WOULD YOU TRADE PLACES WITH A BLACK PERSON?

There are many ways to raise awareness about racism - including being invited out to dinner! A group called Race to Dinner, run by US social justice campaigners, offers White women the chance to confront their prejudices and privilege during a soirée of fine wine and food. (The fact that participants can each afford the $2,500 attendance fee might be their first clue to their privilege!)

In this clip from one such dinner, the women round the table are asked if they’d trade places with a Black person. Most refuse - a clear indication that they are in fact already well aware of the advantages their Whiteness gives them. While the few that do say they would, appear to be naive - or feigning naïveté - about the realities of racism… something the Race-to-Dinner organiser quickly schools them on.

Have a watch and then let us know: would you ever trade places with… a White person?

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UNLOCKING AFRICA’S ECONOMY

Africa can only realise its potential by standing on its own two feet. Achievement does not mean flying to the moon, according to Pan-African scholar PLO Lumumba. Progress starts with the basics, like providing water to villages and using African chickens to lay African eggs instead of importing poultry products.

It’s a simple strategy the continent still fails to grasp, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And listening to Lumumba’s arguments, it’s hard to disagree.

A lot of African farmland grows profitable export crops like coffee and cocoa, while staples like wheat and rice are imported. However, most of these can and should be produced locally. If they are not, the continent remains hostage to global food supplies and rising prices.

Food, though, is just one example. As Lumumba explains, the concept of sovereignty can be applied across all sectors.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DEBATE

Affirmative action is a set of policies and practices aimed at promoting equal opportunities for underrepresented groups, particularly in education and employment, to address systemic discrimination. It originated in the United States during the 1960s as a response to the Civil Rights Movement. Over time, affirmative action policies have become a subject of debate and legal challenges, with some arguing they constitute ‘reverse discrimination’ against white and Asian people.

Continued….However, highlighting the fight for equal access does not excuse Reid for not covering the foreign-fueled humanitarian crisis in her father’s home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. US public radio network National Public Radio recently asked her about her Congolese background and she had nothing to say about the decades-long conflict. Beyond that, she has been dismissing dissenting voices as ‘Russian bots’ since Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election. Leaning on one’s identity, while demonising ordinary people, is on par with US neoliberal politics.

Why else might Reid be able to have a prime-time show on a corporate TV network? Let us know in the comments.

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‘YOU CAN’T HAVE PEACE UNTIL EVERYBODY’S EQUAL’

“You can have peace and be enslaved.” Pan-African activist Kwame Ture explains how actual freedom means liberation from injustice in this documentary drama film from 1968, “Tell Me Lies” by Peter Brook.

Ture seems to be playing himself as the lines he espouses in the film are consistent with everything he has said in his long life dedicated to the struggle for Revolutionary Pan-Africanism underpinned by a socialist development path.

He was one of the most visible leaders of the ‘Black Power’ movement - a phrase he coined - while he was prime minister of the Black Panther Party.

Continued….He later left the party, travelling and speaking all over the world and building the All-African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) – the party founded and outlined by Kwame Nkrumah in his ‘Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare’ while in exile in Guinea in the late 1960s.

Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, he changed his name to Kwame Ture using one name from each of his political heroes, Kwame Nkrumah (former President of Ghana) and Sekou Ture (former President of Guinea). He died 25 years ago from cancer, but exchanges like this one keep his revolutionary ideas alive in the consciousness of the masses.

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THE REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF DREADLOCKS

Dreadlocks are a common sight across our homes, schools, places of work and even of worship. It wasn’t always this way, and it took persistence and patience to mainstream an authentic African hairstyle. Stigma around dreadlocks was informed by colonialism, with effects that were felt decades after independence.

In this video, we look at the revolutionary history of dreadlocks in Kenya and further afield. Have a watch, and please share your thoughts.

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HISTORY OF ‘THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN’

Englishman Rudyard Kipling first published his poem, ‘The White Man’s Burden,’ in 1899. The term was used to justify the supposed moral obligation of Western, predominantly white, colonial powers to bring their perceived superior culture and values to non-white, non-Western societies. All this paternalistic concept really did was make the case for imperialism and colonisation over the course of decades, in service of Western profit margins.

Here, we dive a little deeper to uncover the meaning of the poem. Let us know how you see the white man’s burden playing out today.

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