19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

By Reno Omokri

On Wednesday the 17th of January, 2018, an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the Northwest University, Kano, Umar Labdo Muhammad, claimed that Benue state belongs to the Fulani ethnic nationality by right of conquest.

According to his warped thinking, “Benue State belongs to the Fulani people by right of conquest. This is because half of the state is part of the Bauchi Emirate and the other half is part of the Adamawa Emirate. Benue is therefore part and parcel of the Sokoto Caliphate. So no one has the right to expel the Fulani from Benue under any guise.

Second to the Arabs, perhaps the Fulani are the most benevolent and merciful conquerors in history. If they had applied the Nazi final solution to the natives, or if they had treated them the same way the European settlers treated Red Indians in North America or the Aborigines in Australia, the story would have been different today.”

Just imagine this type of mentality!

But if you take a minute to reflect, Umar Labdo Muhammad’s comments begin to make sense. What do I mean?

Well, if you take into account the unprecedented and uncharacteristic refusal of President Muhammadu Buhari to take any concrete action to stop killer Fulani herdsmen and his government’s reluctance to tag them as the terrorists they are, preferring instead to treat them with kid gloves and label them ‘mere criminals’ it will not be a stretch to make assumptions that President Buhari may agree with Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad’s theory of Fulani racial superiority.

Let us consider the facts.

Since the ethnic cleansing undertaken by Fulani herdsmen in Benue State, President Buhari has not visited the state to condole with the state government or the victims.

In fact, just days after the killings, the President played host to a group of seven leprous governors who asked him to run for a second term. Apparently, securing his second term is more important to President Buhari than securing his own citizens!

And instead of going to Benue State to visit the victims, the President summoned the Benue State Governor and the elders of the state to Abuja.

As an aside, let me just state that if I were the Governor of Benue State, I would not have been foolish enough to accept such an invitation. We are in a democracy and the President cannot summon or punish a Governor. But that is just me. How I wish Benue had a Fayose instead of an Ortom!

But the story does not end there. Instead of reassuring the Governor and elders of Benue that he would apprehend the killer Fulani herdsmen who have, according to the Benue elders, killed thousands of Nigerians in Benue since Buhari came to power, the President turned himself to the advocate of the herdsmen and urged the government and people of Benue to show “restraint”.

The President’s exact words were as follows:

“Your Excellency, the governor, and all the leaders here, I am appealing to you to try to restrain your people. I assure you that the Police, the Department of State Security and other security agencies had been directed to ensure that all those behind the mayhem get punished.”

How the President could ask the victims to show restraint without so much as a warning to the perpetrators stuns me.

Well, to show you how worthless the President’s reassurances are, Fulani herdsmen killed four more people in Benue less than 24 hours after President Buhari’s strong reassurances!

But why does President Buhari seem so incapacitated when it comes to Fulani herdsmen?

And coincidentally, around the time he received the Benue delegation, President Buhari was shown on the Nigerian Television Authority boasting about how he used force to chase Yahya Jammeh from power in Gambia.

If he could use force on Jammeh 2,000 miles away, what is stopping him from using that same force on killer herdsmen here in Nigeria? Charity begins at home not in The Gambia!

Is this not the same President under whom 347 unarmed Shiite men, women, children and infants were killed for merely blocking the way of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Turkur Buratai?

Is this not the same President that militarized the entire Southern Nigeria with Operation Python Dance in the Southeast, Operation Crocodile Smile in the South-south and Operation Crocodile Smile 2 in the Southwest?

Why has the President, who is a lion in the face of Boko Haram, suddenly become a mouse in the face of Fulani herdsmen?

Could it be because President Muhammadu Buhari shares Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad’s philosophy about Fulani racial superiority?

The President may not have acted when Fulani herdsmen killed Benue people, but he sure did act when Adamawa and Taraba people killed Fulani herdsmen and he acted decisively. Troops were sent to intervene in those theaters very quickly.

We also saw the President’s decisive action when Fulani cattle were allegedly rustled in Kaduna, Nasarawa and Zamfara state. In these cases, it took a combined team of the Nigerian Army and Air Force to go after the rustlers and either kill them or arrest and try them.

Curiously, in those occasions, President Buhari did not ask the Fulani to show ‘restraint’.

Let us look at it historically. Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad does have a point, albeit a limited one.

He is right that the Fulani at one time did conquer large expanses of Northern Nigeria. During the Uthman Dan Fodio jihad of 1803 to 1815, the Fulani waged their jihad in today’s Northern Nigeria for the stated reason of proclaiming an Islamic state that would be governed by Shari’a law.

The question for today is whether that philosophy has faded from the minds of the contemporary Fulbe people?

Let us examine this question with the aid of my favourite helpers, those little things called facts.

On Monday the 27th of August, 2001, Muhammadu Buhari said, and I quote (please note that this is a direct quote not a paraphrase):

“I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria. God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of Sharia in the country.”

Notice that Buhari did not ask for the implementation of Shari’a in Northern Nigeria. He wanted “total implementation of Sharia in the country.”

Now, what is the difference between President Muhammadu Buhari’s mindset of 2001 and the mindset of Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio in 1803? They want the same thing.

Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio was the leader of the Fulani invasion force during the 1804 Jihad and today, President Muhammadu Buhari is the immediate past Grand Patron of Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body of Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria.

Where Professor Mohammad believes that Benue belongs to the Fulani by way of conquest, President Buhari wants Benue and other states to establish cattle colonies.

Think about it for minute. What is a colony? Nigeria was once a British colony. What did we call the British when they had a colony in Nigeria? We called them Colonial Masters.

So if Benue and other states listen to President Buhari and allow the Fulani have cattle colonies in their states would that not make the Fulani colonial masters?

Does that not fit right into Professor Mohammad’s theory of Benue (and of course other Middle Belt states) being the province of the Fulani by way of right of conquest?

In the first place, why should any government be involved in creating ‘cattle colonies’ for Fulani herdsmen? Why can’t Fulani herdsmen buy land and build their own cattle colonies?

We don’t have enough land for peace loving Nigerians and we want to give land to a group notorious for killing Nigerians? Why should public money be spent on Fulani herdsmen?

If Nigeria is not a slave ‘colony’ of the Fulani, then let President Buhari give his own personal land in Daura to be used as a cattle colony by his Fulani brethren!

The very fact that the President wants to create cattle colonies with public money on public land for the Fulani who run a private cattle herding business should indicate the type of mindset driving him and his government.

With this historical background, my question still remains this: Is it a stretch to conclude that President Buhari’s mindset is the same as Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad?

Meanwhile, I am waiting to see if the Department of State Security, AKA DSS, that attempted to arrest Reverend Isa El-buba for condemning Fulani herdsmen killings will also attempt to arrest Prof. Umar Labdo Muhammad of Northwest University, Kano, for saying that Benue State belongs to the Fulani by right of conquest.

This will show whether Nigeria is really one and whether we are really all equal because for every single day of 2018, there have been fatal attacks by Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria. Under President Buhari, Fulani herdsmen killings are more regular in Nigeria than public electricity supply or payment of salary to civil services by the federal government. It is the most consistent thing in the land!

And to Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad, I know the truth is usually the first casualty of war, but the good Professor should know that some of us are avid history aficionados and know for a fact that Tiv land was never conquered during the Fulani Jihad.

As I end this piece, please permit me to quote from the Mdzough U Tiv (MUT), the apex social-economic and political body of the Tiv Nation (their own version of Afenifere), which last year responded to a similar claim made by Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria, who, like Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad, claimed that Fulani own Benue.

The Mdzough U Tiv (MUT), said:

“What is a veritable and verifiable historical fact is that the forces of the 1804 Islamic Jihad led by the Fulani cleric, Usman Dan Fodio, were overwhelmingly defeated at the Ushongo Hills in Tivland. That explains why Islam could not be imposed on the Tiv people nor Emirs appointed to rule Tivland as was the case elsewhere in Nigeria.”

Now do not forget that President Muhammadu Buhari was once a Grand Patron of the Group that made and still believes this evil lie.

But even if it is true that the Fulani conquered Benue (it is not true) would that right of conquest still subsist till today?

After all the British conquered the Sokoto Caliphate. Do the British still have a right over the Caliphate by right of conquest?

And by the way, the Fulani are not the only ones who conquered in what is now known as Nigeria. Long before Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio, the Bini empire (wrongly known as Benin), conquered territory from Dahomey in modern day Benin Republic all the way to Igbo land (Onitsha was founded by people from modern day Benin) and to Lagos (the old name for Lagos, Eko, is a Bini word).

But you do not see Benin people going to these places they once conquered to kill people and lay claim to their land and justify it as a ‘right of conquest’. So why should the case of the Fulani be different?

Let me remind people like Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad that former President Olusegun Obasanjo once dethroned the Fulani emir of Gwandu, Alhaji Mustapha Jokolo and that General Sani Abacha did same to a former Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Sultan Dasuki (a man I greatly admired and I only use this example for historical purpose and not to denigrate His Eminence in any way.

Privately and publicly, I will always hold the late Sultan Dasuki in very high esteem for the fact that God used the Sokoto Caliphate to make my late father, Justice Jean Omokri, the success that he was)

They were able to do this because the Nigerian state is superior to the Fulani or any other ethnic nationality within Nigeria. So if the fact that the Fulani currently have one of their own as President is causing the likes of Professor Muhammad to get power drunk, they should remember that President’s come and go, but Nigeria has remained.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

To date, the Nigerian I most admire is  Usman Dan Fodio

Re - what Professor Umar Labdo Muhammad says about Benue

Chidi calls it “land grab”, Toyin Adepoju has variously called it something else. This is the political vocabulary of al-islam,  it predates and is the basis of what you refer to as 19th Century Philosophy, namely Dar al Islam and dar al-harb. Whilst chronologists argue about “who” was there first the Islamic position is that  any territory that has once been conquered and Islamised is an Islamic possession, until the day of resurrection. So we have article 11 of the Hamas Charter which states that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day.”

