LOUVERTURE, ETC.ETC.

“Follow your truth- it’s the only thing you have”

On Africa:

“We are beautiful. Africa is magical. Africa is wealth. There are many ways we can enjoy this wealth, but that needs unity.

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I’ve done the most mind-blowing, once-in-a-life-time things on our continent..”

“Ellison’s allegory reveals the lie at the heart of America’s idea of itself: that no matter how we try to paint the history of this country, black people give it color and depth. That fact has been and is often hidden from view, because America, no matter what it says about itself or what demography portends, still holds on to the idea that this country is a white nation.

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This idea requires a national refusal to remember. We tell ourselves a story, as David Brooks did in his recent op-ed about America’s return to national greatness, that blinds us to the ugliness of who we are. Brooks refuses to linger on those moments in our past that make Trump and his Muslim ban so familiar. “America culminates history,” he writes. One can only write such a sentence if your head is stuck in the sand or hovering in the clouds.

Black History Month reveals that “white lie” for what it is.

America’s myth has enabled what Toni Morrison calls a kind of disremembering, which blots out the pain of past events and horrible loss. We tell ourselves that ours is the chosen nation, the “shining city upon a hill”—that America is an example of democracy achieved. That is our myth.

The yearly ritual of Black History Month ideally strips away the illusions of our national myth. It is a 28-day refusal to turn the page. If we learn the right lessons from the celebration, like the narrator in Invisible Man, we come away knowing, deep in our insides, that ain’t nothing pure about this place.

“It’s silly o’clock on a Sunday morning and I’m still in bed when I hear my phone ping with a WhatsApp notification. I take a look and groan. A colleague is asking if I know how we teach subtraction according to our mental calculations policy.

This is a regular occurrence – even at the weekend. Social media and messaging apps are a blessing and a curse for teachers. While it has broadened our horizons and inspired new ideas (thank you, Pinterest), it has also increased the intrusion of work into our personal lives. We are always contactable, and in many different ways.

What starts off as a message containing a funny aside or lighthearted remark can quickly become a virtual planning meeting. I’ll end up discussing the needs of individual students or even moderating assessments. Sometimes this involves amending work that I have already prepared for the following day.

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I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been with friends or family and an over-zealous (but well-meaning) colleague has tagged me in something as innocuous as “how to make your own mud kitchen”. While this is the sort of idea I’d usually like, I am furious that my mind is being forced into work mode. I don’t even seem to be safe when I’m on holiday – one colleague felt it was OK to ask me about planning even though they knew I was out of the country.

"The great Congo war of 1998-2003 was the most lethal on any continent in most people’s lifetimes. It sucked in soldiers from eight other countries. Mass rape became routine. No one knows how many people died of machete wounds, hunger and disease. Estimates range from 1m to over 5m. Four factors fed the war: an external shock to start it; a state too rotten to hold Congo together; vast mineral wealth that paid for weapons and was worth fighting over; and a tangle of ethnic and tribal grievances for warlords to exploit.  ................................................

“Pai peddles a story of Indian-American exceptionalism. Dino Teppara, a Republican lawyer, described Pai as the classic immigrant model and one of the greatest Indian Americans, telling India Abroad that Pai’s “exceptional background” is “proof enough that Pai has worked hard to reach the position he commands today.”

Pai’s exceptional background, I’m guessing, is his assimilated pedigree as a Konkani Brahmin born to doctor parents, his multiple Ivy League degrees and his white wife. Pai, who told the same business council the moving story of his parents arriving in the U.S. with a radio and $10 in their pocket—“the American dream manifest”—conveniently leaves out their medical education and Brahmin privilege.

This is how the model-minority story operates: It leaves out details of structural privilege and access to resources while prioritizing narratives of white-approved success.

Fighting the “model-minority myth” has become something of an internal battle cry in Asian-American activist spaces. The myth is a wedge between black and Asian communities from which Asian Americans have long benefited. Asian Americans have more opportunities because the model-minority stereotype decreased racism toward Asian communities in a complicated interaction of geopolitics, the Cold War and the civil rights movement. (The latter precipitated the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, which temporarily ended national-origin quotas.)

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Instagay phenomenon is often criticized for being vapid and misrepresenting modern gay life. It seems like many Instagays know each other, and so their world is unique. Through travelogues, lavish grooming routines, and daily appearances at Barry’s Bootcamp, one imagines endless disposable income (seemingly without real work to produce it).

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After all, Instagays are algorithmically-calibrated thirst traps, a new kind of social media star whose fame is predicated on a heady combination of sculpted abs and the lavish trappings of “influencer” culture. What if these are our new gay icons? And what happens when a new queer generation looks to them as role models and idols, people whose lives are their proof that it gets (much, much) better? Is the superficiality of Instagay culture really something they should look up to? How many of them are reaching out to Instagays for help through dark times, as they do to me? And how many of them have nowhere else to turn?

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“Despite the rise in diversity on film, many black girls are not still not seeing many actors who look like them on-screen. Even Zendaya herself has addressed this, as she openly admitted to “have a bit of a privilege compared to [her] darker sisters and brothers” in her acting career due to having light skin. “If I get put in a position because of the color of my skin where people will listen to me, then I should use that privilege the right way," she's said.

“Why does this matter? Why does it matter that a black woman with lighter skin is portraying a black character with dark skin? Why does it matter that some of the most popular black actresses are light-skinned? Because it indicates that Hollywood still overwhelmingly believes that a black woman must possess non-black ancestry or features to be considered beautiful or valuable. Likewise, many black actors with dark skin and "blacker" features are being denied access to film roles.