Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

It has still not been denied that Colonel Gaddafi made the following donations to SIerra Leone:

• 125 Million US Dollars and Cars to be distributed among Imams in Sierra Leone.
• 100 Million US Dollars Cheque to Sierra Leone
• Two ships loaded with Rice for Sierra Leone
• Forty Tractors for Sierra Leone
• Two Air Taxi Planes
• Fifty-two Buses
• Two 20ft Containers of meat for Sierra Leone
• Twelve mini-hydro machines for the 12 Districts
• Two Generators for the City
• Two ferries for Sierra Leone

[ibdu...@gmail.com]

What you have listed is more than the current-total national budget which hovers around the one billion dollar mark. For such a colossal sum to disappear without any trace is frightening to say the least. In the case of the rice the Kabbah regime quickly respond to say it was sold in Ghana and the proceeds invested in the National Insurance Scheme.

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[ibdu...@gmail.com]

Cornelius:

When did this happen? And what is the evidence/source? Gadhafi visited twice: under Kabba and when Koroma came to power. Ghadafi publicly mentioned the rice he donated to the Kabbah regime which was never disclosed plus two million $$$ deposited at Sanpha Koroma's bank. All the other items you listed were never mentioned by Ghadafi or even declared by government officials.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 16, 2015, at 11:27 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

--

[Segun Ogungbemi]

What was intentions? Was it to Islamize the recipients of his  goods and services? Was it not a long plan for him to become the president of the United States of Africa in future? 

If his humanitarian gesture was a genuine passion for Africans in S/Leon it is commendable. 

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

--

[Segun Ogungbemi]

What was his intentions? Was it to Islamize the recipients of his goods and services? Was it not a long plan for him to become the president of the United States of Africa in future? But above all was there any proofs that these humanitarian goods and services were received by the Government and people of S/Leon? If yes, then
his humanitarian gesture was a genuine passion for Africans in S/Leon is commendable.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 I know next to nothing about these matters, but  I assume that the donations are supposed to have been made I guess as part reparations for  what you allege in your publication “The Origin and Character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone" that  to some extent Gaddafi  gave material support to the Foday Sankoh,  the  RUF leader and  consequently the horrendous destruction of life and property  and infrastructure in Sierra Leone.   

The source of the allegations which I’m seeing for the first time is  HERE  and this happened during  the Presidency of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah  - if you remember  he once spent more than ten days as Gaddafi’s guest  over there in Libya…. TEN DAYS!!!!

( By the way  are you related to Tunde Abdullah and his brother Rahman Abdullah ?)

[ibdu...@gmail.com]

I was categorical about Ghadafi's support for Sankoh in the publication you cited and in another piece: 'Africans do not live by Bread alone'.

The Abdullah's in Aberdeen are my mom's relation. My Abdullah is Nigeria--Jiagawa/Kano.

---

Sent from my iPhone

[kenneth harrow]

ghaddafi also supported charles taylor. how many millions died or got their hands chopped off thanks to that?
how many millions went to pay for artificial limbs?
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Segun Ogungbemi]

What were his intentions? Was it to Islamize the recipients of his goods and services? Was it not a long plan for him to become the president of the United States of Africa in future? But above all were there any proofs that these humanitarian goods and services were received by the Government and people of S/Leon? If yes, then
his humanitarian gesture was probably a genuine passion for Africans in S/Leon. And he deserved commendation.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

[ibdu...@gmail.com]

Africans in Sierra Leone? We are all Africans in Sierra Leone!!! Segun: learn to be quite on issues you know nothing about.
--

Sent from my iPhone

[Segun Ogungbemi]

There are expatriates in S/Leon who are not Africans and who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

These days, there are said to be NGOS, AID workers and those representing other international agencies, tourists (after the war and before Ebola took the nation by storm) but the number of Europeans in what was known as “The White Man’s grave”/ the Malaria Coast, has dwindled compared with e.g. British presence during the good old colonial days when we had French teachers from Belgium, France, and Canada…

There are also a lot of resident Lebanese in Sierra Leone (Christian, Shia, Sunni) in my day, mostly as you  pointed out, “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi” : entrepreneurs, retail traders,  diamond miners, diamond merchants, – including a category known as “Afro-Lebanese”, to the extent that a law was specially crafted into the Constitution stating that anyone who wants to contest for the Sierra Leone presidency must have at least have an  African grandfather or grandmother. I guess that with the passage of time this law will be successively updated and extended to read “at least a great great African grandpa or grandma”.  Nabih Berri the speaker of  Lebanon’s parliament was born in  Sierra Leone  and Afro-Lebanese  include John Akar  who composed the Sierra Leone National Anthem  - the words of course were authored by Clifford Nelson Fyle ) Joe Blell (“Afro-Lebanese” – for those who want to make that distinction)  brother of  Denys and Gandhi Bell , was Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Nigeria for many years and most importantly, Ahmed Labi and Ahmed Diab…

There are said to be a lot of Chinese workers and that their restaurants are flourishing at least in Freetown and - no prejudice – I wonder what the coming race of Afro-Chinese are going to look like and to what extent they will multiply…

 Still on the subject of those “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi”, Hezbollah was said to be doing some of their fund-raising in Sierra Leone…

In Gaddafi’s day many Africans were able to make the safe passage from Libya to Italy – that’s how many Africans got there and you will find that such people of course are forever grateful to him…

As far as Gaddafi’s largesse was concerned, let’s face it as the saying goes, “money talks,  bullshit walks”  - so if even whilst you are disputing  the legitimacy of Igbo Kings in Lagos,  Gaddafi  could be crowned King of  Kings  of Africa what else could he not do with petro dollars? President of Africa could not have been so far away, even if Africa’s most populous nation would like the president of Africa to come from Nigeria and the next step would have been – perhaps – full membership of the Arab League….

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi,

These days, there are said to be NGOS, AID workers and those representing other international agencies, tourists (after the war and before Ebola took the nation by storm) but the number of Europeans in what was known as “The White Man’s grave”/ the Malaria Coast, has dwindled compared with e.g. British presence during the good old colonial days when we had French teachers from Belgium, France, and Canada…

There are also a lot of resident Lebanese in Sierra Leone (Christian, Shia, Sunni) in my day, mostly as you  pointed out, “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi” : entrepreneurs, retail traders,  diamond miners, diamond merchants, – including a category known as “Afro-Lebanese”, to the extent that a law was specially crafted into the Constitution stating that anyone who wants to contest for the Sierra Leone presidency must have at least an  African grandfather or grandmother. I guess that with the passage of time this law will be successively updated and extended to read “at least a great great African grandpa or grandma”.  Nabih Berri the speaker of  Lebanon’s parliament was born in  Sierra Leone  and Afro-Lebanese  include John Akar  who composed the Sierra Leone National Anthem  - the words of course were authored by Clifford Nelson Fyle ) Joe Blell (“Afro-Lebanese” – for those who want to make that distinction)  brother of  Denys and Gandhi Blell , was Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Nigeria for many years and most importantly, Ahmed Labi and Ahmed Diab…

There are said to be a lot of Chinese workers and that their restaurants are flourishing at least in Freetown and - no prejudice – I wonder what the coming race of Afro-Chinese are going to look like and to what extent they will multiply…

 Still on the subject of those “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi”, Hezbollah was said to be doing some of their fund-raising in Sierra Leone…

In Gaddafi’s day many Africans were able to make the safe passage from Libya to Italy – that’s how many Africans got there and you will find that such people of course are forever grateful to him…

As far as Gaddafi’s largesse was concerned, let’s face it as the saying goes, “money talks,  bullshit walks”  - so if even whilst you are disputing  the legitimacy of Igbo Kings in Lagos,  Gaddafi  could be crowned King of  Kings  of Africa what else could he not do with petro dollars? President of Africa could not have been so far away, even if Africa’s most populous nation would like the president of Africa to come from Nigeria and the next step would have been – perhaps – full membership of the Arab League….

On Tuesday, 19 May 2015 18:03:35 UTC+2, seguno2013 wrote:

[Segun Ogungbemi]

Thanks my dear colleague for that brilliant explanation. 

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

[kenneth harrow]

gaddafi and war crimes in sierra leone and liberia:

It was not long after he received a secret warning from the Italian government in April 1986 and narrowly escaped being blown to bits by American bombers that Muammar Gaddafi declared his intention to become Emperor of Africa. What followed as the increasingly erratic Gaddafi pursued his megalomaniacal dream was one of the most obscene and violent episodes in recent African history.

Drawing recruits from his terrorism camps, Gaddafi trained, armed and dispatched thugs like Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh to take power in West African countries, initiating the brutal slaughter of innocents in Liberia and Sierra Leone, says David M. Crane, the founding prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. “This was a long-term criminal conspiracy,” says Crane, who is now a professor at Syracuse University, and “[Gaddafi] was the center point.”

For those who don’t remember, here’s a quick summary of the atrocities that took place in the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. In pursuit of diamonds, timber and gold, Sankoh, backed by Taylor, backed by Gaddafi, invaded Sierra Leone and instituted a campaign of terror, cutting off the arms and other body parts of civilians to frighten the country into compliance. Rape was a widespread weapon of war, and according to reporting by one human rights organization, Sankoh’s troops played a game where they would bet on the sex of a baby being carried by a pregnant captive, then cut the fetus out of the woman to determine its gender.

Sankoh died in custody after the war ended; Taylor is currently being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Gaddafi is named in Taylor’s indictment, and Taylor has testified to Gaddafi’s involvement. Crane says he found evidence that when Sankoh invaded Sierra Leone, “Libyan special forces were there helping train and assist them tactically and there were Libyan arms in that invasion: he had been involved from the get go.”

http://swampland.time.com/2011/02/22/gaddafis-blood-soaked-hands/

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Gaddafi was no different from other imperialist country aid givers. Gaddafi’s problem was that he was not entitled and therefore not expected to play the horror game. Mobutu’s Congo for example  received a lot of aid and other assistance from some Western countries. See what happened to his country.

When some Western countries destabilize less developed countries, it is branded supporting freedom fighters. When less developed countries do the same, it is branded sponsorship of terrorism. Remember Angola?  

The situation seems to be that it is very well for Western countries and their proxy states to destabilize less developed countries but not so for a less developing country to do the same. If only every country will mind its own business- pay better than lip service to respect for the sovereignty of all countries.

 

oa

[kenneth harrow]

gaddafi's politics of independence aside--which one could support--his training and support of taylor and sankoh was really horrific. i can't see how this can be excused.
the western nation's bad actions need to be criticized; they do not excuse supporting mass murdering.
ken

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

No one is excusing the wrongs of Gaddafi. I was only making sure that no one thinks Gaddafi wrote the script on foreign aid twined with violent interference in other countries’ affairs.

Wrong is wrong. Why condemn one and merely criticize the other?

[kenneth harrow]

there's lots of condemnations to go around....

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Which is why education, empathy, enlightenment, justice, and peace for all and truth telling by all, should be the ways forward.

[Pablo]

Ken,

Crane went so far as to claim that the British put pressure upon the courts  not to prosecute Gaddafi because of oil,  but provided no evidence;  and even though we know the British lied about many things across two governments (under Major and Blair), they claimed otherwise. Crane's views, to say the least are contentious, and a number of HR lawyers  here in Canada (Schabas at Carleton,  for example), amongst others,  who had no  time for Gaddafi,  have contested them. Crane,   was not an uncontroversial figure in the trials, and  although appointed by the UN,  as a  former Pentagon prosecutor, notwithstanding  his position as a special prosecutor (and maybe because of it),   is hardly an unbiased source. He also seemed to me to  play it  every way; on the one hand,  talking about the problems of imposing white man's justice, nd aware the the multiple local "cultural" complication of but then saying, well this is the best that we can do.

BTW,  your paste here  is  from a  piece in TIME, of all places,  in January of 2011, when the propaganda war to oust Gaddafi was about to get into full swing. Gaddafi was a megalomaniac meddler. But, as Ibrahim knows better than me, as  does, amongst others, a former student, Zuba Wai (who has a slightly different take upon the class-based sources for the RUF than Ibrahim-- I personally don't know, one way or the other),  those  armed and trained  and influenced by  his green book  and Pan Africanism  appeared heterogeneous. Other than their being  expelled and believing in radical change in SL,  there was little ideological consensus or common  political program besides acquiring military training. There were multiple local players, at least through Taylor  and the NPFL, as much though Sankoh, including  Burkina Faso (a declining Houphouët-Boigny's),  Côte d'Ivoire, and even France. Certainly,  Gaddafi and Libya  were the primary bag men,  and if the conflicts could not have happened without his involvement, he was not the only source of the conflicts; but (and despite the relative small numbers of the fighters trained), the arms supplied and the money provided (though few, other than speculative guesses, and again, questionable evidence) have come up with how much. That  appallingly unspeakable  brutality and mayhem that ensued requires culpability, and leaders should be held responsible, even if they could not have anticipated what happened, or were indifferent to the consequences.  But I think, at least on this, we need better evidence then this piece.

Best,
Pablo

[ibdu...@gmail.com]

David Craine was a throw back to the past: a veritable racist(redneck) prosecutor sent to deal with errant negroes. It did not work because the Brits asserted their proprietary rights over Salone--thanks to the pliant Tejan Kabbah who obliged as is immediate post colonial predecessor Milton Margai.

