On the Unbearable Unrightness of Whiteness and the Intolerable Blackification of all Things Negative

There has been a robust discussion on the issue of white privilege in the world and in South Africa in the last few days on FaceBook and I am relieved to see that finally people can have these discussions and express their views without the whole exercise degenerating into an e-blood bath. Therefore it was no surprise to wake up on Wednesday morning and find that one of my friends had tagged me to a response she had written to a blogger named Brendon, who had written a “mea culpa”, confessing to his prejudices against black people. You can read the blog here. My friend Gillian Schutte is a white South African who has no problem discussing the devastating role that colonialism and its hideous cousin apartheid wreaked on the continent of Africa and she will never back down from challenging notions of white supremacy. Her rebuttal to Brandon can be read here.

 

However, after reading both Brendon’s blog and Gillian’s public response to it, where she basically tells Brendon that his views are not the views of all white people and that his admittance of prejudice, with absolutely no sign that he was in any way trying to overcome those prejudices was in fact of no use to anyone but himself and others like him, I felt a compulsion to defend myself. Defend myself you wonder? Yes defend myself, my blackness, because this is what many black people will tell you: Whenever a black person does something wrong, commits a crime, drops a piece of paper on the street, rapes, or murders, all black people become those things. All black people carry the burden of the guilt of one person or a small group, because of blanket statements many of us have grown up hearing from the mouths of white people in southern Africa. Many of these whites were raised with racism as the very backdrop of their lives, in which they had a black nanny or “house girl” and a black “gardenboy”. By the way these were usually grown men and women with families of their own, but they were infantilized even by the white children, who came of age totally believing that the purpose of black people was to be of service to them and that is all blacks were created for. These children grew up hearing their parents talk about the dangerous blacks who robbed murdered, raped, littered, stank, were drunks and cared only about fucking, dancing and drinking beer all the while beating their women and living in squalor. Brendon represents the kind of adults those children became and many stayed that way even as adults. Brendon basically believes that he can never be friends with blacks because blacks are not worthy of his friendship by virtue of their “nature”. Brendon, and many whites have concluded that blacks are harbingers of all things evil and bad, and that blacks are substandard subspecies of lesser human form and because of this we, blacks will never reach a standard of intellectual or material accomplishment that would make us worthy of effort by white people.

 

 

Just to make things clear to Brendon and his ilk: The mimicry you see black people perform, the fawning the flattery and the bootlicking which you so accept as due worship, happens because we are survivors. Many blacks realized that it was a matter of survival to comply and bend with the sick wind that your ancestors belched over us. That is why we could be transported across seas and still thrive where we were enslaved, and made to work like the beasts of burden white people saw us to be. Look around the world Brendon and you will see that blacks survived where other indigenous peoples died out in their millions. The USA and Native Americans is a great example, as is Australia and the Aborigines. At our core we have unpacked and deconstructed your bullshit and I am glad to say that my children will fare better in the new world order than yours will.  My children are being raised to see human beings first not color. My children are being raised to be conscious that there are other peoples on this globe and that a sense of entitlement is a dangerous quality to harbor, one that results in stereotyping others and bigotry. There is no room for the kind of prejudice you exhibit. Those days are gone and just because you confess to prejudice does not make you a better human being. You have shown the world your baseness, your arrogance and stupidity, quite frankly.

I grew up in a country where white people lamented the demise of minority white rule and they all predicted the fall of the great Zimbabwe, bread basket of Southern Africa, all thanks to the white farmers of course. Well, that Great Zimbabwe did fall, but rather than look at the reasons why things went the way they did, and rather than blame an inept, corrupt and brutal regime that has meted out all manner of injustices on all the citizens of Zimbabwe, many white people say:”look what the blacks, ALL blacks have done to this country”. I have not head any of them remark at the ingenuity of black zimbabweans at home and abroad, who sustained a dying nation through sheer guts and steely resolve to hunker down and SURVIVE!

In the introduction his personal history of Biafra, Professor Chinua Achebe, great Nigerian writer and scholar writes: “Africa’s post colonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us by ‘our colonial masters’. Because the west has had a long but uneven engagement with the continent, it is imperative that it understand what happened to Africa. It must also play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution will require the goodwill and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africa’s historical burden [There was a Country. A Personal History of Biafra, 2012]’.

