Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

[Toyin Falola]

Cornell’s Black Student Disunion

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/cornells-black-student-disunion-1508364848-lMyQjAxMTA3NTE4ODcxMjg4Wj/

A radical group calls on the university to disfavor immigrants.

Photo: istock/Getty Images

By

Naomi Schaefer Riley

Oct. 18, 2017 6:14 p.m. ET

159 COMMENTS

A century ago, colleges cared if your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Now some are demanding that when universities admit black students, they give preference to descendants of those who arrived on slave ships. Black Students United at Cornell last month insisted the university “come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students.” The group noted, “We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country.”

After widespread criticism—including a student op-ed with the headline “Combating White Supremacy Should Not Entail Throwing Other Black Students Under the Bus”—the group backtracked, sort of. It apologized for “any conflicting feelings this demand may have garnered from the communities we represent.” But if the purpose of racial preferences is to promote “diversity,” as the Supreme Court has held, why don’t immigrants count?

The BSU argued that “the Black student population at Cornell disproportionately represents international or first-generation African or Caribbean students. While these students have a right to flourish at Cornell, there is a lack of investment in Black students whose families were affected directly by the African Holocaust in America.”

There’s a contradiction here. For years liberal writers have blamed black poverty and undereducation on racism—the experience of being more likely to be pulled over by police, to be looked at suspiciously in department stores, to be discriminated against in schools and the workplace.

But it doesn’t seem to be the case, at least not to the same degree, among immigrants. “The more strongly black immigrant students identify with their specific ethnic origins, the better they perform [academically],” Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld observed in their 2014 book, “The Triple Package.”

Anecdotal examples are easy to find. The website Face2FaceAfrica noted in April that Ifeoma White-Thorpe, a New Jersey teen born in Nigeria, had joined “a remarkable roll call of high-flying African-American students who were accepted into all 8 Ivy League Universities.” Among them: Ghanaian-American Kwasi Enin, Somali-American Munira Khalif and Nigerian-Americans Harold Ekeh and Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna.

Why does racism not seem to keep black immigrants down? The answer is obvious: Black immigrant culture tends to value academic achievement and believe it is possible no matter what happened to your ancestors. As one business school graduate born to Nigerian parents tells Ms. Chua and Mr. Rubenfeld: “If you start thinking about or becoming absorbed in the mentality that the whole system is against us then you cannot succeed.”

Groups like the Cornell BSU insist that the system is out to get them and they cannot succeed. This makes the presence of high-achieving immigrant black students inconvenient. Between diversity and victimhood as the highest good in today’s academia, it’s hard to know where to place your money.

Ms. Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.

Appeared in the October 19, 2017, print edition.     

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

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USA

512 475 7224

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[Biko Agozino]

A few have always risen against the odds and the few African African immigrant students who excel are not the rule. They come from populations with mass failures in examinations. About 80% of Nigerian students have been failing high school exams in Nigeria for decades. The theory of Chua and Rubenfeld missed this by overgeneralizing their convenient samples, one of their examples is Justice Sotomayor who was failing in high school until she asked a successful classmate to teach her how to study effectively. The missing link is lack of training in study skills. Our students are being given fish by teachers but they are not taught how to fish. Once students master study skills, they will excel even against the odds. African American students at Cornell cannot be labelled failures simple because they complain about institutional racism which is a reality that African African students should speak out against too. Any student at Cornell must be good enough to get there in the first place. The problem lies in the high school where every course is taught but not study skills. We have a proposal to experiment by working with failing high schools to teach study skills and then compare the learning results with control group of schools. We hypothesize that knowledge of smart study skills will achieve better results than the gospel of hard work. We have shared our action research design with many state governors internationally but no takers yet.

Biko

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[Toyin Falola]

Biko:

1.     Any role by the family in your research? I ask because there are those who approach this subject from the failure of nuclear families and the rise of single parents.

2.     Is it not possible for you to build a team to establish a school and experiment with this idea? This is doable in collaboration with churches and those with commitment to empowerment.

TF

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 12:17 PM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

A few have always risen against the odds and the few African African immigrant students who excel are not the rule. They come from populations with mass failures in examinations. About 80% of Nigerian students have been failing high school exams in Nigeria for decades. The theory of Chua and Rubenfeld missed this by overgeneralizing their convenient samples, one of their examples is Justice Sotomayor who was failing in high school until she asked a successful classmate to teach her how to study effectively. The missing link is lack of training in study skills. Our students are being given fish by teachers but they are not taught how to fish. Once students master study skills, they will excel even against the odds. African American students at Cornell cannot be labelled failures simple because they complain about institutional racism which is a reality that African African students should speak out against too. Any student at Cornell must be good enough to get there in the first place. The problem lies in the high school where every course is taught but not study skills. We have a proposal to experiment by working with failing high schools to teach study skills and then compare the learning results with control group of schools. We hypothesize that knowledge of smart study skills will achieve better results than the gospel of hard work. We have shared our action research design with many state governors internationally but no takers yet.

 

Biko

 

On Thursday, 19 October 2017, 05:32:40 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

 

 

Cornell’s Black Student Disunion

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/cornells-black-student-disunion-1508364848-lMyQjAxMTA3NTE4ODcxMjg4Wj/

A radical group calls on the university to disfavor immigrants.

Photo: istock/Getty Images

[Biko Agozino]

Kikiwe Akowe Iwin,

All hands must be on deck. Families have a role to play in reproducing success just as peers, mentors, communities, students, and even corporations that support scholarships. However, a significant percentage of students from single parent families have excelled enough for us not to essentialize patriarchy in this regard. Religious schools have not done much better than public school either nor have selective charter schools done better than comprehensive public schools. The missing link is smart study skills with which any student could excel irrespective of family structure, religious affiliation, class background, gender or neighborhood. We are willing to collaborate with any school districts willing to test our hypothesis. I do not need to start a school to test my hypothesis since I am already in the business of mentoring future academic leaders. I am available for outreach to failing students and schools to transform them without preaching hard work ethics. Book work is not hard work. Learning is fun essentially (LIFE) if you have the learning skills.

Biko

[Toyin Falola]

Biko:

Can you circulate to us the published literature on this? The African community, from my own research, puts emphasis on hard work and occupations. What you call LIFE provoked serious caning in my generation. I am interested in this, and if we know more, we can begin to take the ideas back to Africa.

Do you have evidence of its success? Where? Who?

Error! Filename not specified.

Photo: istock/Getty Images

[Biko Agozino]

Akowe self,

Na who cane you while you spent your youth counting the tiger's teeth with pleasure rather than working hard. You are a good example who learned study skills from grandma as she prepared her herbal medicine. The poor Igbo have also learned some study skills to excel against the odds of genocide where many of their privileged compatriots fail even after burning the midnight oil. Du Bois taught us that he did not burn the midnight oil at Harvard. Hard work is for dummies when it comes to books. For further evidence, check out my blog posts on this theme:

Miracle of Harlem?

Miracle of Harlem? By Biko Agozino ‘The Harlem Miracle’ as reported by The New York Times in an opinion article by David Brooks o...

See also

FOR A CULTURE OF LEARNING

FOR A CULTURE OF LEARNING By Biko Agozino bago...@yahoo.com In an earlier article (http://massliteracy.blogspot.com/), I asked parents,...

See also

Education State Of Emergency

Education State Of Emergency --> By Biko Agozino The annual embarrassment of news of mass failure by High School students i...

And see also

Libraries Are Full of Lies: 8 Tips for Researchers in Africa

Libraries Are Full of Lies: 8 Tips for Researchers in Africa --> Biko Agozino They are called libraries because libraries are full of lies. When next you cons...

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Biko,

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

We must be clear that the aim of white supremacy, institutional or otherwise, is to destroy Black, Brown, and indigenous people and create passive assimilated bodies who don't challenge said systems. Indeed, the Movement for Black Lives is an example of a long continuum of Black resistance to domestic white terrorism. African American resistance to white racial terror was a necessary struggle in 1917 and it is no less necessary in 2017. The author's effort to gloss over that fact with the phrase "victimhood" is racist and offensive. There are Black political prisoners who have been in prison since the 1960s. Assata Shakur and others have been in exile nearly as long. Is it the author's position that Assata suffers from "victimhood"? What about 12 year-old Tamir Rice? Tamir was executed in less than two seconds by a police officer. Do we blame Tamir's murder on "victimhood"? There are millions of stories of black people who have been terrorized generation, after generation, after generation. The outcome of white racial terror are vast race-based inequalities that an educated immigrant can side-step by looking straight ahead, getting good grades, causing no controversies, and raising no uncomfortable questions with our white oppressors. 

Talented Africans leave their homelands because their aspirations are crushed under systems that were imposed by white people and now managed by black "matadors" (to borrow Chinweizu's phrase). Ironically, many of them wind up migrating to the very source of their problem--Europe and America. Many talented African Americans, by comparison, are crushed in ghettos created by white American racists. I don't plan of dying in America. But I have been fortunate to develop a longstanding relationship with an African nation (Ghana). Most African Americans don't have that experience. America, the land that hates them, is the only home they will ever know. Who will treat the centuries of trauma that Africans stuck American have endured? How can you treat the trauma if the oppression is ongoing? Given these conditions, we have no option but to keep fighting. "Success," then, should not be measured solely by standards created by white people to maintain white power. A better standard is to what degree do students agitate against the institutions aimed at destroying them. Du Bois was a "success." But after centuries of vicious harassment by the US government, Du Bois quit America and died in Ghana. The brilliant Paul Robeson was a "success." But Robeson chose to speak out against US imperialism abroad and racism at home. Robeson was also viciously harassed and probably poisoned by the US govt under the MkUltra program. Dr. King was a "success." But the US government literally tried to force him to commit suicide. See the pattern? The pathological US government murders, incarcerates, smears our most talented leaders and then that same pathological government labels Black people pathological. 

All Black Lives Matter, 

kzs 

[Biko Agozino]

Bro Kwame,

I do not know the half that you say is right and the half that you say is wrong. But I know that I agree with you 200%. I agree with you 100% that academic achievement is important, otherwise why are we Professors? I also agree with you 100% that activism is important and we combine both 200% in the Africana Studies paradigm of scholar-activism exemplified by Du Bois, Wells-Barnet, Azikiwe, Diop, Fanon, MLK, Nkrumah, Malcolm, Cabral, Rodney, Davis, Asante, and many others. When I emphasize smart study skills, I do not mean to suggest that they are relevant only to academic success. They are life skills and the toughest tasks are always better accomplished by building smart teams rather than by going it alone according to the myth of Sisyphus. Together each achieves more (TEAM). The best athletes are always the ones to tell you that it is important to retain personal coaches to help them keep sharpening their skills. The miseducation of the people starts from the assumption that once you go through commencement, you have finished your education and no longer need to study and learn. Learning is fun everytime (LIFE). The best movements for social change are the ones that include political education such as the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Revolution and BLM is emulating this. The same applies to economic activities in which those who know teach the next generation; be it in music, agriculture, film making, research or in development activities. I also agree that more African students should be activists against racism, sexism and class exploitation but the majority of students anywhere are not trained to have such consciousness and commitment. Even among African Americans, the preference is for artisan degrees that would increase employment opportunities rather than the revolutionary field of study for obvious reasons. Moreover, the responsibility to oppose racism and white supremacy is not the responsibility of only students of African descent given that many students of European descent are comrades in the struggle precisely because white supremacy is a threat to humanity and has resulted in the deaths of millions of white people (some estimates put the deaths in the second European tribal world war at 60 million, mostly white). John Brown's body lies smoldering in his grave but his multiracial troops go marching on. Men also campaign against sexism that affects our sisters, wives, daughters and mothers if not us directly and we petty bourgeois scholars also campaign against class exploitation of the lumpen. You are welcome back home to Africa but do not restrict yourself to Ghana, claim the whole Peoples Republic of Africa which is currently being birthed by Africans through projects like the African Union Passport to enable free movement for all including the African Diaspora with a right to return in defiance of the door of no return and the ridiculous colonial boundaries. While I agree with you that Europeans are always the ones who manufacture the weapons and conspiracies to kill Africans, it is not true that only Europeans are to blame for there is indeed ethnic-class-gender prejudice that has resulted in genocidal rage across Africa while the African diaspora youth engage in 'homeycide' against brothers and sisters just as white kill whites in large numbers, not simply because old massa told them to do it or else. The smart study skills that I talk about will include programs in Love Studies to help our people to recover the revolutionary love that is implied by Ubuntu and by Mbari African philosophy of nonviolence and encapsulated in the Rasta philosophy of One Love. There are so many war colleges around the world but not a single Love College and not a single curriculum on Love Studies anywhere. Do Not Agonize, Organize!

