:43:36.610]So yeah, I had somebody showing me around, eventually
[00:43:40.560]we got to Keta.
[00:43:41.807]And it really was as Maya Angelou had described it,
[00:43:44.730]only this is about 60 years later.
[00:43:47.260]First the town is depopulated 'cause there are no jobs,
[00:43:49.770]the youth have left.
[00:43:53.001]Then, the town, the sea,
[00:43:55.380]the only way of talking about is that the sea
[00:43:56.700]is eating the town, so the town well is,
[00:44:00.610]I mean, they're trying to what is it called,
[00:44:01.820]they're trying to stem the sea, but they're failing, right?
[00:44:03.910]And so, in addition to all this devastation,
[00:44:06.960]nature is attacking the sea.
[00:44:08.790]The sea is attacking the town.
[00:44:11.550]I don't know, this is my imagination,
[00:44:12.850]but they just look very melancholic.
[00:44:15.320]It wasn't like a village where you see or a town
[00:44:17.320]where I know this is a town.
[00:44:18.850]Where you see people playing around,
[00:44:21.220]talking loudly, there weren't even
[00:44:24.020]any drunks for God's sake.
[00:44:28.193]It was mostly two or three people
[00:44:29.540]just walking around quietly.
[00:44:32.270]The castle itself is not like Elmina.
[00:44:35.130]Elmina has to put it bluntly or cruely, or crudely,
[00:44:38.480]has a tourist element to it.
[00:44:41.097]And so the government pours money into it.
[00:44:43.658]Keta. nobody goes to Keta, right?
[00:44:45.501]So the fort is falling apart.
[00:44:47.210]It's one of those things where you have to ask yourself,
[00:44:49.180]actually now, which is better?
[00:44:51.685]Is it better to keep Elmina, right?
[00:44:54.200]And what does keeping Elmina mean, what does it do to us?
[00:44:58.730]Or is it better to let these castles just naturally die off
[00:45:04.600]and my thinking maybe will change,
[00:45:06.840]it was that, it just may be better to let them die off
[00:45:09.920]because what we do then we go we watch, we're like,
[00:45:12.047]"Well, things can never get this bad again,"
[00:45:16.020]and not accounting for all then the consequent atrocities
[00:45:24.239]that are still ongoing.
[00:45:25.760]Anyway after Keta,
[00:45:31.290]and I heard other stories as well,
[00:45:32.390]maybe I'll just tell these and then I'll start
[00:45:34.040]with the Keta stories.
[00:45:36.910]What the enslavers would do
[00:45:39.660]when they're going through let's say a jungle
[00:45:41.928]or whatever, where there are wild animals,
[00:45:43.500]was that they would tie the weak slaves to a tree as decoys.
[00:45:48.753]And it's one of those things where you're like,
[00:45:49.586]"Really, can human beings do that?"
[00:45:51.910]But then when you think about slavery as an absolute evil,
[00:45:55.250]then within that, anything else is possible, right?
[00:45:58.750]So anyway, I left Keta.
[00:46:02.130]Shortly after that, I went to Bristol.
[00:46:05.310]Bristol was a slave trading port in England.
[00:46:11.780]I'd actually gone to the University of Bristol
[00:46:13.210]to give a talk.
[00:46:15.550]So, Bristol is a lot like,
[00:46:19.350]okay, I don't want to say Lincoln. (laughing)
[00:46:23.493]But it's a striving,
[00:46:24.326]is a very wealthy, wealthy little city,
[00:46:29.040]and its wealth rests on slavery,
[00:46:35.203]And some of these streets and universities
[00:46:37.320]and blah blah blah blah are named
[00:46:40.414]after some of the slavers, right?
[00:46:41.247]Like Colston, Colston was one of the major slave traders
[00:46:44.720]who then became philanthropic.
[00:46:46.948]It's a story you're familiar with.
[00:46:48.130]He gave a lot of money and so things are named after him.
[00:46:54.040]The abolitionists would meet in a bar called Seven Stars.
[00:46:57.472]So I went there were found two old white men
[00:46:59.780]just chilling there.
[00:47:01.730]Then after that I went to a church that has been abandoned,
[00:47:05.130]but it's not just abandoned, it's kept up so organists,
[00:47:10.290]people who play the organ can come and play
[00:47:11.787]and so on and so forth.
[00:47:14.505]What I'm trying to say is there are all the successes
[00:47:17.310]that certainly don't exist in Keta, right?
[00:47:19.607]And the question I left there with was,
[00:47:24.522]if we are really serious about decolonization,
[00:47:29.100]it cannot just be renaming streets.
[00:47:31.730]That's the gist of it.
[00:47:33.650]Because you can see, there's a direct correlation
[00:47:36.810]between what's happening in Keta and what's happening
[00:47:38.480]in Bristol, right?
[00:47:39.720]So you do have to their credit, young university students,
[00:47:42.780]who are arguing for decolonization and renaming
[00:47:44.870]and so on and so forth.
[00:47:46.350]But it can't work unless,
[00:47:49.730]and I'm using Keta symbolically, right?
[00:47:51.790]Unless somehow Bristol pays for all it did
[00:47:55.240]to just put it bluntly.
[00:48:02.530]Maybe we can talk a little bit more about that later.
[00:48:04.560]But, so what has been the cost,
[00:48:06.130]then if we're ignoring all this,
[00:48:09.040]if we're looking at each other through the eyes of racism,
[00:48:12.471]and at the same time, not aware of the history
[00:48:14.190]of solidarity that I just laid out,
[00:48:17.420]then what has been the cost of that, right?
[00:48:20.950]So let me paraphrase a story from a friend of mine.
[00:48:24.830]Africans and African-Americans are fighting over a cow,
[00:48:27.980]one pulling it by its tail and the other by its horns.
[00:48:31.740]Who is milking the cow,
[00:48:32.870]'cause I mean, the cow is standing still.
[00:48:36.083]And of course, its capitalism, right?
[00:48:41.396]In other words, this struggle between the Africans
[00:48:43.577]and African-Americans is in direct benefit
[00:48:46.460]of actually out of capitalism, and also white racism
[00:48:51.710]because white racism won't take responsibility, right?
[00:48:56.120]Anyway, Malcolm X put it well,
[00:48:58.234]in a speech he gave at the University of Ghana 1964,
[00:49:01.270]He said of Africa,
[00:49:03.297]"This is the most beautiful continent that I've ever seen,
[00:49:06.227]"it's the richest continent I've ever seen.
[00:49:07.867]"And strange as it may seem,
[00:49:09.727]"I find many white Americans here smiling
[00:49:11.507]"in the faces of African brothers,
[00:49:13.467]"like they have been loving them all the time,"
[00:49:15.780]then there's laughter and applause.
[00:49:17.597]"The fact is these same whites who in America
[00:49:20.087]"spit in your faces, the same whites who in America
[00:49:22.707]"clubbed us brutally, just because we want to integrate
[00:49:25.207]"with them, over here in Africa, smiling in your face,
[00:49:28.797]"trying to integrate with you.
