USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

[Akurang-Parry, Kwabena]

I found this article on Ghanaweb and thought that folks would like to read it. Thanks.

Kwabena Akurang-Parry.

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[Ghanaweb] Feature Article of Sunday, 25 April 2010

Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I would ordinarily not be rejoining any article written and published by Harvard University’s Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and, as usual, seeking to scornfully blame continental Africans, as a whole, for the untold hardships and misery visited on African-Americans through the collaborative sale and enslavement of the latter by African and European elites. I wouldn’t because in 2005, as I was to learn from the former Affirmative Action Officer at the tranquil and sprawling suburban community college where I teach in New York, Prof. Gates categorically declined to keynote a Black History Month celebration primarily because this writer had composed and published a 30-part series of articles (titled “The New Scapegoats”) aptly carping the renowned literary and cultural critic for having distastefully and disdainfully used the privilege of his television documentary series (titled “Wonders of the African World”) to foster gratuitous African-American animus against their continental African kinsfolk.

I would also learn later, albeit obliquely, from the same Affirmative Action Officer, that Prof. Gates had, indeed, presented quite a decent offer to my college, entailing the institutionalization of an annual scholarship program for two African-American students from my college to Harvard, only if I could, in not so many words, I presume, be swiftly, effectively and permanently disengaged from my job. The Harvard heavyweight would also, according to the former Affirmative Action Officer, promise the college an undisclosed handsome monetary largesse. Needless to say, in the wake of the widely publicized Gates-Crowley Affair last year, I had pertinent occasion to reprise some of the preceding and so do not intend to belabor our present subject with much of the same.

Suffice it to observe in passing that Prof. Gates’ latest New York Times Op-Ed fare on the question of the “considerable” role played by continental Africans in the sale and enslavement of African-Americans offers nothing that is either worthwhile or fundamentally edifying. Instead, in an increasingly cynical and jaded manner, the Piedmont, West Virginia, native assumes the lurid stance of a rabidly anti-African critic, perhaps, in hopes of leveraging his global renown and reach in order to do to continental Africans what 500 years of slavo-colonial onslaught by Europe could not do – a phenomenon which approximates the Gatesian equivalent of Germany’s Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” for the incredibly indomitable spiritual and cultural resilience of European Jewry.
Thus nearly at every turn in his recent scholarly and journalistic offerings on the subject of slavery and reparations, the renowned Harvard millionaire professor has not spared the least opportunity to immitigably malign and viciously exaggerate the extent to which “Black” Africans were systematically complicit in merchandising their own kin (See “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” New York Times 4/22/10).

Ironically, albeit scarcely surprisingly, such vitriol comes in the “heady” wake of the quite prolific author’s having expediently appropriated Human Genome Technology (HGT) to scientifically establish the fact of him being genetically 70-percent Caucasoid (or European) and only 30-percent Africoid (or Negroid). Indeed, it was in view of the latter that in the wake of the Gates-Crowley Affair, I quite reasonably, and perhaps even plausibly, suggested that it strikingly appears that what had irked the Harvard egghead the most, in his highly televised and dramatized encounter with Cambridge, Ma., Police Department’s Officer James Crowley had far less to do with the latter’s cuffing of Prof. Gates in the sacred comfort of his own home, than the fact of the “victim’s” fellow Irish-American kin impudently and flatly refusing to acknowledge their mutual ethnic affiliation.

It is also rather rude for Prof. Gates to insinuate President Barack Obama (a man he is widely known to have voted against in the Democratic presidential primaries) into the slavery and reparations discourse, particularly, when the Harvard star player himself implicitly acknowledges the fact that while, indeed, the President’s father was a bona fide African of “Nilo-Luo” descent, there is hardly any evidence to suggest that the Luo of Kenya played any remarkable role in the massive sale and enslavement of African-Americans. May we, therefore, aptly surmise here that in the “Martyr Complex” imagination of Prof. Gates, the mere fact of President Obama’s father having hailed from Kenya automatically and inextricably implicates the man who generously hosted this morbidly irreverent “neo-con-federal” West Virginian to a beer party at the White House in the wake of the Gates-Crowley Affair?

While, indeed, many a contemporary African leader has expressed profound regret in reaction to the bizarre question of the proverbial “Peculiar Institution” (apologies to Kenneth Stampp), the fact starkly remains that there were culprits and victims on both African sides. (Now, I don’t expect any deafening and hysterical “Blaming-The-Victim” plaints and/or charges from any reader. Needless to say, Prof. Gates irresponsibly insisted on being frontally rejoined, and so the bellicose brat had to be served in kind).