Biko

[kwame zulu shabazz]

African Americans have been organizing against white racial terror for centuries. Our organizing efforts have been consistently and viciously undermined by the US govt that is at war with its Black citizens. Love and non-violence are not sufficient against an enemy bent on your destruction. 

kzs​

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

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[Biko Agozino]

Kwame,

I agree with you. People of of African descent have been organizing against oppression for centuries but not exclusively because we have always had allies in all our struggles. Love is not all we need but without love for one another, even if the whole world loves us while we lack self-love, we will be in deep snow. But even if the whole world is against us while we have Mbari self-love, we stand a chance to survive and thrive. One Love.

Biko

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Biko,

Good point and I agree. Love of self and community is vital. In fact the last section of my intro course is Black Love/Afromance.

kzs

On Oct 24, 2017 12:00 PM, "'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Kwame,

I agree with you. People of of African descent have been organizing against oppression for centuries but not exclusively because we have always had allies in all our struggles. Love is not all we need but without love for one another, even if the whole world loves us while we lack self-love, we will be in deep snow. But even if the whole world is against us while we have Mbari self-love, we stand a chance to survive and thrive. One Love.

Biko

On Tuesday, 24 October 2017, 11:17:20 GMT-4, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com> wrote:

African Americans have been organizing against white racial terror for centuries. Our organizing efforts have been consistently and viciously undermined by the US govt that is at war with its Black citizens. Love and non-violence are not sufficient against an enemy bent on your destruction. 

kzs​

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

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[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

About the below, I will make simple observations

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 24, 2017 3:15 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena, 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Negative+Negative = Positive or Positive + Positive= Positive or Positive + Positive= Negative?

A representative of an ethnicity consumately bent on transplanting Black American racial  tactics and rhetorics on a national African ethnic extended family situation meets the real thing: A Black America dye in the wool exponent of the originary polemics.

Can mathematicians like Bolaji Aluko enlighten us on the pluses and minuses of the equation?  Is America Nigeria?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Date: 24/10/2017 18:04 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

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Kwame,

I agree with you. People of of African descent have been organizing against oppression for centuries but not exclusively because we have always had allies in all our struggles. Love is not all we need but without love for one another, even if the whole world loves us while we lack self-love, we will be in deep snow. But even if the whole world is against us while we have Mbari self-love, we stand a chance to survive and thrive. One Love.

Biko

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I can see where both views represented here are coming from

I have had first hand experience of the African American position represented by Kwame expressed to me in a Black college.

All I can say is that we can not allow ourselves to be unnecessarily diverted, distracted and divided by such leanings across the Atlantic.  I welcome the decision of Dubois and brother Kwame to move closer to the mother continent (As well as the philanthropic  outreach of sisters like Oprah).  I would like to solicit Kwames support to help shape the trans-Atlantic tradition toward a genuinely Afrocentric focus such as his and DuBois. 

What I mean is whereas tendencies such as Kwame are gravitating towards an Afrocentric determination (even more than many African immigrant academics) when many African Americans are given the options of which language to choose to fulfil college requirements an o erwhelming majority prefers Eurooean languages.  Language is key to cultural acquisition and resentment toward Africa by such African Americans can be checkmated by a drive to question pedagogical linguistic standards by African Americans in general. Brother Kwame is eminently qualified to lead this drive.   This can lead to massive active  cultural exchange between African Americans and Africa in an active perennial basis.  Then and only then can brother Agozinos position make greater sense in its usefulness.  It would then not matter whether  it's African American youngsters that are being admitted to Cornell or children if African immigrants.

We should all adopt a cohesive multi pronged approach to combating and neutralizating racism which in agreement with Kwame is often too toxic to African children brought up in part in largely mono ethnic backgrounds situated within larger polities in Africa.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Date: 25/10/2017 12:19 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

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Kwabena, 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

---

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[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Kwame better is a relative concept with alternative angles of meanings. I premised my conclusions on your previous position that has some empiricisms to it that are measurable. Thus comparative performances predicated on "better" should not be "rejected," but rather nuanced or problematized. I am not getting your arguments and your conclusions! Are you saying that white racism encourages the academic performances of African Africans in the USA, while it discourages the academic performances of African Americans? You write "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo." Does this mean that if African Africans do "better" in schools it promotes white racist status quo and does it mean that if a heterogeneous group does not do well, it then marginalizes or defangs white racism.? I didn't have to belabor the ways that African Americans have benefited from Africans and vice versa. I raised that to counter your statements like "Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror." I think instead of contesting the academic performances of African Africans in the frameworks immigration, race, and racism, we should rather seek to understand “how” African Africans do “well,” if not “better” while others don’t. Based on your arguments, I would suggest that white racism in the USA is encompassing, not selective in the sense that it privileges and favors African Africans and their children’s educational pursuits. You are free to disagree with my generous position that newly-arrived African Africans find it more difficult to navigate the murky waters of racism than African Americans.

Kwabena 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 25, 2017 2:26 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

I know that Biko's point about improved study skills may sound trite but I believe there is some truth to it. Knowing how to study is not automatic. It is an art that has to be taught and I believe that this is a missing ingredient. We should try to address that skill.

 But there are other issues at stake,  here. I have found that Black students who did their high school in Africa and the Caribbean,  perform better than those trained here in the US,  granted that there are some exceptions here and there.This means that if you are an African American moving through the U.S  educational system  from pre-school, you are at a disadvantage. The cause of this is partly  race related. Visit  high schools in your state and see whether the quality of the schools,  in terms of equipment and  overall infrastructure,  is equally distributed. Factor in demographic profiles. Put another way,  are the high schools in East Hartford equivalent  to those of Cheshire? Not really.

 It also has something to do with the postcolonial agenda and a measure of relative  success at the level of education in some African  and Caribbean countries.  It is an inconvenient truth for those of us  dissatisfied with the level of accomplishment in that arena, in these regions,  but  it  is common knowledge in the Caribbean,  that you are likely to get a better high school education there than in the US.

Does racism privilege African Africans over African Americans? Occasionally so,  but this comes into operation largely at the post- graduate level. My African American colleague with a doctorate from Cornell University is yet to find a full time job in the university system.   But White racism likes to have poster children.  Gee! See how well we are doing.  We have one Black faculty (from Togo) in the department. That one Black faculty thinks he/she is there because of  his/her  superb academic skills and total merit,  and that my Cornell graduate is non-existent. His or her ego prevents a deeper sociological analysis of the reality. Yes,  there are brilliant  AfAfs -  but don't fool yourself. The US is not a true meritocracy.

It is also important to look at what  Patricia Collins,  Black Feminist Thought (2009), calls the intersectionality of race, class, gender and sexuality in the matrix of domination.

White racism is encompassing, especially in the era of Trump, but it  is adept at divide and rule politics. My Cornell student protesters must be careful not to fall into that trap.

Gloria Emeagwali

gloriaemeagwali.com

africahistory.net

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 10:09 AM

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Olayinka,

Im on board with African language acquisition. In fact I'm planning to propose a Lingala course because we have a sizable Congolese population in our town. As for African Americans choosing to study European language, we should note that the vast majority of US institutions devote little or no resources to African language instruction, that much of what we learn about Africa is negative, and that the few colleges that do offer African language do so because African American students began demanding them in the 1960s. In fact, Carter G. Woodson raised the same point in the 1930s in his seminal work, "The Miseducation of the Negro". I also encourage you to investigate the work of Obadele Kambon, an African American professor who teaches at the University of Ghana. Prof Kambon has managed a website for over decade that is focused on African language acquisition:

https://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/forum.php

kzs

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

Thank you  brother Kwame.  I'm hoping more professors on the forum and wider circles take up this challenge and make it a reality.

One way this can be done is online training.  There  are many software's on the apps market  now that anyone can learn virtually any European language to a high level without stepping a foot in the conventional brick and mortar classroom.

Where yourself and Professor Kambon can make the difference is help secure funding within the American Academy and philanthropic circles to develop similar language learning software for major African languages that can be accessed for nominal fees by African American students (and other interested African language enthusiasts globally.)  

If this is already within the ambit of Professor Kambons work then the needed drive is the publicity drive to make African American students aware of its potentials to challenge the academic status quo

In the case of the European languages most are available for free and others as low as $7 for a whole course including dictionaries.  (It was in anticipatiin of such eventual reality that  I enjoined Dr Fakinlede about a decade ago to ensure an online version of his Yoruba dictionary.)

May Odumare Elegbara (The Yoruba communications God/dess)  crown our collective efforts with success.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Date: 25/10/2017 17:18 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

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Olayinka,

Im on board with African language acquisition. In fact I'm planning to propose a Lingala course because we have a sizable Congolese population in our town. As for African Americans choosing to study European language, we should note that the vast majority of US institutions devote little or no resources to African language instruction, that much of what we learn about Africa is negative, and that the few colleges that do offer African language do so because African American students began demanding them in the 1960s. In fact, Carter G. Woodson raised the same point in the 1930s in his seminal work, "The Miseducation of the Negro". I also encourage you to investigate the work of Obadele Kambon, an African American professor who teaches at the University of Ghana. Prof Kambon has managed a website for over decade that is focused on African language acquisition:

https://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/forum.php

kzs

On Oct 25, 2017 8:38 AM, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Mohamed Mbodj]

Dear all,

This is a hard question to address as experienced in my own class. Here is a reading that I use to get some historical perspective:

Ethnic Relations of African Students in the United States, with Black Americans, 1870-1900

Walter L. Williams

The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Summer, 1980), pp. 228-249

Mohamed Mbodj

Professor, History Department and
African & African-American Studies
Manhattanville College
Email: mohame...@mville.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 12:12 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

---

This e-mail transmission is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the recipient of this e-mail is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and then delete the e-mail and destroy any copies of it. Thank you.

