Between Assumptions of Knowledge and Demonstrations of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality

87 views
Skip to first unread message

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Dec 2, 2020, 11:47:23 AM12/2/20
to usaafricadialogue
I almost wish Professor Toyin Falola did not intervene in connection with my debate with Olayinka Agbetuyi and Michael Afolayan on the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge.

Falola's response could throw water on these very valuable debates.

I await a response from Michael Afolayan on his knowledge of Ifa and Afolayan might escape under cover  of the smoke from Falola's responses.

Agbetuyi, Afolayan and IBK are operating within certain unacknowledged limitations. 

Being Yoruba does not make anyone an authority on Ifa. 

Being a scholar of any aspect of Yoruba culture does not make anyone an authority on Ifa.

Being a scholar on the Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology within which Ifa belongs does not make one an authority on Ifa, which is a specialized discipline.

A person who saw something in passing cannot be equated by a person who lives inside that which was seen in passing. 

Even if one is an authority on Ifa, what is the scope of that authority, what depth does it reach in Ifa's myriad dimensions?

My people, I encourage you to challenge Adepoju.

Let us chew these issues.

I am convinced I am better informed than those who are challenging me because they have engaged  these subjects tangentially while these subjects  represent my life.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Dec 2, 2020, 12:48:02 PM12/2/20
to usaafricadialogue
EDITED 

I almost wish Professor Toyin Falola did not intervene in connection with my debate with Olayinka Agbetuyi and Michael Afolayan on the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge.

Falola's response could throw water on these very valuable debates.

I await a response from Michael Afolayan in justifying  his views on Ifa and I  hope  the smoke from Falola's response won't discourage the emergence of that response..


Agbetuyi, Afolayan and IBK are operating within certain unacknowledged limitations. 

Being Yoruba does not make anyone an authority on Ifa. 

Being a scholar of any aspect of Yoruba culture does not make anyone an authority on Ifa.

Being a scholar on the Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology within which Ifa belongs does not make one an authority on Ifa, which is a specialized discipline.

A person who saw something in passing cannot be equated with  a person who lives inside that which was seen in passing. 


Even if one is an authority on Ifa, what is the scope of that authority, what depth does it reach in Ifa's myriad dimensions?

My people, I encourage you to challenge Adepoju.

Let us chew these issues.

I am convinced I am better informed than those who are challenging me because they have engaged  these subjects tangentially while these subjects  represent my life.

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTRmQgGiFuPq6pVnRYatcGhjqdM4Qmn1u3Vy9dpU3Tp7jg%40mail.gmail.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Dec 3, 2020, 4:01:06 PM12/3/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
​Aigbetuyi, Afolayan and IBK are operating within certain unacknowledged limitations.
Being (a) Yoruba does not make anyone (one) an authority on Ifa. Being a scholar of any aspect of Yoruba culture does not make anyone (one) an authority on Ifa. Being a scholar on the Yoruba origin (of) Orisa cosmology within which Ifa belongs does not make one an authority on Ifa, which is a special discipline - Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.

Truly, many Yoruba in the Federal Pentecostal-Islamic Republic of Nigeria do not know anything about Ifa, much less being an authority on it. However, one has to be a Yoruba in order to be able speak on, or write about, Ifa authoritatively. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju revealed on this forum sometimes ago that he is not a Yoruba even though he answers pure Yoruba names. If I can recollect, he also disclosed that he is from Ekpoma (or was it Ekpomeri?) in Edo State. At best, his knowledge about Yoruba Ifa will be based on hearsays or gossips, since he is not a Yoruba. Logically, bearing unadulterated Yoruba names when one is not a Yoruba cannot make one an authority on Yoruba culture of Ifa. As the Yoruba saying goes, ENI BÁ FUN IKUN A FE EHIN,  meaning a person that sneezes must open mouth. Hence, it is requisite to speak and understand Yoruba language properly before one can understand various aspects of Yoruba cultures, including Ifa. Since Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju is very deficient in Yoruba language he becomes a mere Ifa fantasist and its unreliable narrator as far as Yoruba culture, and Ifa in particular, is concerned.

