Black Voices et al
Sometime last week it was revealed that a Floridian child was put in handcuffs by police after having a temper tantrum in school. The event actually happened weeks ago but it was just covered by the press. I wrote about it in this week's Black Voices.
And my friend Liana has been following our discussion about Thomas Sowell. For my money, the best critique of Sowell's work comes from Harold Cruse's Plural But Equal. But this article isn't bad either.
Posted by at May 4, 2005 10:36 AM
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Don't need you to post this one yet...haven't read the whole article, but it seems to me that folks are heading down this path of looking at American Africans in the US vs. Caribbean Africans in the US or Continental Africans in the US. These comparisons are not tenable in a historical sense. The issue of settler colonialism flows into post-modern economic despair for American Africans in a way more akin to Jamaicans in Jamaica and Ghanians in Ghana and Kenyans in Kenya. You've said before that comparing immigrants to American Africans is somewhat ridiculous - the other absurdity of it is that folks decry the economic advances of blacks in America, while benefitting from the political struggle - and ignoring the extreme poverty they've left behind at home. What I folks saying is, "we (immigrants) are better than you (American Blacks) because we have more money than you...we're better than them (those remaining in our home country) because we no longer live there...and we earned what we have through hard work rather than largely due to your successful struggle here - a struggle we convincingly lost at home (that's why I am here and some non-African is running "my country.") Honestly yo, some of this s!%$ is so ridiculous, its crazy. If Jamaicans (my peeps) want to justify the likes of Manley and Seaga and others (read Trinis, Guyanese, etc.) want to justify bottom-rung island economics (trailing European hold-overs, Indians and Chinese nationals, that stuff won't fly. How is it that men like Garnet Silk and others are killed in their homeland? If you can't protect him, you can't act you run things here - even if you have a nice job and a house and a couple of degrees. The real struggle in the islands has been capitulated to those least equipped to fight it. I might have to take Sowell and some of these folks by the crack spot the next time they're in town.
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD006146.html
This conversation has a number of dimensions to it. The Caribbean community was unable to effectively address the needs of Grenada prior to US intervention. The same was true in Haiti two decades later. In many respects, this conversation could be dysfunctional if fueled by the pronouncements of folks like Sowell and relocated Caribbean Africans who believe no one born in the US knows the way to Trenchtown.
Don't need you to post this one yet...haven't read the whole article, but it seems to me that folks are heading down this path of looking at American Africans in the US vs. Caribbean Africans in the US or Continental Africans in the US. These comparisons are not tenable in a historical sense. The issue of settler colonialism flows into post-modern economic despair for American Africans in a way more akin to Jamaicans in Jamaica and Ghanians in Ghana and Kenyans in Kenya. You've said before that comparing immigrants to American Africans is somewhat ridiculous - the other absurdity of it is that folks decry the economic advances of blacks in America, while benefitting from the political struggle - and ignoring the extreme poverty they've left behind at home. What I folks saying is, "we (immigrants) are better than you (American Blacks) because we have more money than you...we're better than them (those remaining in our home country) because we no longer live there...and we earned what we have through hard work rather than largely due to your successful struggle here - a struggle we convincingly lost at home (that's why I am here and some non-African is running "my country.") Honestly yo, some of this s!%$ is so ridiculous, its crazy. If Jamaicans (my peeps) want to justify the likes of Manley and Seaga and others (read Trinis, Guyanese, etc.) want to justify bottom-rung island economics (trailing European hold-overs, Indians and Chinese nationals, that stuff won't fly. How is it that men like Garnet Silk and others are killed in their homeland? If you can't protect him, you can't act you run things here - even if you have a nice job and a house and a couple of degrees. The real struggle in the islands has been capitulated to those least equipped to fight it. I might have to take Sowell and some of these folks by the crack spot the next time they're in town.
Posted by: Temple3 at May 4, 2005 05:47 PM