[00:49:30.747]"But actually what they want to integrate with is the wealth
[00:49:34.957]"that they know is here, the untapped natural resources
[00:49:36.977]"which exceed the wealth of any developed continent
[00:49:38.447]"on this earth today.
[00:49:40.807]"So because we're invisible to each other,
[00:49:42.237]"we do not see we are fundamentally in the same situation.
[00:49:46.057]"African labor and wealth is being siphoned
[00:49:47.497]"out of the continent.
[00:49:49.217]"African-American labor and wealth is being siphoned
[00:49:51.153]"out of their communities."
[00:49:52.820]And really, you cannot think of the prison industrial
[00:49:54.840]complex, and then associate the privatization
[00:49:57.612]of prisons industry in the U.S. without seeing
[00:50:02.090]it as a modern day form or return to slavery, right?
[00:50:11.640]So yeah, yeah, yeah, what is he saying?
[00:50:16.331]I don't know who said this but,
[00:50:17.697]"When America sneezes black America catches a cold,"
[00:50:21.610]then, "America comes to Africa for her medicine
[00:50:23.827]"leaving Africa with a cold."
[00:50:25.940]Right that works quite well.
[00:50:28.840]So, but in all these, my biggest fear is that,
[00:50:31.750]the African immigrants, the first generation immigrants,
[00:50:36.338](mumbles) confusion, what you call the first generation
[00:50:39.690]Africans, African-Americans, and so on and so forth.
[00:50:45.530]is that they're becoming a buffer between
[00:50:46.910]African-Americans and white Americans.
[00:50:50.449]And if you want to see this in full display, look at a time
[00:50:53.520]when college admittances are happening.
[00:50:56.380]There's always the story of so and so admitted to Ivy League
[00:51:00.110]Whatever and usually somebody and I'm not saying
[00:51:03.440]people don't work hard, it's not about that.
[00:51:07.260]Yeah, so there'll be all sorts of stories so and so
[00:51:09.360]admitted, to all Ivy League's, but it will
[00:51:12.250]inevitably be somebody with a, now I'm
[00:51:17.370]serious, it will be somebody with a Nigerian name.
[00:51:19.515](laughing)
[00:51:21.290]somebody with an Africa name, with an
[00:51:22.750]African sounding name, and those articles inevitably will
[00:51:26.580]mention that this person's parents are from this country,
[00:51:30.490]there is an immigrated, the parents work
[00:51:33.330]hard and so on and so forth.
[00:51:36.606]and the subtext is obvious, right?
[00:51:41.780]If these people can come and within not even a generation
[00:51:45.530]succeed, then it must be the fault of African-Americans not
[00:51:49.700]to so but it's interesting to think about these and I hope
[00:51:52.740]somebody will do more research because when I was
[00:51:56.470]looking this up for a course I was teaching,
[00:51:58.740]I came across then one where
[00:52:00.890]an African-American student had been admitted to, I don't
[00:52:02.680]know, 20 schools, and Fox News called him obnoxious.
[00:52:06.500]they call that obnoxious, like, why would
[00:52:09.640]you apply to so many schools?
[00:52:11.140]Where you taking spots from other people
[00:52:13.109]and so on and so forth?
[00:52:14.624]And that's something we need to think about.
[00:52:20.656]And I can tell you a little anecdotes,
[00:52:22.605]I lived in Ohio, there are no African bars there,
[00:52:27.585]there was no Safari Club.
[00:52:28.700]So yeah, I go to a white bar, it mostly white,
[00:52:31.620]and I'd walk in and you'd feel the tension,
[00:52:33.470]there'd be this tension?
[00:52:35.190]Then I would order a beer,
[00:52:38.420]they would hear my accent
[00:52:39.253]and you could you could see the relaxation.
[00:52:41.040]And inevitably, then the conversation would begin.
[00:52:43.317]"Welcome to America." (laughing)
[00:52:46.310]Welcome to America, and it became so predictable
[00:52:49.230]that at some point, I'll go with friends and I'll be like,
[00:52:50.937]"Yeah, this conversation is gonna take place, right?"
[00:52:54.570]There's something Africans joke about, but I call it,
[00:52:55.720]I don't know if it works anymore because
[00:52:58.470]of the whole anti immigrant push.
[00:53:01.962]But an African foreign a privilege,
[00:53:03.010]it's not much, but it's there.
[00:53:06.730]So most Africans will joke or Kenyans, I should
[00:53:09.070]speak about Kenyans
[00:53:09.903]will joke that if we are stopped by a cop, thicken
[00:53:12.320]your accent, "Pfficer, officer, what is going on here now?"
[00:53:15.718](laughing)
[00:53:20.340]Then the court will be like, "Oh, don't do that again,
[00:53:22.777]"we don't do that in this country."
[00:53:25.780]Yeah, but, of course, I'm also mindful of your like,
[00:53:27.830]Amadou Diallo, right?
[00:53:28.760]Amadou Diallo was from I think Guinea.
[00:53:31.570]Yeah, he was shot 41 times in New York.
[00:53:34.040]So, the privilege is there
[00:53:39.044]but they have to hear your accent first.
[00:53:43.300]But also, then I don't know if you have heard the story
[00:53:46.800]of Kofi Annan.
[00:53:48.150]At this point, he had gone to the south.
[00:53:51.760]I believe maybe in the 50s
[00:53:53.150]and he goes to get a hair cut.
[00:53:55.390]And the guy, the white guy tells him
[00:53:58.000]I don't cut the N word here.
[00:54:00.950]Then Kofi Annan replies,
[00:54:03.543]" I'm not an N-word, I'm from Africa,"
[00:54:05.590]and then the barber cuts his hair.
[00:54:08.102]and when he tells the story to his friend,
[00:54:11.030]it is more bemused, not angry.
[00:54:14.240]So that and I think this also translates if somebody did
[00:54:18.910]a study of translates into jobs.
[00:54:21.000]If I walk into a job where I have the accent,
[00:54:26.560]if you will, right, I'll be seen as less threatening,
[00:54:29.340]some of the words that people use, that you
[00:54:30.230]are articulate and so on and so forth.
[00:54:34.739]But by accepting, and then of course, yeah, then
[00:54:38.140]of course, for African parents who come to the US
[00:54:40.650]for various reasons.
[00:54:43.370]Some of them so the kids can assimilate,
[00:54:45.540]some of them, because they have
[00:54:47.440]imbibed from their childhood
[00:54:51.623]in Africa that, that African-Americans,
[00:54:53.570]they've seen the African-Americans through the eyes
[00:54:54.990]of racism, they will isolate their kids from...
[00:55:01.184]They'll isolate their kids, they'll tell them
[00:55:02.479]"Don't play with African-American."
[00:55:04.648]So they will live in mostly
[00:55:05.481]white neighborhoods and so on and so forth.
[00:55:07.940]But there is a cost.
[00:55:08.980]And this is what I'm getting to.
[00:55:12.210]In June of 20, In 2012, my father and I were invited
[00:55:14.750]to Seattle by the Kenyan American Youth Association,
[00:55:18.020]a nonprofit organization, to an acquitted.
