Two Annoying White Men

When Canada's Globe & Mail newspaper thought it was OK to get two white, Irish men to edit a special issue of the paper on Africa.

"Bono chats with The Globe and Mail's Stephanie Nolen, a former Africa correspondent for the paper." (Image: Globe & Mail.)

Another year, another “special” Africa issue. For today, it’s Canada’s version of a paper of record,  The Globe and Mail, guest edited by the OGs of Team Save Africa, Bono and Bob Geldof (B&B). The paper describes them as “anti-poverty activists.” The paper’s publisher said this with a straight face: “”Bono and Sir Bob have valuable insights and knowledge on the future of Africa.” This is all part of Canadian prep for the G20 and G8 coming up. In their first order of business, B&B answered the very tough question: Who speaks for Africa? (The Globe and Mail had invited readers to send in questions.) Why, asked one reader, does it take two white men, both Irish, to discuss the positive things that are happening in Africa? Why, indeed?

Well I don’t know, because they don’t actually answer the question. Note that part of the impetus for this issue was to highlight “the Africa you don’t know.” B&B, of course, only go on about the Africa they want us to know, the poor one that cannot function without their intervention. And, yes, they get that they’re “annoying,” says Bob. And? Bono, for his part, takes it a bit further. He “doesn’t see color,” he says. He “forgets,” you see (must be nice). Perhaps what he doesn’t see is that there are others more qualified than he to do this job. Not many, of course, come endorsed by both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Bono does, he reminds us.  That Bono—the one thing he never forgets is to namedrop.

Thankfully, B&B aren’t the only ones in charge today. The all-around awesome Ory Okolloh is serving as digital guest editor, which means she’s running globeandmail.com’s world site today. For this, I’ll gladly put up with B&B.

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

The new antisemitism?

Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.