U.S. Affairs

This year marks 50 years since the year of African independence in 1960 when 17 African countries achieved their independence from European colonial rule. A series of celebrations are being held in specific countries and across the continent as well as in the diaspora to mark this important milestone. Over the next few months, I will be posting a series of reports and commentaries from a wide variety of sources and outlets commemorating the year.  read more »

Having worked on two encyclopedia projects, the one-volume Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century African History, as Editor-in-Chief, and the six-volume The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, as an Associate Editor, I am quite familiar with the challenges of encyclopedia writing. Careful choices have to be made in selecting topics and authors; coverage can never be comprehensive, gaps are unavoidable.  read more »

"Lisbon lies in ruins, while in Paris they dance," Voltaire wrote of the 1755 Portugal earthquake. The contradiction arrests and startles.

Barely a month into 2010, Haiti lies ruins.  President Wade of Senegal offers displaced Haitians land.  Can an earthquake succeed where Garvey's return to Africa movement failed?

   read more »

Henry Louis Gates, Harvard-based celebrity, Cambridge-trained literary scholar, self-taught historian, and current expert and entrepreneur of Blackness, has offered the ultimate post-racial text. And a pernicious one it is.   His essay, "Ending the Slavery Blame-Game" prominently featured on the New York Times editorial page on April 23, 2010 calls on the nation's first Black president to end the nation's sense of responsibility for the legacy of slavery. 

   read more »

This year, the roles that won Sandra Bullock and Mo'Nique the Oscars for best actress and best supporting actress respectively shared one thing in common: both were mothers to black children whose size was a significant aspect of the children's characters. The things that differentiated the two roles, however, are disturbing.

   read more »

"The God who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The God who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man's god asks him to commit crimes. But the God within us wants to do good. Our God, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It's He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It's He who will assist us.  read more »

In his 11 July 2009 speech in Accra, Ghana, US President Barack Obama declared, 'America has a responsibility to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there is genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems - they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response. That is why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy, technical assistance, and logistical support, and will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable.  read more »

Tiger Woods has become the latest celebrity athlete to fall from grace as his carefully crafted squeaky-clean image crumbles from allegations of prolific extra-marital sexual escapades. Another construct of perfection shatterd by reality that always seems to burn the imagined role models invented by corporate America.  As one woman after another have come to claim raucous affairs with him--up to ten now--Tiger's coveted brand is fast losing its lustre as he becomes the butt of scurrilous jokes.  read more »

In the recent award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, the American President, has marked the third time in the last decade that a leading American Democratic political figure has received the prestigious award. In 2002, the former president, Jimmy Carter and in 2007, the former vice president, Albert Gore, were recipients of the award for their roles in promoting solutions to major international problems.

   read more »

Over the last three nights I have attended several scholarship awards ceremonies, all remarkable occasions, celebrations of the power of generosity and the possibilities of youth; uplifting affirmations and remarkable investments in the future and public good. As an educator, I believe passionately in the transformative power of education and have the deepest admiration for individuals and institutions that provide scholarships to enable bright young people to get an education that they might not otherwise receive. I should know.  read more »

Challenging the imperialist dimensions of capitalism. Capitalism is in crisis, Samir Amin writes in Pambazuka News, creating new opportunities to challenge its imperialist dimensions.  read more »

Last July after Senator Obama won the Democratic Party primaries, I convened an eSymposium, The Meaning and Implications of the Obama Phenomenon,  in which several contributors wrote on the Obama phenomenon. They addressed many issues  including, as I wrote in the Introduction to the eSymposium,  read more »

I have not seen Chris Rock's new documentary "Good Hair" that conjures up the long, painful saga of African American women and their quest for good hair.  It does not mean that I have to see the documentary in order to write this blog.  I believe, or rather, I know that most African American women and girls in this country understand what it means to have good hair.  Moreover, they clearly understand what it means not to have good hair that has been so ingrained into the African American psyche that I wonder what if anything can eradicate this menta  read more »

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama has provoked a strange storm of controversy. I say strange because the protagonists in the debate--the advocates, ambivalents, and antagonists of President Obama's unexpected award--seem to read too much into the award. As shown by their partisan passions they seem, despite their apparent disagreement, to invest the prize with a measure of worldly greatness that is simply untenable.

   read more »

When I heard Rio had been awarded the 2016 Olympic Games over Chicago, I was conflicted about Chicago's loss, the city where I lived until a couple of months ago. Wandia Njoya perceptively captures why Chicago lost, notwithstanding the syrupy interventions of the Obamas and Oprah that did not move the Olympic officials. She observes that for much of the world the United States remains unloved as an aggressive imperial power despite Obama's election.

   read more »

One of the enduring legacies of the tragic Atlantic encounters between Europe, Africa and the Americas out of which the modern world was incubated was racialization, the construction of global racial identities and hierarchies. If the Americas were decimated of their indigenous populations through genocide, Africa was depopulated and dismembered into the black continent, the sub-Saharan contraption of imperial cartography, while the African diasporas created out of the forced migrations of enslavement were deprived of the memories of origin.  read more »

In 2007, events in the United States moved me to wonder publicly, whether race relations were actually getting worse as opposed to, progressing? I asked then and I ask again now, whether "Race Relations Is Regressing in America? What with the return to slavery era language? What with a return to tactics of that ignominious era? Brandishing of weapons, guns, knives, fire, fists, clubs, stones and the pinning of mustache on Obama to portray his as fascist and even as Adolf Hitler?

   read more »

Over the past few weeks, a furious debate has been raging in the media and in public forums including Congress about health care reform. Much anguish and anger has been expressed, outright lies have been peddled by opponents, and social progressives have been dismayed by President Obama's lukewarm support for a fundamental overhaul of the country's inordinately expensive and dysfunctional health care system. It is quite striking that the United States is the only major industrialized power without a national health care system that covers all its citizens.  read more »

With health care reform on the ropes, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)-labor's number one legislative priority-on life support, a stimulus package yet to reach Main Street, no clear plan to close Gitmo, two wars going badly (July was deadliest month yet for U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan), President Obama's agenda has hit a snag, and his poll numbers are dropping. Among the president's supporters, anxiety is quickly setting in.  

   read more »

President Hosni Mubarak recently visited the United States and met President Barack Obama. This is the third meeting between the two men since President Obama took office. President Mubarak last visited Washington in 2004 and for the next few years seemed to have been given the cold shoulder by the Bush Administration.  read more »