[00:55:21.731]It's the young guy who's in the email, he said,
[00:55:23.770]to talk about identity and Kenyanness in the United States.
[00:55:26.690]The invitation in part read that we have many young people
[00:55:30.490]falling through the cracks in our community, because we have
[00:55:33.130]not bridged the gap between Kenyan
[00:55:34.670]and American cultural realities.
[00:55:36.650]We would like to pull them back and prevent this
[00:55:38.150]by providing support systems and inspiring them to embrace
[00:55:41.370]their history and culture and use it to benefit themselves
[00:55:44.270]in their communities.
[00:55:46.631]So we did go, we did go
[00:55:50.200]and for the composition several things
[00:55:51.480]in March, that these kids are,
[00:55:57.388]they are caught somewhere in a weird space
[00:56:00.888]where they're not black, right?
[00:56:01.930]because that identity hasn't been
[00:56:04.130]given to them.
[00:56:05.780]And they're not African because first,
[00:56:08.591]most of them don't go back and forth, right?
[00:56:11.264]Because it's too expensive.
[00:56:12.510]And then also because their parents want them to assimilate.
[00:56:15.720]They don't teach them any African languages, right?
[00:56:18.990]So they in this weird space, (mumbles) space
[00:56:20.860]that we should call it really.
[00:56:23.932]But they also have the cost as well, which is that if you
[00:56:25.640]keep accepting the model, the model minority, which is that
[00:56:30.100]there's also real suffering, so that you
[00:56:32.740]could argue there are two classes of African immigrants.
[00:56:35.170]There is the afro politician, what is
[00:56:37.470]let's call the afro politician.
[00:56:38.980]Jetsetting, mutilingual, and so on and so forth.
[00:56:42.860]And then nowadays, the subtitle
[00:56:45.180]of the Africans who come in,
[00:56:46.629]there was a good article
[00:56:47.920]the other day about
[00:56:50.560]Ghanaians working in Boston, in the,
[00:56:54.170]I don't know if you'd call it the home service industry
[00:56:55.810]where somebody gets
[00:56:57.194]immobilized either because of age or illness.
[00:56:58.880]It's unregulated, they're underpaid,
[00:57:00.330]they work 60 hours or so.
[00:57:02.870]So anyway, so you end up with Africans who are in this
[00:57:04.660]underbelly and most states now what they've been doing is
[00:57:09.090]they're trying to get people to self deport,
[00:57:10.970]that's a term they're using.
[00:57:12.640]And that's through attrition,
[00:57:13.630]that's by making life impossible if you're not documented.
[00:57:17.450]So you for example, you can't get a driver's license
[00:57:20.580]and this leads to other fear as well,
[00:57:21.930]you can't go to the emergency room, right?
[00:57:24.080]But of course what he does is he doesn't self deport.
[00:57:29.110]People go underground.
[00:57:31.470]Or they move from state to state as well looking for more
[00:57:33.780]friendlier, for more immigrant friendly states.
[00:57:37.170]And sometimes you end up with...
[00:57:39.320]It's a term I came across recently, mixed households where
[00:57:42.470]the kids Of course are born here, they have their
[00:57:44.400]papers but their parents don't...
[00:57:47.170]Meaning that then the kids by de facto become the parents
[00:57:50.090]because (mumbles) in society.
[00:57:55.100]So anyway...
[00:58:02.130]Even as we're thinking about the the tensions between
[00:58:07.601]African-Americans and Africans in the US itself,
[00:58:11.800]we should be mindful of that.
[00:58:14.865]That there's also, I don't know,
[00:58:16.470]like an underclass, I don't know
[00:58:18.540]if you can call it an underclass of African families.
[00:58:23.950]So what are the implications of all this?
[00:58:26.840]Some are immediate, especially for us on campuses,
[00:58:31.260]take study abroad programs, there has to be an
[00:58:34.090]understanding that African-Americans will experience Africa
[00:58:36.260]differently from their white counterparts.
[00:58:39.670]and I've had friends when I was, who
[00:58:41.770]actually went to Tanzania, black Americans,
[00:58:44.240]and call them (foreign language).
[00:58:47.102](foreign language) means white person,
[00:58:49.919]and all those interactions
[00:58:51.510]and they're so heartbroken that they ended up coming back.
[00:58:56.120]Or if you have, for example, let's say you're doing a study
[00:58:58.850]abroad program, and you go to Ghana, right?
[00:59:03.100]Obviously, if you go to slave castles, black Americans will
[00:59:06.050]experience those slave castles differently
[00:59:09.057]than the white Americans.
[00:59:11.240]And yeah, and I talked to this who arranges
[00:59:15.440]study abroad programs asked him
[00:59:16.720]you ever seen any of these,
[00:59:17.630]like what happens when you have these interactions?
[00:59:20.800]And he say there was a time,
[00:59:25.730]the black American so moved, right, and of course,
[00:59:29.080]the guides also know how to mind that emotion,
[00:59:30.780]by the way. (laughing)
[00:59:34.627]but then some white students who are laughing not
[00:59:36.350]out of malice, they were laughing at something else.
[00:59:41.136]But then of course it would come out differently.
[00:59:44.444]So those are some of the things
[00:59:45.740]we need to be thinking about.
[00:59:50.907]By the same by the same token, the moment African students
[00:59:56.200]get to US campuses, there should be structured conversations
[00:59:58.440]between them and African-Americans.
[01:00:00.550]I want to say I'm extremely happy because I met
[01:00:01.479]representatives, I think the African Studies Association,
[01:00:06.030]no, sorry, African African Student Association, and also
[01:00:10.160]African-American Students Association, and they were
[01:00:13.303]telling me they have formed an umbrella organization,
[01:00:17.090]the Black Students Union, where then they can talk about,
[01:00:20.670]where they can work together, and so on and so forth.
[01:00:22.990]And I thought that was very important
[01:00:24.080]because it allows for differences, right?
[01:00:29.880]Because the African students will
[01:00:32.330]have different experiences.
[01:00:35.640]But it's good to have a common space where
[01:00:38.300]they can work together.
[01:00:41.080]But all in all, I want to say that solidarity
[01:00:43.510]is formed in struggle, and we have to adapt to each other's
[01:00:46.210]courses and in the discussions that ensue,
[01:00:48.810]in solidarity to work that will help strengthen our bond.
[01:00:53.839]In other words, and this is really for everybody, right?
[01:01:01.766]I'm teaching a course where we're talking
[01:01:03.540]about enlightenment and racism and all the white students
[01:01:06.190]drop the course.
[01:01:07.100]I don't know if that's why, just to be sure.
[01:01:10.920]But it's that whole idea of that issues of race
[01:01:14.470]are for black people.
[01:01:16.990]Whereas really issues of race and especially when it comes
[01:01:19.650]to the ideologies should be for everybody.
[01:01:22.410]But anyway, but at any rate,
[01:01:26.260]so everybody should be involved.
[01:01:28.630]But going back to the keg party with my first year student,
[01:01:32.080]imagine how much richer experience
[01:01:36.001]with each other it would have been if his first question
[01:01:37.430]had been, "What do Kenyans think today
[01:01:39.257]"about Malcolm X's visit?"
