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posts about #barackobamainghana more → President Obama: "Africa’s Future Is Up To Africans"
New York, 5:02 AM
Sun Dec 20
19 posts in the last 24 hours
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President Obama: "Africa’s Future Is Up To Africans" |
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07/11/09
07/11/09
So thanks for bringing that up. The IFI's role is often unacknowledged by American presidents and that's a real impediment to any kind of honest dialogue.
07/11/09
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07/11/09
It didn't go down better because he's some "native son" telling us the truth about ourselves. That's utter bullshit. He's as American as apple pie. The very nature of his ascent is emphatically American. Everyone on the continent knows it. The reason why it matters little is because of his own abilities to be layered.
Simply put, it was a successful speech because he acknowledged nuance. He entrenched the usual platitudes and ultimatums in historical truths, truths that few Western leaders have been able to admit on African soil. When he makes the distinction between colonialism, paternalism, pillage and the destruction in the last ten years of Zimbabwe, and he says that the two cannot be conflated, that not every problem can be laid at the hands of the West, his honesty is applauded because he is doing what many world leaders fail to do in discussions with African people--give context, qualify, concede a point, make a delineation.
Obama mentions that the people of his grandfather's village respected his grandfather for being a cook for the British (basically, for having a job that demanded education and came with a small pension) but for most of his grandfather's life he was referred to by the British as "boy." A statement like that resonates with Ghanaians on a level that a myopic journalist fails to understand. It acknowledges the conflict to visualize our humanity that much of the West constantly struggles with and it acknowledges that it is not okay.
07/11/09
I wish more Westerners would truly visit Africa and put their cameras down for a moment and sit on the banks of the Niger in the morning. Perhaps this would begin to open up the lines of communication required for everyone to take on their own fair share of the responsibility for themselves and their fellow man.
07/11/09
If a Westerner needs to visit Africa to see that we are people then letting that stand as is validates that terribly misguided position. It almost puts the onus on African countries to "prove" their humanity in a sense and it fails to address the racialized notions of access that were part of causing this problem in the first place.
The majority of the rest of the world has never been to a European or North American country. But somehow they are still able to see that the inhabitants of these lands are people. I think the fact that even conceptualizing Africa as more than just a zoo, where National Geographic takes pretty shots, speaks to how deep and abiding race-based ethnocentrism really goes and how much anti-African brainwashing the rest of the world has really been subjected to =)
07/11/09
I live in the U.S. and I've never been to, say, France, but I've talked to people from there, I've talked to lots of people who have traveled or lived there, and I've heard about French culture through so countless books, news articles, etc. I don't have that context for Ghana or for any African country. I read books about the politics and history of different African countries, but it's still difficult for me to clearly conceptualize day-to-day life in any of them. That makes it harder to relate.
07/11/09
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07/12/09
07/11/09
i'm not excusing the west, because those regimes have pretty much carried on with the nonsense, but africa needs to step up... the citizenry needs to say NO to these uninspired, uninspiring leaders, the era of the 'Big Man' needs to end, today. I am watching Liberia with keen interest, their leader inherited a heeeectic mess, but i reckon she's their salvation. we need more of that - a complete break from the historical norm....
07/11/09
I have such high hopes for Liberia. My cousins came to live with us after they fled the civil war there and all of them still have acute PTSD. I agree Johnson-Sirleaf might be the best bet they have. If she can pull off the type of rebound Kagame has been able to I will fax her my first-born kid =)
07/11/09