Interestingly, Prof. Gates’ article about “How to End the Slavery Blame-Game” also wistfully reminded me of my auto-reaction, in the wake of the Gates-Crowley Affair, when the newly-elected pioneering leader charitably referred to the ego-contused Prof. Gates as “a friend.” In his pretentiously expert article, the man who ought to have since long familiarized himself with President Obama’s stance on the reparations question, instead, finds himself quoting another one of his newly-discovered “white kin” by the name of David Remnick whose latest book, titled “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” quotes one of the President’s former University of Chicago students as making the following remark, supposedly reflective of Mr. Obama’s “mixed feelings about the reparations movement”: “He [then Prof. Obama] told us what he thought about reparations. He agreed entirely with the theory of reparations. But in practice he didn’t think it was really workable.” If so, then why regressively and boorishly attempt to saddle a man who clearly has far more pressing issues on his mind than a copycat Judeo-centric chimera?

At any rate, what Prof. Gates deviously attempts to achieve with his rather jaded and embarrassingly fuzzy article, has been far better done by the astute and sterling likes of John Henrik Clarke (whom Gates once described in a New York Times article as a “pseudo-scholar”), Nathan I. Huggins, Chimweizu, Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, W. E. B. DuBois, Ivan van Sertima and Cheikh Anta Diop, to scratch just the surface.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is also a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “The New Scapegoats: Colored-on-Black Racism” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoamp...@optimum.net.

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[Olabode Ibironke]

"This reckless blame game will dismantle the reparation movements!" Rose Ofori

 

Gates's only purpose for doing this that I can see is nothing other than to demonstrate the absurdity of the reparations movement in the first place. I read Gates as saying: we know that Africans are in no position to pay reparations, yet Africans were, at the very least, _equally_ as culpable in the slave trade as Europeans and Americans. We should either ask all players to pay or none at all. If Africa is incapable of paying reparations to descendants of the enslaved, in Gatesian logic, it would be absurd to demand reparations from Europe and America. Gates is right in insisting that Africa owes probably as much as it is owed, however, the condescending and erroneous aspect of his argument is to think that the African complicity throws off balance the entire calculus of the reparations movement. Africa is culpable, and Africa must and can pay reparations, too. African nations owe other African nations reparations; ethnic groups owe ethnic groups, and families owe their communities. All must pay!

 

Olabode Ibironke, PhD.

Johns Hopkins University

Department of English

1102A Dell House, 3400 N. Charles St.

Baltimore, MD 21218

Office: (410) 516-4313

Email: ibir...@jhu.edu

 

[kenneth harrow]

kwabena
i don't know about this one. the author is slurring gates with accusations which only he and his affirmative action officer presumably know. this strikes me as libelous gossip, not fit for our edifying and lively discussions.
ken
(why would gates tell the affirmative action officer of his plan to bribe the college to fire a prof who wrote a piece against gates? ah, i get it: the affirmative action officer has the inside dope on things.... ah well [more litotes])


At 01:04 AM 4/25/2010, you wrote:

I found this article on Ghanaweb and thought that folks would like to read it. Thanks. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
har...@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 353 3755

[Igietseme, Joseph (CDC/OID/NCPDCID)]

I agree that the personalization of Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.'s contribution to this issue took  a lot away from the discussion on whether "a victim should be made to pay compensation or not". That is the point here. The colonialists, with their moral compass encassed in the Islamic and Christian religions, as well as the harbingers of modern civilized practices could have known better. Rather, the native Africans were coerced or misled into an expedient human trading practice that they had no idea where it was going or how it would evolve. Consistent with this outlook, the colonialists used the proceeds of slave trade to build major institutions and corporate bodies that their descendants still enjoy today; however, since the role of Africans in slavery was expedient and convenient for the times, the African participants had no vision on how to build a heritable future from the proceeds, just as the few Native Americans who conspired with the Union to colonize America did not envision the outlook of the colonialists. By and large, when it  bacame necessary to compensate Native Americans for the ill-treatment of their ancestors in the bid to colonize America, the role of the connivers was obviously minimal and remains so. The situation with Africans CANNOT BE DIFFERENT! Joe Igietseme