[01:01:41.450]Or I asked him about Thomas Sankara's visit to Harlem,
[01:01:44.050]how it's remembered today.
[01:01:46.260]Thank you.
[01:01:47.825](audience clapping )
[01:01:58.107]Does anybody have any questions?
[01:02:04.243]Questions, I can go over with the mic
[01:02:06.210]to where you're sitting down.
[01:02:07.910]Questions.
[01:02:16.850]I have a question, no, I'm joking.
[01:02:18.637](audience laughing)
[01:02:20.361]Anybody.
[01:02:21.194]Questions?
[01:02:22.680]I'll walk over so you don't have to get up.
[01:02:27.962]We have a question right here.
[01:02:28.795]I'm gonna go ahead and start it off.
[01:02:31.020]First of all, thank you for that talk.
[01:02:35.260]And yes, I did know that Malcolm X went to Kenya,
[01:02:37.030]but I didn't know anything other than that, and Zanzibar.
[01:02:40.200]But I wanted you to say a little bit more about the need
[01:02:43.470]to have structured conversations between African students
[01:02:48.430]and then first generation Africans Americans,
[01:02:51.530]so parents who were born and raised in Africa
[01:02:54.510]and African-Americans, and then,
[01:02:56.650]I grew up in the East Coast,
[01:02:57.680]so we also have Caribbean students.
[01:02:59.210]So it's a whole different matrix, if you will.
[01:03:04.480]And why those are so important because I think
[01:03:07.360]that you're right that universities try to use
[01:03:11.200]students as buffer zones or in some cases try to play
[01:03:14.470]politics with those students
[01:03:16.436]to their own ends, to create their own narrative
[01:03:22.060]about blackness and diversity that may not be a narrative
[01:03:25.130]that reflects how we live with one another.
[01:03:28.020]Yeah, so the first thing I would say,
[01:03:29.310]first you could tell from my anecdote of the keg party,
[01:03:34.080]that these conversations have been going on for generations
[01:03:36.500]and you go back to Maya Angelou as well.
[01:03:40.380]What I do know from own experience is,
[01:03:41.820]if you try to have those conversations,
[01:03:45.182]and if you say, "Oh, we're having issues,
[01:03:46.217]"let's get together,"
[01:03:47.090]they end up becoming spaces for venting, right?
[01:03:51.320]So, people will say, "Oh, so and so called me,"
[01:03:52.740]like I just did, "So and so asked me if I lived on a tree,"
[01:03:56.590]then somebody else, an African-American,
[01:03:57.481]might be, "Oh, Africans think they're better than us"
[01:04:01.020]or whatever, right?
[01:04:02.340]So, myself I would say the most important thing
[01:04:05.350]that I think people can do is to go back to that history,
[01:04:10.863]and when I was talking to students yesterday,
[01:04:12.780]I was talking about how,
[01:04:14.760]for example, really, they should get together
[01:04:16.240]and talk about let's say Malcolm X in Ghana.
[01:04:21.100]So in which case, then they will take up a chapter
[01:04:23.790]from Manning Marable's "Malcolm X" and use that.
[01:04:27.710]We have this beautiful history as well.
[01:04:30.767]"The Asian Revolution," that should be a discussion,
[01:04:33.737]"The Black Jacobins" by C.L.R. James,
[01:04:35.970]that should be a book that people should read
[01:04:37.730]and come and discuss or have somebody read
[01:04:39.940]and then come in present it.
[01:04:42.208]In other words we cannot-- Slow down?
[01:04:45.715]I'm sorry.
[01:04:46.669]Or "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa."
[01:04:47.990]Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:48.960]Walter Rodney, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa."
[01:04:51.240]There's Frantz Fanon, in other words nothing
[01:04:53.960]can take the place of study. let me put it that way.
[01:04:56.850]Because what it does is it gives you the language
[01:04:59.180]to use, right?
[01:05:01.434]It gives you the language to use
[01:05:03.570]and at the same time,
[01:05:04.580]a sense of where you're coming from.
[01:05:10.230]And you can follow the threads, for example,.
[01:05:15.118]Think of, for example, Frantz Fanon,
[01:05:17.510]who started off as a doctor, rather a psychiatrist,
[01:05:19.910]then ended up becoming a spokesman for the Algerian
[01:05:23.740]for the FLN, right?
[01:05:25.730]But he's from Martinique.
[01:05:28.242]So already, you have these little threads,
[01:05:29.320]you can follow up,
[01:05:30.297]Pan-African threads, you can follow.
[01:05:33.810]Marcus Garvey, you can have arguments about
[01:05:37.000]his contradictions and so on and so forth.
[01:05:39.350]But he was a figure that you can follow to talk
[01:05:42.898]about the Caribbean, the struggles here,
[01:05:47.310]and in Africa, where he was also extremely popular
[01:05:49.667]and people used to read his pamphlets.
[01:05:54.280]And at the same time, even though for most people,
[01:05:57.390]they know these are issues that matter,
[01:06:00.890]I cannot stress enough the importance
[01:06:03.006]of a scholarly distance as well.
[01:06:05.590]'Cause that will allow you to tease out the contradictions.
[01:06:08.060]That will allow somebody not to fall
[01:06:09.330]into the trappings of cultural nationalism.
[01:06:15.160]We have a question here.
[01:06:16.990]Yes, thank you for that wonderful
[01:06:20.090]and enlightening lecture, really appreciate it.
[01:06:24.550]I teach African-American literature
[01:06:26.590]and I always contextualize within history.
[01:06:32.040]And inevitably, there will be some students who will say,
[01:06:37.727]"Well," and you've touched upon this,
[01:06:41.320]I would like for you to expound upon this,
[01:06:43.440]that, "Well, Africans sold their own people,"
[01:06:46.350]and inevitably I get that.
[01:06:49.223]And my answer is that whole situation took place
[01:06:55.910]in a different context and within a different thought.
[01:06:59.530]Right, and you said tonight that the European
[01:07:02.310]was the group that racialized slavery.
[01:07:07.130]Could you expound upon that, please?
[01:07:09.670]Yeah, so my first response would be,
[01:07:14.440]and I think Maya Angelou says it somewhere that,
[01:07:17.120]we need to recognize suffering was on both sides.
[01:07:19.860]So that village, that village is as devastated as,
[01:07:23.310]it's still going through the inherited trauma
[01:07:25.260]and so on and so forth.
[01:07:26.820]And I think the best answer for that I've found
[01:07:30.300]anyway for myself is to think of,
[01:07:34.590]it's not like Africans benefited from the slave trade.
[01:07:38.120]In fact, going back to underdevelopment,
[01:07:41.350]how Europe underdeveloped Africa,
[01:07:43.510]is through this depopulations,
[01:07:50.320]and interruptions, right, that lead us where we are today.
[01:07:55.140]But I think the best answer really is to say,
[01:07:56.137]"Well, look, the villages were destroyed.
[01:08:01.247]"Lives destroyed in ways that they haven't recovered today."