Exhibiting his low and counterfeit knowledge of Yoruba language and culture in his essay titled, Masculinity in the Context of Male Eroticism, posted on this forum on Thursday 6 September 2018, Mr. Adepoju wrote : Taiwo Makinde, in "Motherhood as a source of empowerment in women in Yoruba Culture," describes the goddess Iyamapo as associated with the "water from the vagina, a part of which is considered as the place harbouring the secret of a woman's power." Yoruba people are very serious when they rank mothers as the greatest of all gods, ÒRÌSÀ BI ÌYÁ KÒ SI, meaning there is no God like mother. In appreciation and recognition of the value of mothers, Yoruba of all genders have the common saying, ÌYÁ NI WÚRÀ, BÀBÁ NI JIGÍ, meaning mother is a precious metal, father is the mirror. The common saying in Yoruba that, ÌYÁ NI ALÁBARÒ OMO, meaning the consultant to a child is the mother, has nothing to do with the water coming from the vagina of Taiwo Makinde's mother. Since having vagina is not exclusive to only Yoruba women but all normal women in the world have it, it cannot be out of place to inquire if the vagina of Mr. Adepoju's mother also harbours secret water of power. Taiwo Makinde might have written a Yoruba pornographic fiction which Mr. Adepoju misconstrued as a cultural reality in Yoruba land. That was not the end as Mr. Adepoju demonstrated his poor knowledge of Yoruba language further in his essay.

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju quoted one Adeyinka Bello thus, "Ìbà okó t'ó d'ori kódò tio ro! Ìbà òbò t'ó d'ori kódò tio s'èjè. Thereafter he translated the said Yoruba poet or incantation of Adeyinka Bello. Mr. Adepoju's translation is as follow : I pay homage to the penis that is hung without bringing sperm; I pay homage to the vagina that has stopped menstruating. The correct English translation of the first stanza should have been : Homage to the penis that hangs down and does not wither (Adepoju has substituted the word wither with the word sperm which in Yoruba is called ãtò). The correct English translation of the second stanza should be : Homage to vagina that hangs down and does not bleed (Adepoju has replaced the clause, does not bleed with has stopped menstruating in his translation). As he has counterfeited the Yoruba translation of the aforementioned poetry into English so has, he done with the Yoruba Ifa and other Yoruba cultures. On 24 November 2020, one Cyril Anyanwu shared somewhere else, not on this forum, a CNN link titled : Ugandan protest death toll rises to 45. The following day, a pseudonym called Wharf A Snake commented on it and Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju forwarded the comment and the original CNN link to this forum. Apart from commenting in English, Wharf A Snake wrote in what he believed to be Yoruba thus, "Monamona ni ologun ngbe, ologun to ba gbe paramole ogbe iyonu." Wharf A Snake must be a Siamese twin with Toyin Adepoju as far as Yoruba language and culture are concerned. The fact is that there is a snake named mánúmánú  in Yoruba while the home cat in Yoruba is interchangeably called, Ológbò or Ológìnin. The snake, mánúmánú is from experience not dangerous, especially in the day time and therefore, it is an easy prey for OLÓGÌNIN. There is another snake called páramólè which from experience is very poisonous and any cat that attempts to prey on it will certainly be bitten to death. That is why the Yoruba express their observation of that phenomenon in this way : EJÒ BI MÁNÚMÁNÚ NI OLÓGÌNIN (OLÓGBÒ) LÈ GBÉ, BI OLÓGÌNIN (OLÓGBÒ) BÁ GBÉ PÁRAMÓLÈ YIO RÍ ÌYONU. Roughly translated to, a cat can only prey on mánúmánú if it preys on páramólè, it is going to get into trouble. Lacking proficiency in Yoruba language, it is impossible for Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju to be an authority on Yoruba Ifa, no matter how much he tries or pretends. 
S. Kadiri

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: 02 December 2020 17:39
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of Knowledge and Demonstrations of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality
 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Dec 3, 2020, 6:32:08 PM12/3/20
to usaafricadialogue
We should please be serious.

The pioneer authority on Ifa in Western scholarship is Bascom, a Caucasian American.

Another great authority on Yoruba culture is Karin Barber, an Engliswoman.

Some of the most important scholars on Yoruba spirituality, from John Mason to the Drewals to Teresa Washington, are not Africans.