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I'm 100% percent with you sister Gloria particularly in your exposition of what in a similar situation in the British system is called 'Black tokenism' which is the order of the day in public establishments. I have argued  this was the hidden reason for embracing the European Union: a project to further dilute black presence in public spaces (a project that has now backfired with the glut of European presence which in turn led to Brexit.)

Yes in brother Biko,s skills thesis the baby cannot be thrown away with the bath water.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>

Date: 25/10/2017 17:18 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (emea...@ccsu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info

I know that Biko's point about improved study skills may sound trite but I believe there is some truth to it. Knowing how to study is not automatic. It is an art that has to be taught and I believe that this is a missing ingredient. We should try to address that skill.

 But there are other issues at stake,  here. I have found that Black students who did their high school in Africa and the Caribbean,  perform better than those trained here in the US,  granted that there are some exceptions here and there.This means that if you are an African American moving through the U.S  educational system  from pre-school, you are at a disadvantage. The cause of this is partly  race related. Visit  high schools in your state and see whether the quality of the schools,  in terms of equipment and  overall infrastructure,  is equally distributed. Factor in demographic profiles. Put another way,  are the high schools in East Hartford equivalent  to those of Cheshire? Not really.

 It also has something to do with the postcolonial agenda and a measure of relative  success at the level of education in some African  and Caribbean countries.  It is an inconvenient truth for those of us  dissatisfied with the level of accomplishment in that arena, in these regions,  but  it  is common knowledge in the Caribbean,  that you are likely to get a better high school education there than in the US.

Does racism privilege African Africans over African Americans? Occasionally so,  but this comes into operation largely at the post- graduate level. My African American colleague with a doctorate from Cornell University is yet to find a full time job in the university system.   But White racism likes to have poster children.  Gee! See how well we are doing.  We have one Black faculty (from Togo) in the department. That one Black faculty thinks he/she is there because of  his/her  superb academic skills and total merit,  and that my Cornell graduate is non-existent. His or her ego prevents a deeper sociological analysis of the reality. Yes,  there are brilliant  AfAfs -  but don't fool yourself. The US is not a true meritocracy.

It is also important to look at what  Patricia Collins,  Black Feminist Thought (2009), calls the intersectionality of race, class, gender and sexuality in the matrix of domination.

White racism is encompassing, especially in the era of Trump, but it  is adept at divide and rule politics. My Cornell student protesters must be careful not to fall into that trap.

Gloria Emeagwali

gloriaemeagwali.com

africahistory.net

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 10:09 AM

[Kenneth Harrow]

Well, I will throw in my 2 cents. The problem of afr am students’ training here in the state of Michigan, centered in Detroit, is a major major issue. The weakness of Detroit schools, given all the surrounding social climate, discriminatory issues, not least of which is financial, has meant students do not come out of the system with solid studying practices, and the adaptation to the university for many is very difficult. Those who succeed are wondrous, but that doesn’t happen without a realization of the need to become solid in studying, in prioritizing studying, and studying hard. In short, they must become aware of what is needed, have not been trained in earlier years for the University experience, and in significant percentages fail to make it. This is the pipeline that has to be changed from early years. Finally the republicans have hyped charter schools, leading to further defunding and diminishing of public schools resources and attending. The racism is institutional, and its effects profoundly far-reaching.

Africans who come are often coming from much more elite circumstances, are not burdened by all the factors I mentioned above, do not have the adjustment barriers or expectation barriers. Sure there is still a racial issue for them, but it isn’t grounded in the total social experience, and the differences are very palpable.

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

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Kwabena, 

 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

 

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

 

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

 

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

 

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

 

 

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena, 

I am in agreement with Ken (see thread) on the gross disparities extant in US K-12 education. Another pressing issue is violence. The pipeline for my institution is Chicago. In the 2.5 years I have worked here, I have had four students from the South Side of Chicago who have close friends who were victims of gunfire. One student has lost six male friends in her community to gunfire. Most Black Chicagoans are the descendants of African Americans who, in the 1920s, starting fleeing the south in massive numbers. They were escaping lynchings and other horrific acts of white racial terror. Their reception by whites in Chicago was also extremely violent. 

The Chicago police of the 1940s and 50s were basically execution squads who killed, arrested, or otherwise undermined any Black leader who tried to protect the interests of Black people. In 1969 the Chicago police conspired with federal agents to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. All that to say that these are brute inequities that have been centuries in the making. The original intent of Affirmative Action was to correct these injustices rooted centuries Jim Crow and slavery in America.

I think it is fair to say that the Black students at Cornel need guidance on how to frame the problem in a way that does not exacerbate divisions between Africans and African Americans. But the problem they are raising is legitimate. Cornel, and every other tertiary institution in the USA, should have Affirmative Action programs aimed at aggressively recruiting, retaining, graduating African Americans. They can/should do that alongside the robust recruitment of continental and second generation African students. 

kzs

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:09 AM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame better is a relative concept with alternative angles of meanings. I premised my conclusions on your previous position that has some empiricisms to it that are measurable. Thus comparative performances predicated on "better" should not be "rejected," but rather nuanced or problematized. I am not getting your arguments and your conclusions! Are you saying that white racism encourages the academic performances of African Africans in the USA, while it discourages the academic performances of African Americans? You write "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo." Does this mean that if African Africans do "better" in schools it promotes white racist status quo and does it mean that if a heterogeneous group does not do well, it then marginalizes or defangs white racism.? I didn't have to belabor the ways that African Americans have benefited from Africans and vice versa. I raised that to counter your statements like "Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror." I think instead of contesting the academic performances of African Africans in the frameworks immigration, race, and racism, we should rather seek to understand “how” African Africans do “well,” if not “better” while others don’t. Based on your arguments, I would suggest that white racism in the USA is encompassing, not selective in the sense that it privileges and favors African Africans and their children’s educational pursuits. You are free to disagree with my generous position that newly-arrived African Africans find it more difficult to navigate the murky waters of racism than African Americans.

Kwabena 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 25, 2017 2:26 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Ken writes "Africans who come are often coming from much more elite circumstances, are not burdened by all the factors I mentioned above, do not have the adjustment barriers or expectation barriers. Sure there is still a racial issue for them, but it isn’t grounded in the total social experience, and the differences are very palpable."

I can tell you that most Africans I met in Canadian and American schools did not come from elite families. The children of taxi drivers, "home-nurses," public servants. factory workers, traders, car salespersons, etc. are by no means elite! We are dribbling around the issues! Whether it is Detroit, DC, Philly, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami , and even some rural backwater, Africans most often than not go to the same schools that African Americans attend. And whether it is white racism, both groups experience similar corrosive effects. So the question then is what motivates Africans to do "better" than their African American cousins? For want of a clear-glass word/concept, I would call it "academic work ethic" that African parents give their children. Asians who live in the USA do better like Africans. So what do Asian students bring to the table of learning that African Americans don't bring! I hazard that it is better approaches to learning that comes from home. 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: October 25, 2017 6:00 PM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Kwame:

Well, please, see my response to Ken. Violence in Chicago does not only affect African Americans' schooling. Africans are also impacted. Even whites in suburban schools are also affected. The question then is how come Africans do "better" in academic work than African Americans! Are we afraid to say it is some form of culture of “home training,” or preparing kids at home to understand the key tenets of education? Let me flip the coin, why do African Americans take to sports more than Africans? Could it be that the former have been acculturated at home and in their communities to believe that it is a great means of vertical mobility! And could it be that other groups are socialized at home to believe that vigorous academic work is a means of social mobility. These are rhetorical questions!  But let me boldly add that the selective victimhood approaches that say only African Americans are targets of white racism, poor educational facilities, violence, etc., do not help much. 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 25, 2017 10:48 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kenneth Harrow]

You can substitute “Detroit” for “chicago” in everything Kwame wrote, and it would be true. Too true. And I full-heartedly endorse his important last paragraph.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2017 at 18:48
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena, 

 

I am in agreement with Ken (see thread) on the gross disparities extant in US K-12 education. Another pressing issue is violence. The pipeline for my institution is Chicago. In the 2.5 years I have worked here, I have had four students from the South Side of Chicago who have close friends who were victims of gunfire. One student has lost six male friends in her community to gunfire. Most Black Chicagoans are the descendants of African Americans who, in the 1920s, starting fleeing the south in massive numbers. They were escaping lynchings and other horrific acts of white racial terror. Their reception by whites in Chicago was also extremely violent. 

 

The Chicago police of the 1940s and 50s were basically execution squads who killed, arrested, or otherwise undermined any Black leader who tried to protect the interests of Black people. In 1969 the Chicago police conspired with federal agents to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. All that to say that these are brute inequities that have been centuries in the making. The original intent of Affirmative Action was to correct these injustices rooted centuries Jim Crow and slavery in America.

 

I think it is fair to say that the Black students at Cornel need guidance on how to frame the problem in a way that does not exacerbate divisions between Africans and African Americans. But the problem they are raising is legitimate. Cornel, and every other tertiary institution in the USA, should have Affirmative Action programs aimed at aggressively recruiting, retaining, graduating African Americans. They can/should do that alongside the robust recruitment of continental and second generation African students. 

 

kzs

 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:09 AM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame better is a relative concept with alternative angles of meanings. I premised my conclusions on your previous position that has some empiricisms to it that are measurable. Thus comparative performances predicated on "better" should not be "rejected," but rather nuanced or problematized. I am not getting your arguments and your conclusions! Are you saying that white racism encourages the academic performances of African Africans in the USA, while it discourages the academic performances of African Americans? You write "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo." Does this mean that if African Africans do "better" in schools it promotes white racist status quo and does it mean that if a heterogeneous group does not do well, it then marginalizes or defangs white racism.? I didn't have to belabor the ways that African Americans have benefited from Africans and vice versa. I raised that to counter your statements like "Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror." I think instead of contesting the academic performances of African Africans in the frameworks immigration, race, and racism, we should rather seek to understand “how” African Africans do “well,” if not “better” while others don’t. Based on your arguments, I would suggest that white racism in the USA is encompassing, not selective in the sense that it privileges and favors African Africans and their children’s educational pursuits. You are free to disagree with my generous position that newly-arrived African Africans find it more difficult to navigate the murky waters of racism than African Americans.

Kwabena 

 

 

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi kwabena

I wrote “much more elite,” not “elite” but I agree it is not the perfect word. However, however, the many African students I have known and recruited came from very positive university settings (I am referring here exclusively to grad students). They were very much better prepared, did not come from violent social environments, were highly motivated—as highly motivated as any students at the university. They were not children of impoverished parents, since the basic costs of getting visas, applying, etc., were not for the poorest or weakest students to undertake.

Some were children of well-to-do parents, but many were not. Still, this is relative, and this is key. They were all able to move very successfully through the undergraduate university systems where they came from—kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon—and by that point were not at the same social/economic level as many of the afr am students coming as freshmen to our campus.

The differences were really significant.

I retract “much more elite”—but, “much better prepared” would be more accurate, making my main point that they faced much lower obstacles at the point they entered our university.

ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (kwames...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Ken:

Elite or much more elite is just about ritualization of concepts. And what is "positive university settings"? So is the academic preparation of Africans exclusive? Is it that white racism does not target Africans as Kwame argues? Who prepared them - is it what you call "positive university settings"? Education is a process, not an event. The formative preparations or processes linked with socialization or upbringing at home and at the community levels shape the end product of education. You are making too may assumptions about African students who arrived at your doors with subservient smiles! Do you know how some of us paid for our visas and airfare? We used extended family monetary contributions, loans from sharks, pawning family property, etc.  When I arrived in Canada to begin graduate studies, I had only ten Canadian dollars on me that was so overused that it was placed under a microscope before it was accepted! The mere fact that African students arrive in the USA does not mean that they come from elite backgrounds! I couldn't even pay  my airfare: the Canadian university did! Am I from what would be considered an elite home! Let me laugh small! Haha haa! I am an aristocrat without gold or timber in my principality! Time to sleep. Good night. 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: October 25, 2017 11:55 PM

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: October 25, 2017 11:48 PM
To: usaafricadialogue

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena,

You are missing the point. Again, what African Americans are experiencing is *generational* and *accumulative.* Asians did not experience mass enslavement, Jim Crow, lynchings to degree that African Americans did. A better comparison would be groups who have experienced the trauma of genocidal generational trauma from a white majority--Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, for example. Both of these groups have had outcomes comparable to African Americans.

On Oct 25, 2017 6:45 PM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Ken writes "Africans who come are often coming from much more elite circumstances, are not burdened by all the factors I mentioned above, do not have the adjustment barriers or expectation barriers. Sure there is still a racial issue for them, but it isn’t grounded in the total social experience, and the differences are very palpable."

I can tell you that most Africans I met in Canadian and American schools did not come from elite families. The children of taxi drivers, "home-nurses," public servants. factory workers, traders, car salespersons, etc. are by no means elite! We are dribbling around the issues! Whether it is Detroit, DC, Philly, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami , and even some rural backwater, Africans most often than not go to the same schools that African Americans attend. And whether it is white racism, both groups experience similar corrosive effects. So the question then is what motivates Africans to do "better" than their African American cousins? For want of a clear-glass word/concept, I would call it "academic work ethic" that African parents give their children. Asians who live in the USA do better like Africans. So what do Asian students bring to the table of learning that African Americans don't bring! I hazard that it is better approaches to learning that comes from home. 

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 12:12 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Olayinka,

 

Im on board with African language acquisition. In fact I'm planning to propose a Lingala course because we have a sizable Congolese population in our town. As for African Americans choosing to study European language, we should note that the vast majority of US institutions devote little or no resources to African language instruction, that much of what we learn about Africa is negative, and that the few colleges that do offer African language do so because African American students began demanding them in the 1960s. In fact, Carter G. Woodson raised the same point in the 1930s in his seminal work, "The Miseducation of the Negro". I also encourage you to investigate the work of Obadele Kambon, an African American professor who teaches at the University of Ghana. Prof Kambon has managed a website for over decade that is focused on African language acquisition:

 

https://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/forum.php

 

kzs

On Oct 25, 2017 8:38 AM, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I can see where both views represented here are coming from

 

I have had first hand experience of the African American position represented by Kwame expressed to me in a Black college.

 

All I can say is that we can not allow ourselves to be unnecessarily diverted, distracted and divided by such leanings across the Atlantic.  I welcome the decision of Dubois and brother Kwame to move closer to the mother continent (As well as the philanthropic  outreach of sisters like Oprah).  I would like to solicit Kwames support to help shape the trans-Atlantic tradition toward a genuinely Afrocentric focus such as his and DuBois. 

 

What I mean is whereas tendencies such as Kwame are gravitating towards an Afrocentric determination (even more than many African immigrant academics) when many African Americans are given the options of which language to choose to fulfil college requirements an o erwhelming majority prefers Eurooean languages.  Language is key to cultural acquisition and resentment toward Africa by such African Americans can be checkmated by a drive to question pedagogical linguistic standards by African Americans in general. Brother Kwame is eminently qualified to lead this drive.   This can lead to massive active  cultural exchange between African Americans and Africa in an active perennial basis.  Then and only then can brother Agozinos position make greater sense in its usefulness.  It would then not matter whether  it's African American youngsters that are being admitted to Cornell or children if African immigrants.

 

We should all adopt a cohesive multi pronged approach to combating and neutralizating racism which in agreement with Kwame is often too toxic to African children brought up in part in largely mono ethnic backgrounds situated within larger polities in Africa.

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Date: 25/10/2017 12:19 (GMT+00:00)

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Asians aren't dominant at Ivy league schools. In fact there is lawsuit alleging that the selection process is biased against highly qualified Asian applicants:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/us/affirmative-action-battle-has-a-new-focus-asian-americans.html

On the West Coast where Asians do dominate numerically at elite schools, both whites and Blacks complain.

kzs

 

On Oct 25, 2017 7:40 PM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

I agree about deterministic historical trajectories playing a big role. African immigrants and African Americans come from different histories that predispose them to different outcomes in America's educational system. The caveat of course is that predisposition is not inescapable destiny.

African immigrants may not all be from elite homes but they are a self-selected group, meaning that they have been prepared educationally in their home countries. Often they already have college degrees and come to America already set on the path to educational and career success.

They did not grow up under the same historical and "cumulative" institutional impediments as African Americans. That they do better educationally and career-wise therefore says nothing about ability and a lot about prior preparation. Since socioeconomic classes tend to reproduce themselves, the first generation children of African  immigrants follow, for the most part, their parents' footsteps and examples. The children moreover are brought up in middle class environments and often attend good schools, not the failing inner city schools that many African American kids attend.

Gloria is right that white society likes to hold up African immigrants as a model minority and as a way to put down African Americans and deny the existence of racist structural impediments to success. The model minority discourse is of course racist, a divide and rule technique. Moreover, it ignores the aforementioned nuances and differences of history, experience, and prior interpellations.

A quick anecdote by way of a conclusion. Recently, a white guy, an employee of my institution, came into my office to perform a service. He decided to make small talk and mentioned that he has met several Nigerians and that they all have advanced degrees or are pursuing one. At first I let it slide but when he continued harping on it, I knew that the unspoken premise of his commentary on Nigerian immigrant achievers is the model minority claim. I decided to politely correct him by telling him that the Nigerian immigrants he's been meeting are not representative of the general population of Nigeria, that they are a pre- and self-selected group, and that Nigerians who migrate to America are often motivated college graduates already primed and prepared for educational and career challenges.

[Kenneth Harrow]

Well, on the point of white racism targeting Africans, I’ve taught in different African universities on and off for a zillion years, and often I was the only white around. I found his argument about race in Africa not like what I experienced, even counting the late 70s when there used to be many more French people around.

There is a point where Africans are in charge, and if not entirely, then largely in all African universities. Maybe not s Africa, can’t speak for that. But for the rest of Africa, things are not like in the colonial period.

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (kwames...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Ken, you lost me! 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: October 26, 2017 1:15 AM

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

A rich discussion

On 26 October 2017 at 02:15, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

Well, on the point of white racism targeting Africans, I’ve taught in different African universities on and off for a zillion years, and often I was the only white around. I found his argument about race in Africa not like what I experienced, even counting the late 70s when there used to be many more French people around.

There is a point where Africans are in charge, and if not entirely, then largely in all African universities. Maybe not s Africa, can’t speak for that. But for the rest of Africa, things are not like in the colonial period.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2017 at 20:32

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Ken:

Elite or much more elite is just about ritualization of concepts. And what is "positive university settings"? So is the academic preparation of Africans exclusive? Is it that white racism does not target Africans as Kwame argues? Who prepared them - is it what you call "positive university settings"? Education is a process, not an event. The formative preparations or processes linked with socialization or upbringing at home and at the community levels shape the end product of education. You are making too may assumptions about African students who arrived at your doors with subservient smiles! Do you know how some of us paid for our visas and airfare? We used extended family monetary contributions, loans from sharks, pawning family property, etc.  When I arrived in Canada to begin graduate studies, I had only ten Canadian dollars on me that was so overused that it was placed under a microscope before it was accepted! The mere fact that African students arrive in the USA does not mean that they come from elite backgrounds! I couldn't even pay  my airfare: the Canadian university did! Am I from what would be considered an elite home! Let me laugh small! Haha haa! I am an aristocrat without gold or timber in my principality! Time to sleep. Good night. 

Kwabena

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 12:12 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Olayinka,

 

Im on board with African language acquisition. In fact I'm planning to propose a Lingala course because we have a sizable Congolese population in our town. As for African Americans choosing to study European language, we should note that the vast majority of US institutions devote little or no resources to African language instruction, that much of what we learn about Africa is negative, and that the few colleges that do offer African language do so because African American students began demanding them in the 1960s. In fact, Carter G. Woodson raised the same point in the 1930s in his seminal work, "The Miseducation of the Negro". I also encourage you to investigate the work of Obadele Kambon, an African American professor who teaches at the University of Ghana. Prof Kambon has managed a website for over decade that is focused on African language acquisition:

 

https://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/forum.php

 

kzs

On Oct 25, 2017 8:38 AM, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I can see where both views represented here are coming from

 

I have had first hand experience of the African American position represented by Kwame expressed to me in a Black college.

 

All I can say is that we can not allow ourselves to be unnecessarily diverted, distracted and divided by such leanings across the Atlantic.  I welcome the decision of Dubois and brother Kwame to move closer to the mother continent (As well as the philanthropic  outreach of sisters like Oprah).  I would like to solicit Kwames support to help shape the trans-Atlantic tradition toward a genuinely Afrocentric focus such as his and DuBois. 

 

What I mean is whereas tendencies such as Kwame are gravitating towards an Afrocentric determination (even more than many African immigrant academics) when many African Americans are given the options of which language to choose to fulfil college requirements an o erwhelming majority prefers Eurooean languages.  Language is key to cultural acquisition and resentment toward Africa by such African Americans can be checkmated by a drive to question pedagogical linguistic standards by African Americans in general. Brother Kwame is eminently qualified to lead this drive.   This can lead to massive active  cultural exchange between African Americans and Africa in an active perennial basis.  Then and only then can brother Agozinos position make greater sense in its usefulness.  It would then not matter whether  it's African American youngsters that are being admitted to Cornell or children if African immigrants.

 

We should all adopt a cohesive multi pronged approach to combating and neutralizating racism which in agreement with Kwame is often too toxic to African children brought up in part in largely mono ethnic backgrounds situated within larger polities in Africa.

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

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Date: 25/10/2017 12:19 (GMT+00:00)

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[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Kwame, you should say Asians do not WHOLLY dominate elite schools! Blacks complaining refers to African Americans! These are quibbles to my arguments, but do not change the trajectory of my conclusions

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 26, 2017 12:56 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

GE

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Gloria,

Yes. And I would underscore that those same a cumulative and generational, structural (imperial) forces push talented Africans out of Africa or crushes them their ambitions in their homelands. For those of us who are pan-African, that is the crux of the matter--piecing together and exposing the structural dots that diminish the quality of life of Africans who were stolen from Africa and forcibly relocated in the belly of the white American beast for 10 generations or more (on land stolen from indigenous people who were annihilated) and our African cousins in Nigeria, in Togo, in Ghana, in DRC, Sierra Leone who are victims of dysfunctional governments crippled by an imposed chronic dependency on the very people who are the source of our collective problems--France, US, UK, etc.