Pablo: Wai did not offer any insight on the class basis of the RUF. His sole preoccupation--reductionist and simplistic in my view--was to take issue with my use of lumpen proletariat as an analytic category. He chastises me for being Eurocentric even as he was spewing Foucault whom he reinvented as an 'African' and Valentine Mudimbe the self confessed Garlic Congolese. You cannot stand on Foucault and Mudimbe and seriously claim Africa. It's like staying in North York and claiming you are on Bloor!

--

Sent from my iPhone

[kenneth harrow]

hi pablo
i thought it was common knowledge, so did not probe it very deeply.
i am glad for your greater insight. what do you think of this report in Informed Comment, that confirms gaddafi's role? http://www.juancole.com/2012/05/my-last-phone-call-from-charles-taylor-or-how-qaddafi-plagued-africa-pirio.html

i also was being slightly disingenuous, not because i doubted his willingness of provide subventions to brutal figures, but because i also have read msf evidence that the opponents to ruf proved equally brutal--not excluding the nigerians when they came in as well. this was reported in In the Shadow of Just Wars  by fabrice Weissman.

nonetheless, after all this, the question of left tolerance of questionable leadership because they evoke anti-western rhetoric still troubles me. we've lived through that in the past w figures like idi amin. your posting ends with an appeal to holding leaders responsible, and that's what i was trying to address.
i haven't researched this as you have: what was gaddafi's response  once it became clear that the ruf policy of establishing its rule was to use terror and no-man's-land?
ken

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Peace, brother Ken.

Pirio worked for VOA and calls it a "credible" source of information about Africa. Rubbish! VOA is a tool of US imperialism. You won't find a single instance of VOA taking on the CIA for sponsoring Taylor, facilitating Taylor's escape from prison and his unencumbered passage back to West Africa. There is nothing credible about VOA. Haba! Pirio's theory defies logic. He suggests that Gaddafi sponsored Taylor to get back at the US. But, in fact, the Taylor was being sponsored by the US govt. There would have been no war if the US govt. doesnt break Taylor out of prison and basically escort him back to West Africa.

I think its fair to say that Gaddafi has got some things right and some things wrong. His likely role in the assassination of Sankara was a huge setback for African self-reliance. On the other hand, I have been to about half of West Africa. Virtually everywhere I have gone, someone has pointed to some project that was supported by Gaddafi. And Nelson Mandela called him a comrade of South Africa.

Gaddafi's support of Taylor is probable and even likely. What is unclear was whether Gaddafi intent was to sponsor a bloody civil war. That is, by the way, precisely the benefit of doubt afforded to President Johnson Sirleaf who basically claims she was unaware of Taylor's actual motives. If Sirleaf was on the ground, as it were, and was duped by Taylor, then I think its reasonable to consider the Gaddafi might not of understood the complexity of the hostilities in that region.

[kenneth harrow]

hi kwame
is there a credible source that the cia did all these things, or is it suppositional?
ken

[kenneth harrow]

kwame,
also, let me defend voa a bit. the people who work there are people, not spies. the fonlon-nichols award is named after nichols, whom, if you knew as we at ala did for many decades, was a really decent, good-hearted guy whose first and last interests were african, not american govt. i'm sure the govt set limits to what they could say, but much of their work was first rate.

i have no real specialized knowledge about the rest of it: the only text i've read is the one i cited, by weissman, the msf guy, which was excellent. the political background stuff, w gaddafi's engagement, i take your reading of it. getting closer to ambitious political figures risks getting ugly too often.
ke

On 5/22/15 9:10 PM, kenneth harrow wrote:

hi kwame
is there a credible source that the cia did all these things, or is it suppositional?
ken

On 5/22/15 6:50 PM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:

Peace, brother Ken. n

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Ken, the VOA is not defensible. It is the media arm of American imperialism; that is an institutional matter. If a media house has a weak critique of western imperialism, then I think we have to wonder about its agenda and interests. Your defense of individuals who work for VOA is a different matter. For example, Shaka Ssali seems to be a fair-minded journalist. But even he was weak on US imperialism, in my view. The VOA essay you posted is dubious, to put the matter mildly, if it has no accounting of the US govt orchestrated escape of Taylor. Again, you wont find Shaka or any VOA journalist addressing that important issue in a serious way.

As for credible source for the CIA sponsoring Taylor, I can only offer a healthy dose of commonsense and Taylor's own testimony. The FBI/CIA/and other "black bag" agencies have done fairly decent job of covering its bloody hands in Africa and Black America (although they were exposed in DRC). I do recall that the CIA admitted that Taylor was somehow working with the USG. However, in an unusual step, it was retracted by the Boston Globe (surprise! surprise!) see link here.

For a general discussion of CIA malfeasance also see former CIA agent John Stockwell's book, "In Search of Enemies" or Steven Kinzer's work on US "covert" operations in Latin America. If you have more likely explanation regarding Taylor's implausible "escape" from a US prison and unencumbered travel out of the USA and back to West Africa please share it.

kzs
===
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===
EVERY ARTIST, EVERY SCIENTIST MUST DECIDE, NOW, WHERE HE STANDS. He has no
alternative. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of national and racial superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. This struggle invades the former cloistered halls of our universities and all her seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. The artist elects to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice! I had no alternative! - Paul Robeson, speech about the Spanish Civil War at the Albert Hall, London,on 24th June 1937

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[Folu Ogundimu]

The one takeaway from the 2011 Calabresi Time piece is that the write up is a self-servicing sales job to justify Gaddafi's overthrow by the West. Yes, Gaddaffi may have been a bad guy but the humanitarian argument for his removal was a ruse. In retrospect, the Italians were right about the destabilizing impact of Gaddafi's removal, especially regarding the threat of the thugs of the caliphate. Ditto Saddam and Iraq.

 If the world was truly concerned by moral culpability for the human tragedy of the post-911 world, the UN will be establishing special courts to try a whole bunch of political actors from the West as well. One clear moral of the Gadaffi story is 'If you are nuclear-armed, don't give up your weapon under any circumstance. Deterrence works.'  

F. 

Sent from my iPad

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Agree, comrade Folu.

I say, and continue to say, that any American president is worse than 20 Gaddafis. US foreign policy is consistently in violation of international law and, even worse, catastrophic for human progress.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

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[Pablo]

Thanks Kwame, and apologies for not responding sooner, Ken; been down with a heavy cold, so haven't had the energy or wit  to respond.

I think Kwame's more or less said what I would have said, both about Taylor and the U.S' role in getting him back to Liberia ( and we know now that Sirleaf-Johnson hardly had clean hands in all of this), and about what I have called  Gadaffi's untutored meddling.  If you play in the great game, however local and through proxies, you get burned. And, yes, he did not understand the complexities of the region.  However, it appears that once things got out of hand, he sought, unsuccessfully, to put the genie back in the by bottle by cutting off weaponry and monies. 

As to his legacies, of course he cuts an uneven assessment in different parts of Africa. Intention is not everything, and consequences matter. 

Best,

Pablo

Sent from my grandfather's typewriter

[Pablo]

IB, thanks for this, and sorry not to have responded, but been been down with a heavy cold, so my eyes can but muster the one liners. I think you nailed it on all accounts, including Zuba; and as for "You cannot stand on Foucault and Mudimbe and seriously claim Africa. It's like staying in North York and claiming you are on Bloor!",  na you oh!

Pablo

Sent from my grandfather's typewriter

[kenneth harrow]

hi kwame, for me it is not a matter of defending it or attacking it, but more simply assessing how institutions work. i believe that even when the state is quite powerful, its institutions can work with a degree of autonomy. i regard french cultural institutions overseas as being, at least at times, relatively autonomous from the french policies toward africa, or even as molding that policy in positive directions. the same with voice of america. it would work with limits, within limits, but also at an angle from, say, the goals of africom; i would view the state dept as being at odds with the pentagon, at least in less strategic regions.

i'll give a personal example. i received a few fullbright awards in the past. the first one, in 1977 in cameroon, we were told, i don't remember by whom, that there was an intelligence officer in the embassy, but we didn't know who, and that that person was to keep a distance from us because americans, working under america's official label, would all be suspected of being cia.

that tight line disappeared the last time i was fulbright in africa, in senegal, where the opening reception i attended included military whom the ambassador thanked alongside the cultural figures. we were mingled in with them; simultaneously i learned that the cultural work in senegal, and i dare say in africa, had shifted its priorities. money was reduced; the library in dakar was closed, alas, the cultural center had become a shadow of its former self. i wanted to have them put on an african american film series; i was told that the only real money they had was for events dealing with islam, showing the u.s. was concerned over terrorism, but wasn't anti-muslim.
i was allowed to project a few films on campus....but that was it.
when i accepted this last fulbright, and was interviewed, i stated that i was opposed to bush and american foreign policy--i wanted it to be clear. but the woman who interviewed me said i was free to speak my mind, say whatever i wanted. she requested, only, that i not embarrass the ambassador.
none of any of that mattered.
you could say i was an agent of imperialism simply because i had a u.s. fellowship to be there. but the principle of relative autonomy applied to me. i gave anti-bush lectures in tunisia, a few years before that, despite the fact that the dept of state had paid my tickets to come to a conference and give a series of lectures. when in senegal, no one monitored what i was saying, and in fact, i was learning about talibe, about life in dakar, about the issue of illegal emigration, etc. the state dept had provided all americans related to govt funding w absurd orientation sessions, telling us not to take public transport, etc, and to point out to them if we happened to come across terrorists. the person responsible for security addressed us as if we were children, and i suppose some were newcomers who knew little or nothing of where they had arrived.
but the security apparatus really functioned just to keep senegalese out, to keep them at a distance from the embassy or cultural affairs offices. before, they had been open; before, in cameroon and tunisia, they were in the heart of the downtown; now they were moved to fortresses at the periphery of the city.

when i think about the french cultural center, or the american, or the german, or all the rest, i see them not only in institutional terms, not only in how they might have been funded with a certain idea of their impact, but also how they actually functioned, with the particular people involved.
ken

[kenneth harrow]

oh well, here we go. "seriously claim africa" means what?
who is the judge who will put their african in X and remove it from Y?
should it be fanon who is seriously in, and mudimbe who is seriously out?
seriously? or just rhetorically.

i once asked gates about this very old question, what counts, who counts, what is the authentic, allowable theory to be used in black studies, and he said, i don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. no, he said, let's use what is useful.
let's use what is useful. if mudimbe is not useful in understanding society and culture in africa, nobody is.
there is no more baby or bathwater.

anyway, i don't believe in these bright lines of insider and outsider, obviously
ken

[Pablo]

Maybe I'm febrile, Ken, but I do note understand a note of what you are saying here.

Pablo

[kenneth harrow]

sorry. the question of "claiming africa," that mudimbe, via foucault, cannot be considered as african, as speaking for anything really african...that's how i took the comment of ibdullah below. the old question, as i call it, who is authentically african, has the right to speak for africa....
unless he meant something else, i took it that that was his meaning, and which kwame returned us to.
it is ironic because at the moment i am viewing bekolo's 4 hr film on/of/about mudimbe, and mudimbe just responded specifically to this question posed by bekolo, can africa get rid of the white man, i.e., can african thought rid itself of the west
mudimbe smiled and said, it is a "belle question." he went on to give a very careful, precise response, citing his own key initial texte, L'odeur du pere. foucault speaks of logophilia, love of the logos of reason etc, which, for foucault, occludes logophobia. for mudimbe, the western love of knowledge entails exclusion of what it defines as Other to knowledge, rendering the african "singular," that is, different, and an object of the western anthropological gaze. mudimbe's whole life work is intended to counter this, and yet, formed as he was in the disciplines of history, sociology, philosophy, he says the very framing of the question imposes an answer which is, as foucault says, in attempting to get rid of hegel you wind up back again with him, with him already there waiting.
mudimbe says he substitutes the west for hegel, and says the thinking of african intellectuals is already formed through this absorption of western disciplinary thinking. i.e., there is no escape.

we can debate this point at length. for mudimbe, there are three arenas of knowledge. the mythic, the everyday, and that of disciplines.
i know some on the list will affirm that there is african philosophy, african medicine, etc. but each affirmation, instead of proposing an alternative to western epistemology, falls within it by virtue of accepting its own discipline. that is my largest argument against all claims for african civilization, because the very category of civilization itself is a western concept. to say egypt is the origin of civilization is to lose the game, to accept a western-greek-roman frame, from the outset.

who gives us this issue? mudimbe.
if we were to then argue, mudimbe is too western, too reliant on foucault, we are not only losing the value of his analysis of the very question that seeks to dismiss him, we become blinded to the conditions of possibility that are framing the question.
we remain within the paradigm we are seeking to displace.
spivak also said it: the revolt against colonial thought and discourse presupposes the emplacement of colonialism as the point of departure, the frame for the question. it isn't being freed from it, no matter the violence directed against it. in the end, as foucault said of hegel, it is there waiting for you, having already anticipated the revolt and its conclusion.
k

[Pablo]

My Brother Ken,
 We are at cross purposes. My comment-summary response had first to do with endorsing Ibrahim (always speaks for himself)'s concise characterization of Crane, and his very rich and much insider understanding of the multiply complex process  in judicial wrangling and trialing horse-trading procedures in Sierra Leone.  It was also less about Mudimbe and more about whether his understanding of the constituencies of the RUF and the value of  a certain understanding of class analysis that he disagrees with Zuba Wai.  If I might have been sympathetic to Zuba's analysis, like Ibrahim, but perhaps not so viscerally,  I'm not always convinced. That's a class-ethnographic argument amongst Sierra Leoneans.  The you dey man tag had more to do with the in joke about  turning Zuba's own characterization of Ibrahim  around, but more so about the in joke about the geography and placement of comment of universities in Toronto