Ifa is practically a global spirituality, practised by many across the world who are not Yoruba.

The quote and translation from Adeyinla Bello are both constructed by herself, a Yoruba scholar of Yoruba culture.

Taiwo Makinde is a Yoruba scholar of Yoruba culture.

Makindes summation on the veneration of the vagina in Yoruba culture is supported by Leland Matory's Sex and the Empire that is No More, among other texts.

Beliefs in the sacred and spiritual forces associated with female genitalia are commonly known aspects of classical Yoruba constructions of the feminine, a sigficant number of which I discussed, with meticulous references, in my essay posted on this group on the subject in relation to Ogboni sculpture, in which male and particularly female genitalia, are prominently displayed, with the very visible clitoris central to Ogboni images of Onile, the central focus of Ogboni veneration in perhaps it's oldest form.

How does a post forwaded by Adepoju reflect Adepoju's views?

If you want to take issue with the views of scholars quoted by Adepoju do so without claiming to critique Adepoju.

If you want to critique Adepoju, reference his own views, translations and interpretations.

Was any aspect of Ifa, from visual to verbal arts to philosophy , spirituality and more, engaged with in this piece below?

Toyin

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

unread,
Dec 4, 2020, 3:17:48 AM12/4/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, usaafricadialogue


These authorities researched very well before publication ( It took Bascom decades).  I studies his text closely and used it for my graduate studies.  They did not impose their views on Ifa.  They started no Ifa school nor did they pretend they could produce a single line of Ese Ifa.  

So the argument has nothing to do with race.  It is all about hubris!


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Date: 03/12/2020 23:33 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of Knowledge andDemonstrations  of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (toyin....@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
We should please be serious.

The pioneer authority on Ifa in Western scholarship is Bascom, a Caucasian American.

Another great authority on Yoruba culture is Karin Barber, an Engliswoman.

Some of the most important scholars on Yoruba spirituality, from John Mason to the Drewals to Teresa Washington, are not Africans.

Ifa is practically a global spirituality, practised by many across the world who are not Yoruba.

The quote and translation from Adeyinla Bello are both constructed by herself, a Yoruba scholar of Yoruba culture.

Taiwo Makinde is a Yoruba scholar of Yoruba culture.

Makindes summation on the veneration of the vagina in Yoruba culture is supported by Leland Matory's Sex and the Empire that is No More, among other texts.

Beliefs in the sacred and spiritual forces associated with female genitalia are commonly known aspects of classical Yoruba constructions of the feminine, a sigficant number of which I discussed, with meticulous references, in my essay posted on this group on the subject in relation to Ogboni sculpture, in which male and particularly female genitalia, are prominently displayed, with the very visible clitoris central to Ogboni images of Onile, the central focus of Ogboni veneration in perhaps it's oldest form.

How does a post forwaded by Adepoju reflect Adepoju's views?

If you want to take issue with the views of scholars quoted by Adepoju do so without claiming to critique Adepoju.

If you want to critique Adepoju, reference his own views, translations and interpretations.

Was any aspect of Ifa, from visual to verbal arts to philosophy , spirituality and more, engaged with in this piece below?

Toyin

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020, 22:01 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Salimonu Kadiri

unread,
Dec 6, 2020, 10:03:45 AM12/6/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
​The pioneer authority on Ifa in Western scholarship is Bascom, a Caucasian American. Another great authority on Yoruba culture is Karin Barber, an English-woman. Some of the most important scholars on Yoruba spirituality, from John Masson to the Drewals to Teresa Washington, are not Africans-Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju the genius.

The smart but not clever genius claiming to be serious is telling us that the Yoruba people need the validation of the Caucasians to understand Ifa, invented and practised in Yoruba land many centuries before the great grandparents of Bascom were born. Whatever Bascom and others might have written on Ifa and Yoruba cultures must have been tell-tales from the Yoruba practitioners of Ifa and other Yoruba cultures. To their fellow Caucasians, Bascom could be an authority on Ifa but not to any Yoruba man. One cannot claim to be a King because one has met a King - ENITÍ Ó RÍ OBA KÒ GBODÒ PÉ ARA RÈ NI OBA. 