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 4:43 AM, "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

GE

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena,

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

The students are raising a legitimate question. Namely, if the majority of Black students on campus are not African American, then what sort of Affirmative Action are you pursuing? The answer is that the original intent of Affirmative Action was to redress the vast and brutal inequalities created by slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, lynchings, police brutality, housing convenants, vagrancy laws, theft of black land, and so on. That original intent was replaced by a "diversity" model in the aftermath of a Supreme Court case Bakke vs. the UC Regents (because the white people who do the oppressing still make and adjudicate the rules)

You asked why African Americans dont they complain about Asian dominance. I responded that they do. I went on to explain that Asians dominate at elite institutions on the West Coast. And that both white Americans and Black Americans complain about that dominance, albeit from different vantage points (in the case of whites, lost privilege, and in the case of Blacks, chronic disadvantage). Asians dont dominate at Ivy League schools. 

Lastly, you seem to be ignoring the fact that African Americans have been challenging white people at white-controlled institutions for centuries. We continue to do so. Our African cousins, on the other hand, don't come typically come here to challenge racist white-controlled institutions. Rather, they come here for opportunity denied in their homelands rendered chronically dependent by imperialism.

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 4:43 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame, you should say Asians do not WHOLLY dominate elite schools! Blacks complaining refers to African Americans! These are quibbles to my arguments, but do not change the trajectory of my conclusions

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 26, 2017 12:56 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Once again I find your conclusions problematic. So are you saying that Ivy League schools forage for African students, but choose to overlook qualified African American students, to meet their affirmative action needs.

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

My Great Pan-African Soul Brother, let us just agree to disagree on these matters. So long!

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 10:50 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Oh! Please, Kwame save those  barbershop platitudes of "those of us who are pan-African" for yourself. Pan-Africanism is a product of multiple voices. And you are not pan-African than anyone who comes here to share their perspectives on issues! 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 10:11 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Gloria:

I should have qualified that the Canadian school did not pay my airfare on a silver-platter. It was a competitive grant for needy students that brought non-Canadians, including African Americans, white Americans, and Caribbean, Europeans, Asians,etc.,  to the school. Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system! I am not even historicizing this at all. My point is that the difference may be traced to the ways that children are prepared at home to understand the importance of education as a means of vertical mobility.  Give and take, Africans and African Americans, both from elite and non-elite homes, attend the same schools, yet Africans do “better.” Are we saying that white teachers favor African students in diverse ways? At where you teach, have you seen white professors favoring African students? Sure racism is not only at the school level. And if racism is like an encompassing climate, where and at what point are African students shielded from it! Are LSAT. MCAT, TOEFL, etc. set in ways that advantage African students! The plague of racism affects Africans as much as it impacts African American students, unless we wish to make a reductionist argument that African Americans, unlike Africans, have internalized racism and therefore it has become detrimental to their education. As for structural and systemic racism and the effects of the depredations of white hegemony, be it the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, colonialism, and even unidirectional Globalization, I am sure everyone who comes here understand the impact of such. And I won’t belabor such because they are not my frame of reference. And frankly, I am very comfortable with my perspectives and don't wish to take a second look at anyone's opinion as if generous dissent is a disease.  

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: October 27, 2017 1:28 AM

[Toyin Falola]

Kwabene:

At no time did Kwame insults you. Your response below does not add to the arguments

TF

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: October 25, 2017 11:48 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

You can substitute “Detroit” for “chicago” in everything Kwame wrote, and it would be true. Too true. And I full-heartedly endorse his important last paragraph.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2017 at 18:48
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena, 

 

I am in agreement with Ken (see thread) on the gross disparities extant in US K-12 education. Another pressing issue is violence. The pipeline for my institution is Chicago. In the 2.5 years I have worked here, I have had four students from the South Side of Chicago who have close friends who were victims of gunfire. One student has lost six male friends in her community to gunfire. Most Black Chicagoans are the descendants of African Americans who, in the 1920s, starting fleeing the south in massive numbers. They were escaping lynchings and other horrific acts of white racial terror. Their reception by whites in Chicago was also extremely violent. 

 

The Chicago police of the 1940s and 50s were basically execution squads who killed, arrested, or otherwise undermined any Black leader who tried to protect the interests of Black people. In 1969 the Chicago police conspired with federal agents to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. All that to say that these are brute inequities that have been centuries in the making. The original intent of Affirmative Action was to correct these injustices rooted centuries Jim Crow and slavery in America.

 

I think it is fair to say that the Black students at Cornel need guidance on how to frame the problem in a way that does not exacerbate divisions between Africans and African Americans. But the problem they are raising is legitimate. Cornel, and every other tertiary institution in the USA, should have Affirmative Action programs aimed at aggressively recruiting, retaining, graduating African Americans. They can/should do that alongside the robust recruitment of continental and second generation African students. 

 

kzs

 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:09 AM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame better is a relative concept with alternative angles of meanings. I premised my conclusions on your previous position that has some empiricisms to it that are measurable. Thus comparative performances predicated on "better" should not be "rejected," but rather nuanced or problematized. I am not getting your arguments and your conclusions! Are you saying that white racism encourages the academic performances of African Africans in the USA, while it discourages the academic performances of African Americans? You write "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo." Does this mean that if African Africans do "better" in schools it promotes white racist status quo and does it mean that if a heterogeneous group does not do well, it then marginalizes or defangs white racism.? I didn't have to belabor the ways that African Americans have benefited from Africans and vice versa. I raised that to counter your statements like "Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror." I think instead of contesting the academic performances of African Africans in the frameworks immigration, race, and racism, we should rather seek to understand “how” African Africans do “well,” if not “better” while others don’t. Based on your arguments, I would suggest that white racism in the USA is encompassing, not selective in the sense that it privileges and favors African Africans and their children’s educational pursuits. You are free to disagree with my generous position that newly-arrived African Africans find it more difficult to navigate the murky waters of racism than African Americans.

Kwabena 

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 25, 2017 2:26 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena, 

 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

 

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

 

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

 

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

 

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 24, 2017 3:15 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Brother Biko,

 

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

 

We must be clear that the aim of white supremacy, institutional or otherwise, is to destroy Black, Brown, and indigenous people and create passive assimilated bodies who don't challenge said systems. Indeed, the Movement for Black Lives is an example of a long continuum of Black resistance to domestic white terrorism. African American resistance to white racial terror was a necessary struggle in 1917 and it is no less necessary in 2017. The author's effort to gloss over that fact with the phrase "victimhood" is racist and offensive. There are Black political prisoners who have been in prison since the 1960s. Assata Shakur and others have been in exile nearly as long. Is it the author's position that Assata suffers from "victimhood"? What about 12 year-old Tamir Rice? Tamir was executed in less than two seconds by a police officer. Do we blame Tamir's murder on "victimhood"? There are millions of stories of black people who have been terrorized generation, after generation, after generation. The outcome of white racial terror are vast race-based inequalities that an educated immigrant can side-step by looking straight ahead, getting good grades, causing no controversies, and raising no uncomfortable questions with our white oppressors. 

 

Talented Africans leave their homelands because their aspirations are crushed under systems that were imposed by white people and now managed by black "matadors" (to borrow Chinweizu's phrase). Ironically, many of them wind up migrating to the very source of their problem--Europe and America. Many talented African Americans, by comparison, are crushed in ghettos created by white American racists. I don't plan of dying in America. But I have been fortunate to develop a longstanding relationship with an African nation (Ghana). Most African Americans don't have that experience. America, the land that hates them, is the only home they will ever know. Who will treat the centuries of trauma that Africans stuck American have endured? How can you treat the trauma if the oppression is ongoing? Given these conditions, we have no option but to keep fighting. "Success," then, should not be measured solely by standards created by white people to maintain white power. A better standard is to what degree do students agitate against the institutions aimed at destroying them. Du Bois was a "success." But after centuries of vicious harassment by the US government, Du Bois quit America and died in Ghana. The brilliant Paul Robeson was a "success." But Robeson chose to speak out against US imperialism abroad and racism at home. Robeson was also viciously harassed and probably poisoned by the US govt under the MkUltra program. Dr. King was a "success." But the US government literally tried to force him to commit suicide. See the pattern? The pathological US government murders, incarcerates, smears our most talented leaders and then that same pathological government labels Black people pathological. 

 

All Black Lives Matter, 

 

kzs 

On Thursday, October 19, 2017 at 2:05:22 PM UTC-5, Biko Agozino wrote:

A few have always risen against the odds and the few African African immigrant students who excel are not the rule. They come from populations with mass failures in examinations. About 80% of Nigerian students have been failing high school exams in Nigeria for decades. The theory of Chua and Rubenfeld missed this by overgeneralizing their convenient samples, one of their examples is Justice Sotomayor who was failing in high school until she asked a successful classmate to teach her how to study effectively. The missing link is lack of training in study skills. Our students are being given fish by teachers but they are not taught how to fish. Once students master study skills, they will excel even against the odds. African American students at Cornell cannot be labelled failures simple because they complain about institutional racism which is a reality that African African students should speak out against too. Any student at Cornell must be good enough to get there in the first place. The problem lies in the high school where every course is taught but not study skills. We have a proposal to experiment by working with failing high schools to teach study skills and then compare the learning results with control group of schools. We hypothesize that knowledge of smart study skills will achieve better results than the gospel of hard work. We have shared our action research design with many state governors internationally but no takers yet.

 

Biko

 

On Thursday, 19 October 2017, 05:32:40 GMT-4, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

 

 

Cornell’s Black Student Disunion

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/cornells-black-student-disunion-1508364848-lMyQjAxMTA3NTE4ODcxMjg4Wj/

A radical group calls on the university to disfavor immigrants.

Photo: istock/Getty Images

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[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Oga Falola, with all due respect, I don't think your intervention as a moderator is necessary at this stage! I did not insult Kwame. I responded to this: "For those of us who are pan-African, that is the crux of the matter..." My point is simply that this "small small" discussions cannot be used to subtly dismiss others as  non-pan-Africans. I may have read too much into what his statement means, but certainly would not insult him for anything.

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:22 AM

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena,

If Ghanaians and Nigerians are, in your words, "prepared better at home," then why can't they overwhelm the Black "matador" (Chinweizu) minority and create hundreds top-notch universities in their homelands?

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Gloria:

I should have qualified that the Canadian school did not pay my airfare on a silver-platter. It was a competitive grant for needy students that brought non-Canadians, including African Americans, white Americans, and Caribbean, Europeans, Asians,etc.,  to the school. Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system! I am not even historicizing this at all. My point is that the difference may be traced to the ways that children are prepared at home to understand the importance of education as a means of vertical mobility.  Give and take, Africans and African Americans, both from elite and non-elite homes, attend the same schools, yet Africans do “better.” Are we saying that white teachers favor African students in diverse ways? At where you teach, have you seen white professors favoring African students? Sure racism is not only at the school level. And if racism is like an encompassing climate, where and at what point are African students shielded from it! Are LSAT. MCAT, TOEFL, etc. set in ways that advantage African students! The plague of racism affects Africans as much as it impacts African American students, unless we wish to make a reductionist argument that African Americans, unlike Africans, have internalized racism and therefore it has become detrimental to their education. As for structural and systemic racism and the effects of the depredations of white hegemony, be it the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, colonialism, and even unidirectional Globalization, I am sure everyone who comes here understand the impact of such. And I won’t belabor such because they are not my frame of reference. And frankly, I am very comfortable with my perspectives and don't wish to take a second look at anyone's opinion as if generous dissent is a disease.  