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Mazi Cornelius,
Do I assume that you do not know that the "conquest" of your "most admired" was overtaken by events?

Do I further assume that you do not know that when the descendants of Danfodio accepted to be a protectorate of the British Empire and later accepted the amalgamation of Northern and Southern protectorates to be known as "Nigeria", they invariably surrendered what was supposed to be the estate of their forebear?

The estate lost to the British Empire was in 1960 handed over to what is now known as the Nigerian government by the same British Empire.

CAO.

[Samuel Zalanga]

Interesting. Reminds me of "The Blackman' s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation State."

Samuel

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Cornelius,

What is your position on this Islamic imperialist philosophy? Do you identify with it?

Could you share why you so admire Usman Dan Fodio?

toyin 

--

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Chidi,

Re- The implementation of Sharia Law in Nigeria :

If you don’t have any goodwill or a basic understanding of Islam or the schools of Islamic jurisprudence then you are liable to make all kinds of misinterpretations and this is sometimes based on paranoia. Misunderstandings can also contribute to Islamophobia

Since I had taken a close look at Sunni and Shia fiqh, I followed the discussions about implementing Sharia law in Nigeria on various internet fora, especially one hosted by Yahoo and was very impressed by the scholarly quality of the pro-Sharia arguments and the reservations and some of the unfounded fears of some of the non-Muslims, secularists, idolaters, “polytheists”/ Mushrikin  and those minorities who feared the Sharia  would outlaw their right to imbibe some ogogoro  etc... and of course some of the pious hypocrites who are still foaming at the mouth about the legality of having more than one wife...

First of all, I beg to disagree with your man’s interpretations of what Muhammadu Buhari said in the year 2000 ,  a year after the implementation or the beginning of the implementation of Sharia Law in Zamfara State, which was the first to do so and it was in that context that he said is is reported to have said,

“I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria. God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of Sharia in the country.”

My understanding  - and I hope that the normal understanding of what Muhammadu Buhari meant  was not an intention to “implement” Sharia Law on e.g  Imo and Anambra and the rest of the non-Muslim areas of Federal Nigeria. All he said was “in the country” - not “in all of the country” or “in every square inch of the country”

I should like to refer you to Chapters 13 ( Emirs and Maxims)  and 14 ( The unification of Nigeria)  of  Michael Crowder’s “ The Story of Nigeria” about the sad episodes that you refer to as my “"most admired" was overtaken by events”

Page 183 :” Lugard considered he had two things in his favour. First , in the words of   Hilaire Belloc:

“Whatever happens we have got

The maxim gun and they have not”

Secondly, Lugard  firmly believed that once the Hausa peasantry saw that he was the real master, they would not put up  much of a resistance on behalf of their Fulani rulers. Even so  Kano presented a formidable objective. The great city, encircled by enormous walls, deep thorn-filled ditches and cunningly constructed gates, could, under a determined leader, withstand almost indefinite siege,,,”

So you think that the Great  Shehu Usman Dan Fodio’s descendants surrendered  or submitted to  “The British Empire”?  Or that when the Northern Protectorate was amalgamated with the Southern that was the end of the two state solution? The one country, two systems ?  

                                                                                                                                                                                         

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

"So you think that the Great Shehu Usman Dan Fodio’s descendants surrendered or submitted to “The British Empire”? Or that when the Northern Protectorate was amalgamated with the Southern that was the end of the two state solution? The one country, two systems?" (Cornelius Hamelberg).

Yes, I do.

CAO.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Yes,  Shehu Usman Dan Fodio !

His Handbook on Islam, Iman, Ihsan published by the Diwan Press is succinct and said to be sufficient for the traveller.

I understand that you are wondering why not Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Ebenezer Remilekun Aremu Olasupo Obey-Fabiyi,  Fela , King Sunny Ade, Oga Falola, Abiola Irele, Wole Soyinka, Teju Cole etc

I don’t know what you mean by “Islamic imperialist philosophy” - just ask the Indonesians, but I understand that  Christianity’s  Great Commission has often gone hand in hand with  the benevolent expansion of Empire.

After 911 etc one of the best books on the subject, Norman Daniels' Islam and the West: The Making of an Image ( published 1960)  will have to be be updated.

Long after the Six Day War Jihadists are slowly coming to the reasoning point that , that that which was lost by war is not going to be easily regained by peaceful negotiations...

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

One man's reactionary, is another man's revolutionary; One man's terrorist is another man's liberator;  One man's nationalist is another man's fascist; One man's religious freedom is another man's enslavement and in this era of economic cannibalism nurtured by the capitalist West, one man's death is another man's food. The world is upside-down and as Fela's song put it, 'Upside-down get im meaning too.'

An Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the Northwest University, Kano, Umar Labdo Muhammed is reported to have said that Benue State belongs to the Fulani people by right of conquest. Professor Umar Labdo Mohammed, according to the report, only regrets that his presumed Fulani conquerors of Benue did not apply Hitlers final solution or Europeans extermination of American Indians and Australian aborigins on the indigenes of the Benue. Professor Umar Labdo Muhammed seems to know so much about Islam and Arabs but nothing about the history of Nigeria. Thus, he could not tell readers when Benue was conquered by the Fulani and who led the war of conquest.

Islam and Christianity are Caucasian religions that originated in the Middle-east and their holy books, Quran and Bible, were originally produced in Arabic and Hebrew languages. The Bible and the Quran contain passages approving slavery. Therefore, it is not strange that the Caucasian Arabs were the first to begin raiding Africa and capturing the negro people as slaves only to be followed later by Caucasian Europeans. For what we know racially, Shehu Othman Dan Fodio was a negro, dark like coal. He was not an Arab or a mixture of an Arab and African by birth. Rather he was a Slave in Arabia but later freed together with other negro slaves to spread Arabic religion, Islam, through war in Africa. The Fulani language, Fulfulde, is a mixture of Hausa and pidgin Arabic. Before the Islam intrusion into the Hausa land, the Hausa had word for God, which has now been replaced with the Arabic word, Allah. All ethnic groups in Nigeria, no matter how small, have indigenous name for God in their respective language, except the mentally colonised Hausa/Fulani deploying the Arabic Allah to refer to their God.

Did Fulani ever capture or conquer Benue at anytime in history? Before answering this question, let us look at what happened when the only area out of Hausa land, Ilorin, was captured in 1823 during the reign of the first Sultan of Sokoto, Mohammadu Bello. Before 1817, Ilorin was a provincial territory of Oyo and the King of Ilorin designated Afonja by name Aare-Ona Kakanfo, was subordinate to the King of Oyo, Oba Aole,  the Alaafin of Oyo. In 1817, Aare-Ona Kakanfo, the Afonja of Ilorin seceded Ilorin from the control of Alaafin of Oyo by allying himself with the Fulani Jihadists. Six years later, in 1823, Field Marshal and Afonja of Ilorin, Aare -Ona Kakanfo was murdered by his Fulani ally, Alim al-Salih (also known as Shehu Alimi). Jagunjagun Solagberu, another Yoruba war General and a co-conspirator with Afonja against the Alaafin Aole and Oyo Kingdom was assassinated by the son of Alimi and Ilorin became part of Sokoto Caliphate. It is noteworthy that Ofa which was part of Oyo kingdom was never a part of Sokoto Caliphate and the king of Ofa, addressed as Olofa of Ofa, remained subordinate to Alaafin of Oyo. Utilising Ilorin as a springboard, Fulani tried to advance into Yorubaland but they were repelled in 1840 at Oshogbo. Sword waving Fulani on the back of asses were no match for the Oyo people who by that time were already manufacturing their own guns. Instead of pursuing the fleeing Fulani into Ilorin the Alaafin wrongly believed that permanent subjugation of Ilorin by the Fulani should be their punishment for the betrayal of his Kingdom. Now, in order to answer the question if the Fulani ever conquered Benue, let us read what the late Premier of Northern Region and Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, wrote. "The countries which did not come under the Fulani rule were the area now known as the Bornu Province, the Plateau Province (less Wase), the Jukon, Tiv, and Idoma peoples south of the Benue, and small parts of Kabba and Ilorin Provinces (p. 11, MY LIFE, By Ahmadu Bello)." In all the areas mentioned by Ahmadu Bello, only Ilorin had Emir as traditional rulers before the arrival of the real conqueror of Nigeria, Britain. Towards the end of 1902, the British had succeeded in recruiting and training soldiers mostly from the Middle-belt and mainly Tivs into its army. With these troops under the command of General Kimball and Colonel Moreland the Emir of Kano was pressured to run into hiding and by 15 March 1903 Sokoto was invaded. The Sultan of Sokoto, Mohammadu Attahiru 1 escaped from Sokoto but was pursued to Burmi, in Borno, where he was killed by Colonel Moreland. Realising the usefulness of the Caliphate to their colonial mission, Britain immediately replaced Mohammadu Attahiru 1 with his cousin, Mohammadu Attahiru II, as Sultan of Sokoto. The divide and rule tactics made Britain to group areas that were not under the Fulani hegemony before their arrival under Northern Region. Despite clamours for more regions (states) before and after independence, the slogan of Ahmadu Bello was one people one north. This slogan worked well as long as it gave education and appointments to the more ambitious and educated non-Hausa/Fulani parts of Northern Nigeria. Finally, Ilorin was not directly invaded and conquered by the so-called Fulani army or jihadist, it was a case of a cock handing over its combe to the fox. And even if we should agree that Fulani were ruling the entire Nigerian nation before the arrival of the British their conquest and rule has been annulled by the British conquest and rule. Professor Umar Labdo Muhammed should know that there has never been Emir of Makurdi and there will never be one in the future.