[01:08:04.760]So it's not a question of who sold who,
[01:08:06.220]I think it's a question of recognizing
[01:08:08.060]that suffering was on both sides.
[01:08:11.270]In terms of racializing,
[01:08:15.330]I mean, yeah because before that,
[01:08:18.484]it was racialized and I can't think of a better word
[01:08:20.170]and amplified, right?
[01:08:22.350]So, and one can look at the figures,
[01:08:24.747]of the amount of people that were being taken out and,
[01:08:29.960]and enslaved and so on and so forth.
[01:08:33.920]And at some point, I think for me,
[01:08:36.573]I always go back to the enlightenment, right?
[01:08:38.590]Because it's the enlightenment that gives the ideologies
[01:08:41.950]racist ideologies, or gives it the idea of civilizing
[01:08:45.590]mission, even the way we we look at each other
[01:08:47.820]as Africans and African-Americans
[01:08:50.567]either as lazy, as irrational, indolent.
[01:08:56.123](laughing)
[01:08:57.610]All those go back to the enlightenment.
[01:08:58.700]So for me, I always begin my, any class I teach that touches
[01:09:00.860]on anything remotely African, I start with the enlightenment
[01:09:05.050]because then we can see how much of inherited
[01:09:09.330]ideas we work with, right?
[01:09:11.220]And also recognize how unoriginal racism actually is.
[01:09:15.410]Yeah, I feel pity for racists 'cause I'm like,
[01:09:17.910]this is not new I mean, you're not working
[01:09:19.700]with anything original here. (laughing)
[01:09:22.741]I hope that answers, yeah.
[01:09:24.230]Professor Carey, before you speak
[01:09:25.740]we have a question here.
[01:09:29.780]Thank you.
[01:09:30.613]My question was, what do you think is the role
[01:09:32.600]of African diasporas and African-Americans
[01:09:34.630]in influencing African development
[01:09:36.370]and just changing Africa's image to the outside world?
[01:09:40.020]Thank you.
[01:09:45.890]I guess you could think of it in two ways.
[01:09:49.707]There is the political work that needs to be done.
[01:09:53.060]And that is, for example, U.S. foreign policy.
[01:09:57.920]And in fact maybe this is a good day
[01:09:59.420]to talk about this 'cause it's 911, right?
[01:10:02.440]I do think that Africans and African-Americans
[01:10:04.500]have a responsibility of thinking about the role
[01:10:08.270]of American foreign policy.
[01:10:10.960]Let me give you a quick example.
[01:10:13.303]So, Al-Shabaab, Al-Shabaab in Somalia,
[01:10:17.440]is a direct result of U.S. and Ethiopian intervention.
[01:10:22.260]Let me explain.
[01:10:24.176]When Siad Barre fell, when his government fell,
[01:10:27.500]you had chaos, right?
[01:10:29.640]And from those chaos emerged organization
[01:10:32.110]called the Islamic Court Union, ICU.
[01:10:35.420]The ICU had many elements.
[01:10:38.140]It had what now "radical elements", yeah, Democrats.
[01:10:42.040]In other words, it was an umbrella organization.
[01:10:44.840]But that had managed though, and maybe if you can argue
[01:10:47.537]about it, but that had managed to restore order
[01:10:51.170]of some kind, and at least at that point,
[01:10:53.690]had some respect from the Somali people.
[01:10:56.510]But George Bush didn't want anything to do with Islam.
[01:11:00.920]So with the tacit approval of the U.S. Ethiopia invaded
[01:11:03.800]and got rid of the ICU.
[01:11:06.050]From the ICU then the radical elements,
[01:11:08.320]and I hate using the word radical elements,
[01:11:09.570]but for expediency,
[01:11:12.289]then the radical elements, became Al-Shabaab took over.
[01:11:17.010]So we need to be aware of that,
[01:11:18.130]we need to be aware of that history,
[01:11:19.350]and we can't talk about development
[01:11:23.400]if we're not aware of that history and try
[01:11:25.330]to do something about it.
[01:11:26.850]Or think of, this is why I love Africa Action,
[01:11:31.930]'cause they look into all like unequal trade, right?
[01:11:35.930]You have Africa Growth Opportunity Act,
[01:11:39.180]that begins with Clinton, that declares what is called
[01:11:44.030]Export Processing Zones, right, where it's tax free.
[01:11:47.750]What happens then is that after five years
[01:11:49.881]you're supposed to start paying taxes,
[01:11:50.800]but then after five years, they change their names, right?
[01:11:54.430]Again, that unequal trade.
[01:11:55.960]There are all these statistics that show that,
[01:11:59.031]I think the statistics at least when it comes to Africa
[01:12:00.690]is that for every dollar given in foreign aid,
[01:12:04.617]$2 come back to the U.S.
[01:12:08.310]So I really think we have to be conscious
[01:12:11.150]of the larger economic relationships.
[01:12:15.020]There's a really good video documentary on YouTube
[01:12:18.860]called "Stealing Africa Isn't Theft."
[01:12:20.960]And I recommend everybody to watch it.
[01:12:23.190]Because it's about this Swiss village,
[01:12:26.470]it's a long story,
[01:12:27.900]but the owner, the guys who owned copper mines
[01:12:31.620]in Zambia, from Switzerland or Swiss.
[01:12:37.330]And they made so much money, right, that then got taxed
[01:12:40.970]in this little village.
[01:12:42.610]That then they had a meeting in Swiss,
[01:12:46.330]to talk about what to do, right?
[01:12:48.120]Like whether to do philanthropic work back in Zambia,
[01:12:52.280]and the little town ended up voting not to do it,
[01:12:54.590]but you can get a better example of so much money
[01:12:57.910]extracted from Zambia,
[01:12:58.890]of course with the complicity of the Zambian government.
[01:13:02.440]So much money extracted that a village somewhere
[01:13:05.670]is getting together to decide,
[01:13:06.697]"Oh, should we give a little bit back?"
[01:13:08.690]And then to vote not to do it on top of that.
[01:13:14.720]So, you mentioned how Europe underdeveloped Africa.
[01:13:16.532]There is that,
[01:13:17.442]then there's also underdevelopment in Kenya.
[01:13:21.740]What I suggest is 'cause we have all different ideologies,
[01:13:26.510]but we have to have some reality as well.
[01:13:30.430]Like we cannot deny that slavery was not resolved,
[01:13:34.310]issues of slavery were not resolved.
[01:13:36.500]Issues of colonialism were not resolved,
[01:13:38.040]issues of neocolonies were not resolved.
[01:13:40.090]And no matter how much globalization you put on top of that,
[01:13:42.300]the structure is one of inequality.
[01:13:44.960]I think we can begin with that reality and then after that,
[01:13:47.990]we can have different approaches.
[01:13:53.365]Am I next?
[01:13:56.207](talking over one another)
[01:13:58.830]Okay, I'll go.
[01:14:01.555]So Mukoma, I just want to say thank you so much for coming,
[01:14:04.210]and giving the speech again,
[01:14:06.308]but I have a question about reparations.
[01:14:08.270]And before I ask my question,
[01:14:09.310]I'm gonna lay it down so that everybody can understand.