The quote and translation from Adeyinka Bello are both constructed by herself, a Yoruba scholar of Yoruba culture - Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju. Now that you have confirmed that Adeyinka Bello is the constructor and translator of the said Yoruba pornographic poem, there is strong indication that her wrong translation was targeted at the Caucasian world with the intention to attract pecuniary gains. The Caucasians, as we all know, always fall for anything exotic about Africans, no matter how odd it may appear. She wrote to please her Caucasian sponsors and she did not expect that any Yoruba person would read and detect fraudulent translation of her wayward poem. The same social and mental traits of Adeyinka Bello can be traced in Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju with his bombastic bozo writings on Ifa and Ogboni aimed at attracting funds from foreign sponsors.

Makinde's summation on the veneration of the vagina in Yoruba culture is supported by Leland Matory's Sex and the Empire that is No More, among other texts - Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.
Since I have not read Taiwo Makinde's book or essay titled, Motherhood as a Source of Empowerment of Women in Yoruba Culture, referenced by Mr. Adepoju, it cannot be farfetched to assume that what Mr. Makinde wrote about Iyamapo was not real but a fiction. However, for vulgarians and the perverted a fiction can be elevated to reality through invention of stories to actualize a fiction. Some years ago, I had an encounter with a fellow Yoruba man at a seminar on HIV/AIDS where I happened to declare that homosexuality was never practised in Africa since there was no name for it in any of our indigenous languages whereas every goodness/vice practised or committed in Africa has a name. My opponent claimed that there were homosexuals in Nigeria and inferred to the Yoruba god of thunder, Sango, who plaited/braided his hairs and wore skirts just like women as evidence of homosexual practice. I had to remind my opponent that Sango was married to a woman called Oya in whose honour river Oya was named before the colonialists came to change it to river Niger. Male worshipers of the god of thunder, Sango, till date, still braid/plait their hairs and wear skirts like their progenitors but they often get married with children. Just as wearing of kilt by Scottish men does not imply homosexual practice, so can the cultural practice of hair braiding/plaiting and skirt wearing by male Sango worshipers not be regarded as homosexual posture and practice. Of self-interest and monetary gains, we know that some Yoruba (Nigerians), like Taiwo Makinde and Adeyinka Bello, are never shy to falsify and misrepresent our culture to their Caucasian targets and sponsors as long as it would earn them recognition, fame and money. Unlike Taiwo Makinde and Adeyinka Bello, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju is not a Yoruba and his understanding of Yoruba language, spoken or written is near minus. While it is not offensive for him to find a niche to rewrite/invent a new ese ifa and Ogboni rituals in Yoruba culture, he must first improve his proficiency in Yoruba language. As the Yoruba saying goes, one cannot know the mother of ÒSÓ more than ÒSÓ himself. 
S. Kadiri

  

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: 04 December 2020 03:57
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>; usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of Knowledge andDemonstrations of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality
 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

unread,
Dec 6, 2020, 12:30:21 PM12/6/20
to usaafricadialogue
Kadiri,

You are insisting on creating entertainment.

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/HE1P193MB00765F35662D51783113CC0BAEF00%40HE1P193MB0076.EURP193.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Dec 7, 2020, 6:53:00 PM12/7/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
bascom is not a caucasian american, he is a human being. these attributes of race in identifying people are actually racist.
karin barber is not an english woman. she is a person.
not only is the term caucasian highly racist in its origins (the purist of whites according to gobineau the french racist who penned it); all reductions of us, people, to race, country, ethnic group, religion, used so as to explain who we are and how we think is worse than reductive, it is derogatory.

i hope we can be people first, last, and always. as to who we really are, who could presume to answer that question. you can say bascom or barber did this or that, wrote this or that, were influenced by this or that school, advanced these or those positions.

but to say, well, bascom is white so this defines him and what he could or could not understand is pure and simple racism.
ken
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 12:00 PM

Ibrahim Abdullah

unread,
Dec 7, 2020, 7:21:49 PM12/7/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
So you take exception to being called Jewish? That is the real world. When I lived in North America white folks called me African; and, of course, behind my back black/ negroe. When I walk in the streets am not Ibrahim Abdullah---I am a nigger! 