S. Kadiri  

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 22 januari 2018 19:23
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

[Kenneth Harrow]

One man’s white is not another man’s white. Caucasian is one of the worst signifiers imaginable, but as a synecdoche for white it is even dumber. Here is a defn of Caucasian from Wikipedia, one man’s truth: In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for "white" or "of European ancestry".^[6][7]

 

By that common usage defn, neither of the definitions of islam or Christianity (much less Judaism) could remotely be termed caucasian.

 

What is Caucasian, outside of that simplistic wiki usage? Well, it is people from a region who became slaves in Egypt, mothers of the rulers, etc.

Why do people use “Caucasian”? because they want to avoid the directness of saying white.

But I think it is truer to say, one man’s racism is another man’s source of pride.

I would add, All racisms are harmful in the end—even when in the service of self-defence.

I prefer fanon to armah, in that regard

 

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/

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

"For what we know racially, Shehu Othman Dan Fodio was a negro, dark like coal. He was not an Arab or a mixture of an Arab and African by birth. Rather he was a Slave in Arabia but later freed together with other negro slaves to spread Arabic religion, Islam, through war in Africa." ( S.Kadiri)

An apology is called for here!

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

The question still remains:

What is specifically admirable in Dan Fodio?  The fact that he wanted to bring others by force to his religion and thus create a theocracy?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Date: 23/01/2018 22:31 (GMT+00:00)

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

"For what we know racially, Shehu Othman Dan Fodio was a negro, dark like coal. He was not an Arab or a mixture of an Arab and African by birth. Rather he was a Slave in Arabia but later freed together with other negro slaves to spread Arabic religion, Islam, through war in Africa." ( S.Kadiri)

An apology is called for here!

On Tuesday, 23 January 2018 22:46:06 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

When you say people from a region do you mean the cacausus?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 23/01/2018 22:15 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

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

One man’s white is not another man’s white. Caucasian is one of the worst signifiers imaginable, but as a synecdoche for white it is even dumber. Here is a defn of Caucasian from Wikipedia, one man’s truth: In the United States, the root term Caucasian has also often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for "white" or "of European ancestry".^[6][7]

 

By that common usage defn, neither of the definitions of islam or Christianity (much less Judaism) could remotely be termed caucasian.

 

What is Caucasian, outside of that simplistic wiki usage? Well, it is people from a region who became slaves in Egypt, mothers of the rulers, etc.

Why do people use “Caucasian”? because they want to avoid the directness of saying white.

But I think it is truer to say, one man’s racism is another man’s source of pride.

I would add, All racisms are harmful in the end—even when in the service of self-defence.

I prefer fanon to armah, in that regard

 

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 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>

Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 23 January 2018 at 16:22
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

 Therefore, it is not strange that the Caucasian Arabs were the first to begin raiding Africa and capturing the negro people as slaves only to be followed later by Caucasian Europeans. 

--

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"What is Caucasian, outside of that simplistic wiki usage? Well, it is people from a region who became slaves in Egypt, mothers of the rulers, etc."

Contradictory. How did they become mothers of the rulers, then?

Who exactly do you have in mind. What dynasty? Specify please so we can

have a scholarly debate on this.

As I said before in this discussion list, Wikipedia is not a  scholarly source because of the fact that anyone can add information. It has become much better than before but I was told recently by an analyst who was involved with Wikipedia, that most entries seem to be made by

adolescent white European  males of varied academic background. I should have asked her to elaborate on this but unfortunately did not. The mapwork and illustrations are ok. The references

are a bit constant but the body of entries  is variable and can change from day to day.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Professor of History
 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 5:46 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kenneth Harrow]

The original invention of the term was based on a german racist’s notion that the purest white people came from the caucases—the region. During the wars of Russia and the ottoman empire, they fled Russia, were enslaved, and shipped off to Egypt to be the preferred slaves of the rulers there

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 Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 23 January 2018 at 17:46
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

When you say people from a region do you mean the cacausus?

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

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

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 23/01/2018 22:15 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

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

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

What’s great about Alexander the Great is  the same kind of question.

I´m surprised at the persistence with which this question is asked, by Southern Nigerians, first Toyin Adepoju, always on the threshold of Islamophobia, this time merely whining,

“ Cornelius, What is your position on this Islamic imperialist philosophy? Do you identify with it? Could you share why you so admire Usman Dan Fodio?

And now, the Olayinka Agbetuyi also asketh, the same question, he wants to know:

“What is specifically admirable in Dan Fodio?  The fact that he wanted to bring others by force to his religion and thus create a theocracy?”

Dan Fodio was no Genghis Khan

At Legon, my Better Half and I took a few courses in African History with Jeff Holden ( lecturer)  who was a great admirer of  Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio and  that’s the very first time I heard about the great man . I didn’t know anything about Islam then  and now that I do, I see how remarkably Dan Fodio’s life in some ways parallels the life of  the Prophet of Islam ( sallallahu alaihi wa salaam )  my admiration  for Dan Fodio  as a scholar, warrior and statesman  has soared ( like an eagle). Suffice it to say that Islam is a great religion and civilisation, exactly what he introduced in ( from the Islamic point of view) what was then mostly Jahiliyyah Nigeria ( i.e pre-Islamic Nigeria). Alhamdulillah, today  at least 50% of Nigeria’s 192 million inhabitants, are Muslims., after all it’s the fastest growing religion on planet earth.

A short answer.  He brought the noor to Nigeria. Is that not enough reason to admire him?

Chapter 6  ( pages 69-84) of Michael Crowder's  The Story of Nigeria is devoted to

The Holy War of  Usman dan Fodio ( 1804-30) - a fascinating chapter , giving us the context in which the jihads were made, a war against corruption in its many forms…

Jeff  ( Englishman) was deported from Ghana for saying that “The money of the Ghanaian peasants and workers was not being used in their best interests” . I spoke to him  him  a day before, the next day he was gone.  It figures . He had been criticising kalabule….

I know : "The question still remains"

[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi Gloria

I’m not really inclined to get up and find the book I read on this topic. I suspect our toyin falola has a better memory than I, but I can tell you it was one of the nominees for the herskovitz. A really brilliant study of the Egyptian rules around the 18^th-19^th century, and the slavery that was practiced in Egypt at the time. There were basically three kinds of slave women who were sold in Egypt. The Nubian slaves were the darkest skinned, and cost less than the others; there were Egyptian or arab women, who formed the second group. The third were caucassian slaves, who came, as I said, due to the ottoman wars with the Russians. So when was that? Around 1860-70? They passed through the slave markets in turkey to Egypt where they were sold to the rulers. Their children became part of the rulers’ families. A not uncommon practice in the arab world, that the head of the household would incorporate his children into his family, and although the mothers were slaves the children were not, and could rise to high levels of rule through their father.

I might have misled you into thinking about earlier periods, but for the late 19^th c it wasn’t a secretive practice, but common

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 "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 23 January 2018 at 18:16
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

"What is Caucasian, outside of that simplistic wiki usage? Well, it is people from a region who became slaves in Egypt, mothers of the rulers, etc."

 

Contradictory. How did they become mothers of the rulers, then?

Who exactly do you have in mind. What dynasty? Specify please so we can

have a scholarly debate on this.

 

As I said before in this discussion list, Wikipedia is not a  scholarly source because of the fact that anyone can add information. It has become much better than before but I was told recently by an analyst who was involved with Wikipedia, that most entries seem to be made by

adolescent white European  males of varied academic background. I should have asked her to elaborate on this but unfortunately did not. The mapwork and illustrations are ok. The references

are a bit constant but the body of entries  is variable and can change from day to day.

 

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Professor of History
 

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 5:46 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

When you say people from a region do you mean the cacausus?

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

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

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 23/01/2018 22:15 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

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

[Salimonu Kadiri]

You seem not to accept my inclusion of Arabs in the Caucasian race, therefore, you resorted to redefining the word, Caucasian, with the aid of  Wikipedia. May I counsel you that if Wikipedia defines crocodiles as ful-grown lizards, you should never because of that attempt to approach and treat crocodiles as ordinary lizards. Social anthropologists, for many ages, have classified human beings into three races of mankind, namely Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. After World War II, it has not been politically correct to openly discuss social anthropology, the tap root of survival of the fittest, from which Western world economic ideology rests. However, the meanings attributed to the racial classifications and the political and economic ideology that motivated them remain unchanged. 

General Consultant to the Publication of: COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY - THE AUTHORITY ON CURRENT ENGLISH - is J. M. Sinclair, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Birmingham. The dictionary has a long list of Editors who are Professors in various subjects. Thus, the contents of the dictionary is highly authoritative.

Here follows the definition of Caucasian according to Collins Dictionary. CAUCASIAN : Another word for Caucasoid; A member of the Caucasoid race; A white man.

CAUCASOID : denoting, relating to, or belonging to the light-complexioned racial groups of mankind which includes the people indigenous to Europe, N. Africa, S.W. Asia and the Indian subcontinent and their descendants in other parts of the world(p.257). 

Furthermore, MONGOLOID is defined as: denoting, relating to, or belonging to one of the racial groups of mankind, characterized by yellowish complexion, straight black hair, slanting eyes, short nose and scanty facial hair, INCLUDING MOST OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA, THE ESKIMOS AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS (p. 1008).