 Summary statement always get one in trouble, no?  However, at least you can unpack them? Longer statements lead to longer statements and more refinements that we often  do not have the time to  further elaborate on, but let me say the following:_ 

 My comments really had nothing to do with Mudimbe's lenses upon  Africa. I know the man, and know his work, and have the greatest respect for him; and I could not, as a matter of principle, engage in simple inside-outside binaries about authentic  philosophical-interpretative dispositions. I do think that ther are discourses that are more important  to many peoples' everyday lives and to their modes of appropriating ideas through the social realities  and lenses.  As we all know, if academia is not a market places of ideas( at least in many disciplines) , it is certainly one where we whether choose ways of knowing that undo what we thought we knew, reinforce what we believe we know/knew, and hat they live. I can quite easily imagine, at the level of theory, anyway,  many never knowing Foucault or the biopolitical, or Mudimbe, or for that matter Mbembe, and countless others in their own academic worlds to make sense of that world  and their everyday realities -- countless people do who are not Africanists or  Africans, and have a conversation, theoretically or commonsensicaly, that make sense to them, and that can or has to be captured in others' discourses, theoretical and/or practical, theories, is a matter of the battle of the books  of social reproduction -- we can dispense with Bordieu theoretically to understand those, or ordinary person who can parse the world in a way that evokes the same or a better understanding. We only know if we know, having read them, and we only know if we compare. We may decide that after that comparison,  process, and there may well be a black/African, but we elide many possibilities when we do, as we do for others, and in not discussing them, or opening up that possibility to others  because we found no  utility them--jettisoning them at or after grad school for those whom we want, or think we can speak to.  So yes, Kwame, people can throw away others' canons away, as many of us have. My point was, and still is, that there are many  ways of talking through the choices we make to talk with each other, with all the caveats about the the hegemony  of ethnocentric/ethnocentric thought. It's about,  as my ole Pa used to ask, does it boil any cassava, and does it taste sweet , not just to you, but to others?

I leave authenticity for another time, but which I often think is as much an ethical aim of life as it is an interpretive disposition, but both can be about what and how we teach ourselves and others.

By the way, if I think understand you better, or  am in agreement with you;  and if, I am hopefully,  able to write with grater clarity than earlier, it's partly because I  have taken a mediacamant homeopathique toux et rhume sirop, which which  I recommend to all.

Best,
Pablo

[Ibrahim Abdullah]

Ken is totally off the rail; taking us elsewhere in the name of commenting when the issue being discussed has nothing to do with his comments. Save that for another place and time. A self-confessed Garlic Congolese and Foucault are just not the lenses through which a critique of marxism and a discourse on epistemological independence about African scholarship can be framed.
---

[kenneth harrow]

dear pablo,
thanks for the considered thoughts, and gentle remonstrances.
if i went on about mudimbe, in part it was in reaction to twice seeing him and foucault so blithely dismissed, and, true, i know bloor is in toronto, but don't have a clue what the difference is between up town and downtown campuses, though now i can guess.
what, columbia vs ccny?

anyway,  i  finished watching bekolo's 4 hr show.
my reading of mudimbe goes way way back, to l'odeur du pere, before anything else was quite ready in english. when finally his two major works, invention of africa and idea of africa, came out, they rode very high, and shaped the world of postcolonial african thought, although it was absolutely true that the path had already been carved out earlier by edward said, and before him foucault. in the film mudimbe acknowledges foucault quite a bit.

i grew up intellectually through that world and period, fighting to bring postcolonialism to my dept, seeing it grow, and now decline. not just my dept, the entire academy. mudimbe is now part of the parents, if not grandparents' generation for the current crop of grad students. they politely nod their heads and dutifully read him, after fanon; then a few other postcolonial texts, cesaire's tract, it has become too too much comp exam material, and very far from the core of their dissertation concerns. i have one student who just defended doing ecocriticism--that is cutting edge. another on trauma and affect, in an indian frame, rewriting affect theory--that is cutting edge; a third on nollywood and urbanism, and that is cutting edge. if you think about butler and performativity, that is now ancient for feminism. precarity, dispossession, linked to palestine, say. that is what is being read.

so part of me has to learn, if you will the hard way, to let go of the notion that mudimbe is central to the work a grad student working in africa ought to be doing. i would want my grad students to be able to follow the debates re sierra leone with the awareness i lack of the details of the history.

i often worry about making these postings too long, and see strength in gloria's pithiness. sometimes that let's too much fall between the cracks.
warm regards
ken

[kenneth harrow]

ibdullah
pablo is urging, sagely, a discourse that is welcoming. true, i shifted away from the discussion re sierra leone, to the passing comments re mudimbe and foucault. no doubt both could be critiqued, or dismissed, usefully. but when you say they aren't the lens through which a critique.... can be made, it seems to me you're wrong. mudimbe sees his work as following marxism; have you read his novel about the marxist priest, L'autre face du royaume; or L'ecart? it deals entirely w epistemological readings. it then is spelled out in his two major essays. all of mudimbe's work returns to the latter issues, all of it. marxism seems pretty diffused these days in africanist discussions.

the reason i'm writing is not to say there is no ground for a critique of his work; it is to complain that a wholesale dismissal as you are making leaves no room for the welcoming discussion. and maybe leads me to jump to conclusions about why you might want to dismiss him, since it is the stink of garlic that seems offensive.
but if you don't feel this is a productive track to take us along, i could understand that too.
ken

[kenneth harrow]

oops. for the marxist priest novel, meant to write, entre les eaux.

On 5/23/15 9:38 PM, Ibrahim Abdullah wrote:

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

I think we should add a few names to the Taylor saga to understand the role of the CIA and other agents and
agencies.

First there is Ibrahim Bah, Taylor's Minister for Mineral Resources, an anti-Soviet ex-Mujahideen in the
Afghan anti-Soviet wars.

Next there is Roger D' Onofrio Ruggiero an ex- CIA agent. See Fitsanakis, J, "Retired CIA agent
involved in Liberia diamonds-for- arms scandal" Intel News.org.02.23.2009.

Then there is Pat Robertson of Freedom Gold Ltd with his eyes on gold and diamonds. In fact Taylor's
government was to get 3% royalty on gold and diamond explorations based on a 1999 agreement.

Another player is Kintex, Bulgarian connection- involved in weapons for diamonds schemes.

Gadaffi seemed to be interested in acquisition of diamonds, and probably weapons. One Nicholas
Oman of Slovenia was a known weapons dealer and was also in the mix.

I also heard about the escape of Taylor from a Boston prison from about two different oral scholarly
sources.

See also Gberie, L.:Diamonds without Maps." ZNET. June 16,2004.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kwame zulu shabazz [kwames...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2015 10:38 PM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

Ken, the VOA is not defensible. It is the media arm of American imperialism; that is an institutional matter. If a media house has a weak critique of western imperialism, then I think we have to wonder about its agenda and interests. Your defense of individuals who work for VOA is a different matter. For example, Shaka Ssali seems to be a fair-minded journalist. But even he was weak on US imperialism, in my view. The VOA essay you posted is dubious, to put the matter mildly, if it has no accounting of the US govt orchestrated escape of Taylor. Again, you wont find Shaka or any VOA journalist addressing that important issue in a serious way.

As for credible source for the CIA sponsoring Taylor, I can only offer a healthy dose of commonsense and Taylor's own testimony. The FBI/CIA/and other "black bag" agencies have done fairly decent job of covering its bloody hands in Africa and Black America (although they were exposed in DRC). I do recall that the CIA admitted that Taylor was somehow working with the USG. However, in an unusual step, it was retracted by the Boston Globe (surprise! surprise!) see link here<http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/01/17/mass-escapee-turned-liberian-dictator-had-spy-agency-ties/DGBhSfjxPVrtoo4WT95bBI/story.html>.

For a general discussion of CIA malfeasance also see former CIA agent John Stockwell's book, "In Search of Enemies"<http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Enemies-CIA-Story/dp/0393009262> or Steven Kinzer's work on US "covert" operations in Latin America. If you have more likely explanation regarding Taylor's implausible "escape" from a US prison and unencumbered travel out of the USA and back to West Africa please share it.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>

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

It was not long after he received a secret warning<http://www.repubblica.it/2008/05/sezioni/esteri/libia-italia/attaccousa-conferma/attaccousa-conferma.html> from the Italian government in April 1986 and narrowly escaped being blown to bits by American bombers that Muammar Gaddafi declared his intention to become Emperor of Africa. What followed as the increasingly erratic Gaddafi pursued his megalomaniacal dream was one of the most obscene and violent episodes in recent African history.

Drawing recruits from his terrorism camps, Gaddafi trained, armed and dispatched thugs like Charles Taylor and Foday Sankoh to take power in West African countries, initiating the brutal slaughter of innocents in Liberia and Sierra Leone, says David M. Crane, the founding prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone<http://www.sc-sl.org/>. “This was a long-term criminal conspiracy,” says Crane, who is now a professor at Syracuse University, and “[Gaddafi] was the center point.”

For those who don’t remember, here’s a quick summary of the atrocities that took place in the war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. In pursuit of diamonds, timber and gold, Sankoh, backed by Taylor, backed by Gaddafi, invaded Sierra Leone and instituted a campaign of terror, cutting off the arms and other body parts of civilians to frighten the country into compliance. Rape was a widespread weapon of war, and according to reporting by one human rights organization, Sankoh’s troops played a game<http://www.uscr.org/newsroomsub.aspx?id=1124> where they would bet on the sex of a baby being carried by a pregnant captive, then cut the fetus out of the woman to determine its gender.

Sankoh died in custody after the war ended; Taylor is currently being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Gaddafi is named in Taylor’s indictment, and Taylor has testified to Gaddafi’s involvement. Crane says he found evidence that when Sankoh invaded Sierra Leone, “Libyan special forces were there helping train and assist them tactically and there were Libyan arms in that invasion: he had been involved from the get go.”

http://swampland.time.com/2011/02/22/gaddafis-blood-soaked-hands/


On 5/19/15 11:34 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua wrote:


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaaf...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Segun Ogungbemi
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2015 4:36 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

Thanks my dear colleague for that brilliant explanation.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

On May 19, 2015, at 9:40 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
Prof. Segun Ogungbemi,
These days, there are said to be NGOS, AID workers and those representing other international agencies, tourists (after the war and before Ebola took the nation by storm) but the number of Europeans in what was known as “The White Man’s grave”/ the Malaria Coast, has dwindled compared with e.g. British presence during the good old colonial days when we had French teachers from Belgium, France, and Canada…

There are also a lot of resident Lebanese<https://www.google.co.uk/#q=Lebanese+of+Sierra+Leone> in Sierra Leone (Christian, Shia, Sunni) in my day, mostly as you pointed out, “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi” : entrepreneurs, retail traders, diamond miners, diamond merchants, – including a category known as “Afro-Lebanese”, to the extent that a law was specially crafted into the Constitution stating that anyone who wants to contest for the Sierra Leone presidency must have at least an African grandfather or grandmother. I guess that with the passage of time this law will be successively updated and extended to read “at least a great great African grandpa or grandma”. Nabih Berri<https://www.google.co.uk/#q=Nabih+Berri+> the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament was born in Sierra Leone and Afro-Lebanese include John Akar<https://www.google.co.uk/#q=John+Akar+> who composed the Sierra Leone National Anthem<https://www.google.co.uk/#q=sierra+leone+national+anthem> - the words of course were authored by Clifford Nelson Fyle<https://www.google.se/search?q=Clifford+Nelson+Fyle&gws_rd=cr&ei=xJFbVcTKO8izswHftoHgBQ> ) Joe Blell (“Afro-Lebanese” – for those who want to make that distinction) brother of Denys and Gandhi Blell , was Sierra Leone’s ambassador to Nigeria for many years and most importantly, Ahmed Labi and Ahmed Diab…

There are said to be a lot of Chinese workers and that their restaurants are flourishing at least in Freetown and - no prejudice – I wonder what the coming race of Afro-Chinese are going to look like and to what extent they will multiply…

Still on the subject of those “who do not need any humanitarian services of Gaddafi”, Hezbollah was said to be doing some of their fund-raising in Sierra Leone<https://www.google.co.uk/#q=Hezbollah+fundraising+in+Sierra+leone>…

In Gaddafi’s day many Africans were able to make the safe passage from Libya to Italy – that’s how many Africans got there and you will find that such people of course are forever grateful to him…

As far as Gaddafi’s largesse was concerned, let’s face it as the saying goes, “money talks, bullshit walks<https://www.google.se/search?num=100&q=money+talks%2C+bullshit+walks&oq=money+talks%2C+bullshit+walks&gs_l=serp.12..35i39j0l7.4145.10879.0.12128.3.3.0.0.0.0.37.97.3.3.0.msedr...0...1c.1.64.serp..2.1.36.0.oPxwKU7yCgY>” - so if even whilst you are disputing the legitimacy of Igbo Kings in Lagos, Gaddafi could be crowned King of Kings of Africa<https://www.google.se/search?q=Gaddafi+king+of+kings+of+Africa&num=100&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Y5lbVfW-A8HysgHikYHgCA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=666> what else could he not do with petro dollars? President of Africa could not have been so far away, even if Africa’s most populous nation would like the president of Africa to come from Nigeria and the next step would have been – perhaps – full membership of the Arab League….

ph. 517 803 8839<tel:517%20803%208839>

ph. 517 803 8839<tel:517%20803%208839>

har...@msu.edu

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Ken,

I already noted the distinction between your "defense" (your word) of individuals employed by VOA and VOA as an institution of imperial propaganda. VOA is funded by the CIA, I think we all know how the CIA works--it spend lots of time undermining the sovereignty of other nations. When VOA does an exposé on the relationship between the CIA and Taylor (or general CIA malfeasance) then you could make a case for limited autonomy of individual journalists. But that aint gonna happen. I served in the Marine Corps, so I have a pretty good grasp of what the State Dept and the Pentagon does. They agree on imperialism only the method might differ a bit. "Soft" imperialism is still imperialism. Sometimes we academics "complicate" and "nuance" things that are pretty straightforward. If the VOA can help expose the many injustices done by its boss, the CIA, then the VOA is an enemy of African progress.