Ask Skip who was arrested for "attempted" break-in into his "own" house. As far as the cops were concerned Skip was no Harvard professor; he couldn't have owned a house in that neighborhood; he was a fuckin' negro. 

You cannot wish race appellation away; we have to collectively struggle against it. And until white supremacists ideas are crushed we will keep on make these slips--don't call me this or that. 

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 5:34:08 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
ibrahim, i take exception to being explained away as someone who is jewish.
that would mean, often, assuming i am a believer in "jewish" faith, or precepts, or, more often than not, certain readings of the bible. assumptions that i uncritically support the state of govt of israel, etc etc.
i do not take exception to someone wishing me a happy hannukah.

the same with blackness and whiteness. i spent my whole life immersed in african culture, and unconsciously look out on the world from a perspective very heavily marked by those experiences, those conversations and contacts, those readings etc. if you look at me as a "caucasion american" what does that mean for who i am? am i supposed to be the same as all american whites?
are all africans the same? are all nigerians the same? are all igbo the same? nonsense.
yet i can say, yes, there are igbo deities, songs, religious beliefs from the past, and history, and that history was experienced and therefore formative.

so, to answer your question, i lived through a certain history which was heavily marked by my religion; but in addition to that reality, facticity, i also establish my place in the world, shape the perspective, and "become."
i steal that thought from stuart hall: we "are" through the history of ourselves which we recount--a history we cannot change, but whose narrative we do construct. that is our being. but our becoming, now, that's where we choose and as with existentialist create ourselves.

i am sorry in training any spotlight on myself, rather than on my views.
but since i've become an old man, i noticed i can see better sitting down than lots of youngsters standing up.....
what that means is sometimes when i am sitting here, i am seeing out there from one perspective; sometime from another; another time, maybe even from both, which might not all agree. some rascal who limps around must have gotten hold of me when i wasn't looking, and kept changing his hat from red to green.
hah
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2020 7:19 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 5:35:15 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com


While I have never met Bascom, I met Karin personally. She is indeed English  There is nothing wrong in saying that.  We met in the palace of one of us here.  She is a very dignified scholar.  

Her Englishness did not stand in the way of doing justice to Yorùba culture just as the Germanness of the late Àbęni Yeyelorisa of Òşogbo did not.  Both are insiders to Yoruba culture. Both speak more fluent Yorùba than Tóyìn Adépòjù.

Yes, indeed both women and the Bascoms understand Yorùbá culture far more than Tóyìn Adépojù does now despite their skin colour.

It took Bascom decades to write Ifá because he and his wife had to write an insider's account writing from the expert perspective ( according to Baba Kadiri,)  given to them by the owners of the culture.  It is the views of the owners of the culture that they presented.

Being referred to as caucasian or white is not derogatory by itself it is the posture attached to that definition by some whites/ caucasians that is inflexively derogatory of their others.

There are those who stand outside a culture and write about it.  Those are the ones Africans object to.  Not all whites/ caucasians fit this category.


OAA



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: "Harrow, Kenneth" <har...@msu.edu>
Date: 08/12/2020 00:01 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of KnowledgeandDemonstrations  of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (har...@msu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info
bascom is not a caucasian american, he is a human being. these attributes of race in identifying people are actually racist.
karin barber is not an english woman. she is a person.
not only is the term caucasian highly racist in its origins (the purist of whites according to gobineau the french racist who penned it); all reductions of us, people, to race, country, ethnic group, religion, used so as to explain who we are and how we think is worse than reductive, it is derogatory.

i hope we can be people first, last, and always. as to who we really are, who could presume to answer that question. you can say bascom or barber did this or that, wrote this or that, were influenced by this or that school, advanced these or those positions.

but to say, well, bascom is white so this defines him and what he could or could not understand is pure and simple racism.
ken
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2020 12:00 PM

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Ibrahim Abdullah

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 5:48:40 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ken: 
Let me phrase Marx: people make their own history(agency); but they do not make it as they would have liked but under conditions inherited from the past(structure). 

I hear you loudly--but the conditions under which we live teaches us differently. 

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 10:37:51 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com


Alàgbà Ken:

My last word on race categorisation on this thread.

