IN ONE OF HIS SERIES ON SLAVERY ON PBS TV IN THE USA, GATES ALLUDED THAT AFRICANS ARE SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF THE SIN OF SLAVERY.
IT REALLY HORRIFIED ME THAT AN INTELLECTUAL OF HIS STATURE WOULD MAKE SUCH AN INSENSITIVE AND ... read full comment
IN ONE OF HIS SERIES ON SLAVERY ON PBS TV IN THE USA, GATES ALLUDED THAT AFRICANS ARE SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF THE SIN OF SLAVERY.
IT REALLY HORRIFIED ME THAT AN INTELLECTUAL OF HIS STATURE WOULD MAKE SUCH AN INSENSITIVE AND SUPERSTITIOUS STATEMENT.
ARE GERMANS SUFFERING FOR THE HOLOCAUST? IS BELGIUM IN ANY ECONOMIC MESS FRO WHAT THEY DID IN THE CONGO?
WHAT ABOUT WHAT EUROPEANS DID AROUND THE WORLD, THE RAPE AND GENOCIDE?
DR GATES, DEEP DOWN HATES HIMSELF AS A BLACK MAN. HE HAS BEEN ENDORSED OVER OTHER SCHOLARS BY MAINSTREAM AMERICA BECAUSE HE PLAYS THE UNCLE TOM PART VERY WELL.
Kwesi Mensah 9 years ago
One important point before my comment. Please do not use labels that have the effect of not recognizing the Africanity of diasporic Africans. It would have been more appropriate for your title to state: "Gates hates Continent ... read full comment
One important point before my comment. Please do not use labels that have the effect of not recognizing the Africanity of diasporic Africans. It would have been more appropriate for your title to state: "Gates hates Continental Africans." African-American, Africanadians, Afropeans, Caribbeans etc are all Africans.
Back to the subject, yes, Skip Gates does hate himself as a blackman, as you correctly concluded. If you remember, a couple of years ago Gates was wrongfully arrested by Cambridge, Massachusetts police for "breaking" into his own house. People of colour everywhere were outraged over the treatment Gates received at the hands of police, with President Obama even calling the police action "stupid".
But what do you know when Gates was later interviewed about the event and let out an outburst. He goes: "I am not some crazy black militant! I am 75% white, my former wife is white. ..." It was at that point I decided to ignore anything to do with that man. He, Gates, was teed off not by the racist treatment he received at the hands of the police but by being considered as a black person by the police! Prior to this incident, Gates had expressed great disappointment about not being descended from the family slave-owner in one of his own videotaped shows on discovering one's ethnic roots through DNA testing. According to his family lore, his family descended from the slave master that enslaved his ancestors. However, DNA testing by his own company disproved this family belief and Gates kept expressing much disappointment, even though the test result pointed to France with respect to the white part of his DNA makeup. It may be pertinent also to note that, while social partnering is personal and cannot, in principle, be used to judge a person's racial mentality, Skip Gates was reported at the time of the police incident to be dating another white woman.
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Hello,
I have dealt with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s identity crisis controversies in general terms, as in here, in part 1, and in some of my earlier essays on Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Your title "Gates Hates Continental Afr ... read full comment
Hello,
I have dealt with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s identity crisis controversies in general terms, as in here, in part 1, and in some of my earlier essays on Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Your title "Gates Hates Continental Africans" has no relevance here because the tribute is not about Gates. Unless you did not read the article and the one that was published yesterday or you mistakenly took Gates for Ali Mazrui.
Plus your preferred labels are inconsequential to the article either. You either have "Continental Africans" or "African Diaspora." Don't confuse yourself.
However, there are some Ghanaweb columnists who are no better than Gates in terms of their total disregard for ethnicities outside their own. Of course that is not to deny Skip's demons.
In fact one of these columnists, a sicko, claims blood relations with any important royal family in the history of Ghana when the facts actually say otherwise. Skip hardly do this.
Kwesi Mensah, you can make the same claims you level against Skip against this sicko Ghanaweb columnist, who does not know what he writes about on Ghanaweb and elsewhere. Besides, unlike this sicko Ghanaweb columnist who is always writing about ethnicities outside his own in derogatory terms, Skip uses his influence to help black folks via scholarships, access to prestigious journals, professorships, research grants, and the like.
Ask this sicko Ghanaweb columnist what he does for black folks except for his ethnocentric mediocre writings?
However, despite his shortcomings and hatred for Africans, Gates is a formidable intellectual presnence no one can deny given his contributions to scholarship on the African world, even if we don't always agree with him. Same with Mazrui.