In essence what white people on the continent and in southern Africa in particular do, is to absolutely refuse to look at what black people have become, as a direct legacy of the work of their ancestors, who dehumanized, robbed, raped, disenfranchised and fragmented millions of organized  black communities in order to enrich themselves. Therefore when people like Brendon throw out blanket statements about their racist selves and how they have stopped trying to be friends with blacks, it doesn’t occur to them that blacks have a deep seated distrust for white people based on this ugly and relatively young history and that many blacks don’t really care to make friends with them. They are so blinded by their position of power in terms of wealth and influence they truly believe that to befriend black people is to do them a huge honor or favor. It is this mindset that needs to be deconstructed in the minds of young people if there is ever any change to be made towards real and genuine respect for one another. When white children see black children as their peers then things will turn around. However in order to do this they need their parents to lead by example and stop calling blacks kaffirs and baboons at the dinner table.

 

I have lived in several all white communities since leaving Africa and believe me, white people’s shit stinks just as much as black people’s and at 19 years of age the scales fell off my eyes when I saw a German man snort and spit out a bolus of green mucus onto the pavement. I had never thought a white person capable of such a nasty act even in private and here I was the only black person in middle Bavaria in a tiny village where people stared at me out of windows as I walked down the village streets.

 

In 2010, after running the Chicago marathon, I decided to stop and use one of the hotel restrooms in downtown Chicago and to my horror I found overflowing toilets with ugly turds floating on mounds of toilet paper, dubious looking liquids on the restroom floors and guess what, there were a handful of blacks who ran that race which had over 35 thousand runners that year. This was not black people’s mess!

 I use these two examples to illustrate how ignorant and backward it is to live an unreflected life in this global day and age. I also write because while it is great that my white friend Gillian spoke up, it is high time that black people speak out about racism and how it rears its ugly head under the disguise they call "honesty". While Brendon’s confession is hardly a sophisticated one that requires special genius to unpack, there are other more subtle, more insidious ways in which white people try to undermine black people and usurp any collective confidence we might try to gather as we go about our lives. A typical example of this is Donald Trump’s demand that democratically elected United States President Obama produce his long form birth certificate, to prove he was an American citizen. That act, performed publicly was supposed to have the effect of humiliating a black man, in the highest office of this land because then surely that would result in the rest of the blacks cowering in shame also. The white South African comedians and commentators who mock blacks under the guise of humor, by mimicking our accents when we speak English are  not-so subtle but effective ways of “putting us and keeping us in our place”, which is as the “house-girl”, the “garden-boy” and the cook. It is an underhanded way of sending the message to even those who have done well: you are still black and will always be black and all that this term connotes.

Black people have a lot of work to do on ourselves in terms of throwing off the shackles of mental slavery that have us believing that we are inferior to white people. People like Brendon count on us cowering and living down to their low expectations of us. We are better than that and when we know better and should teach our children the truth about who these racists are and who we really are: The original Africans who existed and had thriving civilizations before Brendon’s ancestors came a -creeping. That we are poor is because they are rich and have access to everything of the highest quality and standards. That is a fact and they sit in positions of privilege from which they write their unintelligent bull crap and call it confession! They believe they have superior knowledge through science and technology, all the while failing to accept that the reason the present is the way it is, is  because they kept all other peoples in various states of arrested development. Shame!

There is no shame in blackness Brendon and no, you are in no way superior because of your white skin. I would encourage you to go back to Ireland and visit the ghettoes of Dublin and come and tell me that blacks are inherently dirty, loud, lazy and inept. I hope you live to tell the tale upon your return if they don’t cut your hand off at the wrist to get to your cheap watch. However, there should be a sense of shame in prejudice as blatant and as archaic as yours and there should be shame at the fact that black Africa is in shambles because of the heinous acts of your ancestors. Other white people are trying to create a different legacy for their children than the one that will burden yours: a legacy of hate, oppression and imperial complex against a people that your ancestors came and stole from. They declared they came in friendship, your ancestors. Now we know different, and you want to believe that blacks want your friendship?! Get real!

 

 

 

 

 

On the Apology that Reads Like an Insult

Apology Not Acceptable

 

As a follow –up on the Swedish cake debacle (April 15, 2012), I would like to inform you of the sequence of events that have taken place thus far.

A group of enraged women of African descent, led by Dr. Claudette Carr, founder and executive director of the Jethro institute for Good Governance, wrote an open letter to the Minister of Culture, demanding an apology for her participation and therefore public endorsement of the highly offensive and racist cake (known as the Venus- Hottentot cake). The full story can be read here .