[01:14:12.330]So, when we talk about reparations,
[01:14:14.570]I truly feel like it would solve a headache for Westerners,
[01:14:18.110]for example, Americans or French people to cut a check,
[01:14:22.610]and then give it to Africans
[01:14:23.760]so that they can do whatever they want.
[01:14:25.200]Because if we do that,
[01:14:26.990]then that takes the responsibility off them.
[01:14:29.940]And people don't want responsibility.
[01:14:32.000]And if they do cut a check,
[01:14:34.099]let's say each country gets $180 billion,
[01:14:37.307]and they can allocate however they want.
[01:14:38.410]To them that's reparations and they're done with it.
[01:14:40.810]But France, the U.S. and Germany are 300 years ahead.
[01:14:46.520]And even if we do get that money now,
[01:14:48.120]for example in real terms, in normal terms,
[01:14:51.110]we will never be able to catch up
[01:14:52.760]to whatever wrong was done in the in the past.
[01:14:55.710]So when we talk about reparations, what kind of provisions
[01:14:58.780]in your opinion should be part of that reparation?
[01:15:03.580]So okay, let me try and answer and then we'll come to you.
[01:15:06.129](laughing)
[01:15:09.690]Okay, first I don't believe progress is linear.
[01:15:15.541]The reason why we have these inequalities,
[01:15:17.790]is they're economic reasons.
[01:15:20.100]It's a direct result of for example,
[01:15:22.230]I gave the exact example of AGOA.
[01:15:25.560]There're all these other things that are happening.
[01:15:27.025]European and Arab countries are leasing land
[01:15:31.450]in the millions of acres to come and grow stuff
[01:15:34.020]on African soil as opposed to African governments
[01:15:37.360]allowing African farmers to then sell back,
[01:15:39.270]to grow stuff and sell.
[01:15:41.520]There are all these discussions about AGOA,
[01:15:43.050]the African Growth Opportunity,
[01:15:44.840]what is called AGOA, Bill Gates' AGOA.
[01:15:47.310]and what it will do to biodiversity.
[01:15:49.880]Now not to mention the direct economic relationships.
[01:15:51.960]So indeed I would say to my to my own mind, more than
[01:15:56.990]reparations I would say what we need is
[01:16:00.070]equal trade, for example.
[01:16:02.970]Simply because of the amount of money that's lost.
[01:16:06.630]I got today that is a good example
[01:16:08.180]with Mali right where it was getting...
[01:16:10.520]I forget the amount.
[01:16:12.060]Maybe like $30 million in foreign aid, but then losing
[01:16:16.900]something like $40 million through unequal trade
[01:16:21.000]and farm subsidies.
[01:16:26.772]I don't know what form reparations should take that on,
[01:16:27.960]I don't know, in principle, yes.
[01:16:31.540]But I would say that discussion should be in
[01:16:34.310]concert with restoring equal trade between
[01:16:42.227]countries, otherwise, then the reparations then will,
[01:16:47.490]if they just got a check,
[01:16:49.420]and equal trade continues,
[01:16:51.840]then it doesn't help.
[01:16:54.280]If you're interested, you can follow up the Mau Mau
[01:16:59.360]who were tortured by the British filed a case.
[01:17:03.160]Filed a case against the British and there was this...
[01:17:05.831]I don't think that the British government ever admitted it
[01:17:07.567]and then they give a little money
[01:17:09.800]to the victims of that so yeah, yeah, I hope that
[01:17:13.960]helps but basically
[01:17:15.880]the question of repercussions is tough.
[01:17:20.340]Hello.
[01:17:22.280]I just gotta say thank you for coming and the part you're
[01:17:24.810]talking about African immigrants settling
[01:17:26.930]in white neighborhoods and their kids to white schools
[01:17:29.270]are really hitting it for me.
[01:17:31.840]My question is, you said that you're a radical feminist.
[01:17:36.105]And I'm not fully aware of Kenyan culture, but if I
[01:17:38.650]know if it's like anything like mine, I would like to ask,
[01:17:41.400]considering it's like really patriarch, like, patriarchy
[01:17:44.060]and such, what does it look like to be a radical feminist
[01:17:47.400]in Kenya today, especially a man?
[01:17:50.870]Of course, it wasn't me who say that, it's Corman.
[01:17:52.210]No, I'm joking.
[01:17:53.541](all laughing)
[01:17:56.355]Once again.
[01:17:57.763](all laughing)
[01:17:59.446](Corman speaking faintly)
[01:18:00.402]Yeah, so, yeah.
[01:18:04.560]So far I'm mostly here
[01:18:05.660]to be quite frank, right, you know.
[01:18:08.970]So, like the longest I've been in Kenya was when I was there
[01:18:10.010]for one and a half months.
[01:18:12.210]And suddenly, it's a very patriarchal,
[01:18:14.590]a highly patriarchal society.
[01:18:17.750]But one of the things we will can do is to support your
[01:18:20.320]women's justice organizations.
[01:18:24.110]And also to be aware of the work they're doing.
[01:18:25.510]So during the Kenya violence, for example, of 2007
[01:18:29.820]where the photograph people have in mind is of Kofi Annan.
[01:18:34.610]What's his name?
[01:18:35.443]Mikey, Bucky, and Raila Odinga
[01:18:38.240]drinking a cup of tea, to try and settle that but really,
[01:18:41.530]in real term, it was women organizations, let's say
[01:18:44.750]in the slums of Kibera who rolled back the violence really.
[01:18:50.300]So there should be recognition of that, I think and then,
[01:18:53.250]especially when we think about philanthropy, and this is
[01:18:55.590]where then, once that's in the definitions of philanthropy,
[01:18:59.220]is that philanthropy doesn't go to those organizations.
[01:19:02.294]It will go to shiny, I don't know, it will go to shiny
[01:19:05.410]organizations, but I'm most interested in the questions
[01:19:08.500]of what we don't take advantage
[01:19:12.410]of in our own cultures, right?
[01:19:14.150]To give you an example when I was growing up a few doors
[01:19:18.890]down as much as you can have doors in a rural town
[01:19:23.720]so it's not next door, it was a little bit removed.
[01:19:26.720]There was a woman who was married to a woman, right?
[01:19:29.440]And when I was growing up it was like we didn't even think
[01:19:32.210]of it, it was to go get sugar from
[01:19:34.810]so and so and you go get the sugar, salt whatever.
[01:19:38.490]Because (foreign language) we allowed for women
[01:19:41.290]to women marriages.
[01:19:43.230]Now to be sure, they were highly patriarchal.
[01:19:47.430]Essentially, one women became masculinized, right,
[01:19:49.930]she become an honorary man.
[01:19:52.866]And at the same time, just to say it is they didn't allow
[01:19:56.408]for men to marry right?
[01:19:58.960]But still, and this is a question I asked..
[01:20:01.840]But still, isn't there something there that you know that
[01:20:04.050]if we're talking about, if you're interested
[01:20:05.520]in talking about gay marriages, right?
[01:20:07.340]Isn't there something that we can use and say, okay, already
[01:20:09.650]this society has allowed for women to women marriages?