...

[kenneth harrow]

wow. international sleaze all the way!

har...@msu.edu

[kenneth harrow]

hi kwame
i am opposed to u.s. hegemony, so there is no point in my imagining a posting to defend the politics of the u.s., or its instruments. however, since i posted earlier about my own fulbright jaunt, i can imagine relative autonomy.
for the voa, my only question about your attack on them is not the underlying principles that guide the funding, but rather the funding source itself. are you sure it is cia? i went to the source of all truth, wiki, and it said:
The Voice of America has been a part of several agencies. From its founding in 1942 to 1945, it was part of the Office of War Information, and then from 1945 to 1953 as a function of the State Department. The VOA was placed under the U.S. Information Agency in 1953. When the USIA was abolished in 1999, the VOA was placed under the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, which is an autonomous U.S. government agency, with bipartisan membership. The Secretary of State has a seat on the BBG.^[34] The BBG was established as a buffer to protect the VOA and other U.S.-sponsored, non-military, international broadcasters from political interference. It replaced the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) that oversaw the funding and operation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a branch of the VOA.^[24]
ken

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Peace Ken,

Again, I don't have a problem with the idea that individuals can have some degree of agency within imperial structures. Systems of domination are not always total (but they are total when they kill people). For reasons I have already explained, I think "relative autonomy" might be too strong of a word for employees of VOA. VOA is a propaganda arm of the US govt, thus no VOA journalist can undermine the imperialist agenda. The VOA journalist you cited has zero "autonomy" to expose the US govt's involvement in liberating Taylor from jail and giving him safe passage out of the USA. The Crooked Intelligence Agency (CIA) does much of its criminal activity covertly, so I don't have direct evidence of CIA funding. There is, however, rock solid proof that the CIA covertly funneled money to VOA's sister unit, Radio Free Europe. Nick Cull in the Oxford Handbook of Propaganda (Chap 7, pg. 131), explains the entanglement of CIA, USIA, VOA and the vacillation between "soft" and "hard" imperialism.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

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[kenneth harrow]

hi kzs
i think of radio free europe as a cold war instrument. i don't know if east europeans listened to it, or found it useful or better than what they got in russia.
i'm ready to move on, but just to share with everyone on the list, some of whom are longterm african literature association members like me, lee nichols, after whom we named half the fonlon-nichols award, devoted most of his life to reporting on culture from africa, on interviewing african authors, etc.
just for remembrance's sake, here is the blurb on him and bernard fonlon from the ala site:

History of The Fonlon-Nichols Award

Bernard FONLON was a teacher, writer, editor of literary journals, and head of the African Literature Department at the University of Yaoundé. He passionately defended human rights in an often oppressive political atmosphere. When this noted Cameroonian man of letters died in 1986, a group of his friends from around the world decided to seek an appropriate way of honoring his memory.

Mobilized largely by Stephen Arnold (then Director of the Research Institute for African and Caribbean Literature -- RICLAC -- at the University of Alberta), these friends of Bernard Fonlon contributed to a memorial fund in his name. These contributions were matched by the Provincial Government of Alberta (Canada).

At about this time Lee NICHOLS announced his retirement. Nichols is a journalist whose positions in support of human rights and against racism are especially known among scholars of African literature for his historic Voice of America reports on the development of African literatures from the sixties to the present.

The executive committee of RICLAC felt it would be appropriate to associate his name to that of Bernard Fonlon, both having shared a commitment to democratic ideals, humanistic values, and literary excellence in Africa.

At its 1993 meeting in Guadeloupe, the Executive of the African Literature Association resolved that the Award be conferred regularly at the annual meetings of the ALA.

ken

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Ken,

The connection I'm making is that RFE was long rumored  to be covertly funded by the CIA. US govt officials, of course, adamantly denied it. The covert funding was finally exposed in the 70s.

As noted in the essay I posted, culture was an covert weapon of soft imperialism. The US govt had a unit devoted full-time to that purpose. One the most famous historical example was the US government promotion of a world tour headlined by jazz great Louis Armstrong.

Armstrong was supposed to convey the lie that "race relations" (read white terrorism) were good in the United States. Armstrong sometimes went with the script and at other times he practiced that thing you call "relative autonomy."

Armstrong's compliance or lack thereof doesn't diminish the point that the agenda of the white racist elite control system that recruited Black jazz great Armstrong was imperial and anti-Black. The Cold War is no more. Nowadays soft imperialism is used to shore up the bogus "war on terror."

[kenneth harrow]

hi kwame
i can't read these cultural interactions as absolutely as you do. i agree that louis armstrong's tours--like all the cultural events focusing on black, or now muslim, performers in africa are intended to
"show america in the best possible light." of course we can read it as part of an ideological practice. but it really is autonomous of those purposes. it isn't a deterministic frame, and even those who set up these tours, who advertise them in african capitals, who establish relations with african artists and educators, all of that is not reducible to a word like imperialism--not for me. it would have to be received naively and produced insidiously, and the people involved mess that up. they work on their own terms, convey their own views of the world, and even represent a mixed message that constitutes the u.s. even in its dominant mode, the u.s. conveys values that are positive and undermine any hegemonic aspirations. that's why i return to raymond williams's relative autonomy.
in fact, race relations in the u.s. aren't all one thing, all terror and violence and white supremacy. do you think that was how a star like armstrong experienced his everyday life?
i don't know where i would have to begin to understand the u.s., or my community or university or the circles of people i know as relating to a "white racist elite control system." there are mixed hegemonies that shift and mess up that strict reading of u.s. culture. mixed as in mouffe and laclau's readings of hegemony, which shifts with alliances and splits. even if i can't see all of the ways that domination or exploitation work--and who can see it all--i see more than one situation obtaining here for people living within race structures.
ken

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Ken,

I said that Armstrong did not always follow the white supremacist script so my point was not made in a "deterministic frame." However, the US did promote Armstrong's trip for deterministic (read soft imperial) aims. This is documented in many places including American Africans in Ghana by Kevin Gaines.

I have noted that you have a consistent habit of deflecting the perniciousness and pervasiveness of global white supremacy and that is unfortunate. Your university, in fact all American universities, are instruments of white power. That power was explicitly challenged by Black students in the late 1960s and early 70s. That battle is still being fought. Your consistent denials only serve to reinforce the racist system.

Wherever Europeans went in the world, death and destruction followed. That is an indisputable fact. America is a racist belligerent nation founded on the annihilation of indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans. Today, in the USA, black people are still second class citizens (the plight of Native Americans is arguably worse). That is the point of the Black Lives Matter movement.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[kenneth harrow]

kwame
i think it is ok if we can establish our differences, and not necessarily come to agreement. it is productive to be clear on the different readings we have. i think you are using "global white supremacy" too absolutely. my university is not an instrument of "white power," as i see it. and death and destruction did not always follow europeans.
that's how i see it. in each instance of your critique, i would look for the very things you want to dismiss: relative domination, relative racial politics, relative negative or destructive practices, but alongside positive ones, alongside the absence of real power, and so on.

before we assess the impact or meaning of louis armstrong's visit, or any of the other incidents or features we've been discussing, there is the way we each frame our understandings differently. even when i want to condemn a given practice which you are also condemning, our different frames, different way of seeing the "conditions of possibilities" lead us to positions that are somewhat at odds with each other.

i have mentioned mouffe and laclau before, whose work i read some time ago and liked a good deal: they talk about coalitions of different critical groups, with hegemony a shifting feature of coalition politics--Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics. i think they are still good guides for those of us who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

[kwame zulu shabazz]

​

Ken,

When you claim that Michigan State is not an instrument of white power, that's your white privilege speaking.  I'm betting many in this room full of black Michigan State students (see image above) and allies would disagree with you. The story is below:

Michigan State University rocked by racial intimidation

http://thegrio.com/2011/10/06/michigan-state-university-rocked-by-racial-intimidation/

Here are a few more to help you along -

1. "No Niggers Please" Sign Posted At Michigan State University

http://hiphopwired.com/2011/10/07/no-nggers-please-sign-posted-at-michigan-state-university/

2. International students deal with social media racism

http://statenews.com/index.php/article/2012/07/international_students_deal_with_social_media_racism

3. End the Racist Attacks at Michigan State University!

http://www.bamn.com/affirmative-action/racist-attacks-michigan-state

4. Racial Intimidation on the Rise at Michigan State

http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/10/04/racial-intimidation-on-the-rise-at-michigan-state.html

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[kenneth harrow]

hi kwame
if there were racial incidents at msu, does that mean the university is an instrument of white power? if a racist students scrawls an ugly word on a black student's door in a dorm, does that make the university an instrument of white power?

if thousands of students respond to these incidents, if faculty make points of discussing those incidents, if the administration comes out with statements reaffirming principles of anti-racism, does that not count?

why do you want to totalize, take an event, or even more, which i could tell you about, and then attribute white power and racism to everyone and the whole institution?
when i said we read events or texts differently because we are framing them different, that is an example.
for you it is reducible to the privilege of white power? for me it is the case that racial positioning is not an absolute, not all white, not all black--and it is clear that the vast majority of students, faculty, and administration, are deeply opposed to racism.
if you want to claim the white and black students, faculty, administration, see things somewhat differently, i would agree.
but you are erasing the word "somewhat" too much, and putting in something that feels like "totally."

lastly, i am not at all sure how my "white privilege" speaks. you seem to know it better than i, but you don't know me or the situation here. if i were to say, you say that because you are black you have the "privilege" to speak for the black community and perspective, as if it were automatic? is it, really, for everyone? who defines these racial markers? are you aware of how our committees work, how judgments are made, what does into hiring decisions, tenure decisions, reappointments? i am pretty sure it isn't what you imagine or that anyone would be able to call these processes "instruments of white power." they aren't.

the problem i have is that by making it all or nothing it makes it all the more difficult to struggle for racial justice and equality, it undermines the struggle against biases or racist assumptions.

that's how it seems to me.
ken

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Yes, those are symptoms of institutionalized white power. No, the fact that American tertiary institutions have ALWAYS been instruments of white power does not mean that every white person within said institutions is racist. Indeed, an important lesson of institutional racism is that it doesn't need a gang of racist white people for it to function. As for my privilege to speak for black people is very different from your privilege as a white male in a white male supremacist nation.

Yes, I am highly educated. But my family members are all still stuck in an American ghetto that white people avoid (Inglewood, Ca). And police officers dont ask me for my Harvard degree before they profile me. The campus police at Harvard didnt bother asking for my Harvard ID before assuming I was a thief, despite the fact that I was in a building on campus that I had been studying in for seven years. So my privilege does not even remotely compare to your privilege in a racist white supremacist nation that was founded on the annihilation and enslavement of non-white people.

Suggestion: You should read less Raymond Williams and more Patricia Hill-Collins, bell hooks, Kimberly Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Marimba Ani, Amos Wilson, Angela Davis, Michael Bobo. etc.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

We should be suspicious of and alert to the insidious manifestations of imperialism. However, a puritanical ethos of anti-imperial repudiation is almost impossible. We historians like to dig into the past. Such diggings reveal that there is hardly any human endeavor that is not riddled with contradictions, some of which would be embarrassing to current participants in those endeavors or to the enforcers and policers of radical progressive politics of today. I am sure if one looked hard enough one would see that most educational and cultural institutions in the US, including HBCU's, had some direct or indirect CIA support or at least support from the white power structures. In fact, as my friend Devin Fergus's work on black power institutions in North Carolina shows clearly, a cursory tracing of the money leads to the same white, liberal power structures that black power activists railed against. 

This, of course, is not to suggest that one should not acknowledge or resist imperialist sponsorship or interpellation to the extent possible, but the entwinements and webs of visible and invisible connections as well as contemporary and historical entanglements between organs and institutions of the American state and progressive or radical organizations mean that one should be circumspect and pragmatic in positing what seems like a blanket and impulsive invocation of imperialist underbellies or sponsorships as a way to discredit certain engagements that one does not agree with. Moreover, in many cases, these invocations are founded on little more than conspiracy theories, speculations, or extrapolations from past conduct.