The open letter was then used to create a petition to which people were asked to append their signatures in protest to this piece of “performance art”. The petition was run for about 4 weeks, and during that time, a representative from our core group, along with a representative from the Afro- Swedish community was asked to participate in an interview on The Stream, a program on Al Jezeera Televison.

One of our partners, the Black women’s Blueprint also provided a platform in the United States on their blog radio show, to discuss the various ways in which the artist Makode Linde, the minister of culture and the people who participated in the performance art exhibit had acted inappropriately. That interview can be accessed here.  

. After four weeks the petition was closed and mailed to the Minister of Culture in Sweden. In the meantime, Dr. Claudette Carr and Mina Salami took part in an email conversation entitled Racism is no Joke: A Swedish minister and a Venus Hottentot Cake, to be published in a forthcoming anthology called Afro-Nordic landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe (Routeledge, 2012), edited by Professor Paul Gilroy.

We are waiting to hear from the Minister of Culture with regards to our petition/ open letter and the points we put forward as a way to make amends for the gross error in judgment that she displayed by part taking of a culturally insensitive and inappropriate spectacle, which has brought into question her publicly stated commitment as an “anti- racist”. 

In the meantime, Mashua Against FGM, an organization we partnered with for this campaign ran their own petition where they simply asked for an apology. They received the apology on June 27, 2012 and you can read it here.

After the initial happiness that an apology had been rendered, I read the apology and to my utter disbelief the apology was exactly the same as the pro- forma apology that Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth had delivered to the press. It was the same non-apology that I blogged about here.

While I am glad that Mashua for FGM is satisfied with this apology. However, I would like to make it clear that I find the apology an insult and therefore do not accept it. The fact that this is exactly the same apology rendered through the press leads me to believe that no effort has been made to grasp the scope of the problem with her involvement in the art project.

I believe I speak on behalf of the original cosignatories to the open letter, when I state that the apology is nullified by the fact that the minister places the problem with her actions squarely on the shoulders of those who were offended by saying that they misinterpreted her actions. In other words, she did not err in any way and the only thing she regrets is that people took it the wrong way. This is insulting on many levels as I have stated before in a previous blog.

We therefore disassociate ourselves from the minister’s second non- apology and look forward to a genuine apology, where it is clear that she has understood why this so called art is a mockery and a dehumanizing act that has sent waves of anger throughout the world. We look forward to an admission of error on the minister’s part,and not this defensive verbiage that insinuates that those who are offended do not understand art.

 We also look forward to a solid response to the other requests presented in the open letter. I would also like to make it clear that we will not accept to being condescended to; neither will we go away quietly. This issue is huge and it will remain an issue to be discussed and resolved for as long as it takes for the minister of culture to do the right thing and render a genuine apology. To relent now is to have failed ourselves and those for whom we speak. This would also set a bad precedent, whereby African women can be objectified and belittled with no real consequences. Now is the time to stand up and refuse to be the portrayed through negative stereotypes and oppressive, racist images which only serve to marginalize us further from mainstream discourse about our issues vis-à-vis development and empowerment. It is time that we are front- and- center of such discourse and it is imperative that we lead and direct this discourse. This issue of Swedish racism has provided us a conduit to the fore front of discussions about who we are in relation to the other women in the world and history will not look favorably on us if we “drop the ball” at this juncture.

 It is very disappointing that the minister chooses to play politics in an issue where vulnerable women are further victimized, and Black people in general have been affronted.  As I have stated before, this non-apology is reflective of and consistent with the Swedish government’s own reticence to address the pressing racial issues and race-based disparities that negatively affect the Afro-Swedish community. We stand in solidarity with the Afro- Swedish community and we stand together with all the African women and all women affected by FGM, whose dignity we seek to restore by passionately seeking redress in this degrading, racist spectacle, which got the seal of approval from a government minister, a woman for that matter. What a shame.

 

On BARBARITY

My children have suffered!

I see you are back again. Come in. You look concerned. And so you should be. Let us sit down again. I thought that the next time you visited, we would pick up where we left off. I thought perhaps I would share my story with you, tell you how I came to be in this state in which you always find me. However there is a more pressing issue. I need to show you something. You have to watch it and you have to listen. Listen to the crying in there and do not blink an eye. Absorb the images before you and let them sink into the very depths of your soul. I want these images seared into your memory and stitched to the fabric of your being.  Then I will talk to you.