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of kenneth harrow
Sent: Sun 25-Apr-10 10:32 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

[kenneth harrow]

joe, i agree with your general sentiments, though the specific points don't hold. the "descendants" doesn't work. too far away, too many shifted here or there, victims or time, victors over time. that doesn't work. the ignorance of what was happening--no. there was too much coming and going for that either.
but that there was injustice, criminal, and some profited, others paid. absolutely.
i wrote this piece in frustration this morning; hope it makes a little sense--sorry for its length:

Let’s push the logic of the question concerning reparations a bit farther, partly with historical questions, partly with ethnical questions.
Not simply who’s responsible, but what relations of exploitation in the past rose to the level of historical crimes, like crimes against humanity.
Slavery was one, and there was widespread slavery before the 19^th century. The argument that chattel slavery constituted a unique crime would need to include the expansion of plantation type slavery into Nigeria in the 19^th century, according to Falola and Heaton’s History of Nigeria. Our historians can chime in on other examples, I am sure. The abuses of slaves who were marched across the Sahara and died in high proportions, including especially men who were castrated so as to serve as eunuchs ought to be included. I read in Fisher and Fisher’s old history on that trade that up to 90% of the men died. 
Slavery’s historical crime consisted of the abuse of people who lacked a choice and were forced into turning their labor into the wealth of their owners. It becomes increasingly obnoxious as a crime when conditions are highly abusive. The history of the industrial revolution in England and France fits this description for large portions of the laboring forces, to the point where disease and shortened life expectancies (in their 30s) of workers in industrial cities became worse than those of peasants during the feudal period. The Great Enclosure movement forced those people to the cities where they lived in horrific conditions and slaved for factory owners, much as is the case now in the Walmartdriven factories throughout the global economy. Does anyone care still?

Don’t we feel that  we are somehow missing the point when developing these arguments? It isn’t that slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, the deaths in the middle passage, and chattel slavery in the Americas, represented the only circumstances in which historical crimes against humanity were committed. The argument on exceptionalism is fruitless, and unproductive in the end, as Gates ultimately demonstrates.  More importantly, it is not that those conditions are over since reports I have seen on mining conditions in some mines in East Africa are as pernicious as the above examples, are essentially worked by people compelled by guns or economic circumstances to labor under dangerous conditions so as to generate the wealth of those who impose the labor on them. How much wealth? I heard a paper at the last ASA which indicated that up to 1.5 billion dollars of gold are being exported from Uganda, where Uganda itself has no gold mines. The flow of gold into Uganda comes from one place only, the northern provinces of E Congo, some of whose mines are now under the control of the FDLR (nominally, but not actually, integrated into the DRC army) and other militias­friends of the traders who siphon the gold to Uganda.
 
 The LRA is regarded by some as an aberration; in a larger sense they are merely a more visible example of the Agamben state of exception which obtains in many swathes of the region extending from Chad, CAR, Sudan, etc through the E Congo. Most militias have forced children into their ranks, as the tide of fighting has swelled and ebbed. The literature of human rights reports, Amnesty and HRW, regale us with small and large states of exception continually.
 
The virtue of reparations would be to demand an accountability, as Randal Robinson has brilliantly argued in the past­not so much for the unique crimes committed by pernicious men in the past, but for the historical continuation of crimes that take the same form in the present. When women are kidnapped and used as sexual slaves, be it by the LRA or by East European or Asian traffickers, aren’t we dealing with crimes similar to the slaveries of the past? What do we accomplish by denying that resemblance if not an exoneration of the criminality of the present for which an accounting is still due. To make it simple, who profits from the crimes against humanity of today? What gun runners? What states profit, especially by refusing to put teeth into arms embargoes in conflict zones? What states in the Great Lakes region in Africa does not profit from the extraction of resources in East Congo, and at whose expense still today? (not a single one--not Rwanda, not Burundi, not Tanzania) What companies continue the profit in resources trade that is paid by the sweat and blood of children in mines or sweatshops? We are a long way from a decent world economic order, and reparations are a good a trope as any for the demand that this should not ever happen again­as has been said more than once.

