“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves”
- Confucius (551-479 BC)
Quote of the Week
5/21/2010 11:23:00 PM
May 15, 2010
One of my favorite movies is the 1930s comedy, Ninotchka starring Greta Garbo. In the movie, three Soviet agents are dispatched to Paris to sell off imperial jewels to raise money to buy tractors for the USSR. When the Grand Duchess, former owner of the jewels discovers this she deploys her lover to recover her gems. He starts seducing the three bumbling Soviet agents with the luxuries of capitalist life. The delay of the sale is noticed in Moscow, and Comrade Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) is dispatched to Paris to settle the matter. The movie unfolds around the satirical image of the young idealistic Communist, Comrade Ninotchka, fighting against corrupt Western ways.
Upon arrival in Paris, the three other Russian agents meet her at the train station where she gives them an update on developments in their Stalinist Russian homeland. "The last mass trials were a great success,” she says in a thick Russian accent. “At zee end, there will be fewer, but better Russians!"
You have to see the movie to understand why I find this line so hilarious. Although the line is uttered in the context of humor and comedy, it conveys the absurd logic that dictatorships throughout history have used to justify mass killings as aspirations towards national utopias.
The line, “There will be fewer, but better Russians" conveys the need for:
- Skepticism of aspirations of national utopias whether coming from the right or the left, or religion. Nazi Holocaust reflects genocide with right wing conservative inclination. The Cambodian genocide reflects genocide with leftist inclination (claim to communist influence, egalitarianism, anti-imperialism). Both aimed to create fewer but "better" citizens.
- Skepticism of state and personalist nationalisms; cult of personality.
- Skepticism of the tendency to conflate the community with the state and the state with the regime.
- Skepticism of code words used for exclusion and repression masquerading as nationalist discourse – terms such as “upholding national purity; maintaining the sanctity of the nation; upholding national values; cultural degeneracy/ virtue.”
- Skepticism of State prescribed sanctimony. The regimes in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan have state Committees for the “Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.” Who determines what's “virtue?” and who determines what's “vice”?
The lesson of history is that we must be alert to and skeptical of state aspirations toward national utopias. The quest for "better" citizens is often the prelude to pogroms, mass murders and genocides.
"I have heard of the arrogant male in Capitalistic societies..."
"There will be fewer, but better citizens"
5/15/2010 04:43:00 PM
history, human rights, media, politics
As is becoming his style, Prof. Henry Louis Gates has offered a provocative exposé into the debate over reparations for slavery in the United States. He argues that “while we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played.”But as others have noted, despite Mr. Gates' contention that "there is very little discussion" of this fact, it hardly qualifies as news; today, virtually every history of slavery and every American history textbook includes this information.
Much of Gates' arguments are valid. I do see the need for a frank and open debate about the role of Africans in the discourse on reparations for slavery.
What I find problematic, however, is that as he does in his television series, Gates tends to reinforce the erroneous assumption that African “brothers and sisters” were selling off each other to the Europeans. True, African middlemen traders sold other peoples of African descent to the European slave traders but did these middlemen see the slaves they sold as their “brothers” and “sisters?” For the most part, they did not. They saw them as enemies, war captives and foreigners. The myth of a monolithic African identity is a construct that stands in the way of proper understanding and contextualization of the role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade.
When I teach the Atlantic Slave trade to my undergraduate students, one of the questions I frequently get is: “How could Africans have sold other Africans as slaves to the Europeans?” My standard response comes in the form of another question: “How could German Europeans have murdered 6 million innocent fellow Europeans in the 1940s?”
My students’ familiarity with European history enables them to offer cogent answers: The murderers were only a few Nazis, not all Europeans; it happened in the context of war; and the Nazis did not quite see the Jews as fellow Germans or Europeans but as an alien race. “Very well explained,” I say to my students. Now, apply the same depth of analysis to your understanding of the role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade.
See Prof. Gates’ original article
“Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” By HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.