Do you see what your people over there are doing to my children? Do you? Do you hear the gut wrenching sobs of my offspring? Those sobs are causing my womb to contract as though going through birth pangs. Those screams are causing my milk to come to the fore and it is dripping down my belly down my thighs as my tears forge two rivers flowing down my face. Do you see my baby’s head hit the pavement and how her mother is dragged by the beast in uniform? Yes, beast. Barbarity’s real face. In your history books, written by your forefathers, who were the barbarians? Who did they call darkie and dark hearted? Who was the cannibal in those stories you were taught? My children were. Yet as you watched those images, who is the real brute? Who has a dark heart and a twisted soul? Who is the one who hears the cry of a pregnant woman lying belly bared on the road and winces not in sympathy? Who is it that shoves and drags who hits and kicks with relish at each blow that delivers shock waves into a woman’s body? Who is it that reverences not the sanctity of a woman’s body carrying a child? Who? Who respects not the mother with a baby on her back, the mother who is fresh out of the birthing room, the mother who has stared death in the face as she groans and  roars a human being into the world? Who?

That my children are darker skinned than your people does not make them dirty. That they resemble the color of the earth does not make them ugly. That they are the color mud does not make them hard hearted. They are dark skinned yes, but they are not dim witted. They have hair like wool but that has no bearing on their mental capabilities. Your ancestors maltreated them on their own soil. They brutally enslaved them in their own home, casting away their deities, their rituals and replacing them with meaningless religions that have been the cause of more suffering and penury. Your ancestors came here and they plundered me and they took my children to toil as slaves and that is how they built the wealth you enjoy over there. They got rich on the blood, sweat and crushed spirits of my offspring. They gorged themselves on the wealth buried in my belly. They dug and excavated greed and avarice curdling in their veins. They ploughed and reaped, using my issue as labor, 

 until backs broke open under whip and bodies disintegrated under the weight, the weight, the weight of the harness, the plough, the insults, the curses, the spitting, the hate. Your ancestors raped. They savagely tore into the soft flesh of my maidens, salivating at the screams of pain, and basking in the silent screams of shame, screams of degradation and despair. They plucked irreverently at pert breasts, pinching and twisting with malevolent grin and bared teeth. I watched it all in silence. In my silence I saw it all.

In my silence I watched as my children dived off ships, human cargo plunging into the depths of the rough cold waters. I rejoiced, because those were the lucky ones, the ones whose spirit said never. Never will I become a slave. Never will I go to a land where my forefathers never ventured to. We have a saying: where mother’s feet have never trodden, do not dare, for there are no familiar foot prints to guide along the safest path. Yes the ones who hurled themselves bound in chains into the abyss of the ocean harkened to the warning and gave themselves up to death by water, sinking like stones under the weight of chains. I watched and I wept, in silence.

Silence. It hides a multitude of emotions and a myriad of sins. Silence is what I touched when after years of bondage on their soil, my children harkened to the call to arise. They harkened to the call to mutiny and to shake off the shackles that bound them. Blood was spilled. Blood was the sacrifice required to break the yolk. Blood was the offering the earth desired to quench its thirst so that the land could be cleansed of all the impurities and the abominations that had been committed on it. I looked on in silence.

In silence things fell apart, slowly unraveled at the seams, creating a tangled mess of humanity. Confused and bewildered and corrupted, my children had been damaged. Damaged deep in their core. Corrupted. Greed and the hunger for power fueled the destruction of communities. Over there in your land they wondered like lost sheep, buying freedom from shackles but never freedom from the demons of their story, of that tragic and terminal journey to the land where mother had never set foot and sanctified. They wander still.

My children are scattered all over this world, in all sorts of strange and terrible lands, like the land where innocent pregnant women are treated worse than cattle at an abattoir all because they are brown. Your people call them immigrants and say they should leave. But where are they to go when their wealth paves your streets and their deities decorate your museums? Where will they go when their land is now hostile and they flea the bullets and guns you dump there in exchange for oil and diamonds from my belly? You give them death and they give you wealth. Your kind has always given death and you have always taken wealth. While they are busy killing each other you cunningly, siphon the oil, surreptitiously dig up the gold, the platinum, the diamonds. Frighteningly cunning. That is what your people are. How dare they? How dare they raise their filthy blood stained hands to touch my children? After all that they have done, after all the wickedness of the ages that they have heaped on their heads, they dare to touch them.