And that leads me to a related point. It does seem to me that radical progressives, black or white but especially blacks, have an inordinate affinity for a critique of imperialism in which imperialism becomes a catch-all critique, a default go-to discourse to explain and devalue things we don't agree with, things that we can't explain, or things that are too complex for our understanding. In such situations, it is easier to simply say this or that was/is sponsored by the CIA or that this or that was/is sponsored or funded by the US government. Sometimes this is just a narcissistic way for us to mark our ideological territory, as it were, to claim ideological authenticity by devaluing the work of others. It sometimes flows from ideological arrogance, insecurity, or intolerance. 

Ultimately, everything was at one time or the other fiscally connected to the US government or its intelligence agencies. It does not invalidate or discredit what individuals and groups in the orbit of institutions did/do on their own. Unless certain academics had or have direct CIA ties, the question of historical connections to the state is irrelevant, a banality applicable to the institutional histories of many movements or ideological ferments.

Some of it is intellectual laziness on our part. Instead of investigating and unraveling the extent to which an institution was connected to the government and the extent to which scholars or artists who functioned within those institutions were compromised or conditioned, and the extent to which they were conscious in their work of these connections or resisted them, our self-righteous instinct is to simply dismiss everything associated with any government agency as ipso facto, ab initio, discredited.

Kind of reminds me of this black Muslim African American graduate school colleague of mine. He was a huge fan of the late Ali Mazrui and regarded whatever he said as gospel. In addition he was paranoid of the "man." Everything and everybody was against him. Everybody who did not participate in his puritanical rejection of America and in his separatist racial politics was CIA. My South African graduate school colleague and I were shocked one day when, upon encountering this fellow and exchanging pleasantries, he asked us deadpanned if we had joined the CIA. It was one of those moments of literal speechlessness. We stood transfixed for a few minutes, unable to process what had been said and trying to make sure we both heard what we thought we heard. 

We didn't know where the question came from, but once we sat down and analyzed our interlocutor's politics, which he was aggressive in proclaiming on our campus, we understood. My friend and I didn't share his uncritical love of Ali Mazrui or his extremely radical politics of reducing everything to a moral struggle of black vs white. Nor did we share his paranoia about the "man." To compound our plight, my friend and I had white advisers, who in the narrow conception of this African American brother, must be CIA members. For him, we had been recruited by the man, through his minions, our white advisers, into the system. He was merely checking if our "CIA" advisers had initiated us into the organization yet.  

I tell this story to illustrate the ubiquity of this CIA motif as a discursive frame within black (and white) radical leftist circles. It has become a vacuous label to be thrown at anything that is too complicated to fit neatly into our clean ideological templates. What is baffling is the failure of those engaging in this discursive enterprise to realize that, if the discourse were to be pursued to its logical atomistic historical conclusions, they themselves would be implicated in this CIA/US government connection business, which would, by their logic, discredit them. After all, my African American friend in question was a funded graduate student in a state school, where some of resources would have come from the range of practices we unimaginatively and simplistically homogenize as US imperialism.

When I hear this canard of US imperialism and of CIA omnipotence and omniscience I conclude that it is perhaps a tactic to avoid discussing the messy, complex specificities of what individuals and groups actually did or didn't do.

There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

[Segun Ogungbemi]

I think we seem to be beating the issue of racism like a dead horse. In an attempt to make us believe that racism cannot be generalized in all cases in the US, Ken has become the sacrificial lamb. I agree with Ken that not all whites are racists in the US. I had many whites as friends when I was at Southern Methodist University in the late 70s and early 80s and some of them and their parents we still communicate till today. I spent my holidays in their home and went on ice skating together to have fun.  They have at no time given me the impression that they were/are superior to me and I never presented myself as someone inferior or superior to them. You see, some of these things depend on our attitudes.

There may be a few whites who are chronic racists like the KKK. They are abnormal individuals. 

Among Africans, my experience in some African countries that  I have visited or worked is not different from the US. I was warmly received and treated with respect and dignity.  

Given my own experiences as an example just like some of us might have had, Ken who has traversed the length and breath of Africa, Europe and Americas cannot be seen or understood as an alien in the world of racism. 

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

On May 25, 2015, at 9:17 PM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

hi kwame
if there were racial incidents at msu, does that mean the university is an instrument of white power? if a racist students scrawls an ugly word on a black student's door in a dorm, does that make the university an instrument of white power?

if thousands of students respond to these incidents, if faculty make points of discussing those incidents, if the administration comes out with statements reaffirming principles of anti-racism, does that not count?

why do you want to totalize, take an event, or even more, which i could tell you about, and then attribute white power and racism to everyone and the whole institution?
when i said we read events or texts differently because we are framing them different, that is an example.
for you it is reducible to the privilege of white power? for me it is the case that racial positioning is not an absolute, not all white, not all black--and it is clear that the vast majority of students, faculty, and administration, are deeply opposed to racism.
if you want to claim the white and black students, faculty, administration, see things somewhat differently, i would agree.
but you are erasing the word "somewhat" too much, and putting in something that feels like "totally."

lastly, i am not at all sure how my "white privilege" speaks. you seem to know it better than i, but you don't know me or the situation here. if i were to say, you say that because you are black you have the "privilege" to speak for the black community and perspective, as if it were automatic? is it, really, for everyone? who defines these racial markers? are you aware of how our committees work, how judgments are made, what does into hiring decisions, tenure decisions, reappointments? i am pretty sure it isn't what you imagine or that anyone would be able to call these processes "instruments of white power." they aren't.

the problem i have is that by making it all or nothing it makes it all the more difficult to struggle for racial justice and equality, it undermines the struggle against biases or racist assumptions.

that's how it seems to me.
ken

On 5/25/15 1:30 PM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:

<mime-attachment.png>
​

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Moses,

One problem is that historians have generally ignored the history of the black student movement (lazy?). It was mostly insular knowledge passed along in African American communities. I heard many of the stories from my mentors in Los Angeles. The scholarship on the topic is very new. In fact it is not well known but many black high school and university students at White institutions and HBCUs died fighting white power on university campuses all over the USA.

I made a specific claim about the CIA, Charles Taylor, and VOA. I cited sources to support that claim. I didn't say anything about about linking tertiary institutions to imperialism or the CIA. I said that American tertiary institutions, including HBCUs, are instruments of white power. HBCUs are accredited by a white controlled institutions called SACS. The governing board here in Mississippi didnt even bother to include a single representative from an HBCU. Its an all white board. The set up was very similar in North Carolina where I also taught.

Furthermore, much of our teaching pedagogy at HBCUs is dreamed up at white Ivy's and deemed "cutting edge" with little input from Black scholars. Some of the elite HBCUs like Howard, FAMU, and Spelman. But even some Howard administrators have raised the alarm at that institution. Here are some quotes from the highly respected administrator at Howard University, Howard Dodson. Dodson is no radical:

"We've a different intellectual agenda and intellectual responsibilities. If we dont take responsibility for it, who is going to do it?"

"Our 'intellectual leadership' has been following the tail of the dog of American 'intellectual leadership'"

We don't need to be engaging in other peoples' discourse, we need to fashioning one of our own."

"[Howard University] started out as a colonial institution and, frankly, we are still colonized."

I think you can hear most of Dodson's commentary during the program Celebrating 60 Years: African Studies at Howard University. All or most of the comments were made at the near the end of the vidoe: https://youtu.be/tQl04Cn0nJQ

I was also careful to note that it is true that domination is not always total and that people can sometimes navigate some degree of agency within oppressive structure. And, yes, institutionalized white power is certainly complex. So complex that You and Ken don't see it. American colleges and universities were explicitly instruments of white power up until the 1960s when Black students challenged them all over the nation. See, for example, The Black Campus Movement by Ibram H. Rogers (Palgrave 2012) ; Black Students and Their Changing Perspectives by James Turner; Black Students and the Impossible Revolution by Vincent Harding. The latter two titles can be read in their entirety online. Or you can simply go to your university archives and look into the black student movement on your campus. You will find statements by black students explicitly calling out institutionalized racism on their campus.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Segun, I have never claimed on this forum or anywhere else that all white people are racist. In fact, on this thread I said that institutional racism does not require a gang of racist white people to function.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

--

[Segun Ogungbemi]

Okay my colleague. How do you now define institutional racism? 

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

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[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"....How do you now define institutional racism?" Ogungbemi
Although this was directed at Kwame, let me give it a try - although he may do a better job,
and I look forward to his definition, should he choose to give one.


Institutional racism is a multi-pronged, multifaceted system of discrimination and exclusion
propped up and sustained by overt and covert rules, laws and regulations that give preference to
and perpetuate the political, cultural and economic advantage of a dominant racial group or coalition of groups.
A few agents and agencies from outside the dominant, hegemonic entities may be recruited to perpetuate
the system. Some of the recruits may or may not be aware of their role, in this regard.

Institutional racism may manifest itself in the academic arena through curricula content and orientation,
systems of recruitment, evaluation , tenure, promotion and retention.
In Africa and the Academy: Challenging Discourses on Africa (2006),
the "hostility index" I created, looked at tone, style and methodology in various world history textbooks.
We can extend this 'hostility index' measurement beyond history textbooks. I have since looked at a few
geography textbooks, for example, and saw similar hostilities and exclusionary, biased tendencies
that converge with the dominant value system associated with institutional racism in the American context.

In law enforcement this may be through a complex system of racial profiling; legislation to entrap certain groups;
differential punitive laws etc.

Institutional racism may manifest itself in religious institutions, whereby certain icons and symbols of the religion,
tend to favor, or represent, a particular dominant racial group, to the exclusion of others- thus perpetuating
the 'outsider syndrome' for the majority of its believers, and feeding into the dominant system.

To give an example, in Christianity, a dominant representation of Christ is that of a blonde, blue- eyed Germanic or
Scandinavian figure- a trend that defies historical accuracy, given the geographical region associated with
his alleged birthplace. So, too, are most of the religious icons associated with that religious system. The representations
play into certain stereotyped expectations that institutional racism perpetuates, deliberately or accidentally.
Aspects of Christian theology may actually challenge institutional racism,
but its powerful iconography and organizational and systemic structure, may do the opposite.

As academics, if we want to overcome institutional racism, we have to understand it in its various manifestations,
in a scholarly way, and move forward.

Anyway this is my little contribution to this discussion. Criticisms are welcome.
In fact I look forward to modifications, additions, subtractions, corrections etc.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Segun Ogungbemi [segun...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 2:57 AM

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

Okay my colleague. How do you now define institutional racism?

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

On May 25, 2015, at 11:59 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Segun, I have never claimed on this forum or anywhere else that all white people are racist. In fact, on this thread I said that institutional racism does not require a gang of racist white people to function.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I think we seem to be beating the issue of racism like a dead horse. In an attempt to make us believe that racism cannot be generalized in all cases in the US, Ken has become the sacrificial lamb. I agree with Ken that not all whites are racists in the US. I had many whites as friends when I was at Southern Methodist University in the late 70s and early 80s and some of them and their parents we still communicate till today. I spent my holidays in their home and went on ice skating together to have fun. They have at no time given me the impression that they were/are superior to me and I never presented myself as someone inferior or superior to them. You see, some of these things depend on our attitudes.
There may be a few whites who are chronic racists like the KKK. They are abnormal individuals.
Among Africans, my experience in some African countries that I have visited or worked is not different from the US. I was warmly received and treated with respect and dignity.
Given my own experiences as an example just like some of us might have had, Ken who has traversed the length and breath of Africa, Europe and Americas cannot be seen or understood as an alien in the world of racism.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:53 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
kwame
i think it is ok if we can establish our differences, and not necessarily come to agreement. it is productive to be clear on the different readings we have. i think you are using "global white supremacy" too absolutely. my university is not an instrument of "white power," as i see it. and death and destruction did not always follow europeans.
that's how i see it. in each instance of your critique, i would look for the very things you want to dismiss: relative domination, relative racial politics, relative negative or destructive practices, but alongside positive ones, alongside the absence of real power, and so on.

before we assess the impact or meaning of louis armstrong's visit, or any of the other incidents or features we've been discussing, there is the way we each frame our understandings differently. even when i want to condemn a given practice which you are also condemning, our different frames, different way of seeing the "conditions of possibilities" lead us to positions that are somewhat at odds with each other.

i have mentioned mouffe and laclau before, whose work i read some time ago and liked a good deal: they talk about coalitions of different critical groups, with hegemony a shifting feature of coalition politics--Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics. i think they are still good guides for those of us who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Ken,

I said that Armstrong did not always follow the white supremacist script so my point was not made in a "deterministic frame." However, the US did promote Armstrong's trip for deterministic (read soft imperial) aims. This is documented in many places including American Africans in Ghana<http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-4966.html> by Kevin Gaines.

I have noted that you have a consistent habit of deflecting the perniciousness and pervasiveness of global white supremacy and that is unfortunate. Your university, in fact all American universities, are instruments of white power. That power was explicitly challenged by Black students in the late 1960s and early 70s. That battle is still being fought. Your consistent denials only serve to reinforce the racist system.

Wherever Europeans went in the world, death and destruction followed. That is an indisputable fact. America is a racist belligerent nation founded on the annihilation of indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans. Today, in the USA, black people are still second class citizens (the plight of Native Americans is arguably worse). That is the point of the Black Lives Matter movement.




kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Thanks, KZS. The problem is not that Ken and I don't see racism and imperialism. The problem is that, while you see them as linear, unidirectional forms of oppression, we see them as complex, defused, and not omnipresent and omnipotent. Unlike you, we don't see them as determining or defining all sociopolitical, cultural, and economic phenomena.