What I find problematic, however, is that as he does in his television series, Gates tends to reinforce the erroneous assumption that African “brothers and sisters” were selling off each other to the Europeans. True, African middlemen traders sold other peoples of African descent to the European slave traders but did these middlemen see the slaves they sold as their “brothers” and “sisters?” For the most part, they did not. They saw them as enemies, war captives and foreigners. The myth of a monolithic African identity is a construct that stands in the way of proper understanding and contextualization of the role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade.
When I teach the Atlantic Slave trade to my undergraduate students, one of the questions I frequently get is: “How could Africans have sold other Africans as slaves to the Europeans?” My standard response comes in the form of another question: “How could German Europeans have murdered 6 million innocent fellow Europeans in the 1940s?”
My students’ familiarity with European history enables them to offer cogent answers: The murderers were only a few Nazis, not all Europeans; it happened in the context of war; and the Nazis did not quite see the Jews as fellow Germans or Europeans but as an alien race. “Very well explained,” I say to my students. Now, apply the same depth of analysis to your understanding of the role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade.
See Prof. Gates’ original article
“Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” By HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr.
Ending the Slavery Blame-Game (Erroneously!)
May 1, 2010
With all the hope and promise of building a rainbow nation following the collapse of Apartheid, racial tensions are once again brewing in South Africa and this deserves the world's attention.
The murder, recently, of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche by two of his black workers has further polarized the country and raised the ugly specter of the kinds of racial violence that characterized the worst days of the apartheid era. This time however, the story is a bit more complex.
Eugene Terreblanche, by all accounts, was an objectionable figure who thrived on stoking racial animosities. He led the Afrikaner Resistance movement, the AWB, which viewed the end of apartheid as surrender to communism and threatened full scale civil war if President F. W de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. He even led a violent attempt to disrupt the dismantling of Apartheid.
The death of Terreblanche has been blamed on Julius Malema, the vocal and controversial leader of the Youth League of the ruling African National Congress. Widely seen as a divisive figure, even within the ANC, Malema is a close ally of President Jacob Zuma. White groups and opposition parties blame Malema for singing an apartheid-era song at rallies that include the lyrics “shoot the Boer [farmer].”
This is particularly sensitive given that several white farmers have been murdered in their farms since the end of apartheid. Although the ANC rejected the link between the song and Terreblanche’s murder, it accepted that the song and the debate around it was polarizing society and subsequently instructed its members to stop using it.
Julius Malema and his supporters have defied this instruction and continued to sing the songs at political rallies. Within the ANC there is talk of initiating disciplinary proceedings against Malema where he is expected to answer to an array of charges, including promoting racism. But given his influence within the party, it remains uncertain whether the ANC leadership has the will or incentive to follow through on this.
Julius Malema and his supporters justify the singing of the song with the offensive lyrics in terms of history and heritage. The lyrics “Kill the Boars,” they insist is not intended to encourage violence against white farmers but to evoke the anti-apartheid struggle. It is a lame excuse. Given the fragility of post-Apartheid peace in the country and the racial tensions that simmer just beneath the surface, nothing can justify the singing of this song – not even the evocation of history and heritage.
In the arguments of Julius Malema and his supporters, I find parallels with the arguments of those in the United States who insist on flying the confederate flag in public spaces in the name of history and heritage. Groups such as the “Sons of Confederate Veterans,” seek to preserve the history and legacy of Confederate heroes, often without regard to the sensitivity of many African-Americans, for whom the Confederate flag evokes a different history and legacy.
Like the Sons of the Confederacy, Julius Malema and his followers have chosen to turn a blind eye to the fact that their interpretation and evocation of history have adverse implications for the rights, safety and wellbeing of others. We must be wary of those who evoke history and heritage in ways that are insensitive to the pain and suffering of others. I am all for protecting the freedom of speech and expression but there must be limits imposed when one’s freedom of expression so clearly poses a threat to the sense of security of others within the community.
The South African government needs to do more to rein in the divisive racial discourses growing on all sides. It must send a strong message that history and heritage cannot provide an excuse for divisive racial discourses. Those who are keen on those symbols of their history and heritage that provoke racial animosities may continue to “enjoy” them in the dark privacy of their homes, but they have no place in the public square.
South Africa cannot afford the Hate
5/01/2010 11:20:00 AM
africa, human rights, politics, war and peace
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