Read the article here."Harvard Prof. Henry “Skip” Gates has made it his life’s work to pander to whites by defaming Black people. In his latest blood-libel, Gates claims Africans share equal blame with Europeans for the centuries-long holocaust of the African slave trade. By Gates’ hideously bizarre reasoning, Black Americans should look to Black Africans for reparations."
Henry Louis Gates has long pointed fingers at the collective African for their role in slavery.
I am not surprised by this his most recent nonsense.
In one of his sleep-inducing documentaries he asked a man in Tanzania if he felt responsible for slavery!
This he did right after he asked the man if he considered himself black.
The man looked puzzled and asked something like 'black as opposed to what?'.
Gates is ignorant but his ignorance is purposeful in fueling the mythology of whiteness.
African identity issues cannot be so easily collapsed into categories that Gates and his ilk theorize from afar.
His New York Times article similarly dilutes the reparations issue/movement.
In both contexts he is the unmistakable agent that provides whiteness the room to escape culpability for slavery.
In these terms Margaret Kimberley is spot on when she writes:
"Henry Louis Gates is perhaps the most dangerous man alive to black Americans. He has the cache of a professorship at Harvard University, a position which undeservedly gives his voice an added weight of authority on every issue. Gates’ area of specialty is African American literature, but he has shrewdly marketed himself as the “go to” guy on any and every issue effecting black people all over the world.When I read Gates, or about Gates, I am always reminded of the words of Frantz Fanon who said: "I have seen the future of the black man and it is white."
The secret of his success is not at all difficult to decipher. Gates is a masterful and consummate suck up. He sucks up to white people in the worst and most damaging way possible to other black people. He never passes up a chance to let white people off the hook for the evils they have committed and henever passes up a chance to blame black people for just about anything bad that has ever happened to them.
His latest outrageous and toxic thoughts were spewed, as usual, in the opinion pages of the New York Times. This tome, “Ending the Slavery Blame Game,” uses African participation in the slave trade as his latest cudgel with which to beat black people and to make a mockery of the question of reparations for the 200-year history of slavery in the United States. ..."
Gates would not be relevant in any other terms. Obama too.
Onward!
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5 comments:
So this is the ilk that the Boondocks character, Uncle Ruckus, has been modelled after. I never thought I'd see the day a Black man wasn't even trying to hide desperately seeking white approval and validation.
Who is this man and why has he been given a platform to impose his racist views on us Blacks including himself?
I'm reminded of a Boondocks episode where Uncle Ruckus had taken a DNA test to show that he was indeed white. The test came back YT negative and 100% Black positive. I had never seen Uncle Ruckus so suicidal. He hung his head in shame and apologised profusely for all the "wrongness", hopelessness and worthlessness that came with his Blackness. He cried out that the "possibility" of him being Black was just too heavy a cross to carry and that no redemption could ever come his way. Uncle Ruckus went through all the phases of grief except of course...ACCEPTANCE.
This I suspect is what might be happening to our fellow kaffir Prof Henry Louis Gates. Much respect though to Uncle Ruckus for falling just a step shy of acceptance. Gates doesn't seem to be getting past the denial phase? Which, if I'm not mistaken is the very second stage of grief. This Oreo is still stuck at SHOCK!
Imagine that, over 3 centuries later, we still have a brotha left on a boat floating in the Atlantic among Great White Sharks, tearing his flesh off bit-by-bit, feeding them his Black skin in the hope of being one with them and trying to appease them into allowing him to survive. Too bad he's too delirious to realise that by the time his boat washes up shore, all that will be left of him to be saved is bones. And what do we Blacks do with bones?
Well in my culture, Zulu culture, we use bones to tell the future and in this instance, since we're throwing Henry's bones, I agree with you, Fanon's words were uttered with sheer clairvoyant accuracy: "(We) have seen the future of the Black man and it is white."
Salute
Interesting. Mmmmm ...
And you call me controversial ;0)
Just jiving but you should look at the whole multiracial concept that is being debated in the US.
It appeared as a category in the US 1997 Census.
It allowed folks to choose multiple races because of the pressure from the multi-identity folks who wanted to credit all their races.
The outcome was that if you ticked black and whatever you counted only as black.
White remained undiluted.
Can you tick more than one racial category in South Africa?
Or does that make you coloured?
Yo.
Peace,
Ridwan
No,you can't tick more than one racial category in SA.
I had a friend who had "issues with that issue" as we say in SA. She was mulatto-Polish Dad, half Zulu-half Tswana Mom. In SA she would typically be identified as "Coloured” but she passionately refused to be categorised as such. The reason for this was that she thought "Coloureds" were not "enlightened folk". She had the perception of Coloureds that so many other South Africans share.
The VERY WRONG perception is: Coloureds are a lost race, they don't know if they are Afrikaaners or Black, that's why they drink cheap liquor, deal in narcotics, love gangs, stab each other to death, have no front teeth, "rev their cars"(that's especially for you), can't speak English, Afrikaans or Indigenous languages properly, give birth every minute of every day, don’t know if they are Muslim or Catholic,etc.
In EVERY FORM Natasha had to fill, she would draw a little box at the end of the row of race option boxes.On top of that box, she would write "mulatto/enlightened coloured" and then she would proceed to cross or tick her special box.
Natasha wasn't the problem.She was the symptom.I don’t even know what I mean by that.I don’t know how to explain Natasha’s desperation and insistence on letting not just people around her but the Non-racial, Rainbow-nation SA govt & all its form-pushers know that she did not come from “these people or those people”,that for her identity to be reduced to four boxes-non of which she felt she could tick & fit into-was something she was going to fight.Even if her punches were a pen in a fist, drawing a tiny box at the end of the row,altering the label until she felt she could fit into.Whatever Tashy’s “issue” was,it didn’t start with her.
What does it mean when we have to draw boxes and alter labels on forms so we can fit (in an apperently Non-racial Rainbow nation)?
White remains undiluted in SA as well, they have no need to draw boxes or alter labels.They have no problem fitting(in).Go figure.
Eish ;)
Thanks for weighing in!
R
ditto!
http://www.oocities.org/ambwww/gates.htm
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