Africabeat

Mahmoud Mamdani on Darfur

I have in the past on this blog taken potshots at the SaveDarfurers; my essential criticism is that many seem like hypocrites or bandwagoners engaging in advocacy without really understanding what it is they are advocating or why.  (I don't necessarily mean that you are, rather only that most are.)

The most common defense I hear from readers runs somewhere along the lines of, "at least they're doing something!" or "but we can't just do nothing!  we have to do something!"  or "doing something is better than doing nothing at all" etc.

Something. Nothing. Nothing something nothing.

Mahmoud Mamdani, I believe, offers an explanation for this stunning lack of articulateness in an essay  published last March in the London Review of Books when he argues that in America, the Darfur conflict has been "emptied of its political content."  He reasons this is why it's easier for sunny college kids to advocate the end of mass murder in Darfur than in Iraq, where we Americans are much more conscious that the situation has moral and political complexities--even if we can't exactly name them--not to mention our own complicity in their creation; or at least I naively cling to the hope that we have become aware of that much, even though it is certainly easier to wage a theoretical battle against a theoretical evil in lands that may as well be theoretical than it is to admit your own, very concrete sins.

From the Democracy Now interview:

Well, I was struck by the fact—because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about sort of violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians, and there are two places that I read about—one is Iraq, and the other is Darfur—sort of constantly, day after day, and week after week. And I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq. And it puzzles me, because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens, and I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government’s policies. And I ask myself, “Why not?” I ask myself, “How do they discuss mass violence in Iraq and options in Iraq?” And they discuss it by asking—agonizing over what would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq. Would there be more violence? Less violence? But there is no such agonizing over Darfur, because Darfur is a place without history, Darfur is a place without politics. Darfur is simply a dot on the map. It is simply a place, a site, where perpetrator confronts victim. And the perpetrator’s name is Arab, and the victim’s name is African. And it is easy to demonize. It is easy to hold a moral position which is emptied of its political content. This bothered me, and so I wrote about it. (emphasis added)

A very smart man with very many smart things to say.  Read more of this argument in Mamdani's LRB essay or check out the Democracy Now interview transcript.

Paris Hilton Goes to Rwanda

Yet Another Celeb Seeks Africa Cred

Paris Hilton is off to Rwanda next month to show the world that even drunk-driving billionaire heiresses can have a heart.

Africa has become an obligatory destination for celebrities--apparently even those on the B-list--to turn over a new leaf in their careers or otherwise prove they are more than just a pretty face.

Rwanda seems a logical choice; both Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor made appearances there this summer. 

After showing us a different side of rural America, Paris intends to extend the favor to Rwandans. 

But I mean, who wouldn't want Paris as their spokesperson?

On Solidarity (I): Sorority Girls, an Archetype

A letter to my people
(Whoever you are)

Part I of V: Sorority Girls, an Archetype

*  *  *

An editorial in the Washington Post by Nigerian American writer Uzodinma Iweala begins with a funny anecdote about “perky” college girls manning a Save Darfur booth:

Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists.

"Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR!

My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me.

"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.

My university had a similar brand of girls.  They would spirit off to exotic places over winter break and return with slightly slimmer noses—but the injustice of such privilege was not lost on them. 

Their sororities organized fashion shows, in which they starred, to raise money so that African children with cleft palettes could be afforded at least one of the many luxuries they enjoyed: access to a good plastic surgeon.

One day these girls would return to their native Manhattan, Philadelphia, or Birmingham, Alabama and chair benefit balls.  They’d Save the World in Dior couture from their castles in the sky, where no ever has to be poor or ugly or black (same diff).

Sometimes I have evil thoughts.  I used to wish I had a little brown child with a cleft palette in my closet just for this:  I’d whisper in his ear, “See that nice blond lady at the table over there?  She has candy.”  He’d go running up to one of these sorority girls to shake hands.  What if she didn’t see him coming, and was startled?  (Black people??  In Princeton?!!)  How fast would she recoil?  Fast enough to fall out of her chair?

There are some right now who are reading this and will want to say, "But a cleft palette is a serious health problem!  And these girls, at least they're doing something, even if they are preternaturally beautiful and not particularly self-aware!  Even if they've never once bothered to make friends with a brown person!"

Something.  Yes, it is always good to do something.  But if you really wanted to help, wouldn't you do everything in your power to make sure you that that something you were doing was the right thing, the right way?

And if you wanted to do that thing, legitimately, credibly, would you have to be African?

Would it at least help to be Black?