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>

Sent: October 27, 2017 1:28 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

GE

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

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...

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Whether Ivy League schools intentionally favor African students I do not know. However, the question is whether it is disingenuous for Ivy League administrators to use African students to bolster their claim of Affirmative Action success stories. If Affirmative Action is about correcting brutal disparities created by slavery and Jim Crow then the answer is no. The Ivy Leagues are being dishonest. 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Once again I find your conclusions problematic. So are you saying that Ivy League schools forage for African students, but choose to overlook qualified African American students, to meet their affirmative action needs.

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

My Great Pan-African Soul Brother, let us just agree to disagree on these matters. So long!

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 10:50 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

...

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Kwabena,

I dont know if you're pan-African and I didn't exclude you from that group. My point is that part of the pan-African project should be connecting opportunity crushed in Mississippi to opportunity crushed in Lagos.

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Oh! Please, Kwame save those  barbershop platitudes of "those of us who are pan-African" for yourself. Pan-Africanism is a product of multiple voices. And you are not pan-African than anyone who comes here to share their perspectives on issues! 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 10:11 AM

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Thank you for the explanation. 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:43 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

If you don't know how do you then summon some "disingenuous....." to rescue your conclusion! Now you have centralized what you have been skirting around all along: Africans did not experience slavery and Jim Crow so they should not benefit from Affirmative Action! The pan-African inclusion is lost oh! 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:53 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Please, read carefully: "Prepared better at home" is not a synonym for LIVING in Africa! I use home to mean the influence of the immediate/extended family and the space was even America, not Africa. Remember Chinweizu has his critics, both African and non-Africans. You may also talk about the large number of African scholars who have put American universities in the limelight! Oh yes, there are great African universities in Nigerian and Ghana that are comparable to any in the world. And here, let us return to pan-Africanizing!

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:32 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[kwame zulu shabazz]

I only cite Chinweizu to credit the phrase "matador"--selfish African elites who are complicit in the dysfunction of African governments.

I can only go by what Nigerians say about Nigerian universities. They all seem to agree that Nigerian education is failing Nigerian students. And what of the mass WEAC debacle? I know Ghana much better. Ghana's flagship universities are regionally ok (but the bar is low)-- Legon, KNUST, UCC--are not world class by any stretch of the imagination. The infracture is generally awful, the classrooms are woefully overcrowded, they lack basic resources such as textbooks, etc.

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 7:11 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Please, read carefully: "Prepared better at home" is not a synonym for LIVING in Africa! I use home to mean the influence of the immediate/extended family and the space was even America, not Africa. Remember Chinweizu has his critics, both African and non-Africans. You may also talk about the large number of African scholars who have put American universities in the limelight! Oh yes, there are great African universities in Nigerian and Ghana that are comparable to any in the world. And here, let us return to pan-Africanizing!

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 11:32 AM

[kwame zulu shabazz]

No. Earlier in the thread is said that Ivys should do both--aggressively address the problem of brutal disparities in America created by slavery and Jim Crow whilst continuing the robust recruitment of African students. Alongside those imperatives, Black radicals must continue to challege the fundamental problem of racism/white supremacy on college campuses and the racist white control of knowledge production.

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 7:10 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

If you don't know how do you then summon some "disingenuous....." to rescue your conclusion! Now you have centralized what you have been skirting around all along: Africans did not experience slavery and Jim Crow so they should not benefit from Affirmative Action! The pan-African inclusion is lost oh! 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 11:53 AM

...

[Toyin Falola]

Kwame:

A small question for you: at what point do we begin to take responsibilities for our failures, recognizing the hegemonic issues that overwhelm us? In other words, as Pan-Africanists, who is stopping us other than ourselves, if the knowledge that is against us, as you map out so clearly, is understood?

 

From: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 27, 2017 at 7:24 AM
To: dialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

No. Earlier in the thread is said that Ivys should do both--aggressively address the problem of brutal disparities in America created by slavery and Jim Crow whilst continuing the robust recruitment of African students. Alongside those imperatives, Black radicals must continue to challege the fundamental problem of racism/white supremacy on college campuses and the racist white control of knowledge production.

 

kzs

 

On Oct 27, 2017 7:10 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

If you don't know how do you then summon some "disingenuous....." to rescue your conclusion! Now you have centralized what you have been skirting around all along: Africans did not experience slavery and Jim Crow so they should not benefit from Affirmative Action! The pan-African inclusion is lost oh! 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:53 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Whether Ivy League schools intentionally favor African students I do not know. However, the question is whether it is disingenuous for Ivy League administrators to use African students to bolster their claim of Affirmative Action success stories. If Affirmative Action is about correcting brutal disparities created by slavery and Jim Crow then the answer is no. The Ivy Leagues are being dishonest. 

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Once again I find your conclusions problematic. So are you saying that Ivy League schools forage for African students, but choose to overlook qualified African American students, to meet their affirmative action needs.

 

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

My Great Pan-African Soul Brother, let us just agree to disagree on these matters. So long!

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 10:50 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

 

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

 

The students are raising a legitimate question. Namely, if the majority of Black students on campus are not African American, then what sort of Affirmative Action are you pursuing? The answer is that the original intent of Affirmative Action was to redress the vast and brutal inequalities created by slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, lynchings, police brutality, housing convenants, vagrancy laws, theft of black land, and so on. That original intent was replaced by a "diversity" model in the aftermath of a Supreme Court case Bakke vs. the UC Regents (because the white people who do the oppressing still make and adjudicate the rules)

 

You asked why African Americans dont they complain about Asian dominance. I responded that they do. I went on to explain that Asians dominate at elite institutions on the West Coast. And that both white Americans and Black Americans complain about that dominance, albeit from different vantage points (in the case of whites, lost privilege, and in the case of Blacks, chronic disadvantage). Asians dont dominate at Ivy League schools. 

 

Lastly, you seem to be ignoring the fact that African Americans have been challenging white people at white-controlled institutions for centuries. We continue to do so. Our African cousins, on the other hand, don't come typically come here to challenge racist white-controlled institutions. Rather, they come here for opportunity denied in their homelands rendered chronically dependent by imperialism.

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 4:43 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame, you should say Asians do not WHOLLY dominate elite schools! Blacks complaining refers to African Americans! These are quibbles to my arguments, but do not change the trajectory of my conclusions

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 26, 2017 12:56 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

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...

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

You are now pioneering a new field of arguments with hasty conclusions! What are you using to measure Ghanaian universities? I recently returned home to teach and research and can provide first-hand insights and changes and continuities, but first run away from the generalizations to some specific units of analyses then I can speak to such. If Nigerians intellectuals talk about Nigerians universities, it is that they seek improvements, not that they are saying that every backyard college and third-tier university in America is better than all Nigerian Universities.

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 12:43 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi kwabena

I would be interested in hearingyour assessment of how the Ghanaian university system is working.  You’ve had the experience of u.s. and now Ghana, and although I am sure each university, and each country, is different, we need your first hand experience to be able to assess the situation

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, 27 October 2017 at 11:14
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

You are now pioneering a new field of arguments with hasty conclusions! What are you using to measure Ghanaian universities? I recently returned home to teach and research and can provide first-hand insights and changes and continuities, but first run away from the generalizations to some specific units of analyses then I can speak to such. If Nigerians intellectuals talk about Nigerians universities, it is that they seek improvements, not that they are saying that every backyard college and third-tier university in America is better than all Nigerian Universities.

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 12:43 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

 

I only cite Chinweizu to credit the phrase "matador"--selfish African elites who are complicit in the dysfunction of African governments.

 

I can only go by what Nigerians say about Nigerian universities. They all seem to agree that Nigerian education is failing Nigerian students. And what of the mass WEAC debacle? I know Ghana much better. Ghana's flagship universities are regionally ok (but the bar is low)-- Legon, KNUST, UCC--are not world class by any stretch of the imagination. The infracture is generally awful, the classrooms are woefully overcrowded, they lack basic resources such as textbooks, etc.

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 7:11 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Please, read carefully: "Prepared better at home" is not a synonym for LIVING in Africa! I use home to mean the influence of the immediate/extended family and the space was even America, not Africa. Remember Chinweizu has his critics, both African and non-Africans. You may also talk about the large number of African scholars who have put American universities in the limelight! Oh yes, there are great African universities in Nigerian and Ghana that are comparable to any in the world. And here, let us return to pan-Africanizing!

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 11:32 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena,

 

If Ghanaians and Nigerians are, in your words, "prepared better at home," then why can't they overwhelm the Black "matador" (Chinweizu) minority and create hundreds top-notch universities in their homelands?

 

kzs

 

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Gloria:

I should have qualified that the Canadian school did not pay my airfare on a silver-platter. It was a competitive grant for needy students that brought non-Canadians, including African Americans, white Americans, and Caribbean, Europeans, Asians,etc.,  to the school. Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system! I am not even historicizing this at all. My point is that the difference may be traced to the ways that children are prepared at home to understand the importance of education as a means of vertical mobility.  Give and take, Africans and African Americans, both from elite and non-elite homes, attend the same schools, yet Africans do “better.” Are we saying that white teachers favor African students in diverse ways? At where you teach, have you seen white professors favoring African students? Sure racism is not only at the school level. And if racism is like an encompassing climate, where and at what point are African students shielded from it! Are LSAT. MCAT, TOEFL, etc. set in ways that advantage African students! The plague of racism affects Africans as much as it impacts African American students, unless we wish to make a reductionist argument that African Americans, unlike Africans, have internalized racism and therefore it has become detrimental to their education. As for structural and systemic racism and the effects of the depredations of white hegemony, be it the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, colonialism, and even unidirectional Globalization, I am sure everyone who comes here understand the impact of such. And I won’t belabor such because they are not my frame of reference. And frankly, I am very comfortable with my perspectives and don't wish to take a second look at anyone's opinion as if generous dissent is a disease.  

Kwabena

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: October 27, 2017 1:28 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

 

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

 

 

 

GE

 

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: October 25, 2017 11:48 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

You can substitute “Detroit” for “chicago” in everything Kwame wrote, and it would be true. Too true. And I full-heartedly endorse his important last paragraph.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 25 October 2017 at 18:48
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena, 

 

I am in agreement with Ken (see thread) on the gross disparities extant in US K-12 education. Another pressing issue is violence. The pipeline for my institution is Chicago. In the 2.5 years I have worked here, I have had four students from the South Side of Chicago who have close friends who were victims of gunfire. One student has lost six male friends in her community to gunfire. Most Black Chicagoans are the descendants of African Americans who, in the 1920s, starting fleeing the south in massive numbers. They were escaping lynchings and other horrific acts of white racial terror. Their reception by whites in Chicago was also extremely violent. 

 

The Chicago police of the 1940s and 50s were basically execution squads who killed, arrested, or otherwise undermined any Black leader who tried to protect the interests of Black people. In 1969 the Chicago police conspired with federal agents to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. All that to say that these are brute inequities that have been centuries in the making. The original intent of Affirmative Action was to correct these injustices rooted centuries Jim Crow and slavery in America.