Silence is no longer my food and drink. The time has come. I shall speak and you shall listen. I know that you will be back. Here is something to take back to your people: Just as they once rose in rebellion and took what is theirs, my children shall arise again. Yes, rest assured, they will arise because the time to say ENOUGH is here.

WAKE UP SWEDEN!

On why the Swedish minister’s Apology is really a non-apology

"I am sincerely sorry if anyone has misinterpreted my participation," the
minister said in a statement.

"While the symbolism in the piece is despicable, it is unfortunate and highly regrettable that the presentation has been interpreted as an expression of racism by some. The artistic intent was the exact opposite."

http://www.thelocal.se/40348/20120419/

Firstly there are many things wrong with what the minister believes is an apology. It makes an excuse for her participation in the whole project. This is why she is being challenged; not because people are misinterpreting her participation, but that she should not have participated at all once she realized what she was expected to do. As a national leader it is her responsibility to ensure that she does not in any way tarnish her office through dubious or in this case outrageous associations. It is also her responsibility to ensure that all the constituents she represents are treated with equity under the law. The idea that she participated because she had been asked to talk about “freedom of expression and the right to offend”, is no excuse for her involvement in what was a mockery of African women by depicting them as a grotesque caricature. In this day and age, 2012, global village, social media and all that, her gross failure in judgment has left her probably one of the most controversial women around the globe at this time. She has demonstrated a total lack of cultural competence, a lack of awareness that in this day and age it is racist and egregious to use imagery that evokes the despicable era of black slavery and colonialism, evils that the whole world has condemned. The black woman cake is highly offensive and evokes haunting and degrading images of the Minstrel shows in which white actors painted themselves black and performed degrading stereotypes of African Americans and Africans in Europe as stupid, lazy and less than human beings. The African Community in Sweden has, understandably, no faith that this Minister can ever represent them, because her participation in this project placed her squarely on the side of those who believe that racism is not a problem in Sweden. She has placed herself on the side of those who think black people who are offended by this caricature of black womanhood are “too sensitive”, therefore trivializing their genuine hurt and anger.

Secondly it is not the symbolism of this cake that is despicable it is the actual cake itself! What is truly despicable is the enactment of cutting the genital area by the Minister and the accompanying screams by the artist Makode Linde, who then goes on to face book and writes:  “This is after getting my vagaga mutilated by the minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth. Before cutting me up she whispered ‘Your life will be better after this’ in my ear.” This is really a mockery of women who have undergone Female genital cutting, an issue that this project was supposed to highlight. How do you justify mocking and degrading a group of people as a way of raising awareness? So you highlighted the serious and devastating issue of female genital cutting by cutting an ugly cake, while laughing and drinking and taking pictures? The outcry from women who have had experienced genital cutting and women who work for the eradication of this cultural/ public health problem has been enormous.

Thirdly, an apology that contains ‘mis’ words is always suspect.  The phrase “ Anyone who misinterpreted”, apportions blame on those who feel slighted. It insinuates that they are the ones who got it wrong and who do not have the intellectual capacity to understand the artists’ intent. The minister adds more insult to injury with this “non-apology”.

In the light of this global outcry, the minister’s apology rings hollow because she refuses to take ownership of the huge public relations and political blunder that she has made. This renders her less respectable and unfit for the post she holds. The point is that people are angry and people feel insulted. Any politician worth their salt would rush to do damage control instead of uttering patronizing statements in the name of apology.

In the same vein, the Swedish government has been silent about this issue, an issue which has the potential to have political fallout and to tarnish the image of Sweden. It is obvious that they do not care, just the same way that they do not care about the Africans who live and work and pay taxes in Sweden who are subjected to racism but are told again and again that “there is no racism in Sweden”.

In 2011, Jallow Momodou reported to the police that students were having a party in which they were painted black with slave chains around their necks.

“Apart from threats against me and my family, a manipulated picture of me as a slave in shackles was made into posters bearing the words, in Swedish: "This is our runaway nigger slave and he answers to the name Jallow Momodou. If you should find him please call this number." These were put up in several different spots around my workplace, Malmö University. But hey, “there is no racism in Sweden”.

In 2010 a white Swedish man went on a shooting spree in Malmo, shooting more than 20 people of color and killing one. The killer was officially considered to be an isolated case with psychological issues, but not a terrorist with racist motives. This man has still not been prosecuted, and “there is no racism in Sweden”.