NEGRO : A member of any dark-skinned indigenous peoples of Africa and their descendants elsewhere. A member of the Negroid race. NEGROID: denoting, relating to or belonging to one of the major racial groups of mankind, characterized by brown-black skin, tightly-curled hair, a short nose, and ful lips. This group includes the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AFRICA,SOUTH OF THE SAHARA, THEIR DESCENDANTS ELSEWHERE,AND SOME MELANESIAN PEOPLES (P.1045).

It can easily be deduced from the above definitions that Islam and Christianity are Caucasian religions. The Bible was originally written in  Hebrew while Quran was written in Arabic. Both religions originated from the same geographical area of the world. That explains why the two religions share names of the same religious deities for instance, Christian's Moses is Islam's Musa; Islam's Isa is Christian's Jesus; Christian's Abraham is Islam's Ibrahim; Islam's Yusuf is Christian's Joseph; and Christian's Mary/Maria is Islam's Miriam/Mariam etc. Since, parts of the Bible and Quran sanction slavery, it has historically been established that the Caucasian Arabs began raiding Africa for slaves long before Caucasian Europeans. In fact, the genocide committed by Caucasian Arabs in Africa gave birth to Arab countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan.

S. Kadiri 

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Skickat: den 23 januari 2018 22:56
Till: usaafricadialogue
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

--

[Salimonu Kadiri]

I will apologise if you or Professor Umar Labdo Muhammed can prove that Shehu Othman Dan Fodio was not of Negroid race, and if he was how did he come to study Quran and become Islamic progenitor in Africa. Prove to me that Fulfulde is not a counterfeited or pidgin Arabic language mixed with Hausa. Since the word Allah is Arabic word for God and Hausa/Fulani are not Arabs, what is the name for God in Hausa/Fulani language.

S. Kadiri

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Skickat: den 23 januari 2018 23:15

[Kenneth Harrow]

Dear solimonu

I wonder if I asked you to construct an argument against the division of peoples into races if could do so with as much energy as for constructing it?

I wish I could say that what I will write is dispassionate, but it is not. I feel quite strongly antipathetic toward the notion of race. Partly because it has been mobilized for evil purposes throughout history.

You are going by definitions that you find in a dictionary. Of course you can define the term. Does that make it a reality? Look up unicorns in the dictionary: they are there too.

In the 19^th century, jews were also considered a race. Not white.

In the u.s. irish were not considered white, and until world war 2, neither were Italians or Portuguese, and certainly not mexicans.

The definition of race has changed over time, and the reference to Caucasian is based on the same kind of illogic as the Nazis’ who decided they belonged to the superior race, the Aryans. For them, Slavs were not a race on their high level.

 

Racists like to use skin color to define race, at least nowadays. Indians, despite being Aryans, are too dark for racists of today. Why are they a little dark or very dark? Why are arabs and berbers light skinned or dark skinned? Why are Sudanese light or dark? Why are south Asians and people from the islands, west indies, malaysians, and endless other people lighter or darker?

Either there has been mixing going on, since forever, or god made a mistake.

Try the first option.

And secondly, where did the people from the Caucasus come from? Where did you and I come from? How long did humans have to be separated from their east African origins to become races? And when they moved, intermingled, reformed, which race did they belong to?

 

Lastly, the key question, because all the above are merely rhetorical questions intended to challenge racist thinking, why would you want to affirm the existence of race? Before you answer, with respect, I suggest you read appiah’s work In My Father’s House. Not simply because he celebrates mixed-race, but more because he debunks the notion of race.

 

“Race” as a category has been constructed for a reason. Until the 20^th century it was to keep “us” pure, and there is only one way to do that, to exclude “them.” Even if that means ethnic “cleansing” and genocide. Purity at all costs.

 

Now whose side do you want to be on in this dispute? Trump’s or Appiah’s?

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 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 24 January 2018 at 10:52
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

You seem not to accept my inclusion of Arabs in the Caucasian race, therefore, you resorted to redefining the word, Caucasian, with the aid of  Wikipedia. May I counsel you that if Wikipedia defines crocodiles as ful-grown lizards, you should never because of that attempt to approach and treat crocodiles as ordinary lizards. Social anthropologists, for many ages, have classified human beings into three races of mankind, namely Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. After World War II, it has not been politically correct to openly discuss social anthropology, the tap root of survival of the fittest, from which Western world economic ideology rests. However, the meanings attributed to the racial classifications and the political and economic ideology that motivated them remain unchanged. 

 

General Consultant to the Publication of: COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY - THE AUTHORITY ON CURRENT ENGLISH - is J. M. Sinclair, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Birmingham. The dictionary has a long list of Editors who are Professors in various subjects. Thus, the contents of the dictionary is highly authoritative.

Here follows the definition of Caucasian according to Collins Dictionary. CAUCASIAN : Another word for Caucasoid; A member of the Caucasoid race; A white man.

CAUCASOID : denoting, relating to, or belonging to the light-complexioned racial groups of mankind which includes the people indigenous to Europe, N. Africa, S.W. Asia and the Indian subcontinent and their descendants in other parts of the world(p.257). 

Furthermore, MONGOLOID is defined as: denoting, relating to, or belonging to one of the racial groups of mankind, characterized by yellowish complexion, straight black hair, slanting eyes, short nose and scanty facial hair, INCLUDING MOST OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA, THE ESKIMOS AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS (p. 1008).

 

NEGRO : A member of any dark-skinned indigenous peoples of Africa and their descendants elsewhere. A member of the Negroid race. NEGROID: denoting, relating to or belonging to one of the major racial groups of mankind, characterized by brown-black skin, tightly-curled hair, a short nose, and ful lips. This group includes the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AFRICA,SOUTH OF THE SAHARA, THEIR DESCENDANTS ELSEWHERE,AND SOME MELANESIAN PEOPLES (P.1045).

 

It can easily be deduced from the above definitions that Islam and Christianity are Caucasian religions. The Bible was originally written in  Hebrew while Quran was written in Arabic. Both religions originated from the same geographical area of the world. That explains why the two religions share names of the same religious deities for instance, Christian's Moses is Islam's Musa; Islam's Isa is Christian's Jesus; Christian's Abraham is Islam's Ibrahim; Islam's Yusuf is Christian's Joseph; and Christian's Mary/Maria is Islam's Miriam/Mariam etc. Since, parts of the Bible and Quran sanction slavery, it has historically been established that the Caucasian Arabs began raiding Africa for slaves long before Caucasian Europeans. In fact, the genocide committed by Caucasian Arabs in Africa gave birth to Arab countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan.

S. Kadiri 

 

 

 

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

OK. I thought you were referring to ancient Egypt. We should not conflate ancient Egypt with

Ottoman Egypt of the 18th and 19th century..

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Africa and the African Diaspora

8608322815  Phone

8608322804 Fax

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 9:30 PM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Son of Ogun,

What else to expect from you but the best?

Baba Kadiri: Skärp dig !

I am upset by warped, undignified, racist colonial  thinking that  it would seem defines and defiles you when you utter such words in our august Pan-African Forum  :

“When Nigeria was granted self-administered enslavement, the rank of leaders of our government was that of slave overseers.”

You mean that on 1st of  October 1960, Nigeria’s Independence Day, you became a slave?

May you be redeemed from this kind of abject introspective pessimism can pollute and consume a black as coal African soul.

The above is a light reprimand and prayer, is not meant as an insult;  but you insult  me, us, yourself, hurt generations of Muslims and embarrass all Africa when you say that,

“When Nigeria was granted self-administered enslavement, the rank  of leaders of our government was that of slave overseers.”

Not unexpectedly, the next stage is that such a slavelike mentality descends further into denigrating Shehu Usman Dan Fodio.

Lastly,  I ask you to reconsider the last Sermon of the Prophet of Islam ( sallallahu alaihi wa salaam), in which he says,

“Remember, one day you will appear before ALLAH and answer your deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety (taqwa) and good action.”

By extension your argument about race, colour, language could be applied to you, Baba Kadiri, with regard to Buckingham Palace cum di pidgin english .

To complement Professor Harrow’s direction here’s something else for your perusal :

As Crinkly as Yours,

Cornelius

[Kenneth Harrow]

Right, it was modern Egypt. The other similar example of slaves rising to ruling class was the mamluke dynasty, earlier in Egyptian history, and of course the same under the byzantines. Totally unends our American narrow notions of slavery

 

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 "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 24 January 2018 at 16:30
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

OK. I thought you were referring to ancient Egypt. We should not conflate ancient Egypt with

Ottoman Egypt of the 18th and 19th century..

 

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

 

Africa and the African Diaspora

8608322815  Phone

8608322804 Fax

 

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

I think this is one of those rare instances where both opposing viewpoints can be right at the same time:  Kens proto-academic problematisation of the notion of race and Salimonu's insistence in grounding discourses on contemporary practice.

  Kens position may be liminal even within academic circles (hence the cogency of Salimonus dictionary authorities) but liminality (academics by nature dont always agree and this fact automates the acquisition of knowledges) by itself does not constitute error since it often takes time for change to permeate discourses from the margins to the centre.

As the Yoruba would put it 'Ogbon odun yi were eemi '   Kwowleges can be empirically outmoded.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Date: 24/01/2018 18:35 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

Dear solimonu

I wonder if I asked you to construct an argument against the division of peoples into races if could do so with as much energy as for constructing it?

I wish I could say that what I will write is dispassionate, but it is not. I feel quite strongly antipathetic toward the notion of race. Partly because it has been mobilized for evil purposes throughout history.

You are going by definitions that you find in a dictionary. Of course you can define the term. Does that make it a reality? Look up unicorns in the dictionary: they are there too.