[01:20:13.930]What is it about that, that we can use then to talk about
[01:20:17.150]let's say, yeah, gay marriages and so on and so forth.
[01:20:20.040]So, I mean, the problem is, once you start talking like
[01:20:22.320]that, then people start calling you a cultural nationalist,
[01:20:24.470]and so on and so forth, but because the country has
[01:20:28.300]given that has given, that I don't open, and if you will,
[01:20:33.050]so I don't know how this answers your question.
[01:20:35.117](laughing)
[01:20:37.090]Yeah, but also recognizing what,
[01:20:41.170]you know what the culture is. Yeah.
[01:20:42.003]So it's a highly patriarchal society,
[01:20:45.960]hyper masculinized and so on and so forth.
[01:20:48.420]But yet also you have these, I don't want to call them
[01:20:51.980]spaces, spaces where radical dialogues
[01:20:54.960]can take place, right?
[01:20:57.480]Yeah, and it related to that is
[01:21:00.640]why don't we use our own revolutionary concept,
[01:21:06.360]for example amongst like (foreign language),
[01:21:08.280]there's a concept called (foreign language)
[01:21:09.790]which means rupture.
[01:21:11.710]And it's a concept that the youth would invoke when things
[01:21:15.960]have gotten really, really bad.
[01:21:16.910]So for example, the Mau Mau begin with that sort of with
[01:21:20.440]the idea of the things are good and so but the youth have
[01:21:22.740]to take over it.
[01:21:24.210]So again, if you're talking about radical change, where can
[01:21:27.450]we begin with that, right?
[01:21:28.970]And then add Marx's dialectics to that, and so on.
[01:21:30.760]And so you know what I'm saying?
[01:21:31.910]So, I think, oh, and you can go on
[01:21:34.267]and on and on and on with that.
[01:21:36.620]Why don't we use our own literary concepts,
[01:21:38.830]to read literature, right?
[01:21:41.300]Why can't we use the concept of (foreign language),
[01:21:44.223]which (foreign language), the child who dies
[01:21:45.480]and then keeps coming back?
[01:21:46.830]Why can't we use that
[01:21:47.960]for example to read "Beloved", right?
[01:21:51.220]And I have to tell you, I say that once in a conference
[01:21:53.150]and people laughed like it was...
[01:21:55.756]It was so out there, right?
[01:21:58.870]What does (mumbles) really have to do
[01:21:59.960]with "Things Fall Apart?"
[01:22:00.940]Anyway, okay.
[01:22:03.157](laughing)
[01:22:06.920]Yeah, I got a question over here, sorry.
[01:22:11.080]So I just heard a question about reparations
[01:22:14.010]just a little bit ago.
[01:22:15.773]And I'd like to add on to that.
[01:22:16.606]You've been talking about how speaking more about
[01:22:19.520]the history and all of the issues that have gone on before
[01:22:22.410]and all the connections between Africans
[01:22:23.707]and African-Americans may help build solidarity more.
[01:22:26.890]So today, there's history going on today as well.
[01:22:29.360]For example, reparations coming back into popularity
[01:22:32.530]and politics as well as a better example would be
[01:22:37.240]the current treatment of Jews of Ethiopian
[01:22:41.100]descent in Israel currently.
[01:22:44.110]My question here is, wouldn't talking about these modern
[01:22:48.954]historical events today help build a newfound solidarity
[01:22:51.870]as well and ignoring them may also form a newfound division.
[01:22:57.700]Thank you. Yeah, okay.
[01:22:58.960]That's a really good point.
[01:23:01.199]Certainly we cannot, I mean, certainly we cannot...
[01:23:08.240]I don't know how to put this, but okay, first, we need
[01:23:11.590]we need to be aware of that history.
[01:23:13.250]There is no other way around it, right?
[01:23:15.530]Because then you won't be able to contextualize
[01:23:17.380]what is happening today.
[01:23:19.270]It'll just be happening.
[01:23:21.100]And I'm trying to think of an example.
[01:23:24.050]So for example, let's say if you don't
[01:23:26.690]take the long historical view of economic inequality, right,
[01:23:30.943]then the solution would be what, like what
[01:23:32.420]the South Africans did, which was to
[01:23:36.360]implement the black economic empowerment, right?
[01:23:39.780]Without taking into into consideration that as a highly
[01:23:42.270]unequal society, where in fact (mumbles) say that.
[01:23:45.430]He thinks that anything short of a more socialist
[01:23:49.810]solution wouldn't work.
[01:23:51.860]So you end up with a black economic empowerment, which
[01:23:54.700]really works like an affirmative action for a majority
[01:23:56.850]population, which then can't work.
[01:23:58.527]So, then we'll always come up with these solutions.
[01:24:00.850]We always come up with solutions that fail.
[01:24:06.260]But certainly I think we, should be and this is
[01:24:10.470]conceptually a moved from postcolonial theory where it's
[01:24:13.800]always about the West and in relation to the colonized
[01:24:17.590]and move more to ourselves to South sort of frame rate, we
[01:24:20.570]are then you are able to bring for example, Afro Latinos
[01:24:23.890]into conversation or historical,
[01:24:28.951]if you take that framework
[01:24:30.693]you can talk about Cuban interventions in Angola
[01:24:34.440]and so on and so forth.
[01:24:36.070]So, maybe I would say we need to do both,
[01:24:37.760]we need to be academically
[01:24:40.588]so we need to be of our times,
[01:24:42.100]and the way of our history.
[01:24:50.200]Speaking of the diaspora,
[01:24:56.031]Africa Afro descended people are global people.
[01:25:00.620]One of the things that we often avoid
[01:25:04.470]are the issues of rigor
[01:25:08.100]and what it entails to really participate
[01:25:10.800]in today's society.
[01:25:13.870]Is it possible that the safest place to route
[01:25:17.310]this dialogue is in science, engineering,
[01:25:22.500]the arts and mathematics and have discussions
[01:25:29.005]there as a safe place?
[01:25:32.650]Because certain things
[01:25:34.569]that have already happened, may or may not be resolved.
[01:25:38.000]But if we're interested in going forward, we're interested
[01:25:41.660]in going forward.
[01:25:43.507]And we're interested in going forward,
[01:25:44.970]not excluding any communities.
[01:25:48.420]I don't know if I'm making myself clear.
[01:25:50.650]We are clearly an African people, but African people
[01:25:54.440]are not the entire world.
[01:25:56.580]And at some point, we're going to have to be able to have
[01:25:59.841]discussions with others, without antagonism,
[01:26:05.240]without anger, without rancor, without alienization.
[01:26:09.770]And it seems to me that if we're having conversations about
[01:26:16.660]moving the world forward,
[01:26:19.110]about not destroying the planet,
[01:26:21.840]about having economies where everybody
[01:26:27.010]has the opportunity to thrive.
[01:26:30.990]Everyone has the opportunity to thrive,
[01:26:33.787]everybody's not going to thrive.
[01:26:34.780]But everyone has the opportunity to thrive,
[01:26:39.110]rehashing what has already happened to our group.