In early 2012,  there was uproar over a sex education film in which a black man was having sex with a white girl.  There were over half a million comments by Swedes who were appalled and disgusted that a white girl would degrade herself by sleeping with a black man. Others were lamenting the contamination of the pure Swedish gene pool. Once again, there was no comment about the blatant racist comments by any political leader, because ‘there is no racism in Sweden.”

WAKE UP SWEDEN! Being silent about this issue and denying the existence of a serious human rights violation only means one thing, that you are giving racism a seal of approval, something which goes against the Durban Declaration and Program of Action (September 2001). States were required to sign their commitment to combating contemporary forms of racism against Blacks, Muslims, xenophobia, negrophobia and anti-Semitism. Sweden is a signatory to the Durban Declaration. Honor your commitment SWEDEN!

Sweden is not an island and the context is the global village.

Barbara Mhangami

Dr. Claudette Carr –Director of the Jethrow Institute for Good Governance

 Samantha Asamandu –Black Feminists UK

Minna Salami

Black Women’s Blueprint

On eating Black Women

On World Art Day, April 15 and how they celebrated in Sweden

The social networks are abuzz with the latest sensational story of how the Minister of Culture in Sweden, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, took part in an art event which was supposed to highlight the issue of Female genital mutilation (FGM). The event was held at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the capital's museum of modern art.

In the photographs and video footage making the rounds on the internet, the minister is seen cutting a cake which is in the shape of the torso of a black woman. The cake, which is of a dark, ruby red velvet filling with black icing, was created by a black artist Makode Aj Linde, whose head forms that of the black woman, is seen with a blackened face and he screams each time a guest cuts a slice of the black woman (er, cake). The minister is laughing and she cuts off the genital area (clitoris) of the black woman (er, cake), and artist Makode screams.

Here is the video.

No doubt this footage has infuriated many people and accusations of racism have been leveled at the project. Indeed, there have been calls by the African- Swedish Association for the resignation of the minister for culture for having taken part in what they describe as a “racist spectacle”.

However the fury that I have seen particularly from African women has to do with the fact that this project was supposed to bring awareness of the very painful and complex issue of genital cutting. This is no laughing matter for any sane human being but certainly not for African women. The idea that someone who holds a position of authority and power, and who is a woman as well would take part in what is a humiliating, degrading and offensive project in the name of “raising awareness” shows a disconnect between herself and the women who have to deal with FGM.  That her sensibilities were not assaulted by the callousness of this project signifies a huge gap between African women and their issues and western women. This project is in my view no different from the” Hottentot Venus” Sara Baartman and other African women who were exhibited as freak show attractions in Europe in the 19^th Century.Sara Baartman was tricked into going to Europe, where she and other African women were paraded naked in museums and public squares and gawked at by all and sundry, for their “huge buttocks and peculiar genitalia”. The objectification of African women’s bodies by the west is rife in the pornography industry and there at least one can argue that the women who participate do so willingly. However when this happens in the context of a serious issue such as FGM and it is done in the name of “art”, then there needs to be a strong unequivocal response against such an unacceptable, ugly and insensitive “art”.

The fact that the artist is black does not in any way diminish the gravity of this racist and demeaning project. The black artist who created this may be accused of being a dim witted misogynist, but the racial over tones of this project cannot be denied. His blackness does not legitimize anything done here and the message about the seriousness of FGM is totally crowded out by the hideous manner in which that message has been conveyed. One does not need to watch an ugly cake in the form a black woman having its clitoris cut off to the sound of screaming, while a crowd watches, drinks in hand with smiles on their faces to bring awareness of FGM. This says a lot about the people who were present and who applauded and actually saw nothing wrong with the whole scenario. Gosh that they could even eat the black woman (er, cake) is sobering.

The humiliation and dehumanization that comes with patronage is a huge price that Africans pay in order that their helpers might feel good about themselves. This is one occasion where I question whether many of those who seek to help Africans to solve their myriad problems do so out of a genuine empathetic desire to see an end to debilitating conditions or whether it really is about a thorough ego massage and the kudos that come with “doing good”.