In the 19^th century, jews were also considered a race. Not white.

In the u.s. irish were not considered white, and until world war 2, neither were Italians or Portuguese, and certainly not mexicans.

The definition of race has changed over time, and the reference to Caucasian is based on the same kind of illogic as the Nazis’ who decided they belonged to the superior race, the Aryans. For them, Slavs were not a race on their high level.

 

Racists like to use skin color to define race, at least nowadays. Indians, despite being Aryans, are too dark for racists of today. Why are they a little dark or very dark? Why are arabs and berbers light skinned or dark skinned? Why are Sudanese light or dark? Why are south Asians and people from the islands, west indies, malaysians, and endless other people lighter or darker?

Either there has been mixing going on, since forever, or god made a mistake.

Try the first option.

And secondly, where did the people from the Caucasus come from? Where did you and I come from? How long did humans have to be separated from their east African origins to become races? And when they moved, intermingled, reformed, which race did they belong to?

 

Lastly, the key question, because all the above are merely rhetorical questions intended to challenge racist thinking, why would you want to affirm the existence of race? Before you answer, with respect, I suggest you read appiah’s work In My Father’s House. Not simply because he celebrates mixed-race, but more because he debunks the notion of race.

 

“Race” as a category has been constructed for a reason. Until the 20^th century it was to keep “us” pure, and there is only one way to do that, to exclude “them.” Even if that means ethnic “cleansing” and genocide. Purity at all costs.

 

Now whose side do you want to be on in this dispute? Trump’s or Appiah’s?

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 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 24 January 2018 at 10:52
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

You seem not to accept my inclusion of Arabs in the Caucasian race, therefore, you resorted to redefining the word, Caucasian, with the aid of  Wikipedia. May I counsel you that if Wikipedia defines crocodiles as ful-grown lizards, you should never because of that attempt to approach and treat crocodiles as ordinary lizards. Social anthropologists, for many ages, have classified human beings into three races of mankind, namely Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. After World War II, it has not been politically correct to openly discuss social anthropology, the tap root of survival of the fittest, from which Western world economic ideology rests. However, the meanings attributed to the racial classifications and the political and economic ideology that motivated them remain unchanged. 

 

General Consultant to the Publication of: COLLINS ENGLISH DICTIONARY - THE AUTHORITY ON CURRENT ENGLISH - is J. M. Sinclair, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Birmingham. The dictionary has a long list of Editors who are Professors in various subjects. Thus, the contents of the dictionary is highly authoritative.

Here follows the definition of Caucasian according to Collins Dictionary. CAUCASIAN : Another word for Caucasoid; A member of the Caucasoid race; A white man.

CAUCASOID : denoting, relating to, or belonging to the light-complexioned racial groups of mankind which includes the people indigenous to Europe, N. Africa, S.W. Asia and the Indian subcontinent and their descendants in other parts of the world(p.257). 

Furthermore, MONGOLOID is defined as: denoting, relating to, or belonging to one of the racial groups of mankind, characterized by yellowish complexion, straight black hair, slanting eyes, short nose and scanty facial hair, INCLUDING MOST OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA, THE ESKIMOS AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS (p. 1008).

 

NEGRO : A member of any dark-skinned indigenous peoples of Africa and their descendants elsewhere. A member of the Negroid race. NEGROID: denoting, relating to or belonging to one of the major racial groups of mankind, characterized by brown-black skin, tightly-curled hair, a short nose, and ful lips. This group includes the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF AFRICA,SOUTH OF THE SAHARA, THEIR DESCENDANTS ELSEWHERE,AND SOME MELANESIAN PEOPLES (P.1045).

 

It can easily be deduced from the above definitions that Islam and Christianity are Caucasian religions. The Bible was originally written in  Hebrew while Quran was written in Arabic. Both religions originated from the same geographical area of the world. That explains why the two religions share names of the same religious deities for instance, Christian's Moses is Islam's Musa; Islam's Isa is Christian's Jesus; Christian's Abraham is Islam's Ibrahim; Islam's Yusuf is Christian's Joseph; and Christian's Mary/Maria is Islam's Miriam/Mariam etc. Since, parts of the Bible and Quran sanction slavery, it has historically been established that the Caucasian Arabs began raiding Africa for slaves long before Caucasian Europeans. In fact, the genocide committed by Caucasian Arabs in Africa gave birth to Arab countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan.

S. Kadiri 

 

 

 

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

I don't know where we are heading with this discussion,  but let me clarify that the Mameluks

initially seized power in a successful slave revolt. This was not an evolutionary upward mobility process.

 By 1811,  Mohameed Ali Pasha, the Albanian leader and founder of the Pasha dynasty that dominated Egypt until the 1880s, eliminated their descendants in a very treacherous ambush.

GE

www. gloriaemeagwali.com

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

And why do people like Appiah want to make their particular circumstance a generality?

In any case, race does exist sociologically if not biologically. Anti-colonial  and anti-apartheid activists, fighting segregation were not delusional. They were not fighting windmills in the air.

Who feels it knows it.

On a different note, giving  the Alaafin a professorial  chair may diminish his role as  a  cultural and

 historical icon and leader,   but we should ask him about the connection he would like to have with professional historians. Would he facilitate  oral  interviews or visual documentation of his domain?

Would he facilitate  biographical works etc? The Historical Society of Nigeria could have a major role in  this discourse. Thank you,  Adeshina Afolayan,  for this insightful commentary on the Alaafin.

GE 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Professor of History
History Department

Central Connecticut State University

1615 Stanley Street
 New Britain. CT 06050
www.africahistory.net

www.gloriaemeagwali.com

www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on

Africa and the African Diaspora

8608322815  Phone

8608322804 Fax

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 9:38 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Kenneth Harrow]

I liked olayinka’s way of putting it. You need to add another small factor: my way of thinking is indeed conditioned by my profession, i.e., my colleagues and discipline. I am most exposed to American academic thinking about race, and I would venture to say that what I wrote is solidly anchored in the mainstream. The public is another story.

For me, then, I am not affirming any kind of marginal position—not at all. In truth, the academic truism is that race is a construct, and that social and historical factors account for how we think about, understand, what race is. if you were to state it is innate, physical, inborn, you’d be accused of essentializing. That just is not acceptable here, and you’d not get a job if you were to claim it.

There’s more to be said: notions about race vary enormously from dept to dept, but the mainstream would concur with what I said

 

I am not an adventuresome thinker on this topic. Citing appiah is very old school. But if my points are conventional today, salimonu’s notions of race, the three dictionary definitions, are really antiquated and we would associate them with colonial discourse. In fact, the rise of racial ethnography is 19^th century and was completely driven by colonial administrators and their institutions that fed racialized notions to newspapers back in Europe. It took until the 1920s for anthropology to begin to shed itself of those notions of race.

After that it was possible for negritude to come about, affirming positively notions of blackness, and it was in response to that that an appiah arose, 50 years later, to oppose race with cosmopolitanism.

 

The whole set of discussions of the past have been supplanted now by dna, as if there were some kind of intrinsic relationship between the dna shared by a collection of people, and their identities, i.e., their cultures and societies. But that’s another story for another day.

Nuff said

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/

 

 

 

[Kenneth Harrow]

I agree on all points.

As for appiah, well, he’s been part of an older fight that goes back to notions of authenticity and chinweizo vs Soyinka.

My point of agreement is simply that race is a construct—socially, historically—which doesn’t mean it isn’t real. In fact, as a construct it is much more real than if it were simply biological.

k

 

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 "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday 25 January 2018 at 10:44
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

And why do people like Appiah want to make their particular circumstance a generality?

 

In any case, race does exist sociologically if not biologically. Anti-colonial  and anti-apartheid activists, fighting segregation were not delusional. They were not fighting windmills in the air.

Who feels it knows it.

 

On a different note, giving  the Alaafin a professorial  chair may diminish his role as  a  cultural and

 historical icon and leader,   but we should ask him about the connection he would like to have with professional historians. Would he facilitate  oral  interviews or visual documentation of his domain?

Would he facilitate  biographical works etc? The Historical Society of Nigeria could have a major role in  this discourse. Thank you,  Adeshina Afolayan,  for this insightful commentary on the Alaafin.

 

 

GE 

 

 

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

Professor of History
History Department

Central Connecticut State University

1615 Stanley Street
 New Britain. CT 06050
www.africahistory.net

www.gloriaemeagwali.com

www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on

Africa and the African Diaspora

8608322815  Phone

8608322804 Fax

 

 

 

 

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Which academic in the world in any institution, American or otherwise could dispute the fact that

people were placed in racial categories and sociologically speaking as well as socio-historically

 speaking had to confront that phenomenon! No need to jump on a pedestal  here.

Now as for as Salimonu's classification is concerned, well that's another matter.

Let him speak for himself.

Gloria

 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 11:30 AM
To: usaafricadialogue

[Kenneth Harrow]

Gloria

Are you misreading me? I repeated from the beginning that race is a social and historical construct, taking that idea from stuart hall. That hardly diminishes its importance, which I certainly recognize

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 "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emea...@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday 25 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

Which academic in the world in any institution, American or otherwise could dispute the fact that

people were placed in racial categories and sociologically speaking as well as socio-historically

 speaking had to confront that phenomenon! No need to jump on a pedestal  here.

 

Now as for as Salimonu's classification is concerned, well that's another matter.

Let him speak for himself.

 

Gloria

 

 

 

 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Cornelius, son of Odén,

I will always offer my best and leave the rest to others to judge.

Rabbi (Alhaji)Hamelberg. Bli inte en överförfriskad ideologisk fylla! 

