The Atlantic: We Don’t Know What’s Behind the COVID-19 Racial Disparity. And That’s a Problem.

[Toyin Falola]

We Don’t Know What’s Behind the COVID-19 Racial Disparity. And That’s a Problem.
Outrage is warranted. But outrage unaccompanied by analysis is a danger in itself.

Read in The Atlantic: https://apple.news/ANyEe2pbAQ1S5IcaHJ6GF-A


Shared from Apple News

Sent from my iPhone

[Ibrahim Abdullah]

Of course we know----it's a reflection of the disparity of wealth and its acquisition in national and global settings. It sure references race/class/culture. "Underlying causes" is a coded word the political economy of national and global inequalities and there multiple consequences. 

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On 27 May 2020, at 12:51 PM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



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[Gloria Emeagwali]

This  is a fantastic article - until you get to the last sentence - that implies

that Covid19 has “spared” White America. The authors run the risk of committing one of the ills that they hinted against within the article, namely, the pathologizing of Black America. I use upper case, because

Black in this case is a NOUN and not an adjective and we should show some respect, too, in our conceptual

designations.

 By the way, the last time I checked, Native American seemed to be the preferred term. “Red Indian” comes from an earlier epoch.

Now let me turn to entrepreneurship.

If a nation engaged in warfare to

build up its income from the seizure of oil wells, historic artifacts and war booty and to make profit from the sale of arms to belligerents, will we classify it as an entrepreneur or is it just another shameless  plunderer and bounty hunter. Are human traffickers (slave traders) entrepreneurs? I would think not. They are using some tactics that entrepreneurs use but should not be elevated. 

Biko is right about the perils of using military adventurism as an example taking into consideration the moral factor surrounding human rights violations, genocide etc.

Moses suggests that we should broaden the definition of entrepreneurship,  but I am inclined to narrow it.

The cover trivializes and belittles African entrepreneurship, some may argue, and reminds me of a cover 

on a text by Taban lo Liyong featuring a tiger, an image that had absolutely nothing to do with the content. I quickly sent him a query about the cover - regrettably and sadly so, in retrospect, because this was a gift he had sent to me.  His response was exactly that of Moses, of course. The maestro of poetry and veteran of African literature had  absolutely nothing to do with the cover. 

I plan to send the editor of Roape an

image  of textile entrepreneurship 

that  came out of a recent interview.

GE

Sent from my iPhone

On May 27, 2020, at 8:51 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



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[Toyin Falola]

Best if you split the response below into two threads because of the way we archive all our messages for research purposes.

TF

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