However as long as we Africans continue to have problems for which we are not doing enough to bring solutions, as long as our governments continue to focus on looting and clinging to power, as long as our elite human resources continue to walk away without a backward glance, as long as our intellectuals continue to complain but do nothing, there will be more humiliation, mockery and dehumanization coming our way, and black women (er, cakes) will be eaten in Sweden and other places where African women are exotica. If we as Africans are serious about being viewed as human beings capable of thinking and acting in our own best interests, until we demonstrate that we are our own best advocates, we will continue to be spectators of our own destiny and to be seen as nothing more than strange children who are in a perpetual state of arrested development, disabled beings who don’t know what they want or need. We are treated the way we allow people to treat us. Disrespect of the kind demonstrated in this event is not acceptable in 2012. Only we can put a stop to this debilitating imagery of ourselves.

Since this blog was written I have joined hands with other women and organizations to write an open letter to the Minister of culture in Sweden. The link is below, please sign it and forward this blog to your friends and contacts. Fell free to google this issue and you will become aware of the widespread rage and consternation at this vile project.
http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-of-culture-sweden-apologise-for-the-display-of-offensive-artwork-of-black-women


 

On the state sanctioned killing of two men, one white one black on the same day in America the land of justice and freedom

.

Troy Davis was killed by lethal injection yesterday in Georgia for possibly having been the murderer of a white police officer in 1989. Yesterday, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russel Brewer was also killed by lethal injection in Texas for tying up James Bryd Jr., a black man, to the back of his pick- up truck and pulling him along a rough asphalt dirt road until he resembled road kill. Incidentally the officer who found his tattered remains thought he was road kill until he realized he was a decapitated, mashed up, human being.

The differences between the two cases are glaring: In the case of Troy Davis, he has over the last twenty years pleaded his innocence and asked that a fresh investigation be launched. In the absence of the murder weapon (a gun), no finger prints and no DNA evidence, the case rested purely on the testimony of eye witnesses, 7 of whom have recanted all or part of their story.

In the case of Brewer, he and the other men involved in the case were picked up and the blood of Byrd were found on all of them. He has also never ever denied that he killed Byrd.

Byrd had no final words to say to anyone, while Troy Davis told the family of the slain officer that he was sorry for their loss but he had not killed officer McPhail. He also asked his family to keep searching for the truth and he forgave those who were about to kill him and asked God to forgive them too.

I am tempted to dwell on what I perceive to be a gross miscarriage of justice in the Troy Davis case, but I think we all know this and those who have followed this case over years, as I have will no doubt be feeling hurt, angry and bitter, as I am. However I think there is a bigger issue here, which is that of state sanctioned killings. I refuse to use the term capital punishment because to my simple mind, what is the punishment in terminating a person’s life? What punishment does a dead person feel? Unless of course you are a believer in the eternal inferno called hell and you believe that sending someone to an eternity of being fried or roasted earlier than his maker planned, is the ultimate punishment, I really don’t see how killing a person is punishment for him. Punishment is for his family members maybe, who despite everything may still love and value the person. Or maybe you are also a believer in the biblical an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Or Live by the sword, die by the sword?

Whatever the case killing a person because he killed another will not bring the dead person back and while some say justice is served, for whom is justice served when the injured party is dead? No one has any way of consulting the dead guy if he wants his murderer killed so what justice are we talking about? Worse is the case where there is a possibility that the man who is killed is the wrong man. Does it matter at all that Troy Davis may have been innocent or is it a case of witnesses saying they saw a thin black man kill the officer and so it doesn’t matter which black man goes down as long as one goes? I have often heard people say all black people look alike to white people and all white people look alike to Asian people. So is it possible that there was a case of mistaken identity? That this was the wrong black man and he has become the fall guy?

My idea of punishment is keeping the person alive to serve out a jail term even if it is life in prison. Confinement is punishment, lockdown is punishment. Waking up every day to the knowledge that you are a murderer, deplorable and not fit to walk the earth freely, is punishment. Having nightmares about the person you killed is punishment. State sanctioned killing is not punishment, it is gratuitous violence, open to abuse by flawed officials and flawed institutions of justice. I am sickened by the deaths of Troy Davis and Brewer, but for different reasons:

 I wish Troy Davis had lived, and that a proper investigation would have been carried out to determine whether he was guilty. Instead he was presumed guilty, convicted based on flimsy testimony, and was saddled with the burden of proving that he was innocent. Now he is gone.

I wish Brewer had lived, so that his hideous crime would be with him every single day he breathed, as he marched his hours away in a prison yard. Now he is gone.

And both their deaths did not bring the victims back to life. So where is the justice I ask?