 

I think it is fair to say that the Black students at Cornel need guidance on how to frame the problem in a way that does not exacerbate divisions between Africans and African Americans. But the problem they are raising is legitimate. Cornel, and every other tertiary institution in the USA, should have Affirmative Action programs aimed at aggressively recruiting, retaining, graduating African Americans. They can/should do that alongside the robust recruitment of continental and second generation African students. 

 

kzs

 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:09 AM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame better is a relative concept with alternative angles of meanings. I premised my conclusions on your previous position that has some empiricisms to it that are measurable. Thus comparative performances predicated on "better" should not be "rejected," but rather nuanced or problematized. I am not getting your arguments and your conclusions! Are you saying that white racism encourages the academic performances of African Africans in the USA, while it discourages the academic performances of African Americans? You write "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo." Does this mean that if African Africans do "better" in schools it promotes white racist status quo and does it mean that if a heterogeneous group does not do well, it then marginalizes or defangs white racism.? I didn't have to belabor the ways that African Americans have benefited from Africans and vice versa. I raised that to counter your statements like "Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror." I think instead of contesting the academic performances of African Africans in the frameworks immigration, race, and racism, we should rather seek to understand “how” African Africans do “well,” if not “better” while others don’t. Based on your arguments, I would suggest that white racism in the USA is encompassing, not selective in the sense that it privileges and favors African Africans and their children’s educational pursuits. You are free to disagree with my generous position that newly-arrived African Africans find it more difficult to navigate the murky waters of racism than African Americans.

Kwabena 

 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 25, 2017 2:26 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Kwabena, 

 

Again, I reject the claim that Africans are "doing better" if "better" is measured on terms designated by the white status quo and does nothing to challenge the white racist status quo. I also know Africans here who are exasperated by the fact that their children are asking why black people are inferior because that's what the white kids and teachers are telling them in school. I have an African friend who has decided that the racial climate is too toxic so they have resolved to send their child back to Nigeria for school. "Doing better" misses those stories. 

 

Who would deny that African Americans have benefited from struggles in Africa? Indeed, African Americans were engaged in the examples you listed--the Italian invasion of Italy and decolonization led by Nkrumah and many others. Two African American pilots flew in defense of Ethiopia despite a US ban on them doing so. 

 

I don't agree that Africans in the US are disadvantaged with navigating institutional racism. In fact it is sometimes the case that immigrants gain privileges by disassociating with African Americans. Moreover, as I noted earlier, the harm caused by white racial terrorism is cumulative. That is to say African Americans, Native Americans, Latin Americans have experienced white brutality generation, after generation, after generation. Some of those victims have been in prison for decades. But the author dismisses all of that as "victimhood." 

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

 

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 5:36 PM, Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

About the below, I will make simple observations

 

African Africans who live the USA face the same institutional white racism, sometimes worse ,because they don't know how to navigate its murky waters!

 

African Americans have also benefited from forms of empowerment that had its roots in Africa, for example, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia and the rhythmic osmosis of decolonization in Africa championed by Nkrumah and co. Sometimes African American political energies and unity arise when they engage Africa, for example, Apartheid struggles.

 

You are not suggesting that what Africa Africans study in America on the desk of white racism is not the same as what African Americans study. So look for a variable that account for why African Africans do better in school than their cousins

 

I think you are half-right. Yes, institutional racism is an actual thing that African Americans have resisted and continue to resist and challenge. Recent immigrants to America benefit from Black America's unfinished business of racial justice for centuries of white racial terror. Simply learning better study habits isn't the point of all this. We must question what is being studied. Who sets the terms? Whose interests are being served? White knowledge was built on Black subordination. White America must be held accountable for centuries of white racial terror against its Black, Brown, and indigenous citizens. Getting good grades without raising your voice against white supremacy is a sort of assimilation that perpetuates the problem. 

 

 

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[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Hello,

Ken, I will do so. But let me first visit my pawpaw plantation this weekend then take to your request. 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: October 27, 2017 3:40 PM

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Toyin,

I have used the term "matador" precisely to acknowledge the fact that we Africans bear some responsibility for our condition. But I suspect that you and I won't agree on what I believe is the massive role of ongoing imperialism that undermines "third world" nations. Or how the US state crushes, incarcerates, brutalizes, miseducated, impoverishes Black, Brown, and indigenous Americans.

By definition, hegemony operates on two levels. Level one, the victims are compelled to be participate in their own oppression. Level two, there always remains the threat of force of level one becomes unreliable. Or at least that is my understanding of the concept.

kzs 

On Oct 27, 2017 9:59 AM, "Toyin Falola" <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

Kwame:

A small question for you: at what point do we begin to take responsibilities for our failures, recognizing the hegemonic issues that overwhelm us? In other words, as Pan-Africanists, who is stopping us other than ourselves, if the knowledge that is against us, as you map out so clearly, is understood?

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, October 27, 2017 at 7:24 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

No. Earlier in the thread is said that Ivys should do both--aggressively address the problem of brutal disparities in America created by slavery and Jim Crow whilst continuing the robust recruitment of African students. Alongside those imperatives, Black radicals must continue to challege the fundamental problem of racism/white supremacy on college campuses and the racist white control of knowledge production.

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 7:10 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

If you don't know how do you then summon some "disingenuous....." to rescue your conclusion! Now you have centralized what you have been skirting around all along: Africans did not experience slavery and Jim Crow so they should not benefit from Affirmative Action! The pan-African inclusion is lost oh! 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 11:53 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Whether Ivy League schools intentionally favor African students I do not know. However, the question is whether it is disingenuous for Ivy League administrators to use African students to bolster their claim of Affirmative Action success stories. If Affirmative Action is about correcting brutal disparities created by slavery and Jim Crow then the answer is no. The Ivy Leagues are being dishonest. 

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Once again I find your conclusions problematic. So are you saying that Ivy League schools forage for African students, but choose to overlook qualified African American students, to meet their affirmative action needs.

 

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

My Great Pan-African Soul Brother, let us just agree to disagree on these matters. So long!

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 10:50 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

 

I failed to state early on that one key reason African Americans at Ivy League schools are questioning the dearth of African Americans on their campuses as compared to the relatively high number of continental Africans is that Ivy League schools tout their higher than average enrollment of Black students as an Affirmative Action success story. 

 

The students are raising a legitimate question. Namely, if the majority of Black students on campus are not African American, then what sort of Affirmative Action are you pursuing? The answer is that the original intent of Affirmative Action was to redress the vast and brutal inequalities created by slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, lynchings, police brutality, housing convenants, vagrancy laws, theft of black land, and so on. That original intent was replaced by a "diversity" model in the aftermath of a Supreme Court case Bakke vs. the UC Regents (because the white people who do the oppressing still make and adjudicate the rules)

 

You asked why African Americans dont they complain about Asian dominance. I responded that they do. I went on to explain that Asians dominate at elite institutions on the West Coast. And that both white Americans and Black Americans complain about that dominance, albeit from different vantage points (in the case of whites, lost privilege, and in the case of Blacks, chronic disadvantage). Asians dont dominate at Ivy League schools. 

 

Lastly, you seem to be ignoring the fact that African Americans have been challenging white people at white-controlled institutions for centuries. We continue to do so. Our African cousins, on the other hand, don't come typically come here to challenge racist white-controlled institutions. Rather, they come here for opportunity denied in their homelands rendered chronically dependent by imperialism.

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 4:43 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Kwame, you should say Asians do not WHOLLY dominate elite schools! Blacks complaining refers to African Americans! These are quibbles to my arguments, but do not change the trajectory of my conclusions

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 26, 2017 12:56 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

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...

[kwame zulu shabazz]

I have a relationship with the University of Ghana stretching back to 1997. The University of Ghana is in perpetual crisis. Africa has tons of talented students but African schools are failing them. This is indisputable. Is it because we Africans are incapable of educating our youth or is it primarily because of deeper long-standing imperial impediments. I say more the latter than the former. I have collected a few essays on the topic below:

"Who is to blame for the incessant mass failure of WAEC: The students, the teachers or WAEC itself?"

https://www.google.com/amp/venturesafrica.com/who-is-to-blame-for-the-incessant-mass-failure-of-waec-the-students-the-teachers-or-waec-itself/amp/

"NIGERIA: Universities hit by accreditation crisis"

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20101029225220494

"FAILING THE TEST: THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA"

http://the-generation.net/failing-the-test-the-university-of-ghana/

"Letter from Africa: Why Nigeria is failing teachers and pupils"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-africa-41656369

"72% of WASSCE Candidates Failed this Year’s Exams | Results Endemic of Bigger Problem with Education in Ghana"

https://www.ghanacelebrities.com/2014/08/20/72-wassce-candidates-failed-years-exams-results-endemic-bigger-problem-education-ghana/

"FAILING THE TEST: THE UNIVERSITY OF GHANA"

http://the-generation.net/failing-the-test-the-university-of-ghana/

"Letter from Africa: Why Nigeria is failing teachers and pupils"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-africa-41656369

"72% of WASSCE Candidates Failed this Year’s Exams | Results Endemic of Bigger Problem with Education in Ghana"

https://www.ghanacelebrities.com/2014/08/20/72-wassce-candidates-failed-years-exams-results-endemic-bigger-problem-education-ghana/

On Oct 27, 2017 11:05 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Ken, I will do so. But let me first visit my pawpaw plantation this weekend then take to your request. 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Sent: October 27, 2017 3:40 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Hi kwabena

I would be interested in hearingyour assessment of how the Ghanaian university system is working.  You’ve had the experience of u.s. and now Ghana, and although I am sure each university, and each country, is different, we need your first hand experience to be able to assess the situation

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, 27 October 2017 at 11:14
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

You are now pioneering a new field of arguments with hasty conclusions! What are you using to measure Ghanaian universities? I recently returned home to teach and research and can provide first-hand insights and changes and continuities, but first run away from the generalizations to some specific units of analyses then I can speak to such. If Nigerians intellectuals talk about Nigerians universities, it is that they seek improvements, not that they are saying that every backyard college and third-tier university in America is better than all Nigerian Universities.

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 12:43 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

 

I only cite Chinweizu to credit the phrase "matador"--selfish African elites who are complicit in the dysfunction of African governments.

 

I can only go by what Nigerians say about Nigerian universities. They all seem to agree that Nigerian education is failing Nigerian students. And what of the mass WEAC debacle? I know Ghana much better. Ghana's flagship universities are regionally ok (but the bar is low)-- Legon, KNUST, UCC--are not world class by any stretch of the imagination. The infracture is generally awful, the classrooms are woefully overcrowded, they lack basic resources such as textbooks, etc.

 

kzs

On Oct 27, 2017 7:11 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Please, read carefully: "Prepared better at home" is not a synonym for LIVING in Africa! I use home to mean the influence of the immediate/extended family and the space was even America, not Africa. Remember Chinweizu has his critics, both African and non-Africans. You may also talk about the large number of African scholars who have put American universities in the limelight! Oh yes, there are great African universities in Nigerian and Ghana that are comparable to any in the world. And here, let us return to pan-Africanizing!

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>

Sent: October 27, 2017 11:32 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

 

If Ghanaians and Nigerians are, in your words, "prepared better at home," then why can't they overwhelm the Black "matador" (Chinweizu) minority and create hundreds top-notch universities in their homelands?