Again, despite their egregious shortcomings, Gates and Mazrui have done more to shape the discourse of race and human relations than this sicko Ghanaweb columnist whom nobody virtually knows about except on Ghanaweb.
Please do understand that this three-part series is not about Gates. It is about Ali Mazrui. My mentioning of Gates, Soyinka, and others in connection with Mazrui is only incidental. No one can write about Mazrui without mentioning Gates, Asante, Soyinka, etc. I have left out many names for good reasons know to myself.
Finally, I have disagreed with Skip for most of his ideas but, as you know, I will always choose him over this sicko Ghanaweb columnist. I will also choose the "confused" Mazrui over the sicko Ghanaweb columnist. Both Skip and Mazrui are gifted, extremely intelligent, and better writers than this sicko Ghanaweb columnist.
All errors are mine.
Thanks.
Agyeman 9 years ago
Mazrui was a great thinker,scholar and intellectual of world reknown.He did Kenya and Africa proud.Fare thee well professor Mazrui.
Mazrui was a great thinker,scholar and intellectual of world reknown.He did Kenya and Africa proud.Fare thee well professor Mazrui.
Mahuwu 9 years ago
Mazrui "advised" Idi Amin, and then ran away from him.
That alone shows Mazrui was NOT very a PERCEPTIVE thinker!
Mazrui "advised" Idi Amin, and then ran away from him.
That alone shows Mazrui was NOT very a PERCEPTIVE thinker!
francis kwarteng 9 years ago
Dear Readers,
These are irrelevant to the central message though I had to point them out just in case a reader wants to take me to court for typos!
Paragraph 7 (line 6):
Aside that, both Mazrui and Soyinka demonstrat ... read full comment
Dear Readers,
These are irrelevant to the central message though I had to point them out just in case a reader wants to take me to court for typos!
Paragraph 7 (line 6):
Aside that, both Mazrui and Soyinka demonstrated a ("a"; there should not have been the indefinite article before "enviable heights") enviable heights of writing sophistication throughou
Paragraph 9:
Soyinka has finally succeeded in translating two major works in (not "in"; it's INTO) Yoruba...
Paragraph 10 (4th line):
intellectual investment in foreign languages, especially Western, come (not "come"; its COMES) with a heavy price, cultural suicide
Thanks.
ADJOA WANGARA 9 years ago
This is nothing new than a mere tribute to Francis Kwarteng's copy and paste (mixed paragraphs) nonsense part 2.
Of course a wasted space on Ghana-web columnist platform and a circulation of crap.
This is nothing new than a mere tribute to Francis Kwarteng's copy and paste (mixed paragraphs) nonsense part 2.
Of course a wasted space on Ghana-web columnist platform and a circulation of crap.
Nana Kwame 9 years ago
Asjoa Wangara, we are dying to read your "PERFECT PIECE", in order to compare it to Kwarteng's.
Asjoa Wangara, we are dying to read your "PERFECT PIECE", in order to compare it to Kwarteng's.
IN ONE OF HIS SERIES ON SLAVERY ON PBS TV IN THE USA, GATES ALLUDED THAT AFRICANS ARE SUFFERING AS A RESULT OF THE SIN OF SLAVERY.
IT REALLY HORRIFIED ME THAT AN INTELLECTUAL OF HIS STATURE WOULD MAKE SUCH AN INSENSITIVE AND ...
read full comment
One important point before my comment. Please do not use labels that have the effect of not recognizing the Africanity of diasporic Africans. It would have been more appropriate for your title to state: "Gates hates Continent ...
read full comment
Hello,
I have dealt with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s identity crisis controversies in general terms, as in here, in part 1, and in some of my earlier essays on Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Your title "Gates Hates Continental Afr ...
read full comment
Mazrui was a great thinker,scholar and intellectual of world reknown.He did Kenya and Africa proud.Fare thee well professor Mazrui.
Mazrui "advised" Idi Amin, and then ran away from him.
That alone shows Mazrui was NOT very a PERCEPTIVE thinker!
Dear Readers,
These are irrelevant to the central message though I had to point them out just in case a reader wants to take me to court for typos!
Paragraph 7 (line 6):
Aside that, both Mazrui and Soyinka demonstrat ...
read full comment
This is nothing new than a mere tribute to Francis Kwarteng's copy and paste (mixed paragraphs) nonsense part 2.
Of course a wasted space on Ghana-web columnist platform and a circulation of crap.
Asjoa Wangara, we are dying to read your "PERFECT PIECE", in order to compare it to Kwarteng's.