Finally, as for the deaths incurred­you can start adding up the numbers of people who lost their lives in these guns-for-resources conflicts, from Liberian-Sierra Leone-Guinea, to more recent conflicts in Darfur and now East Congo, and we have indeed another holocaust, in which the Never Again, following Rwanda’s genocide, seems to have been quickly forgotten.
ken harrow

[Amatoritsero Ede]

Henry Louis Gates is guilty of over-simplification in his own blame-game. he began the blame-game in the first place. I wonder who is paying him, CIA? He is pushing the very academically vacuous, historically inaccurate and dangerously polarizing  statements he began in his Wonders of the African World. Who 'Gates' is he keeping?

[Ikhide]

As teenagers would say on Facebook, smh, shaking my head. Sounds to me like someone is suffering from delusions of grandeur and it is not Skip Gates. Many mysteries, what would push me to read that stuff and think it is worth sharing, and two, a bigger mystery, how that stuff went past an editor's veto power says more about the state of our condition than anything else. I guess, I should add a third mystery; why we don't invest in meaningful constructive dialogue. We are always in a hurry to get to the wrong place, logic be damned.

 

I really would like to get my stubborn head into a really really meaty conversation without all sorts of people coming at me with the steel doors of their closed minds. But it aint gonna happen. I just finished reading the Zambian Dambisa Moyo's book, Dead Aid. Disappointing to say the least, I was so looking forward to high-fiving her. Poor research, poor logic, same tired theories from the Ronald Reagan era. She argues that Western nations should stop giving aid to African nations. She wants the nations to go to the open markets and get their capital er loans from their, She works/worked (dunno) for Goldman Sachs. She probably wants Goldman Sachs to get some business ;-) Na wa! But Oh well, life goes on. I would go get a good glass of Malbec, but my doctor says mba O, enough is enough! I am lucid, all my cells at ease and I make sense but who wants to live like this!

 

I might as well endure all the abuse being hurled at my good friend Skip Gates. Better him than me. He can take it. He is paid well!

 

- Ikhide

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From: kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, April 25, 2010 10:32:57 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

[Igietseme, Joseph (CDC/OID/NCPDCID)]

""Let’s push the logic of the question concerning reparations a bit farther, partly with historical questions, partly with ethnical questions. Not simply who’s responsible, but what relations of exploitation in the past rose to the level of historical crimes, like crimes against humanity."" unquote Kenneth Harrow.

 

Ken,

I believe you are MISSING the central point of this discussion, especially by your attempt to use the standards of yester-years to aportion blames today, or to package all human problems involving human inhumanity to human (e.g., conflicts, conquests, wars, territorial struggles, power tussle etc) under a common theme. It is not POSSIBLE! The point under discussion now is that, irregardless of who shares blames for specific incidents of inhumanity which were peerpetrated on the basis of ACCEPTABLE or unacceptable human standards of yester-years, the standards of today and the visible socio-economic ramifications of those practices necessitate the need for the conquerors, victors and their corporate and individual beneficiaries of the misdeeds to uplift the lives of those reeling under the yoke of the misdeed. And that is a moral obligation of the civilized world that marches toward a Global Village.

After all, dead German Nazis were not prosecuted for the Nazis inhumanity  in Europe and elsewhere during the second world war; only the LIVING German Nazis have borne the burden of the evil; besides, you can't say living Nazis are only responsible for a portion of the misdeed and therefore only a portion of the burden; the rest should be reserved for the dead Nazis. Living Nazis assume responsibility for all the evils of the Nazis! Likewise, to the best of our knowledge, there are no human or thriving institutional beneficiary of the slave trade in Africa; meanwhile, there corporate and individual beneficiaries of the misdeed of the slave trade in the Americas and the Arab world; the deplorable socioeconomic conditions of descendants of slaves which is anchored on and traceable to the slavery practice and experience are evident in the Americas and the Arab world.  So what is the problem with an advocation for moral obligation to uplift the lives of those reeling under the yoke of the misdeed of slavery in the Americas and the Arab world?

As you may realize, a number of white men support Affirmative Action because the position of advantage many enjoy over blacks and women is a diret result of the instituionalized deprivation, discrimination and inhuman ill-treatment of blacks and women in America over the years. A generation of white men that still benefits from the misdeeds of yester-years cannot suddenly dissociate itself from the historical misdeeds that gave it the position of advantage it enjoys in the society. It is the natural wheel of social and human justice my Brother; and it is customary in human evolution and civilization for the advantaged conqueror to reach out to the vanquished to ameliorate a nagging moral dilemma of human conpunction. Take care. Joe Igietseme

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of kenneth harrow

Sent: Sun 25-Apr-10 12:06 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

[Kwabena Parry]

Ikhide and Ken

I share your perspectives on the paper that I posted here: there is no doubt about its poor taste from some scholarly standpoints! But does that mean that it should be censored and not posted here? At least, you have read it despite making the claim that it "Sounds to me like someone is suffering from delusions of grandeur and it is not Skip Gates."  I hope that the author would learn from your comments, not to forget that the article has received similar negative reviews on Ghanaweb.  
 