You asked, "You mean that on 1st October 1960, Nigeria's Independence Day, you became a slave?" 

Yes, Nigeria was transformed from a direct enslaved nation to an indirect enslaved nation, just like all other African countries. Foundation to the transformation of Nigeria from direct to indirect slavery was the outcome of Hitler's war. Already in 1940, while the war was raging in Europe and France was militarily occupied by Germany, the United States of America had begun drawing up plans for a post-war world by which the US would displace and replace the Colonialists in the Colonies. Take note that Colonialists are the enslavers while the Colonies are the enslaved!!  Speaking at the Investment Bankers' Association on 10 December 1940,, the President of the National Industrial Conference Board of the USA, Virgil Jordan said, "Whatever the outcome of the war, America has embarked on a career of imperialism in the world affairs and in every other aspect of her life... At best, England will become a junior partner in a new Anglo-Saxon imperialism, in which the economic resources and the military and naval strength of the United States will be the centre of gravity.... (p.117, Crisis of Britain and the British Empire)."

At the Atlantic Charter meeting of 1941, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was reported to have told the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt thus, "Mr. President, I believe you are trying to do away with our Empire (Colonies). Every idea you entertain about the post-war world demonstrates it. But, in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. And you know that we know it. You know that we know that without America the Empire won't stand." President Roosevelt replied, "When we've won the war, I will work with all my might and main to see to it that the United States is not wheedled into the position of accepting any plan that will further France's imperialistic ambitions or that will aid or abet the British Empire in its imperial ambitions (p.120, Crisis of Britain & the British Empire)." In October 1942, the American magazine, Life, published an article that suggested that Great Britain should better decide to part with her Empire because the United States was not prepared to fight to enable her to keep it. Responding to that on 10 November 1942, Winston Churchill said, "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire (Crisis of Britain & the British Empire)." The British Newspaper, Daily Telegraph of 23 October 1943, reported the Dominion's Secretary, Lord Cranborne as having said, "Those who would not look beyond their personal interests should remember that their employment and standard of living (in Britain) depended mainly on the existence of the Empire (colonies)." Three months after the Nazi trial began in Nuremberg, the Labour British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, declared in the House of Commons on the 21st of February 1946, "I am not prepared to sacrifice the British Empire because I know that if the British Empire fell.... it would mean the standard of life of (Britons) our constituents would fall considerably." So, Colonial possession was not a philanthropic or leisure time mission. After the end of the war, United States was demanding influence that was proportional to her military power in the colonies, while at the same time the Communist Soviet Union was at the rear supporting liberation forces in the colonies. At that stage the colonialists, mainly Britain, France and Belgium reached an accord with USA to grant self-administered enslavement to the colonies whereby indigenous rulers were allowed to preside over the economic exploitation of their countries and people on behalf of Euro-American powers. The granting of national anthem and national flag to us which we misconstrue to mean independence was graciously declared in 1962, by R.E. Robinson and J. Gallagher in the New Cambridge Modern History Volume XI, that nationalism (as encouraged in our rulers by the colonialists) is a continuation of imperialism (colonialism) by other means (p.640). The implication of the self-administered enslavement was observed by Henry A. Kissinger thus, "After independence, many leaders of newly independent countries have had to realize, at least subconsciously, that they were inwardly a good deal closer to their former rulers than to their own countrymen (p.215, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy by H.A. Kissinger)." Before Winston Churchill died in 1965, he regretted opposing 'independence' to the colonies immediately after World War II because the indigenous slave overseers made the exploitation of the enslaved to work frictionless and more profitable than when the British were there in persons. The economic exploitation of Nigeria by European enslavers was euphemistically expressed in a crude, but factual, pidgin English by late Pa Michael Imodu thus, "ÒYÍNBÓ PEOPLE NA TÒTÓ, WE WEY BE BLACK, NA PENIS; ALL THE WORK WEY PENIS DE DO, NA TÒTÓ DE COLLECT PAY." So, Alhaji Rabbi Hamelberg if we are no longer slaves, who are in the coffee and cocoa plantations and who are drinking coffee and eating chocolate cakes?; who are having diamonds and gold in their soil  and who are wearing jewellery?; and in which country's soil is crude oil flowing like river and which people are not sleeping at the petrol station to buy gas? etc.

Finally, in what way did I denigrate your Shehu Usman Dan Fodio? Can you tell me what God is called in Hausa/Fulani language?

S. Kadiri 

  

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Skickat: den 24 januari 2018 23:12

[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

You are right.  The Pashas did what was parallel to the behaviours of the Fulani usurpers of Ilorin to the descendants of Afonja.  The upwards mobility is slaves is more demonstrable in the case of the occupants of the stool of Ooni of Ife and needs to be internationalized to replace the faulty Egyptian narrative.

Here as we stated in the past the rightful heirs departed the kingdom to found their own kingdoms and ruling dynasties in places like Oyo and Benin so the consecrated palace slave was offered the post and the title was changed to reflect the situation  from Olofin (northern Yoruba for Alaafin) of Ife to Ooni to underline the fact the pantheon supported the change and upward mobility.

It is possible stories of this system in the diaspora informed the development of the manumission system of the Atlantic slavery as opposed to the Arabic slavery which freedom seems only ensured by religious conversion

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

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

Date: 25/01/2018 18:13 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

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

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[Olayinka Agbetuyi]

You are right that there is perceived real sociological manifestation of race in western societies. That's is why every govt job application form in the UK has an ethnic background monitoring page attached to it.

An Alaafin professorial chair will not diminish his status; it will actually rightly enhance it just as the fact of Queen Elizabeths position as patron of over 600 organizatiins did not diminish the role of the monarch but enhanced it.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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

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

Date: 25/01/2018 18:13 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 9:38 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Son of Ogun,

By the way , what are the origins of the names Salimonu and Kadiri ? ( If I may so ask ?)

Please  don’t be angry,  Prince Nico Mbarga begins his piece, Tribalism with these words ,

“According to the Bible, all people be one, oh ho

And nah one God create everybody !”

As pointed out in your discussions, Europeans were also enslaved

According to the Bible, after the flood,  we (mankind) are all descendants of Noah’s sons

Shem // Shem

Ham // Ham

Japheth //  Japheth

Re - your taking recourse to the Collins dictionary  of  Her Majesty’s English for support against what you say  is  Professor Harrow  not accepting your “inclusion of Arabs in the Caucasian race”

The Arabs are Semites - as they often tell us when they are accused of  anti- Semitism.

The Askenazi  on the other hand , are not Semites ( or are they ?)

It was King Solomon  who declared in Verse 5 of the Song of Songs ,

“I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.”

Solimnou

“I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.”

I will respond to what you said , later...

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

OK. Noted.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

---

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

Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 4:32 PM

[Kenneth Harrow]

To tiptoe in  a drop on this—until world war two, jews were not considered whites in the u.s. I would guess it was similar in Europe, so “semites” weren’t white until after the war, and after the holocaust. Why did it change? Because racist thinking was associated with the Nazis, and was disgraced.

As it should be.

By the way, I don’t believe they were considered black, but rather “non-white” as were other southern Europeans.

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/

 

 

 

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

This came in today : Modern humans left Africa much earlier

Current archives at <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__groups.google.com_group_USAAfricaDialogue&d=DwMFaQ&c=nE__W8dFE-shTxStwXtp0A&r=Zy8I_UX8z9DLbmf5YJ0EIg&m=ZENQVxqzzMvkLPtz-Opm-dSwOcErowBLH_wsV

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

OK but  that  depends on whether the Chair is named after him or is in his honor-

 or if he is appointed the Chair.

Appointing Queen Elizabeth as the Chair of British  Medieval Studies is different from

her sponsorship and patronage of a professorial Chair.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagb...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 5:50 PM

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Was that said by  the Queen of Ethiopia and Saba  or by  Solomon? BTW

that should be "I am Black and comely......"

Even so,  some may posit that  the Bible is not a historical text, in the general sense, but is largely  a reflection of Jewish nationalism.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali

gloriaemeagwali.com

     

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2018 9:28 PM

To: USA Africa Dialogue Series

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Dear Kennoth,

Your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian prompted me to search for other definitions. Since Wikipedia is an on-line free dictionary of which no person can be held responsible for its contents, I opted for a dictionary whose authors are identifiable and could be held responsible for its contents. Otherwise, there are many books on Eugenics and social anthropology, both old and new, that contain the division of human races. That you don't like it or object to it does not mean that the division of human being into races, and the exploitation, persecution and oppression of one race by another, does not exist. It is true in history that racism has been used to commit heinous crimes but you need not remind us, negroid race, of the evil of racism when up till now our race is still at the receiving end of the racism commenced by Caucasian Europeans, Americans, Hebrews and Arabs in the 15th century. If, according to you, the division of human beings into different races no longer exist after World War II, why is Barrack Obama, and people like him in the USA, identified as African-American, whereas George Bush (both senior and junior), Jimmy Carter, Bil Clinton, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, to mention few, are never identified as European-Americans but simply as Americans? Why are over 50% of USA prison inmates Black when their population is said to be about 20% of the total population of USA? What necessitates Black lives matter in your USA but not White lives matter? Why is Ku Klux Klan accepted in the USA as a democratic organisation but not as a terrorist?

You asked, "Why do people use 'Caucasian'?" And you provided the answer, "Because they want to avoid the directness of saying white."  