It is not always good to premise your interventions on the assumption that your interlocutors are not familiar with the material under discussion. I may not know as much of the literature on black radical politics as you do, but much of what you've stated on this thread is critical race theory 101, which is something we all learn from grad school and engage constantly with in our research and pedagogy. The idea that race is insidious and subtle, that there can be "racism without racists," that race is embedded stealthily in institutions, and that even non-whites are instruments of white domination--this is all elementary race theory that you shouldn't be wasting your time lecturing your interlocutors about.

While you parrot these textbookish ideas about whiteness, imperialism, oppression, and radical black politics, some of us have chosen to critique them as another epistemic blind spot, an emerging epistemic hegemony, which sees racial oppression as overlaying and overdetermining everything. I have no inclination for such blanket ideological arguments. Sometimes you should get out of the ideological straightjacket and think critically about these matters. Life is more complex than ideologically framed contentions allow.

I think asking me to go my library to research how African American students challenged white racism is as condescending as one can get. My minor doctoral field was in African American history, and my advisor, Kevin Gaines, made sure I read everything seminal and that I familiarized myself with all the strands and ideological currents of the Af-Am experience. Not only that, I teach at an institution where James Lawson, who coordinated the tactics of both the Nashville Student Movement and SNCC, is currently in residence. He had been expelled for his activism but now he and his papers are part of our civil rights treasure. So, asking me to go and read about student activism in the civil rights/black power era is presumptuous of you to say the least.

On CIA invocations, I was commenting on a broader phenomena in which in my opinion you're a participant--a phenomenon of default, almost automated invocation of the CIA and US imperialism to frame every discussion of politics, economy, and culture. Your VOA-is-a-CIA-funded-organization claim doesn't check out, especially not in light of the current composition of the organization. VOA is an instrument of American propaganda and was affiliated with the state department for a long time. But it is no more propagandistic or state-sponsored than the BBC, Deutchwelle, or Radio France or other similar state-funded radio configurations. It may have had a CIA beginning, given its wartime role, but name me an American institution that has never been complicit in the American imperial system. You like to talk about black power. Who was paying the bill, making money available to some of the black power organizations, unknown to some but known to others within the rank of black power activists.

My point is, it is not useful to keep invoking CIA and connections to the US government, whether past or present, whether speculative or confirmed because in the end it is a discussion-ender, a way to simply dismiss and discredit without engaging with the substance of a particular institution or production. If you want to invoke pasts of complicity in US imperialism, where should we draw the line? What's the cut-off date? We are all ultimately coopted in one form or another in American imperialism if we push the inquiries about funding, founding, previous affiliations, and even current funding. The issue is how do we operate and assert ourselves intellectual in the crevices of this empire. What do individuals and groups do within these institutions? To simply say something is/was CIA or US government funded is nowadays a way to dismiss and foreclose these questions, or to discredit the worth of intellectual and cultural productions associated with the institutions.

Finally, you say domination is never total. I'd say it a bit differently. I'd say domination CANNOT be total. For if domination is total it becomes counterproductive to its very aim. I make a similar argument in my first book regarding colonial exploitation and oppression. These two features of colonization COULD NOT have been total because that would have alienated potential African allies, destroyed the productive basis of the colonial economy and imperil colonial economic futures, and risked constant uprisings that would have jeopardized or at least consistently undermined colonial aims. 

To put it crudely, if you kill off all Africans through a program of total oppression/domination, who are you going to tax, or rule, or cause to produce the raw materials you desire, and who is going buy the manufactured goods you want sold? Oppressors, whether colonialists or racists, are not random, foolish actors. They are rational ones. They realize that total domination is nihilist, counterproductive, suicidal. And this is precisely why subscribing to arguments that ascribe too much deterministic power to regimes of domination is in my opinion a tad unscholarly.

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Peace, Brother Segun.

Institutional racism as a point of analysis was developed during the Black Power movement by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael). It builds on the earlier conceptual frames first articulated by Malcolm X. Malcolm often referred to it as "the system." However, he didn't have time to fully develop it as a theory of white supremacist oppression. It also grows out of a critique of liberal white racism developed by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and contemporaries.

So what is it?

Institutional racism is the evil complement of personal or individual or intimate racism. Individual acts of bias and violence based upon gross stereotypes of racial groups. Whereas black Americans are sometimes racist towards whites, it is the logical outcome of centuries of white terrorism. Moreover, African Americans have never used institutional power to oppress whites as a group. For that reason I call the white-on-black (or anti-black) instance, "functional racism," i.e. the only form of institutionalized racism that actually exists in the USA.

I think of institutions as the building blocks of a society--the fundamental social units that make a society viable. Family structure, healthcare systems, spiritual systems, economy, labor, law, education, policing, and so on. In the USA these systems had/have as primary function the promotion and maintenance of white supremacy. Institutional racism is distinctive in that it is the method by which the dominant group (white Americans) negatively impacts to quality-of-life of Blacks, Native Americans, and other people-of-color (or, if you prefer, "non-whites") as groups (not individuals).

Prior to the 1960s, that is to say for most of America's existence, US institutions were explicitly anti-black. That only changed after CENTURIES of Black struggle, many lost lives, and perhaps immeasurable levels of physical and mental trauma. While it is true that a subset of whites supported full equality for African Americans, most have not and do not. It is also important to note that although the overt legal edifice of white supremacy was more-or-less dismantled, institutionalized racism continues ot severely impact the quality of life of African Americans.

Institutional racism in our educational system has been recently dubbed the "school-to-prison-pipeline"--an anti-black system, including universities, that disadvantages African Americans and privileges whiteness. The fact that institutional racism is promoted and reinforced in American universities is not disparagement of individual efforts on these campuses to challenge racism. But it is also true that liberal whites are often blind to their own racism. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it, "Often white liberals are unaware of their latent prejudices." White denial of the persistence of systemic racism only helps to reinforce its power to subjugate.

Here is how Carmichael/Ture and Hamilton framed it in their important work Black Power, p.4 (Random House, 1967):


​

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Moses,

Breathe. Relax. Disagreement is fundamental to (western) scholarly production so its hardly a sin. And your original post was chock full of condensation so you sound like proverbial black pot.

Yes, I think you severely underestimate the pervasive of CIA/FBI (COINTELPRO) and other agents of white elite supremacy. No, pervasive and omnipotent are not synonymous. Yes, I typically agree that domination is never total. In fact I make this point frequently.  I modified it just a bit on this this thread stating thus:

Domination is rarely total (but it is total when it kills).

That is to say, when a system kills massively it is total system. Say, for example, when Europeans entirely wiped out the Tasmanian people. Human extinction is total.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ok, KZS, no wahala. You're married to my Middle Belt sister, so I will not push further. You may be right that you and I just ascribe different deterministic weights to the imperialist regimes of the CIA/FBI/COINTELPRO and concede to individuals' differential abilities to maneuver and carry out autonomous actions within those overarching regimes of oppression.

When I was in grad school, my Af Am classmate told me a story about her cousin who was the radical black nationalist of the family. He always railed against "the man" and invoked "the man" to explain every setback in his life, to answer questions in family gatherings about his life. On one occasion, a witty family member, retorted to him that "the man" must be really busy trying to put him and and the entire black race down. I don't know if he got the import of the statement. Received or not, however, the sarcasm was rich in that, although it did not excuse or deny the pervasive nature of white oppression, it posited that you can't blame everything on the machinations of "the man" or suggest that it is impossible to escape "the man." More importantly, when "the man" becomes an alibi, a catch-all explanation, there is no incentive to examine the minutia of things, to actually look at the limitations of oppressive regimes and how individuals and groups assert themselves in the face of--and in spite of--hegemons.

Okay, I am done. I can now breathe.

Be well.

[kwame zulu shabazz]

I like sister Gloria's explanation of institutional racism. Judging from some of the posts on this thread, perhaps it is more difficult for scholars to see institutional racism in the university setting? Just a thought. African American law professors have a far more robust critique of institutional racism in US jurisprudence, called "Critical Race Theory. Perhaps we can build on their efforts. There are several good readers on that topic including: Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge Richard Delgado, ed. (Temple University Press, 1995).

I would add that beside personal racism and institutional racism there is also the psychological dimension. We all know Biko and Fanon. And Afrocentric thinkers read Welsing's Isis Papers, Amos Wilson's Black on Black Violence in the Service of White Supremacy and the Falsification of African Consciousness; Naim Akbar's Chains and Images of Psychological Slavery, Bobby Writght's Psychopathic Racial Personality; Jacob Carruthers, etc.

Over the past ten years or so, scholars have done some groundbreaking work quantifying sub-conscious racism and other unconscious biases, collectively called "implicit association." According to these studies virtually all Americans have internalized negative subconscious perceptions of Black people. Not terribly surprising given the history of this racist nation, but actually being able to measure it is important. I also think Joy DeGruy's work on anti-black racism and trauma is useful. She calls it post traumatic slave syndrome.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Moses,

Agree that "the man," cant be blamed for everything. As Chinweizu reminded us, there are many Black "matadors." The problem is that "the man" has hardly been held accountable for much of anything. And, moreover, African American freedom was been worked out mostly on terms amenable to the people who did/do the oppressing (i.e. white people). That being said, I dont sit around on my butt complaining. I've been organizing, picketing, writing letters, getting arrested, putting on programs, inspiring students to create a more just system for some time now. So, yes, agree that we must actually do things despite the hegemony. If "the man" would stop killing, harassing, smearing our leaders (some of whom, by the way, have been in jail since the 60s) perhaps we could do much more. I leave you with a (slightly modified) civil protest song:

Which side are you on, friend,
which side are you on?
Justice for Black Lives is
justice for us all.

We will fight for freedom

Till justice is won.

kzs

p.s. the Middle-belt wife and I love your book.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

This may be relevant to this thread--I don't know. But it seems to illustrate a missing piece of this discussion: the foreign cultural cachet conferred or made possible by American imperialism. Nothing wrong with enjoying a little privilege conferred by hegemonic difference but I think it goes to show the complexities and infinitely insidious complicities in which we all, to various degrees, are imbricated wittingly or unwittingly.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/black_in_thailand_we_re_treated_better_than_africans_and_boy_do_we_hate.html

Being Black in Thailand: We’re Treated Better Than Africans, and Boy Do We Hate It

Black expats in Thailand and Australia describe the guilt they feel living fairly privileged lives in comparison with the discrimination that African immigrants and Aborigines face.

BY: DIANA OZEMEBHOYA EROMOSELE

Posted: May 26 2015 3:00 AM

 

Generic image 

THINKSTOCK

In all fairness, the Thai police officer was absolutely right for approaching the swing set and telling Stephanie Stew’s friend—a grown woman in her 30s—to get off the swing.  

Even though Jane (for anonymity, we changed her name) was swinging next to her young daughter, the swing set was intended for young children, and the added weight of an adult could pose a safety risk.

But when the officer issued his request to Jane—a black woman he might have assumed was Ghanaian or Nigerian, living and working in Thailand—and she responded with her black Americanaccent, he immediately switched gears and insisted that it wasn’t a problem.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Thai officer said. “You can stay.”

When he realized that she was a black American, Stew explained to The Root, the officer didn’t want to inconvenience Jane.  

Stew—a 38-year-old black American who moved to Thailand last August with her husband and 3-year-old daughter—says that’s just one of the many examples of how African-American expats practically have the red carpet laid out for them in the Southeast Asian country and are treated like gold, especially when compared with the black African immigrants who live and work in Thailand and are treated like, well, less than gold, and at times like s--t.

“That’s not the first time,” Stew explained, “that someone has mistaken us for an African” and then dropped their attitude or condescension once they realized that Stew and her crew were, in fact, American.  

“We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,” Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

‘We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,’ Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

Stew recalls the time an African hair-braiding stylist was trying to get up to a hotel room where Stew’s sister-in-law was staying so that she could braid her hair. The hotel receptionist would not let the African woman get past the lobby, thinking that the hairstylist was a prostitute—even though the woman was older and not dressed scantily—because what could an African woman possibly be doing in such an establishment? (Stew says the hotel was not that fancy.) Stew’s sister-in-law had to come down to the lobby and escort the hairstylist up to her room.  

Stephanie Stew and her 3-year-old daughter in Bangkok 

COURTESY OF STEPHANIE STEW’S BLOG

Tomasina Boone is experiencing something similar in Australia.

Boone—a 45-year-old black American who has been living Down Under with her husband and two daughters for eight years—immediately picked up on the way white Australians treated her, as opposed to the way they view and treat Aborigines—the country’s brown-skinned indigenous people who are perhaps more comparable to Native Americans of the U.S.

“It’s the craziest thing in the world. Australians do not view us as they view their Aboriginals,” Boone said. It’s a reality that bugs her because Aborigines view their treatment as comparable to the racism that black Americans experience in the U.S.

“I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,” Boone put it plainly.

‘I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,’ Boone put it plainly.

Stew and Boone are two black Americans living fairly privileged lives because of their ethnicity and nationality. Living—dare I say—like many young and middle-aged white Americans live in the U.S., since, on one hand, they’re not contributing to and certainly were not the perpetrators of the ethnic hierarchies in Thailand and Australia—hierarchies that place black Americans on a level several notches higher than that of Africans and Aborigines.