Kwabena.
 

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Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:25:12 -0700
From: xok...@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

---

Live connected. Get Hotmail & Messenger for mobile.

[Dr. Valentine Ojo]

"I guess, I should add a third mystery; why we don't invest in meaningful constructive dialogue." - Ikhide xok...@yahoo.com

Ikhide:

Are the opaque comments from yourself and Kenneth Harrow to what Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe took pains to write here in response to Gate's own article your idea of "invest in meaningful constructive dialogue"?

I frankly do not get the point either of you is making:

Are agreeing with what Skip Gates wrote? Are you disagreeing?

And why?

Are you criticizing the views expressed by Kwame - or simply out to make snide remarks about what he wrote...?

I don't quite get it. You should not be found guilty of what you call a "mystery". At the end of the day, and after all said and done, someone has to start and lead by example.

Why not you, Ikhide?

Dr. Valentine Ojo
Tall Timbers, MD



On Sun 04/25/10 1:25 PM , Ikhide xok...@yahoo.com sent:

As teenagers would say on Facebook, smh, shaking my head. Sounds to me like someone is suffering from delusions of grandeur and it is not Skip Gates. Many mysteries, what would push me to read that stuff and think it is worth sharing, and two, a bigger mystery, how that stuff went past an editor's veto power says more about the state of our condition than anything else. I guess, I should add a third mystery; why we don't invest in meaningful constructive dialogue. We are always in a hurry to get to the wrong place, logic be damned.

 

I really would like to get my stubborn head into a really really meaty conversation without all sorts of people coming at me with the steel doors of their closed minds. But it aint gonna happen. I just finished reading the Zambian Dambisa Moyo's book, Dead Aid. Disappointing to say the least, I was so looking forward to high-fiving her. Poor research, poor logic, same tired theories from the Ronald Reagan era. She argues that Western nations should stop giving aid to African nations. She wants the nations to go to the open markets and get their capital er loans from their, She works/worked (dunno) for Goldman Sachs. She probably wants Goldman Sachs to get some business ;-) Na wa! But Oh well, life goes on. I would go get a good glass of Malbec, but my doctor says mba O, enough is enough! I am lucid, all my cells at ease and I make sense but who wants to live like this!

 

I might as well endure all the abuse being hurled at my good friend Skip Gates. Better him than me. He can take it. He is paid well!

 

- Ikhide

---

From: kenneth harrow

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, April 25, 2010 10:32:57 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ending Whose Slavery Blame-Game, Prof. Gates?

kwabena
i don't know about this one. the author is slurring gates with accusations which only he and his affirmative action officer presumably know. this strikes me as libelous gossip, not fit for our edifying and lively discussions.
ken
(why would gates tell the affirmative action officer of his plan to bribe the college to fire a prof who wrote a piece against gates? ah, i get it: the affirmative action officer has the inside dope on things.... ah well [more litotes])


At 01:04 AM 4/25/2010, you wrote:

I found this article on Ghanaweb and thought that folks would like to read it. Thanks.

[kenneth harrow]

