This was amazing!!! It has connected so many dots that I have been contemplating for decades! Thank you so much! It was so clear that the chief motivation and fuel for this is LOVE!!!
Would love to hear Bayo speak on Africans participation in the transatlantic slave trade. Would love to hear his thoughts. Lived in 3 continents and the Biafran war comes to memory .
But what if the table was never truly "white"? And what if pre-colonial "black" cities weren't that different from "white" cities (take the great cities of the empires of Mali and Songhai for example, or venturing further afield, the great pre-contact cities of the Americas)? Isn't this just a reification of the idea of going back to a "golden age" of indigeneity? As a descendent of Hellenic (greek) people, a white or not white or spicy white (depending on who is doing the naming of me) people who are both looked to as founders of Western Civilization (although we never claimed this until some Northern Europeans suggested it in the 19th century; Hellens felt that Egypt was the source of wisdom, but the people to the north were barbarians) as well as inferior subjects (WOGS, lazy Mediterraneans), a descendent of refugees, an immigrant and a citizen of a former British colony who has grown up in what used to be an anglo dominated society (in terms of its aesthetics and self-regard), I find the binary thinking, the dualistic thinking around white and black, unhelpful. The naming, the categorizing, continues (colonialism, Asian, black, white, etc.). As Bayo wrote in his book: "Name the colour, blind the eye." I think Bayo addresses some of this in his discussion of the illusion of non-entanglement, but elsewhere gets caught in categorical thinking. I don't mean to dispute the historical racism that was (and sometimes still is) a feature of a people who justified exploitation by dehumanizing "black" people. But as Bayo writes, this is not essential to being "white." I would go so far as to say that racism is something I see expressed in every culture I have ever visited. And it's nothing new. And nothing particularly white. If we "other" it, as Bayo warns us not to do, we enter into an illusion that it belongs to white people and not to "black" or "Asian" people. We stuff our shadow bags. So is it a "white" table, really? I recently studied the American musical Oklahoma!. It has been very credibly argued, for historical reasons and through lifeworld concept of tribalography, that it is actually a fusion, or an example of indigenous worlding. It would take to long to explain this, but I think it makes perfect sense. Is the table really "white"?
This was amazing!!! It has connected so many dots that I have been contemplating for decades! Thank you so much! It was so clear that the chief motivation and fuel for this is LOVE!!!
Marvelous, resonant, and expansive. Encouraging us to find the cracks, break and create! 🙏🏾
Would love to hear Bayo speak on Africans participation in the transatlantic slave trade. Would love to hear his thoughts. Lived in 3 continents and the Biafran war comes to memory .
But what if the table was never truly "white"? And what if pre-colonial "black" cities weren't that different from "white" cities (take the great cities of the empires of Mali and Songhai for example, or venturing further afield, the great pre-contact cities of the Americas)? Isn't this just a reification of the idea of going back to a "golden age" of indigeneity? As a descendent of Hellenic (greek) people, a white or not white or spicy white (depending on who is doing the naming of me) people who are both looked to as founders of Western Civilization (although we never claimed this until some Northern Europeans suggested it in the 19th century; Hellens felt that Egypt was the source of wisdom, but the people to the north were barbarians) as well as inferior subjects (WOGS, lazy Mediterraneans), a descendent of refugees, an immigrant and a citizen of a former British colony who has grown up in what used to be an anglo dominated society (in terms of its aesthetics and self-regard), I find the binary thinking, the dualistic thinking around white and black, unhelpful. The naming, the categorizing, continues (colonialism, Asian, black, white, etc.). As Bayo wrote in his book: "Name the colour, blind the eye." I think Bayo addresses some of this in his discussion of the illusion of non-entanglement, but elsewhere gets caught in categorical thinking. I don't mean to dispute the historical racism that was (and sometimes still is) a feature of a people who justified exploitation by dehumanizing "black" people. But as Bayo writes, this is not essential to being "white." I would go so far as to say that racism is something I see expressed in every culture I have ever visited. And it's nothing new. And nothing particularly white. If we "other" it, as Bayo warns us not to do, we enter into an illusion that it belongs to white people and not to "black" or "Asian" people. We stuff our shadow bags. So is it a "white" table, really? I recently studied the American musical Oklahoma!. It has been very credibly argued, for historical reasons and through lifeworld concept of tribalography, that it is actually a fusion, or an example of indigenous worlding. It would take to long to explain this, but I think it makes perfect sense. Is the table really "white"?
Hmmm!!