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AMERICA: Black writer says 'ThankGod for slavery' [boodskap #70546]

Vr, 13 Desember 2002 14:45

Andrew Taylor
Boodskappe: 42
Geregistreer: Oktober 2002

Karma: 0

Volle Lid

Hier is die nuws...

Outrage as Black Reporter says 'Thank God for Slavery'

A black American author has sparked anger and controversy among black
nationalists "by repudiating his African roots and thanking God his
ancestor was enslaved."

"Keith Richburg has been shunned and insulted for daring to reject the
Afro-centric idealism which is an article of faith in black America.
In 'Out Of America', published in February,1997, (hardcover, 288
pages;

'Basic Books,' ISBN: 0465001874), after he spent three years reporting
from Africa for the Washington Post, Mr Richburg hurls down a
challenge to black American leaders to stop deceiving themselves and
the 35 million (black) descendants of slaves, that Africa is Eden on
earth.

"I'm tired of lying,' he writes. 'And I'm tired of all the ignorance
and hypocrisy and the double standards I hear and read about Africa,
much of it from people who've never been there, let alone spent three
years walking around amid the corpses.

"Talk to me about Africa and my black roots and my kinship with my
African brothers and I'll throw it back in your face, and then I'll
rub your nose in the images of the rotting flesh.'

"Richburg spent three years covering the continent's senseless
violence, corruption, bloody and incessant cruelties--machete-wielding
Hutu militiamen, a cholera epidemic in Zaire, famine in Somalia, civil
war in Liberia, disease, dirt, dictatorships, killer children, AIDS,
terror.

"Had my ancestor not made it out of here,' Richburg muses, 'I might
have ended up in that crowd...maybe I would have been one of those
bodies, washing over the waterfall in Tanzania or maybe my son would
have been set ablaze by soldiers. Or I would be limping now from the
torture I received in some rancid police cell...'

Afrocentrism 'has become fashionable for many blacks, Richburg notes.
'It cannot work for me. I have been here, I have lived here and seen
Africa in all its horror.'

"Mr Richburg's every word is an assault on the group identity politics
which have taken hold among black intellectuals and leads, critics
say, to a Balkanisation of American society. Thinking about his slave
forebear, transported in chains to the Caribbean and thence to South
Carolina, Mr Richburg writes: "Thank God my ancestor got out, because,
now, I am not one of them [Africans]. In short, thank God I am an
American."

"Borders, a Washington D.C. book shop, was packed this month for a
lecture by Mr Richburg at which hecklers accused him of racial
betrayal. 'One man demanded to know if the author had a white
girlfriend,' said Mary Ann Brownlow, who organised the lecture.

"When Mr Richburg appeared on a talk show on Black Entertainment
Television, Randall Robinson, leader of the TransAfrica lobby group
and one of America's most prominent blacks, refused to join the
discussion.

"Jackie Clark, producer of the show, said: 'We African-Americans have
this vision of Africa as the motherland which we see in this wonderful
light

but people who have lived there can burst this bubble. It takes
courage to say things you know are going to outrage people, but I
think Richburg wishes he were white.'

"Out Of America is a gruesomely detailed account of barbarism and
corruption across the continent, particularly in Somalia and Rwanda.
The author pulls no punches in condemning it, and no...myth is spared.
When sketching how his ancestor was enslaved, he says it was first
'probably by a local chieftain.' The suggestion that African blacks
were slave owners is anathema in America...

"Mr Richburg, who is now working for the Washington Post in Hong Kong,
says he is not condoning the evil of slavery, but insists that
condemning it should not blind blacks to the fact that good has
emerged from it..."

Reviews of Richburg's Out of America:

E.G. Long: "Africa is a painful reality. Over the past 21 years, I
have lived and worked in five African countries: Kenya, Tanzania,
Zambia, Zaire and Nigeria. ..There is nothing in Richburg's book that
I could contradict. I too, experienced the horror, and hopelessnesss
of that continent. I read 'Out of America' in one sitting... "

Steve Wishnevsky: "This is the voice missing from the current race
'dialogue.' Mr. Richburg is a courageous writer and clear
observer...His is an authentic voice and should be listened to
closely. America is the only land where the descendants of Africans
have anything approaching freedom and economic opportunity."

H. Luther: "So much of what you hear about Africa lately is from
people who have never been there. People who want to romanticize what
is in fact chaos and disaster...Richburg has written what he has seen,
he has presented reality with great integrity. It is a must read. " --
Peter Watson

Andrew (Taylor)
http://www.taylor.co.uk