joe, well, i don't think any of this has escaped me.
the division between conquerors and victors versus victims becomes vitiated and lost over time. the question of justice, of an unjust social order, does not. the only sense reparations could mean would be if those profiting from the current economic order were made to alter that order into a more just one.
it isn't coincidental that the wealthy nations of today are governed by corporate interests whose origins date back to the time that global capital began to take hold, 15th century, time of the inception of the trade between europe and africa. but the buyers and sellers, at first portuguese who eventually sent slaves to brazil and then to the caribbean, have not been the target of demands for reparation justice, because it would be largely meaningless. what is not meaningless is to address the needs of those who continue to experience the effects of an unjust economic global system. if we were to imagine redressing the nightmare of slavery in the past along the lines you suggest, then why would we ignore those perpetuating its defacto conditions of today??
as for 'living nazis' bearing responsibility, i assume you mean germans, and i wonder what logic would have us ask those living in germany today, including "living turks, arabs, and africans," to compensate israel for the sins of the nazis, especially as no one is asking for israelis to compensate the palestinians for their losses with the creation of the state of israel.
we need to address our own world and its injustices; if the call for reparations can awaken some global sense of justice, all the better. if, however, it puts it to sleep with the notion that a pay-off settles the matter, then it would have failed.
i note that today's nytimes takes the group of 8 to task for not fully committing itself to the billions of dollars of aid it promised to the poor countries of the world. it guaranteed 150 billion, and is 20 billion short. how can we hold a conversation about reparations in the same breath that we demand a full commitment to hundreds of billions in aid? what good would a conversation about reparations serve? there is no moral uplift in compensation as long as the conditions that gave rise to the need for compensation continue unabated
ken

[Igietseme, Joseph (CDC/OID/NCPDCID)]

Ken,

It is pertinent to observe that the substance of our discussion is obscured when we decide to close our eyes to the existential socioeconomic and political realities that put the heirs of conquerors/victors at a collossal advantage over the offsprings of victims, gnerations over generation; in fact, a time comes when the social consequences of the disadvantage positions of the heirs of victims paint a picture of an inherent genetic deficiency on their capacity to achieve and attain and progress in life. Also, experience has shown that although some symbolic and token movements can be discerned in the social structures harboring the heirs of conquerors/victors and victims, the passage of time does not really vitiate the socioeconomic and political division between conquerors/victors and victims; thus, from all practical oservations, suceeding generations of descendants of conquerors/victors do all they can to retain the status quo and therefore their socioeconomic and political advantages, while several generations of victims continue to play catch ups. That is not social justice!

 

Reparations, compensations and benefits for past injustice that sowed the seeds of existential social order that put a group of people at a disadvantage socioeconoimically are humane measures to level the playing field and fast-track to a more just social order. So I agree with you that "what is not meaningless is to address the needs of those who continue to experience the effects of an unjust economic global system." However, what is probably meaningless is to attempt to discourage the "regionalization or national confinement" of the fight for social justice; this is because an attempt to globalize the struggle for social justice will automatically relieve the local pressure on Govts and corporations, where the political systems, elections and laws are most effective to acheive meaningful progress and to set the tone for reluctant societies.

Besides, I believe it is misleading to attempt to conflate the national clamors for social justice (e.g., minority or women socioeconomic empowerment in a nation due to historical institutionalized deprivation and discrimination) on the one hand, and the general global call for mutual assistance because we now know we live in the same world, and what affects on poor nation today may negatively impact a rich nation tomorrow. In the final analysis, THIS IS OUR WORLD! We must learn to think globally and act locally to be effective. Take care. Joe Igietseme

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com on behalf of kenneth harrow

Sent: Sun 25-Apr-10 5:18 PM

[Igietseme, Joseph (CDC/OID/NCPDCID)]

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

"as for 'living nazis' bearing responsibility, i assume you mean germans, and i wonder what logic would have us ask
those living in germany today, including "living turks, arabs, and africans," to compensate israel for the sins of the nazis

.................................................." Harrow


So what about the billions paid in reparations to Jewish Holocaust victims and families, over the last decade?
I actually had the good fortune of interviewing the attorney who worked on the case, Ed Fagan.

See the published interview in 'Africa Update'. More than $50 billion was paid by the Germans.


http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd9-4.htm


GE

Dr. Gloria T. Emeagwali
Prof. of History and African Studies
History Department
Central Connecticut State University
1615 Stanley Street
New Britain
CT 06050.
www.africahistory.net <http://www.africahistory.net/>
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html <http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html>

Suffice it to observe in passing that Prof. Gates' latest New York Times Op-Ed fare on the question of the "considerable" role played by continental Africans in the sale and enslavement of African-Americans offers nothing that is either worthwhile or fundamentally edifying. Instead, in an increasingly cynical and jaded manner, the Piedmont, West Virginia, native assumes the lurid stance of a rabidly anti-African critic, perhaps, in hopes of leveraging his global renown and reach in order to do to continental Africans what 500 years of slavo-colonial onslaught by Europe could not do - a phenomenon which approximates the Gatesian equivalent of Germany's Chancellor Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution" for the incredibly indomitable spiritual and cultural resilience of European Jewry.