I think, you are trying here to cover nakedness with a fig leaf. Eugenicists say the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid is scientific and it makes sense to me. This is because Caucasians embrace various degrees of lightness in light-skinned people. Moreover the designation of any human being as white is not only false but untrue, since we all know that snow is white but no human being looks like snow. From your question and answer above, it would appear as if you prefer to racially define a race as white but not as Caucasian. In doing so , you tactically limit white skin colour to the people of Europe and their descendants in other parts of the world while regarding indigenes of North Africa, Southwest Asia and India subcontinent as non-white people. The idea behind your limiting white skin colour to Europeans and their descendants elsewhere alone, is intended to invalidate my assertion that Christianity and Islam are Caucasian's religions of Hebrews and Arabs origins. In your country, the USA, human beings are still publicly identified or referred to as *coloured people* and I hope that you will agree with me that there is no *colourless person* anywhere on the planet earth. In view of this, I want you to inform me, which racial colour should be ascribed to the Hebrews and Arabs the progenitors of Christianity and Islam respectively?

Going through the forum's archive, I found a post titled : The Most Racist areas in the United States (dailykos) & the 5 year old that NY police placed in handcuffs and shackles (Guardian - UK). Discussion on this matter caused you to write to Kwame Zulu Shabazz thus :

Dear Kwame,

Just had a long discussion with a young colleague, a woman of colour, and she was much more in agreement with you than with me. That was your post on this forum on 7 May 2015. When I challenged your expression, with which you referred to your colleague as a woman of colour, as being racist, your response contained among others the following, "In Cameroon when we were there in the 1970s, Mabel Smythe was the U.S. Ambassador. To the Cameroonians, this light-skinned African American woman was white! Not mixed, not black, white. They were astonished, when we said she was black! To an American it was obvious she was black! If it had been in the Caribbean, they would have not only called her a femme de couleur, a woman of colour, but more an octroon, or one of those horrible terms designating how much white or black blood she had." This was part of your post on 9 May 2015 in response to my objection to your reference to a fellow human being as a woman of colour. !970 was 25 years after World War II ended and 2015 was 70 years after the end of the World War II, which according to you obliterated the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Yet you found it appropriate in year 2015 to racially classify a U.S. Ambassador as light-skinned African American woman, not white but black, and an octoroon, beside describing your colleague as a woman of colour. Earlier, on 8 May 2015, Mr. Ogugua Anunoby had queried you about what you meant by the expression, 'a woman of colour' in referring to your colleague when it would have been sensible of you to refer to her as, 'my colleague or my female colleague'. On the same day you wrote Mr. Anunoby:

Dear OA, 

                ... But in this case, persons of colour, women of colour, are commonly used respectful terms. You might not like them, but an individual dislike doesn't constitute grounds for determining a term derogatory. We don't invent a vocabulary, it is shared, and its value are shared ones. That's how language works.  May I add that, that is how language works for a man of pale colour.

Although I referred to the division of human race by the western eugenicists into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid and expatiated further that  a child parented by a Negro and a Caucasian, is called a Mulatto; a child parented by a Mulatto and a Caucasian is called a Quadroon; and a child parented by a Quadroon and a Caucasian is called an Octoroon, neither did you object to any of the aforementioned shared vocabularies nor invoke Wikipedia definitions to invalidate them. You dared not do that because it would have amounted to sneezing and closing your mouth at the same time and thereby causing self-asphyxiation. The validity of your claim to use the terms, woman of colour, not white, black and octoroon would have crumbled if you had objected then to the terms, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid races. 

I am not a racist as you tried to paint me. In my mother tongue, we have equivalent word for God. If that that God has any message to the people of my mother tongue, He should communicate that to us in the language into which He has created us. For what is racist to me is when an Arab or a Hebrew comes with sword in hands to force me to accept Allah or Jehovah as the name of my God and if I don't accept, I can be killed or incarcerated. The God of black Africa does not speak Arabic or Hebrew and no sane black man will go around killing his fellow blacks for refusing to adhere to Islam or Christian religion. Saying that does not constitute racism or hatred against the Caucasian Arabs or Hebrews and their religions. During the trial of late Mohammed Ali for refusing to be drafted to the US army for onward service in Vietnam, the presiding Judge asked him, "Do you hate whites?"  Mohammed Ali answered thus, "Your honour, if a lion suddenly enters into this court room, we will all jump out throughout the windows. Not because we hate lions, but because we know what lions always do." When victims of racism complain, it is unfair for perpetrators to accuse victims of racism of being racists. Some liberals, I am sorry to observe, are two persons in one, they are Judas and Jesus at the same time.

S. Kadiri

 

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Skickat: den 24 januari 2018 18:01

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Cornelius, son of Odén,

If you check through the Forum's archives you will discover that you have asked me the same question before which I answered promptly. However, since you recognize me as the son Ògún the origin of my name does not matter but what I do with the name.

On my part, I think it will be very foolish of me to ask you about the origin of your name, Cornelius Hamelberg, when I have already recognized you as the son of Odén, one the Swedish Asa gods. 

S. Kadiri

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Skickat: den 26 januari 2018 03:28

Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Baba Kadiri,

Hamelberg is German, all the way from the mythical Adam via Franz and Heinrich and ulitantely to me and my descendants . I am Cornelius, the son of Theodore and Evelyn Adekumbi Hamelberg. You don’t have to worry about that.

And to Sister Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali who asked if it was the Queen of Sheba that said “ I  am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.”  as she so insightfully points out  the “but” attests to the possibility of some discrimination against black at that time otherwise  Solomon would have said “I am black and beautiful” , not, “ I am black, but beautiful”   - but this is an honest translation.  - in some other translations, black is rendered as “ swarthy” - a  Middle Eastern and Mediterranean hue ( don’t forget that the Almighty made Adam which in Hebrew means  “dark earth”from which the first man was made, according to the Bible. The dust to which we shall return...

As Cornelis sang in Plogen , “ och min hud blir svart, ja svart ja svart i solen” ( and my skin turns black, yes black, yes black in the sun “)

As Naipaul recounts in “ A Bend in the River” (which I read in my first month in Nigeria)  and if I remember correctly Shiva Naipaul too in his “ North of South”  (which I read before going to Nigeria) in the East African Africans first encounters with the White man, they thought White folks were ghosts  and were quite afraid of them

Dr Khalid al Mansour uses an incident in the Torah, in Numbers 12  to establish his proof of the status of white skin: re- God cursing Moses' sister Miriam as a result of  which her skin turned white ( as with leprosy)

Since, according to the Bible, we are  all descendants of the sons of Noah , perhaps we should factor in  “ The Curse of Ham “ and this book  “ in our deliberation on the racial ethics of the US slave owners and their Judeo-Christian foundations from those early days onwards - and this could lead us into a wider discussion that I myself am looking forward to, this kind of thing “ Go back to your jungle”. I don’t like it at all.

I can’t help poking just a slight aside here,

Re - “Moreover the designation of any human being as white is not only false but untrue, since we all know that snow is white but no human being looks like snow.”

Haven’t you ever hear the expression, “ as white as a ghost” ?

Nobel laureate  Bob Dylan  himself posed the question  and answered it

“I'm as pale as a ghost

Holding a blossom on a stem

You ever seen a ghost? no

But you've heard of them” (Spirit on the Water)

I don’t know if you read the Eldridge Cleaver piece that I posted in my last reply to you or indeed the whole book (a treasury about Black Folklore in the US) but Eldridge, the author of the Soul on Ice indictment  of racism - of being Black in America, later tells a very variegated story of  how he fled to Cuba about which he reported racism both in the history of Cuba, before the Bay of Pigs and in Fidel’s Revolutionary Cuba ( at which time I thought “another undercover CIA agent hired to give Cuba a bad name ( just as there have been stories of FBI agents becoming prison inmates, in order to get close to certain prisoners to obtain some vital information) from there to Algeria and then to Paris, where he was picked up a couple of time by some CIA agents who showed him the sharp edge of a knife and from there, Cleaver  voluntarily/ involuntarily repatriated himself to repentance in the US where a completely new man  - from  Soul on Ice to his new book, a necessary book he says, since that historic event when  he  “saw the face of Jesus on the moon” and so the title of  his new book, “ Soul on Fire”  - all about his conversion to what you insist is a “Caucasian”  religion  - even as they follow the Great Command , to preach  salvation through the son of God’s name, “ to the furthest ends of the earth” - and that’s how  and why Christianity came to Nigeria, long before Nigeria became an independent nation. ( By the way , small world , I got some intimate details about Cleaver’s Paris at the funeral of Rashid - Malcolm X’s representative in Egypt  -  at which  it was only an Algerian Nuruddin and me who said some prayers in Arabic for Rashid  - at the graveside  - and as I walked from the grave with Rashid’s partner  who had been through the thin and thick with him in Paris, I got some details  about those tumultuous days there.

In Soul on Fire  Cleaver quotes from the Bible,  about the purity of whiteness: Isaiah 1 :18

“Come now, let us debate, says the Lord. If your sins prove to be like crimson, they will become white as snow; if they prove to be as red as crimson dye, they shall become as wool.”

It should be interesting to know ( surely a subjective experience) what was the colour of the face of Jesus that  Cleaver saw on the pale moon?

As you know, Carl Anderson ( a Black man) plays the role of Judas, in  “Jesus Christ Superstar”

I have asked Pa google “ Who is the anti-Christ ?” and I hope, sure as hell, that we don’t get the answer that  he is or will be  “a Black Man”

David Crane , Chief Prosecutor at Special Court for Sierra Leone once proclaimed  - I think that it was in a speech that he delivered in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, that  “ the devil is alive and he lives in West Africa “ ( he was referring to Liberia’s Charles Taylor )  for which statement  a very sensitive Kotoh Abdul Bangura ( his  own skin, as you would say “ as black as coal” took him to task....