 

kzs

 

On Oct 27, 2017 6:15 AM, "Kwabena Akurang-Parry" <kap...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Gloria:

I should have qualified that the Canadian school did not pay my airfare on a silver-platter. It was a competitive grant for needy students that brought non-Canadians, including African Americans, white Americans, and Caribbean, Europeans, Asians,etc.,  to the school. Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system! I am not even historicizing this at all. My point is that the difference may be traced to the ways that children are prepared at home to understand the importance of education as a means of vertical mobility.  Give and take, Africans and African Americans, both from elite and non-elite homes, attend the same schools, yet Africans do “better.” Are we saying that white teachers favor African students in diverse ways? At where you teach, have you seen white professors favoring African students? Sure racism is not only at the school level. And if racism is like an encompassing climate, where and at what point are African students shielded from it! Are LSAT. MCAT, TOEFL, etc. set in ways that advantage African students! The plague of racism affects Africans as much as it impacts African American students, unless we wish to make a reductionist argument that African Americans, unlike Africans, have internalized racism and therefore it has become detrimental to their education. As for structural and systemic racism and the effects of the depredations of white hegemony, be it the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, colonialism, and even unidirectional Globalization, I am sure everyone who comes here understand the impact of such. And I won’t belabor such because they are not my frame of reference. And frankly, I am very comfortable with my perspectives and don't wish to take a second look at anyone's opinion as if generous dissent is a disease.  

Kwabena

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Sent: October 27, 2017 1:28 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

 

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

 

 

 

GE

 

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

 

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

 

 

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...

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Brother Kwame, I was with you until you started extending the "imperial impediments" argument wholesale to continental educational problems. That frame is passe. The problem is largely domestic, I must tell you. Even my colleagues in Nigerian universities, who for a few decades predicated their commentary on the problems of Nigerian higher education on the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s, now know better than to keep harping on that dated causal explanation. Go to the archive of this forum. We have analyzed the problems of the Nigerian higher education system to death. It has multiple facets--policy, systemic, attitudinal, etc, but the imperial or neo-imperial argument is rarely mentioned, and rightly so because it no longer has any purchase with honest observers of the Nigerian higher education scene. 90 percent of the problem in the Nigerian higher education sector is traceable to the actions and inactions of Nigerians--including (actually, mostly) university administrators and academics.

Imperial, structural, historical impediments in the African American educational experience, YES, but thread carefully when you adapt that explanation uncritically to African educational problems.

[Malami buba]

… on the other hand, Moses, when TETFund, but not PTDF, used only the top 20 ranked UK universities as a key criteria for study fellowship awards, there's something quite 'imperial' and 'structural' about that decision. I have two very promising junior colleagues that we wanted to send to the University of Bangor for Language & Linguistics MA, using our own  allocation of staff development money, but they were turned down ostensibly because Bangor is not on their list of 'approved' universities.  Mind you, Professor David Crystal, author of more than 100 books on Language & Linguistics is still active in the School of Language & Linguistics at Bangor, where our GAs wanted to study! How do you explain the ridiculousness of this superficial quality assurance? 

As for HE big men, I believe that their residual imperialism and hegemonic pursuits are major sources of academic malaise in Nigerian universities.

Malami

[Kwabena Akurang-Parry]

Kwame:

If you wish to engage, focus on one issue at a time. There is no school system in the world that does not have some structural problems! All the problems you have listed below can be found in gilded American schools and educational system.  Even some can be found in Harvard! May be you should tell us the ideological lens and methodological praxes with which you look at the University of Ghana. I hope it is not the "tourist mentality," where every experience is refracted through homegrown hegemonic ideas. 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com>
Sent: October 27, 2017 7:40 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Moses,

I remember the debate and the thread. As I said, we just won't agree on that point. I think the imperial impediment is still substantial. It is the imperial or neo-colonial that shapes, informs, influences, many of factors you have named.

kzs

How can it not be when Nigeria is depende

...

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system!" Kwabena

No.  This grossly distorts my point, Kwabena. I wouldn't want to be associated with such a simplistic formulation. In fact I  argued that the problem lies  largely at the  pre-university level

where the structures of disempowerment take a serious toll and   I  made reference to high school advantages with reference to the Caribbean and Africa.  Have another read.

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 7:01 AM

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Kwabena,  you  definitely win on this ticket issue.  

Kwame, I believe we have to be very proud indeed of the successes of AfAf   in elite institutions for a few reasons.

1.  This  makes quite ridiculous the Bell Curve theory and all those racist theories out there that argue that Black people  have no brain or intellectual stamina. An entire school of thought has flourished in Euro- America touting that silly  racist claim.
2.  AfAfs  have produced  role models - not to envy -  but to emulate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      At the same time the glass ceiling remains somewhat in place- -  beyond the  elite schools and  the university environment -  with its own implications for student/ parental  debt repayment, full professional recognition, alienation,   job retention, promotion etc. We may see a convergence of grievances across the board.                                                                                                                                                                 

 I tend to agree with you that the US should not really take  full credit. I give  most credit to the  countries that  laid the foundation for these student successes -  especially in terms of the first generation of scholar - pioneers. I don't want to underestimate the American educational system at the graduate level.  This may be its  strong point,   but its  foundation system is rickety, to say the least.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                As future AfAf  generations get sucked into the dysfunctional  structural  complexities, Trumpism,  De Vos -ism  etc, the AfAf  record may be affected,  and those study guides and learning strategies and whatever solutions we come up with,  would become even more  relevant.

That is why this discussion is important to all of us, tough as it is. There is also the need to come up with  meaningful solutions .

 I would hope that some of us would work with the Cornell students  and come up with tangible non-divisive ones.

I am on my way to South Africa,  right now.    No doubt this  discussion has  relevance to  South Africa as well .

GE

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 7:01 AM

--

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Sister Gloria, 

It is not the burden of Africans or African Americans to disprove the racist "Bell Curve." And we have plenty of models stretching back to Du Bois for "high achievement" at elite American institutions. But I think we are missing the gravity of the situation. The transatlantic slave trade was a genocidal white war on Black people. The first enslaved (or indentured) Africans landed in North America in 1619. Chattel slavery in the US was abolished in 1865. Jim Crow, another form of white terrorism, followed shortly thereafter and was not dismantled until the 1960s alonside the anti-colonial struggle in Africa. TODAY, in 2017, under the banner of the Black Lives Matter Movement, African Americans are still out in the streets making the simple demand to be acknowledged as human beings and full citizens in the only land that most of us know. My point is that the genocidal war against African people is ongoing. For that reason, I cannot consider an African or an African American, who graduates from a racist elite white institution without raising her or his voice against genocidal war, a model for anything other than assimilating into to system designed to destroy us. We need models like Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson and Ayi Kwei Armah and Anna Julia Cooper and Chiekh Anta Diop who graduated from elite western universities and devoted their lives to countering the genocidal war on Black people. 

kzs

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

cell: 336-422-9577
skype: kwame zulu shabazz
twitter: https://twitter.com/kzshabazz
===
THE NEUTRAL SCHOLAR IS AN IGNOBLE MAN. Here, a man must be hot, or be accounted cold, or, perchance, something worse than hot or cold. The lukewarm and the cowardly, will be rejected by earnest men on either side of the controversy." Fredrick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered" (1854).
===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 3:12 PM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu> wrote:

Kwabena,  you  definitely win on this ticket issue.  

Kwame, I believe we have to be very proud indeed of the successes of AfAf   in elite institutions for a few reasons.

1.  This  makes quite ridiculous the Bell Curve theory and all those racist theories out there that argue that Black people  have no brain or intellectual stamina. An entire school of thought has flourished in Euro- America touting that silly  racist claim.
2.  AfAfs  have produced  role models - not to envy -  but to emulate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      At the same time the glass ceiling remains somewhat in place- -  beyond the  elite schools and  the university environment -  with its own implications for student/ parental  debt repayment, full professional recognition, alienation,   job retention, promotion etc. We may see a convergence of grievances across the board.                                                                                                                                                                 

 I tend to agree with you that the US should not really take  full credit. I give  most credit to the  countries that  laid the foundation for these student successes -  especially in terms of the first generation of scholar - pioneers. I don't want to underestimate the American educational system at the graduate level.  This may be its  strong point,   but its  foundation system is rickety, to say the least.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                As future AfAf  generations get sucked into the dysfunctional  structural  complexities, Trumpism,  De Vos -ism  etc, the AfAf  record may be affected,  and those study guides and learning strategies and whatever solutions we come up with,  would become even more  relevant.

That is why this discussion is important to all of us, tough as it is. There is also the need to come up with  meaningful solutions .

 I would hope that some of us would work with the Cornell students  and come up with tangible non-divisive ones.

I am on my way to South Africa,  right now.    No doubt this  discussion has  relevance to  South Africa as well .

GE

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 7:01 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Gloria:

I should have qualified that the Canadian school did not pay my airfare on a silver-platter. It was a competitive grant for needy students that brought non-Canadians, including African Americans, white Americans, and Caribbean, Europeans, Asians,etc.,  to the school. Your point is that White racism targets African-Americans and that is why African students do "better" at all levels of the educational system! I am not even historicizing this at all. My point is that the difference may be traced to the ways that children are prepared at home to understand the importance of education as a means of vertical mobility.  Give and take, Africans and African Americans, both from elite and non-elite homes, attend the same schools, yet Africans do “better.” Are we saying that white teachers favor African students in diverse ways? At where you teach, have you seen white professors favoring African students? Sure racism is not only at the school level. And if racism is like an encompassing climate, where and at what point are African students shielded from it! Are LSAT. MCAT, TOEFL, etc. set in ways that advantage African students! The plague of racism affects Africans as much as it impacts African American students, unless we wish to make a reductionist argument that African Americans, unlike Africans, have internalized racism and therefore it has become detrimental to their education. As for structural and systemic racism and the effects of the depredations of white hegemony, be it the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow, colonialism, and even unidirectional Globalization, I am sure everyone who comes here understand the impact of such. And I won’t belabor such because they are not my frame of reference. And frankly, I am very comfortable with my perspectives and don't wish to take a second look at anyone's opinion as if generous dissent is a disease.  

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@ccsu.edu>

Sent: October 27, 2017 1:28 AM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Kwabena,

             You seem to be waving the flag of the old school conservatives who

avoid looking at structural issues,  and the  diverse processes of disempowerment at play.

 They blame  families, culture, rap music, the way people walked,

 the way people talked, the food they ate, their genetic profile -  and everything under the sun except  historical and

 current structures of disempowerment. Of course they like to use the word victimhood, too, and take on an air of superiority in the process.

 The same Canadian university that  paid your ticket from Ghana  would  probably not spend a penny on a bus fare for the Black Canadians

and Native Americans within their borders. Have you wondered why? I am not saying that you should not have gotten your ticket paid.

I am simply pointing to the complexities and contradictory nature  of  hegemonic politics.

Kindly have  another look at the views of Ken, Kwame, Biko and Moses on this issue..

 

GE

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kwabena Akurang-Parry <kap...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 8:09 PM

To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Cornell¹s Black Student Disunion

Ken:

Kwame's last paragraph is not in dispute here! But let me ask why African Americans would complain about the increasing number of Africans in elite schools and overlook Asian domination of elite schools! May be Kwame can theorize from some conservative pan-African perspectives, while Ken wave the flag of neo-liberal empiricisms! 

Kwabena

---

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

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