But while they certainly didn’t cause the discrimination, boy, are Stew and Boone inadvertently benefiting from it—and, at times, feeling awfully conflicted about that.

Page 1 of 2

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

We were talking about institutional racism and you have shifted to
divide and rule politics.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 4:12 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

This may be relevant to this thread--I don't know. But it seems to illustrate a missing piece of this discussion: the foreign cultural cachet conferred or made possible by American imperialism. Nothing wrong with enjoying a little privilege conferred by hegemonic difference but I think it goes to show the complexities and infinitely insidious complicities in which we all, to various degrees, are imbricated wittingly or unwittingly.


http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/black_in_thailand_we_re_treated_better_than_africans_and_boy_do_we_hate.html



Being Black in Thailand: We’re Treated Better Than Africans, and Boy Do We Hate It

Black expats in Thailand and Australia describe the guilt they feel living fairly privileged lives in comparison with the discrimination that African immigrants and Aborigines face.

BY: DIANA OZEMEBHOYA EROMOSELE<http://www.theroot.com/authors.diana_ozemebhoya_eromosele.html>

Posted: May 26 2015 3:00 AM

Generic image

THINKSTOCK

In all fairness, the Thai police officer was absolutely right for approaching the swing set and telling Stephanie Stew’s friend—a grown woman in her 30s—to get off the swing.

Even though Jane (for anonymity, we changed her name) was swinging next to her young daughter, the swing set was intended for young children, and the added weight of an adult could pose a safety risk.

But when the officer issued his request to Jane—a black woman he might have assumed was Ghanaian or Nigerian, living and working in Thailand—and she responded with her black Americanaccent, he immediately switched gears and insisted that it wasn’t a problem.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Thai officer said. “You can stay.”

When he realized that she was a black American, Stew explained to The Root, the officer didn’t want to inconvenience Jane.

Stew—a 38-year-old black American who moved to Thailand last August with her husband and 3-year-old daughter—says that’s just one of the many examples of how African-American expats practically have the red carpet laid out for them in the Southeast Asian country and are treated like gold, especially when compared with the black African immigrants who live and work in Thailand and are treated like, well, less than gold, and at times like s--t.

“That’s not the first time,” Stew explained, “that someone has mistaken us for an African” and then dropped their attitude or condescension once they realized that Stew and her crew were, in fact, American.

“We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,” Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

‘We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,’ Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

Stew recalls the time an African hair-braiding stylist was trying to get up to a hotel room where Stew’s sister-in-law was staying so that she could braid her hair. The hotel receptionist would not let the African woman get past the lobby, thinking that the hairstylist was a prostitute—even though the woman was older and not dressed scantily—because what could an African woman possibly be doing in such an establishment? (Stew says the hotel was not that fancy.) Stew’s sister-in-law had to come down to the lobby and escort the hairstylist up to her room.

Stephanie Stew and her 3-year-old daughter in Bangkok

COURTESY OF STEPHANIE STEW’S BLOG<http://bangkoksgothemnow.wordpress.com/>

Tomasina Boone is experiencing something similar in Australia.

Boone—a 45-year-old black American who has been living Down Under with her husband and two daughters for eight years—immediately picked up on the way white Australians treated her, as opposed to the way they view and treat Aborigines—the country’s brown-skinned indigenous people who are perhaps more comparable to Native Americans of the U.S.

“It’s the craziest thing in the world. Australians do not view us as they view their Aboriginals,” Boone said. It’s a reality that bugs her because Aborigines view their treatment as comparable to the racism that black Americans experience in the U.S.

“I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,” Boone put it plainly.

‘I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,’ Boone put it plainly.

Stew and Boone are two black Americans living fairly privileged lives because of their ethnicity and nationality. Living—dare I say—like many young and middle-aged white Americans live in the U.S., since, on one hand, they’re not contributing to and certainly were not the perpetrators of the ethnic hierarchies in Thailand and Australia—hierarchies that place black Americans on a level several notches higher than that of Africans and Aborigines.

But while they certainly didn’t cause the discrimination, boy, are Stew and Boone inadvertently benefiting from it—and, at times, feeling awfully conflicted about that.

Page 1 of 2

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:47 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Brother Moses,

Agree that "the man," cant be blamed for everything. As Chinweizu reminded us, there are many Black "matadors." The problem is that "the man" has hardly been held accountable for much of anything. And, moreover, African American freedom was been worked out mostly on terms amenable to the people who did/do the oppressing (i.e. white people). That being said, I dont sit around on my butt complaining. I've been organizing, picketing, writing letters, getting arrested, putting on programs, inspiring students to create a more just system for some time now. So, yes, agree that we must actually do things despite the hegemony. If "the man" would stop killing, harassing, smearing our leaders (some of whom, by the way, have been in jail since the 60s) perhaps we could do much more. I leave you with a (slightly modified) civil protest song:

Which side are you on, friend,
which side are you on?
Justice for Black Lives is
justice for us all.
We will fight for freedom
Till justice is won.

kzs

p.s. the Middle-belt wife and I love your book.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:31 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com<mailto:meoc...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Ok, KZS, no wahala. You're married to my Middle Belt sister, so I will not push further. You may be right that you and I just ascribe different deterministic weights to the imperialist regimes of the CIA/FBI/COINTELPRO and concede to individuals' differential abilities to maneuver and carry out autonomous actions within those overarching regimes of oppression.

When I was in grad school, my Af Am classmate told me a story about her cousin who was the radical black nationalist of the family. He always railed against "the man" and invoked "the man" to explain every setback in his life, to answer questions in family gatherings about his life. On one occasion, a witty family member, retorted to him that "the man" must be really busy trying to put him and and the entire black race down. I don't know if he got the import of the statement. Received or not, however, the sarcasm was rich in that, although it did not excuse or deny the pervasive nature of white oppression, it posited that you can't blame everything on the machinations of "the man" or suggest that it is impossible to escape "the man." More importantly, when "the man" becomes an alibi, a catch-all explanation, there is no incentive to examine the minutia of things, to actually look at the limitations of oppressive regimes and how individuals and groups assert themselves in the face of--and in spite of--hegemons.

Okay, I am done. I can now breathe.

Be well.

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:49 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Moses,

Breathe. Relax. Disagreement is fundamental to (western) scholarly production so its hardly a sin. And your original post was chock full of condensation so you sound like proverbial black pot.

Yes, I think you severely underestimate the pervasive of CIA/FBI (COINTELPRO) and other agents of white elite supremacy. No, pervasive and omnipotent are not synonymous. Yes, I typically agree that domination is never total. In fact I make this point frequently. I modified it just a bit on this this thread stating thus:

Domination is rarely total (but it is total when it kills).

That is to say, when a system kills massively it is total system. Say, for example, when Europeans entirely wiped out the Tasmanian people. Human extinction is total.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:20 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Peace, Brother Segun.

Institutional racism as a point of analysis was developed during the Black Power movement by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael). It builds on the earlier conceptual frames first articulated by Malcolm X. Malcolm often referred to it as "the system." However, he didn't have time to fully develop it as a theory of white supremacist oppression. It also grows out of a critique of liberal white racism developed by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and contemporaries.

So what is it?

Institutional racism is the evil complement of personal or individual or intimate racism. Individual acts of bias and violence based upon gross stereotypes of racial groups. Whereas black Americans are sometimes racist towards whites, it is the logical outcome of centuries of white terrorism. Moreover, African Americans have never used institutional power to oppress whites as a group. For that reason I call the white-on-black (or anti-black) instance, "functional racism," i.e. the only form of institutionalized racism that actually exists in the USA.

I think of institutions as the building blocks of a society--the fundamental social units that make a society viable. Family structure, healthcare systems, spiritual systems, economy, labor, law, education, policing, and so on. In the USA these systems had/have as primary function the promotion and maintenance of white supremacy. Institutional racism is distinctive in that it is the method by which the dominant group (white Americans) negatively impacts to quality-of-life of Blacks, Native Americans, and other people-of-color (or, if you prefer, "non-whites") as groups (not individuals).

Prior to the 1960s, that is to say for most of America's existence, US institutions were explicitly anti-black. That only changed after CENTURIES of Black struggle, many lost lives, and perhaps immeasurable levels of physical and mental trauma. While it is true that a subset of whites supported full equality for African Americans, most have not and do not. It is also important to note that although the overt legal edifice of white supremacy was more-or-less dismantled, institutionalized racism continues ot severely impact the quality of life of African Americans.

Institutional racism in our educational system has been recently dubbed the "school-to-prison-pipeline"--an anti-black system, including universities, that disadvantages African Americans and privileges whiteness. The fact that institutional racism is promoted and reinforced in American universities is not disparagement of individual efforts on these campuses to challenge racism. But it is also true that liberal whites are often blind to their own racism. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it, "Often white liberals are unaware of their latent prejudices." White denial of the persistence of systemic racism only helps to reinforce its power to subjugate.

Here is how Carmichael/Ture and Hamilton framed it in their important work Black Power, p.4 (Random House, 1967):

[cid:ii_ia5l79p61_14d913bba9efc79a]

​


kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:57 AM, Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Okay my colleague. How do you now define institutional racism?

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

On May 25, 2015, at 11:59 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Segun, I have never claimed on this forum or anywhere else that all white people are racist. In fact, on this thread I said that institutional racism does not require a gang of racist white people to function.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I think we seem to be beating the issue of racism like a dead horse. In an attempt to make us believe that racism cannot be generalized in all cases in the US, Ken has become the sacrificial lamb. I agree with Ken that not all whites are racists in the US. I had many whites as friends when I was at Southern Methodist University in the late 70s and early 80s and some of them and their parents we still communicate till today. I spent my holidays in their home and went on ice skating together to have fun. They have at no time given me the impression that they were/are superior to me and I never presented myself as someone inferior or superior to them. You see, some of these things depend on our attitudes.
There may be a few whites who are chronic racists like the KKK. They are abnormal individuals.
Among Africans, my experience in some African countries that I have visited or worked is not different from the US. I was warmly received and treated with respect and dignity.
Given my own experiences as an example just like some of us might have had, Ken who has traversed the length and breath of Africa, Europe and Americas cannot be seen or understood as an alien in the world of racism.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:53 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>> wrote:
kwame
i think it is ok if we can establish our differences, and not necessarily come to agreement. it is productive to be clear on the different readings we have. i think you are using "global white supremacy" too absolutely. my university is not an instrument of "white power," as i see it. and death and destruction did not always follow europeans.
that's how i see it. in each instance of your critique, i would look for the very things you want to dismiss: relative domination, relative racial politics, relative negative or destructive practices, but alongside positive ones, alongside the absence of real power, and so on.

before we assess the impact or meaning of louis armstrong's visit, or any of the other incidents or features we've been discussing, there is the way we each frame our understandings differently. even when i want to condemn a given practice which you are also condemning, our different frames, different way of seeing the "conditions of possibilities" lead us to positions that are somewhat at odds with each other.

i have mentioned mouffe and laclau before, whose work i read some time ago and liked a good deal: they talk about coalitions of different critical groups, with hegemony a shifting feature of coalition politics--Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics. i think they are still good guides for those of us who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Ken,

I said that Armstrong did not always follow the white supremacist script so my point was not made in a "deterministic frame." However, the US did promote Armstrong's trip for deterministic (read soft imperial) aims. This is documented in many places including American Africans in Ghana<http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-4966.html> by Kevin Gaines.

I have noted that you have a consistent habit of deflecting the perniciousness and pervasiveness of global white supremacy and that is unfortunate. Your university, in fact all American universities, are instruments of white power. That power was explicitly challenged by Black students in the late 1960s and early 70s. That battle is still being fought. Your consistent denials only serve to reinforce the racist system.

Wherever Europeans went in the world, death and destruction followed. That is an indisputable fact. America is a racist belligerent nation founded on the annihilation of indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans. Today, in the USA, black people are still second class citizens (the plight of Native Americans is arguably worse). That is the point of the Black Lives Matter movement.




kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

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[kenneth harrow]

kwame
to me it feels as though what you presume about my race implies my location as "the man." it is offensive to assume all your knowledge about black radical thought is somehow invisible to me. i could spell it out, but why do it?
i think the most annoying is to imagine you have the keys to understanding institutional racism, and that if i disagree with you it must be because of white privilege and institutional racism.
ken

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Gloria, I wasn't part of your institutional racism discussion. You and KZS have handled it very well. I read what both of you posted, satisfied and edified. I made points about not dwelling too much on imperialist complicities of institutions in which scholars and progressives operate in because in the end if we push the inquiry in every direction everyone is likely to be implicated to various degrees, which would then discredit or devalue people's work and ascribe all the credit to a catchall, omnipresent imperialism. This was a specific point. I saw a story posted on Facebook by one of my friends, and it seems to illustrate the point I was making about inadvertent, vicarious complicities and imbrication in the structures of empire. I decided to share it. Don't shoot the messenger. It was an enlightening read for me, not that I didn't know that black Americans enjoyed such privileges outside America but the Thai angle is fascinating to me. By the way, although considered inferior and subject to both individual and institutional racism, African immigrants in America enjoy what one might call the privileges of foreign blackness in white dominated institutions and circles of America. That's the real divide and rule, which I have written about in at least one published essay.