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

In mentioning Fidel, I wanted to add this : Fidel and Religion (268 pages)

And of course the power and beauty of Black , my dear Mother was also “as Black as coal”

[Kenneth Harrow]

Dear solimonu

Did I say races didn’t exist, or that they were social and historical constructs? I said the latter, not the former. my reasons for disliking Caucasian have to do with the thinking of the racist supremacists who invented the term. Am I supposed to be defending a position here that I never espoused, or should I ask you where in my statements you found the points for which you are criticizing me?

Lastly, jews in the 15^th century oppressed black people??

Do you know anything about what the jews suffered in the 15^th century?

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 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 27 January 2018 at 09:41
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

Dear Kennoth,

 

Your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian prompted me to search for other definitions. Since Wikipedia is an on-line free dictionary of which no person can be held responsible for its contents, I opted for a dictionary whose authors are identifiable and could be held responsible for its contents. Otherwise, there are many books on Eugenics and social anthropology, both old and new, that contain the division of human races. That you don't like it or object to it does not mean that the division of human being into races, and the exploitation, persecution and oppression of one race by another, does not exist. It is true in history that racism has been used to commit heinous crimes but you need not remind us, negroid race, of the evil of racism when up till now our race is still at the receiving end of the racism commenced by Caucasian Europeans, Americans, Hebrews and Arabs in the 15th century. If, according to you, the division of human beings into different races no longer exist after World War II, why is Barrack Obama, and people like him in the USA, identified as African-American, whereas George Bush (both senior and junior), Jimmy Carter, Bil Clinton, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, to mention few, are never identified as European-Americans but simply as Americans? Why are over 50% of USA prison inmates Black when their population is said to be about 20% of the total population of USA? What necessitates Black lives matter in your USA but not White lives matter? Why is Ku Klux Klan accepted in the USA as a democratic organisation but not as a terrorist?

 

You asked, "Why do people use 'Caucasian'?" And you provided the answer, "Because they want to avoid the directness of saying white."  

 

I think, you are trying here to cover nakedness with a fig leaf. Eugenicists say the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid is scientific and it makes sense to me. This is because Caucasians embrace various degrees of lightness in light-skinned people. Moreover the designation of any human being as white is not only false but untrue, since we all know that snow is white but no human being looks like snow. From your question and answer above, it would appear as if you prefer to racially define a race as white but not as Caucasian. In doing so , you tactically limit white skin colour to the people of Europe and their descendants in other parts of the world while regarding indigenes of North Africa, Southwest Asia and India subcontinent as non-white people. The idea behind your limiting white skin colour to Europeans and their descendants elsewhere alone, is intended to invalidate my assertion that Christianity and Islam are Caucasian's religions of Hebrews and Arabs origins. In your country, the USA, human beings are still publicly identified or referred to as *coloured people* and I hope that you will agree with me that there is no *colourless person* anywhere on the planet earth. In view of this, I want you to inform me, which racial colour should be ascribed to the Hebrews and Arabs the progenitors of Christianity and Islam respectively?

 

Going through the forum's archive, I found a post titled : The Most Racist areas in the United States (dailykos) & the 5 year old that NY police placed in handcuffs and shackles (Guardian - UK). Discussion on this matter caused you to write to Kwame Zulu Shabazz thus :

Dear Kwame,

Just had a long discussion with a young colleague, a woman of colour, and she was much more in agreement with you than with me. That was your post on this forum on 7 May 2015. When I challenged your expression, with which you referred to your colleague as a woman of colour, as being racist, your response contained among others the following, "In Cameroon when we were there in the 1970s, Mabel Smythe was the U.S. Ambassador. To the Cameroonians, this light-skinned African American woman was white! Not mixed, not black, white. They were astonished, when we said she was black! To an American it was obvious she was black! If it had been in the Caribbean, they would have not only called her a femme de couleur, a woman of colour, but more an octroon, or one of those horrible terms designating how much white or black blood she had." This was part of your post on 9 May 2015 in response to my objection to your reference to a fellow human being as a woman of colour. !970 was 25 years after World War II ended and 2015 was 70 years after the end of the World War II, which according to you obliterated the division of human race into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Yet you found it appropriate in year 2015 to racially classify a U.S. Ambassador as light-skinned African American woman, not white but black, and an octoroon, beside describing your colleague as a woman of colour. Earlier, on 8 May 2015, Mr. Ogugua Anunoby had queried you about what you meant by the expression, 'a woman of colour' in referring to your colleague when it would have been sensible of you to refer to her as, 'my colleague or my female colleague'. On the same day you wrote Mr. Anunoby:

Dear OA, 

                ... But in this case, persons of colour, women of colour, are commonly used respectful terms. You might not like them, but an individual dislike doesn't constitute grounds for determining a term derogatory. We don't invent a vocabulary, it is shared, and its value are shared ones. That's how language works.  May I add that, that is how language works for a man of pale colour.

Although I referred to the division of human race by the western eugenicists into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid and expatiated further that  a child parented by a Negro and a Caucasian, is called a Mulatto; a child parented by a Mulatto and a Caucasian is called a Quadroon; and a child parented by a Quadroon and a Caucasian is called an Octoroon, neither did you object to any of the aforementioned shared vocabularies nor invoke Wikipedia definitions to invalidate them. You dared not do that because it would have amounted to sneezing and closing your mouth at the same time and thereby causing self-asphyxiation. The validity of your claim to use the terms, woman of colour, not white, black and octoroon would have crumbled if you had objected then to the terms, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid races. 

 

I am not a racist as you tried to paint me. In my mother tongue, we have equivalent word for God. If that that God has any message to the people of my mother tongue, He should communicate that to us in the language into which He has created us. For what is racist to me is when an Arab or a Hebrew comes with sword in hands to force me to accept Allah or Jehovah as the name of my God and if I don't accept, I can be killed or incarcerated. The God of black Africa does not speak Arabic or Hebrew and no sane black man will go around killing his fellow blacks for refusing to adhere to Islam or Christian religion. Saying that does not constitute racism or hatred against the Caucasian Arabs or Hebrews and their religions. During the trial of late Mohammed Ali for refusing to be drafted to the US army for onward service in Vietnam, the presiding Judge asked him, "Do you hate whites?"  Mohammed Ali answered thus, "Your honour, if a lion suddenly enters into this court room, we will all jump out throughout the windows. Not because we hate lions, but because we know what lions always do." When victims of racism complain, it is unfair for perpetrators to accuse victims of racism of being racists. Some liberals, I am sorry to observe, are two persons in one, they are Judas and Jesus at the same time.

S. Kadiri

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

PS 2

Not funny : don't forget to go back to the jungle in Africa

As Nobel Laureate  Dylan put it  in the concluding lines of “The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest”

“Well, the moral of the story

The moral of this song

Is simply that one should never be

Where one does not belong

So when you see your neighbor carryin’ somethin’

Help him with his load

And don’t go mistaking Paradise

For that home across the road"

<p s

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Dear Kennothe,

Thank you for your diplomatic question No.1 which nullifies your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian and tacitly upholds Eugenicists and social anthropologists definition of it.

Concerning your other questions, I am aware of the sufferings of the Jews in the hands of their fellow Caucasians. However, in the annal of human history, no race has suffered so much persecution and injustice as the Negroid race has been obliged to do in the hands of the Caucasians. When all is said and done, the fact is plain for everybody to see that besides the annihilation of the American and Australian aborigines by the Caucasians, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated by the Caucasians was the capture and carting away of the Negroid race from Africa to America and West Indies as slaves. Unfortunately, the enslavement of the Negroid race by the Caucasians is still in operation today by other means.

S. Kadiri 

---

Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>

Skickat: den 27 januari 2018 20:41

[Kenneth Harrow]

Hi salimonu

I am afraid of responding to your points by wrangling, which becomes unproductive, and I am not sure how to get past wrangling. In soyinka’s telephone conversation poem the English landlady says something to the Soyinka character in the poem when he is calling about renting a  flat. Hearing his accent, she suspects he is black and asks him if he is dark. He responds, depends on which part of my body you are referring to, and then goes on, in typically soyinkan irony, do you mean my this, my that, my face, my hands, and then concludes (am doing this by heart, so not really precise) by stating, but my bottom, madam, is pitch black.

I feel I am being put in the same position as Soyinka in the telephone booth, the closeness and sense of embarrassment that he affiliates with sensing his breath, not believing his ears at her indiscreet questions.

 

Being caught, he put it.

If I say x, will I be caught? Will I be found out? I as what? White, Caucasian, jewish, male, height this, weight that, eyes, ears, etc etc.

No, there is no profit in this. if it isn’t an idea the discussion of which is profitable, this turns into accusations and denials. Maybe we could try to turn to issues amenable to reflection, in which case I would happily reengage.

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 Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday 28 January 2018 at 05:59
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: 19th Century Philosophy That Drives President Buhari’s Cattle Colony Policy

 

Dear Kennothe,

Thank you for your diplomatic question No.1 which nullifies your Wikipedia definition of Caucasian and tacitly upholds Eugenicists and social anthropologists definition of it.

 

Concerning your other questions, I am aware of the sufferings of the Jews in the hands of their fellow Caucasians. However, in the annal of human history, no race has suffered so much persecution and injustice as the Negroid race has been obliged to do in the hands of the Caucasians. When all is said and done, the fact is plain for everybody to see that besides the annihilation of the American and Australian aborigines by the Caucasians, the greatest holocaust ever perpetrated by the Caucasians was the capture and carting away of the Negroid race from Africa to America and West Indies as slaves. Unfortunately, the enslavement of the Negroid race by the Caucasians is still in operation today by other means.

S. Kadiri