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Africa

The Implicit Trust Given to Whiteness puts Black Children at Serious Risk

The Implicit Trust Given to Whiteness puts Black Children at Serious Risk

By Commentaries/Opinions

We need to do better at protecting our children from foreign men who come to prey on them in the name of “doing good”. By NWS — Last week we were sent this image of Mr. Daniel Illescas, a Spanish model from Madrid, laying shirtless with a small Kenyan girl who he seems to have an affinity for. The child he refers to as “xxxx” (name redacted for child’s privacy)…

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Plaque depicting warrior and attendants (16th-17th century), Edo peoples, Benin kingdom, Nigeria.

Liberating the precolonial history of Africa

By Editors' Choice

The West focuses only on slavery, but the history of Africa is so much more than a footnote to European imperialism. By Toby Green / Edited by Sam Haselby, Aeon — To understand the complexity and significance of West African history, there is no better thing to do than to go to Freetown. Sierra Leone’s capital is sited in the lee of the ‘lion-shaped’ mountain that gives the country its…

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The conference of Berlin,

Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa

By Editors' Choice

135 years ago today, European leaders sat around a horseshoe-shaped table to set the rules for Africa’s colonization. By Patrick Gathara, Al Jazeera — On the afternoon of Saturday, November 15, 1884, an international conference was opened by the chancellor of the newly-created German Empire at his official residence on Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin. Sat around a horseshoe-shaped table in a room overlooking the garden with representatives from every European country,…

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Mmusi Maimane

Liberalism in South Africa isn’t only for white people—or black people who “want to be white”

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Steven Friedman — Liberalism is meant to be about freedom for all individuals, regardless of race. But linking liberalism to whiteness as is happening now is not new in South Africa. Most activists who fought for black freedom dismissed liberalism as a white ideology designed to tame black people, not to free them. This was hardly surprising, since many white liberals spoke and acted as if liberalism was exactly that:…

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R. Drew Smith Professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Co-Convener, Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race

National Reconciliation Without Accountability Rings Hollow

By Commentaries/Opinions

By R. Drew Smith Professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Co-Convener, Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race — Twenty-five years ago, Nelson Mandela was elected South African president after serving 27 years in prison for leading resistance against racially-oppressive apartheid rule. During that same moment in April of 1994, a horrible tragedy was unfolding further north on the African continent as longstanding ethnic grievances within Rwanda irr

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Slave Descendant - Illustration by Ojima Abalaka

The Descendants of Slaves in Nigeria Fight for Equality

By Reparations

Slavery existed among the Igbo long before colonization, and accelerated with the transatlantic trade. Today, slave descendants still retain the stigma of their ancestors. By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, The New Yorker — On a sunny morning in November, 2018, twelve men and two women gathered in a lavishly furnished living room in Oguta, a town in southeastern Nigeria, with the air-conditioning at full blast. They had come to discuss the caste…

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