The fact that many official forms monitoring ethnicity in the West ask routinely for people to fill in their ethnicities: White/ caucasian; Black/ African/ Carribean; Asian and we comply without protests does mean that we have accepted these as convention rather than derogatory terms whatever their original provenance.

The same thing goes for the word 'nigger'.  Because of the influence of popular musicians who use this term to refer to themselves in positive terms, you will be hard put to convince youngsters to stop this term to refer to themselves because of its derogatory provenance.  

It has been re-territorialized as you would put it or reified as the Marxists would put it.  It now has new meaning.  Èşù has reclaimed it as we would put it.

I would not look at Karin Barber or yourself and have my own mind accept the term those caucasians in reference to you ( it's up to you what you fill in those forms, I always fill Black African.)  I would not think of the late Adunni Olorişa ( Susan Wenger, whom I also personally met as a journalist) her colour notwithstanding and think of that German lady.  

Àdùnní ( name was given to her by the reigning monarch the Àtaója of Òşogbo) professed Yoruba culture, lived and breathe the culture,  till her final days in Yorùba land whence she slid into the famous Òşun river for her final one- way swim to meet her Principal and take her place by her side as an addition to the pantheon: Òrişa Adùnní, Yèyèlórişà.  

This in addition to the presence of Ifá and Òrìşá culture in diverse clmes around the globe is clear indication that the Yorùbá Òrìşà pantheon do not discriminate on the basis of colour or race who they accept as their own. The Òrìşà point the way to us mere mortals, and we follow.


OAA





Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: "Harrow, Kenneth" <har...@msu.edu>
Date: 08/12/2020 10:39 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of KnowledgeandDemonstrations  of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (har...@msu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info
ibrahim, i take exception to being explained away as someone who is jewish.
that would mean, often, assuming i am a believer in "jewish" faith, or precepts, or, more often than not, certain readings of the bible. assumptions that i uncritically support the state of govt of israel, etc etc.
i do not take exception to someone wishing me a happy hannukah.

the same with blackness and whiteness. i spent my whole life immersed in african culture, and unconsciously look out on the world from a perspective very heavily marked by those experiences, those conversations and contacts, those readings etc. if you look at me as a "caucasion american" what does that mean for who i am? am i supposed to be the same as all american whites?
are all africans the same? are all nigerians the same? are all igbo the same? nonsense.
yet i can say, yes, there are igbo deities, songs, religious beliefs from the past, and history, and that history was experienced and therefore formative.

so, to answer your question, i lived through a certain history which was heavily marked by my religion; but in addition to that reality, facticity, i also establish my place in the world, shape the perspective, and "become."
i steal that thought from stuart hall: we "are" through the history of ourselves which we recount--a history we cannot change, but whose narrative we do construct. that is our being. but our becoming, now, that's where we choose and as with existentialist create ourselves.

i am sorry in training any spotlight on myself, rather than on my views.
but since i've become an old man, i noticed i can see better sitting down than lots of youngsters standing up.....
what that means is sometimes when i am sitting here, i am seeing out there from one perspective; sometime from another; another time, maybe even from both, which might not all agree. some rascal who limps around must have gotten hold of me when i wasn't looking, and kept changing his hat from red to green.
hah
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2020 7:19 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

Gloria Emeagwali

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 10:38:21 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ken, you should recognize that 
affirmative  action programs, and remedial policies against criminally racist structures, would not have been possible without the identification of the racial or ethnic background of the victims. 

You cannot conquer racism against specified  societal entities by denying the existence of those entities and claiming that race or racism does not exist sociologically. The same can be said about gender discrimination. 

Thankfully we have come a long way from denialism, covert discrimination and  the violence of “raceless” rhetoric.

So where does this leave us in this current debate? Well it implies that
there is nothing wrong in identifying yourself as Black or White. It is a sociological reality that has shaped
the world we live in, historically, like it or not, even though we should not let that reality diminish our appreciation of each other as human beings and co- inhabitants of planet Earth. 

Barber is a White scholar who  apparently transcended
racist boundaries. Of course, we know that studying a culture, or speaking its language, does not automatically liberate the scholar  or the linguist from  White supremacist psychological entanglements and deficiencies.

