Teju Cole, who just won a prestigious award for his novel “Open City“, offers a brief essay, in Twitter form, as a reaction to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign:
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809068847673344
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809396070498304
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809558608150529
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809821712650240
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810073740001281
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810262223626241
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810524908687360
https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810822268067841
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On the above which criticises western sentimentality – yes, yes, but we are so quick to criticise the west, and no African country has bothered to do anything for the past 20 years but when a bunch of white people try and do it in the only way they know, we are so quick to jump against them. What have we Africans being doing all this time to stop this and all the rest??
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This is so well said given the limitations of twitter, lol.
The white man’s burden over Africa is their way to satisfy their guilt and create a false sense of conscience. Even the ones that do their charity on much smaller scales still come back with this condescending pity for the African man and not a true sense of hope. As if the African is nothing but a sorry case.
Then they return still extremely ignorant however having fulfilled some trivial curiosity such as whether we live with lions and say crap like ‘Africa changed my life’… My friend, where in Africa?! Nonsense.
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One challenge for civic media is: how do we turn this into a Yes And? How can we meet halfway with people’s genuine if uninformed feelings of empathy and use that to create a real connection?
That’s one reason I love the post on Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin which you referred me to, “African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign.” It gives readers a alternative way to genuinely connect rather than simply chiding audiences for their gullibility.
I know Global Voices is trying to do this work, but can we streamline the process? Hod do we do online Couchsurfing for cultural/political ambassadors?
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You’re brilliant. Your words resound with searing clarity,a pure dose of truth in a sea of white noise.
Thank you
Kia Mistilis
freelance journalist & photographer
Athens, Greece
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No, Teju Cole. No, No, No.
The Iraqis were mainly killed by militants and terrorists willing to kill their own people to make a point. What are you going to do about THAT?
The ICC indictments are in Africa for a reason — that’s where the worst atrocities are.
So I guess we are supposed to cease caring about our fellow man because we are white?
No, I won’t be stampeded or guilt-tripped into political correctness.
One of the greatest things about Kony2012 is that for once, American and European schoolchildren were learning something that the inane Internet never teaches them — that it isn’t America that is the only or the greatest evil in the world. That there are other evils. That these evils include African warlords who are so evil, they kidnap kids and make them kill their own parents.
And it is fine to learn this truth, and you cannot distract from it.
what an insulting and disgraceful compilation of rhetoric. what, may i ask, has this guy done in terms of fighting for human rights? this infantile tirade could be leveled at human rights activists anywhere in the world. what would you say of iranians protesting the treatment of Muslims in Europe? “stop trying to save the Muslims”? this is a blanket insult to anyone anywhere fighting injustice and demanding human rights. where are your words against the government’s activities in Brooklyn? you live among more homeless people in NYC than in any other city in America. are you in the streets? and are the rest of us now unqualified by the color of our skin or the city of our residence to decry how you are treatying your most vulnerable citizens? get a life. this is insulting rhetoric. what would you say of northern abolitionists in early America? to shut the fuck up? do we have to bow down to your ridiculously superficial criteria to determine who can protest what? this is the most pathetic rant i’ve ever read. funny how the kony campaigners – who, by the way, have a flawed approach to be sure – are not being taken to task so much on the substance of what they have said than on who they are. PATHETIC. Give them IDEAS you moron, BUILD on their positive energy and vision of a just world. there is more RIGHT with what they have done than wrong. and it is truly disgusting that they are being subject to ridicule and insults for doing anything – when people like this sit in their hipster digs in Williamsburg – having left their countries behind and making mints off of the misery there – can lob easy condemnations. I’m appalled.
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Hmm, what an exquisitely appropriate medium to “mau mau” the bourgeoisie. Tweeting is so – easy, while doing something is so – banal. Still, it took seven tweets to express the depth of your soul. Mix me a molotov while you’re up.
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Can’t wait to meet this briiliant guy at BAM this Thurday, March 15th at 6:30 pm. Africans should NOT be afraid to speak “truth to power”
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Change “white” to “black” in his tweets above and he comes across as a racist with a chip on his shoulder!
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Both Kony2012 video and this piece are patronizing and generalizing, but towards different parts of the world. Quite interesting really.
Some friends of mine have suggested that Cole’s tweets above amount to a “lame, white man’s guilt” argument. But the on-stage discussion at the 7 November 2011 Liberty University convocation (feat. Jason Russell and Alex Harris) suggests that Cole’s remarks are appropriate in this context. Here’s Alex Harris being a bit like Kony, which is to say, explicitly encouraging young people to follow his example in the name of God, to advance what Doom and Vlassenroot could have described as* “a ‘biblical’ vision of political redemption”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkB8o5VWAjE#t=21m38s
*But didn’t. Though they did describe Kony’s mission this way. Note their careful scare quotes around “bibilical”: http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/390/5.abstract
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