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[Segun Ogungbemi]

Gloria and Kwame,
I want to appreciate your definitions of institutional racism. A few minutes after reading your own Gloria, I read that of Kwame's own and both are definitive explanations of how institutional racism is and how it manifests itself.
It is rooted in the western history to justify the enslavement of Africans. African Americans and Africans in diaspora have gone through the long chain of institutional racism. If African Americans had not fought for their rights in the US most of you living in the US today would have returned to Africa. The police brutality against the Blacks with impunity is the worst institutional racism to date.
If African leaders have been serious in getting read of institutional racism all along they would have developed their countries much better than Europe and America. If that had been done since independence, it could have contributed to the dismantling racial prejudice.
If African leaders have shown in their foreign policies equal treatment of black race in Europe and America amounts to equal treatment of whites in Africa the stereotype would have stopped. But what do we get from most of African leaders, servitudes, sellouts, collaborators etc.
I admire the courage of the few African Americans who fought the institutional racism all the years even till now which has brought some respite but there still more to be done.
Yes, institutional racism is cowardly demonic and spiritually sinful. We must not give up in fighting it intellectually, legally, spiritually, morally and otherwise.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

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[kwame zulu shabazz]

Moses,

I have easily had hundreds on conversations on this topic. Agree that it is a problem. I know an African American expat in Ghana who lives very comfortably. She thinks Ghanaians are backwards and lazy. I told her straight up that her views were foolish and that she should take that nonsense back to America. I know Africans in the USA who think that African Americans don't take advantage of opportunities. And it is often the case that Black immigrants in the USA are privileged in the sense that whites often perceive them to be more hard working than Black Americans. The sociologist Mary Waters has written on this. I tell them that they have to dig into the consequences of Jim Crow and the trauma of white terrorism.

My mother lived through Jim Crow. She tells the story that in her early 20s she was able to integrate a segregated hotel in Indiana by convincing the hotel clerk that she was "African," not African American. All that to say that privilege--lets call it relative privilege in a system of white supremacy--works both ways. I think we have to bear in mind that these perceptions are ultimately mitigated by a Eurocentric media, historiography, etc. Which takes us back to the importance of Africana Studies...

I think we scholars sometimes invoke "complexity" to convince ourselves that we are doing something special. Frances Cress Welsing gets it right when she says that these matters are only superficially complex. Once you dig beneath the surface you will eventually find white people pulling the strings. Its a sort of decoding. We should aim to, as Malcolm X put it, "make it plain." Haile Gerima once said that our aim should not be to produce specialized knowledge. Rather we should endeavor to be servants of our people. The knowledge we produce should heal our communities and somehow improve their lives.

I agree.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

[kwame zulu shabazz]

Brother Segun,

Your post jogged my memory about another significant event in the struggle against institutional racism. In 1951, Black radicals charged the US government with genocide and presented the document to the United Nations. Signatories included: Paul Robeson, William Patterson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Claudia Mitchell and others. Over a decade later, Malcolm X would take up a similar strategy only to be assassinated before he could get the proposal off the ground. So, again, this document speaks clearly to the pervasiveness and perniciousness of white supremacy in the US, even as many Americans, especially white Americans downplay the pervasiveness of institutional racism.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com

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

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Dear Moses,
The point is taken. Can you give me the reference to your article?
I am sure it would be illuminating.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com]

Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2015 5:18 PM

To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re-Gaddafi'sdonations to Sierra Leone

Gloria, I wasn't part of your institutional racism discussion. You and KZS have handled it very well. I read what both of you posted, satisfied and edified. I made points about not dwelling too much on imperialist complicities of institutions in which scholars and progressives operate in because in the end if we push the inquiry in every direction everyone is likely to be implicated to various degrees, which would then discredit or devalue people's work and ascribe all the credit to a catchall, omnipresent imperialism. This was a specific point. I saw a story posted on Facebook by one of my friends, and it seems to illustrate the point I was making about inadvertent, vicarious complicities and imbrication in the structures of empire. I decided to share it. Don't shoot the messenger. It was an enlightening read for me, not that I didn't know that black Americans enjoyed such privileges outside America but the Thai angle is fascinating to me. By the way, although considered inferior and subject to both individual and institutional racism, African immigrants in America enjoy what one might call the privileges of foreign blackness in white dominated institutions and circles of America. That's the real divide and rule, which I have written about in at least one published essay.

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 3:29 PM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emea...@mail.ccsu.edu<mailto:emea...@mail.ccsu.edu>> wrote:
We were talking about institutional racism and you have shifted to
divide and rule politics.



Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050

africahistory.net<http://africahistory.net>
vimeo.com/user5946750/videos<http://vimeo.com/user5946750/videos>

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora

________________________________

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com> [usaafric...@googlegroups.com<mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu [meoc...@gmail.com<mailto:meoc...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:47 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Brother Moses,

Agree that "the man," cant be blamed for everything. As Chinweizu reminded us, there are many Black "matadors." The problem is that "the man" has hardly been held accountable for much of anything. And, moreover, African American freedom was been worked out mostly on terms amenable to the people who did/do the oppressing (i.e. white people). That being said, I dont sit around on my butt complaining. I've been organizing, picketing, writing letters, getting arrested, putting on programs, inspiring students to create a more just system for some time now. So, yes, agree that we must actually do things despite the hegemony. If "the man" would stop killing, harassing, smearing our leaders (some of whom, by the way, have been in jail since the 60s) perhaps we could do much more. I leave you with a (slightly modified) civil protest song:

Which side are you on, friend,
which side are you on?
Justice for Black Lives is
justice for us all.
We will fight for freedom
Till justice is won.

kzs

p.s. the Middle-belt wife and I love your book.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577><tel:336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:31 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com<mailto:meoc...@gmail.com><mailto:meoc...@gmail.com<mailto:meoc...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Ok, KZS, no wahala. You're married to my Middle Belt sister, so I will not push further. You may be right that you and I just ascribe different deterministic weights to the imperialist regimes of the CIA/FBI/COINTELPRO and concede to individuals' differential abilities to maneuver and carry out autonomous actions within those overarching regimes of oppression.

When I was in grad school, my Af Am classmate told me a story about her cousin who was the radical black nationalist of the family. He always railed against "the man" and invoked "the man" to explain every setback in his life, to answer questions in family gatherings about his life. On one occasion, a witty family member, retorted to him that "the man" must be really busy trying to put him and and the entire black race down. I don't know if he got the import of the statement. Received or not, however, the sarcasm was rich in that, although it did not excuse or deny the pervasive nature of white oppression, it posited that you can't blame everything on the machinations of "the man" or suggest that it is impossible to escape "the man." More importantly, when "the man" becomes an alibi, a catch-all explanation, there is no incentive to examine the minutia of things, to actually look at the limitations of oppressive regimes and how individuals and groups assert themselves in the face of--and in spite of--hegemons.

Okay, I am done. I can now breathe.

Be well.

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:49 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Moses,

Breathe. Relax. Disagreement is fundamental to (western) scholarly production so its hardly a sin. And your original post was chock full of condensation so you sound like proverbial black pot.

Yes, I think you severely underestimate the pervasive of CIA/FBI (COINTELPRO) and other agents of white elite supremacy. No, pervasive and omnipotent are not synonymous. Yes, I typically agree that domination is never total. In fact I make this point frequently. I modified it just a bit on this this thread stating thus:

Domination is rarely total (but it is total when it kills).

That is to say, when a system kills massively it is total system. Say, for example, when Europeans entirely wiped out the Tasmanian people. Human extinction is total.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577><tel:336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:20 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Peace, Brother Segun.

Institutional racism as a point of analysis was developed during the Black Power movement by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael). It builds on the earlier conceptual frames first articulated by Malcolm X. Malcolm often referred to it as "the system." However, he didn't have time to fully develop it as a theory of white supremacist oppression. It also grows out of a critique of liberal white racism developed by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and contemporaries.

So what is it?

Institutional racism is the evil complement of personal or individual or intimate racism. Individual acts of bias and violence based upon gross stereotypes of racial groups. Whereas black Americans are sometimes racist towards whites, it is the logical outcome of centuries of white terrorism. Moreover, African Americans have never used institutional power to oppress whites as a group. For that reason I call the white-on-black (or anti-black) instance, "functional racism," i.e. the only form of institutionalized racism that actually exists in the USA.

I think of institutions as the building blocks of a society--the fundamental social units that make a society viable. Family structure, healthcare systems, spiritual systems, economy, labor, law, education, policing, and so on. In the USA these systems had/have as primary function the promotion and maintenance of white supremacy. Institutional racism is distinctive in that it is the method by which the dominant group (white Americans) negatively impacts to quality-of-life of Blacks, Native Americans, and other people-of-color (or, if you prefer, "non-whites") as groups (not individuals).

Prior to the 1960s, that is to say for most of America's existence, US institutions were explicitly anti-black. That only changed after CENTURIES of Black struggle, many lost lives, and perhaps immeasurable levels of physical and mental trauma. While it is true that a subset of whites supported full equality for African Americans, most have not and do not. It is also important to note that although the overt legal edifice of white supremacy was more-or-less dismantled, institutionalized racism continues ot severely impact the quality of life of African Americans.

Institutional racism in our educational system has been recently dubbed the "school-to-prison-pipeline"--an anti-black system, including universities, that disadvantages African Americans and privileges whiteness. The fact that institutional racism is promoted and reinforced in American universities is not disparagement of individual efforts on these campuses to challenge racism. But it is also true that liberal whites are often blind to their own racism. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once put it, "Often white liberals are unaware of their latent prejudices." White denial of the persistence of systemic racism only helps to reinforce its power to subjugate.

Here is how Carmichael/Ture and Hamilton framed it in their important work Black Power, p.4 (Random House, 1967):

[cid:ii_ia5l79p61_14d913bba9efc79a]
​


kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577><tel:336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>>

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

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:57 AM, Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com><mailto:segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
Okay my colleague. How do you now define institutional racism?

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

On May 25, 2015, at 11:59 PM, kwame zulu shabazz <kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>> wrote:

Segun, I have never claimed on this forum or anywhere else that all white people are racist. In fact, on this thread I said that institutional racism does not require a gang of racist white people to function.

kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577><tel:336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Segun Ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com><mailto:segun...@gmail.com<mailto:segun...@gmail.com>>> wrote:
I think we seem to be beating the issue of racism like a dead horse. In an attempt to make us believe that racism cannot be generalized in all cases in the US, Ken has become the sacrificial lamb. I agree with Ken that not all whites are racists in the US. I had many whites as friends when I was at Southern Methodist University in the late 70s and early 80s and some of them and their parents we still communicate till today. I spent my holidays in their home and went on ice skating together to have fun. They have at no time given me the impression that they were/are superior to me and I never presented myself as someone inferior or superior to them. You see, some of these things depend on our attitudes.
There may be a few whites who are chronic racists like the KKK. They are abnormal individuals.
Among Africans, my experience in some African countries that I have visited or worked is not different from the US. I was warmly received and treated with respect and dignity.
Given my own experiences as an example just like some of us might have had, Ken who has traversed the length and breath of Africa, Europe and Americas cannot be seen or understood as an alien in the world of racism.

Prof. Segun Ogungbemi

email: kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com><mailto:kwames...@gmail.com<mailto:kwames...@gmail.com>>
cell: 336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577><tel:336-422-9577<tel:336-422-9577>>

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

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:53 AM, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu><mailto:har...@msu.edu<mailto:har...@msu.edu>>> wrote:
kwame
i think it is ok if we can establish our differences, and not necessarily come to agreement. it is productive to be clear on the different readings we have. i think you are using "global white supremacy" too absolutely. my university is not an instrument of "white power," as i see it. and death and destruction did not always follow europeans.
that's how i see it. in each instance of your critique, i would look for the very things you want to dismiss: relative domination, relative racial politics, relative negative or destructive practices, but alongside positive ones, alongside the absence of real power, and so on.

before we assess the impact or meaning of louis armstrong's visit, or any of the other incidents or features we've been discussing, there is the way we each frame our understandings differently. even when i want to condemn a given practice which you are also condemning, our different frames, different way of seeing the "conditions of possibilities" lead us to positions that are somewhat at odds with each other.

i have mentioned mouffe and laclau before, whose work i read some time ago and liked a good deal: they talk about coalitions of different critical groups, with hegemony a shifting feature of coalition politics--Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics. i think they are still good guides for those of us who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
who share some similar goals, but have different priorities or readings.
ken

On 5/25/15 11:24 AM, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Ken,

I said that Armstrong did not always follow the white supremacist script so my point was not made in a "deterministic frame." However, the US did promote Armstrong's trip for deterministic (read soft imperial) aims. This is documented in many places including American Africans in Ghana<http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-4966.html> by Kevin Gaines.

I have noted that you have a consistent habit of deflecting the perniciousness and pervasiveness of global white supremacy and that is unfortunate. Your university, in fact all American universities, are instruments of white power. That power was explicitly challenged by Black students in the late 1960s and early 70s. That battle is still being fought. Your consistent denials only serve to reinforce the racist system.

Wherever Europeans went in the world, death and destruction followed. That is an indisputable fact. America is a racist belligerent nation founded on the annihilation of indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans. Today, in the USA, black people are still second class citizens (the plight of Native Americans is arguably worse). That is the point of the Black Lives Matter movement.




kzs
===
kwame zulu shabazz

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---Mohandas Gandhi

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---Mohandas Gandhi

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Gloria, the essay is a chapter in my book, Africa in Fragments (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2014), pp. 209-229.

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