[01:26:44.240]The reality is that
[01:26:47.700]let's just say Latinos, start to rehash that.
[01:26:50.300]Latinos are a diverse people, then we look at them,
[01:26:54.890]like they're not, let's just say one more thing.
[01:26:58.790]Even Chinese are a diverse people.
[01:27:01.640]The reality is we look at them like they're not.
[01:27:04.460]But if we're having discussions about
[01:27:08.350]those things, which everybody participates in,
[01:27:12.820]could we have a different kind of discussion?
[01:27:15.610]Yeah, so okay.
[01:27:16.850]That's what I was talking about, that.
[01:27:19.220]One is that and this is from Terry Gordon, right?
[01:27:22.640]Who argues that first, you struggle from where you're
[01:27:25.760]oppressed, right?
[01:27:27.520]So if you're oppressed as a woman,
[01:27:28.770]you can't universalised you can't.
[01:27:31.480]Like you'd have to get to that universal struggle
[01:27:36.151]through where you're oppressed, right?
[01:27:36.984]That's one.
[01:27:40.500]The conversations will be a universalism
[01:27:43.350]that's not grounded on any material basis
[01:27:46.670]for that matter.
[01:27:49.090]But you have a point at which, the understanding for myself,
[01:27:53.170]is the role of science and and philosophy
[01:27:56.960]and so on and so forth
[01:27:58.830]in this conversation, and this is why
[01:28:00.360]then I'd have to talk about African languages
[01:28:02.240]because the first thing that...
[01:28:04.390]The first thing that oppression does,
[01:28:06.750]oppression has rules it follows
[01:28:08.660]is to deny people a rationality.
[01:28:11.130]They're not rational, they can't do science.
[01:28:14.520]They don't have a sense of the future, they don't
[01:28:16.521]have a sense of the past and so on and so forth.
[01:28:18.842]And then their languages can not carry science,
[01:28:20.999]their languages cannot carry a philosophy,
[01:28:22.240]cannot carry a rational thought.
[01:28:23.970]So from where I am, as an African scholar,
[01:28:28.730]I would answer that question by saying
[01:28:29.940]yeah, we need to have dissertations in African languages.
[01:28:33.240]Dissertations in physics for example
[01:28:35.490]and so on and so forth.
[01:28:42.390]We cannot avoid that history because also
[01:28:45.220]history has instruction.
[01:28:49.762]The only example that comes to mind right now is
[01:28:52.900]the Cubans raiding, Che Guevara in the Congo?
[01:28:57.320]Then the Cubans in in Angola, where they helped
[01:29:01.033](mumbles) Mandela, where they help recover take
[01:29:03.220]back by defeating the apartheid army
[01:29:07.510]in Angola, leading to the freedom of Namibia as well.
[01:29:11.550]Now there's instruction there, as there is...
[01:29:15.390]Otherwise then we'll just talk about Castro, Castro,
[01:29:18.721]the Castro that we have, the western imagined Castro
[01:29:22.300]as opposed to the Castro who is internationalist.
[01:29:25.200]But anyway, this is historical that the Cubans are
[01:29:29.740]the only country to intervene in Africa
[01:29:31.410]and leave with nothing, right?
[01:29:33.810]At the end to the Congo it's not known how
[01:29:35.550]many Cubans died but the estimate is about 10,000 without
[01:29:39.020]asking for mining concession or oil or anything.
[01:29:42.370]And there's instruction there,
[01:29:43.590]there's great instruction there of how
[01:29:46.775]possible solidarity is.
[01:29:51.374]One last question. Hm?
[01:29:52.880]I would like to propose a question
[01:29:54.790]and it may not be directly answerable,
[01:29:57.140]perhaps just food for thought.
[01:29:59.520]In Lincoln, Nebraska, a large proportion of African refugee
[01:30:04.870]or African immigrants are refugees from Darfur,
[01:30:08.660]from South Sudan, from Uganda, from many other countries.
[01:30:12.660]Their experience is dramatically different from
[01:30:15.740]that of the sons and daughters of physicians
[01:30:20.040]and academics and engineers.
[01:30:25.330]They primarily grew up in refugee
[01:30:29.050]camps, came here from refugee camps.
[01:30:32.310]I would certainly, am not qualified to speak for them.
[01:30:35.540]But I have been told by my friends that they feel as
[01:30:39.490]alienated from other African immigrants as they do from
[01:30:43.520]white Americans and African-Americans.
[01:30:47.170]Could you speak to that issue?
[01:30:52.246]So far as far as I do think as universities...
[01:30:56.930]First, this is an aside before I get to the question.
[01:31:01.600]First as university people, people in university,
[01:31:05.440]when we're thinking about community work, right, what it's
[01:31:08.140]called, being a good neighbor, and so on and so forth, we
[01:31:10.520]should also ask how much taxes university
[01:31:12.460]is paying into the community.
[01:31:14.800]Because more often than not, we have
[01:31:17.440]these community programs.
[01:31:20.480]Institution at the university is not paying its fair taxes.
[01:31:22.930]So that's the first one.
[01:31:25.833]Then also where should this, like this conversation
[01:31:28.260]take place, right?
[01:31:30.880]As universities, we tend to create our own...
[01:31:35.840]Let's say even if you want to call them radical spaces,
[01:31:38.440]and I'm thinking about this in relation to with
[01:31:40.300]Alice with reference, Alice, we were part of an
[01:31:41.657]organization called Africa Without Borders.
[01:31:44.720]And this was at UW Madison,
[01:31:47.640]it was a student organization.
[01:31:49.923]And what we'd do is we'd invite a speaker
[01:31:52.980]and then we'd have that speaker at least
[01:31:54.570]do some quote unquote community work.
[01:31:58.310]And we followed that model when we did a conference
[01:32:00.280]in South Africa where we went and we decided, well,
[01:32:04.420]we'll have at least one community event.
[01:32:06.870]But this is a DW Institute.
[01:32:08.470]But when we went to this township,
[01:32:10.780]and we couldn't get back on
[01:32:12.010]time, right, we couldn't get back
[01:32:13.340]on time for the DW Institute for the keynote.
[01:32:15.520]So the keynote, we held the keynote
[01:32:18.334]at this township in and the question that emerged for me
[01:32:22.640]from that is why didn't we think we
[01:32:25.100]could have done the whole conference in the township?
[01:32:28.490]In other words, even for us here,
[01:32:31.550]why can't we have an event like this or another one like
[01:32:34.240]this, where, because of the space, it can involve other
[01:32:37.780]people, because also, campuses are not inviting for people
[01:32:40.140]who are not part of it, right?
[01:32:41.630]So even though, even if you say open to the public,
[01:32:44.140]the Sudanese or Syrian refugees or whatever wouldn't come.
[01:32:47.510]So it's also, I think part of it is we need to rethink.
[01:32:52.760]We need to rethink how we are
[01:32:53.593]using our campus privileges, yeah.
[01:32:59.889]Thank you very much.
[01:33:00.827]Yeah, thank you, thank you. (audience applauding)

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Blackness, Africans and African Americans

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