The British deployed Intelligence Officers in their colonies to learn various aspects of African culture, know more about their taxable income, and   refine the instruments of taxation - and by so doing, improved on the strategies of colonial domination and hegemonic control.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali 

On Dec 8, 2020, at 05:48, Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com> wrote:



Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 10:38:44 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
hi ibrahim
i don't get what i said that contradicts your point. maybe you should point it out more directly? i cited stuart hall on "being," that is, our history, shared history, which we can't change. but the "history" is remembered and recounted, and in the recounting we create/forge our being. i can cite the lines if you want; it is a famous quote from hall on how we create our ethnicity or identity.
it does not trump our "becoming" which is forged by acts we choose to make. within the "conditions under which we live" we choose our own actions and thus identities. we can't change how others treat us, but are not pawns of their acts requiring us to be what they say we are
ken
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ibrahim Abdullah <ibdu...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 5:47 AM

Gloria Emeagwali

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 11:42:25 AM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Re -sent  in the light of an error 
message.
GE


Ken, you should recognize that 
affirmative  action programs, and remedial policies against racist structures, would not have been possible without the identification of the racial or ethnic background of the victims. 

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 1:24:22 PM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
hi gloria
i am supportive of affirmative action; i was basically the affirmative action officer for my college for years, and pressed every dept in my college to hire minorities to adjust the ratios to something more progressive, more diverse.

your response and ibrahim's mean you didn't quite get my point, which i must have expressed unclearly. the posting i objected to essentialized people like bascom or barber on the basis of their race. it made them objects.
the very thing we have fought against in fighting racism. it suggests that all objects of that sort are the same, regardless of individual differences.
affirmative action seeks to correct social injustices, and to do that we have to count people as objects, but if that were all that mattered, their own individual identities would disappear.

to be black is not to be progressive in black causes; to be white is not to be racist against blacks. no one is worse for the black cause, the progressive cause, in this country than clarence thomas. and no one has been more willing to put their lives on the lines than those two white boys who were killed in mississippi during the civil rights struggle.

i am against this kind of thinking that says, well, only igbos have the right to affirm their identities as igbo and therefore to speak about what that constitutes; only jews can say what jews think; only blacks understanding the experience of being black. that would mean igboness, jewishness, blackness were this essential trait that defined all the individuals whose origins and birth conferred that essential knowledge on them.

the test might be stated otherwise: someone might say, well, i am a woman, so only other women can understand me. what does that say about other women? and what would make that sentence true? it would be, because you are a woman, you've lived in the world where the experiences you have had as a woman formed your consciousness. but what if you had the same experience as another woman, but you each responded differently to those experiences? were you already pre-formed to be a woman before you had those experiences, in which case they didn't form you? or can you share experiences, but experience them differently?

finally, can't a man play at being a woman, "be" a woman, transform into a woman, and most to the point, understand the being of womanness better than some other women themselves? or is that category of womanness a faulty category? igboness a faulty category? blackness a faulty category, whiteness a faulty category.
i didn't see anything in kadri's posting that permitted those questions to be asked.

if i were seek some authority to validate my question, i might well turn to anthony appiah, aka kwame appiah, aka the ethicist. but it is a question for all of us, who are we, and who gets to determine who we are, and on the basis of what?

so, gloria, i agree with you: we count noses to make a more just society; but we don't label individuals on the basis of assumed essentialized traits.
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.e...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 11:26 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Fwd: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of Knowledge andDemonstrations of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality
 

Harrow, Kenneth

unread,
Dec 8, 2020, 2:50:07 PM12/8/20
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
dear olayinka
it is all in the context of how the terms are used, which i believe is what you are saying. i agree with that. the context i criticized was in the implication that the racial identifiers defined the essential nature of the people involved, and as you state so well, that logic could never work for the unique being that was suzanne wenger.
as for those categories we fill out, if it is for a good reason, i will check the box, though not without a twinge of annoyance. gloria's argument that this is needed for affirmative action is one i agree with; but that was not at all my issue. it is rather, one of inclusion and exclusion. your response addresses my point well
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 9:24 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Between Assumptions of KnowledgeandDemonstrations of Knowledge on Yoruba Spirituality
 
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages