I never understood why E-Type’s 2002 smash hit ‘Africa’ didn’t really catch on outside Sweden. The video is slightly embarrassing. It’s like watching a Scandinavian version of the b-grade movie ‘Soul Plane.’ But it has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Or so one hopes. [Read more...]
"Soweto" (@Jodi Bieber)
A few people have emailed us about the not-so-new layout here at AIAC; mostly about finding old posts on this new layout. The main complaint: “When I am on your home page, I can’t find a way of accessing any recent posts older than ‘Latest posts’ or hope they’re in ‘Top posts’.” (Only the last posts appear on the main body of the front page along with a ‘Featured’ post.) True. Here’s some advice: Click on the ‘More…’ button at the bottom of the front page. That will take you to a blog version (dates descending) of AIAC. Or click on the ‘Archive’ widget on the right and choose a month, say ‘January 2012′, and all the posts for that month will appear in chronological order (by date descending). The other option: If you’re looking for a specific post, just use the ‘Search’ option at the top of the page in the header. Or, if you’re looking for the work of a specific blogger, click on her/his name. Hope that helps and keeps you reading.
An essay I wrote for AIAC on David Goldblatt at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan (2010) is in the latest edition of SAVVY, a Journal for Critical Texts on Contemporary African Art based in Berlin. The 3rd edition of SAVVY is devoted to looking at the “The fire behind the smoke called political art”: that is, the relationship between art and politics, and whether the two are an “inseparable couple”; it’s edited by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Andrea Heister. Some great essays in there.
At the end of 2011 we contemplated asking you, dear reader, who you think was the most influential African thinker alive. We abandoned the idea for a while because of our thing against lists (except our end of year lists, of course). I got the initial idea from the British blog, Left Foot Forward, which had run a contest to determine “the most influential leftwing thinker of the year 2010/11.” The result of the Left Foot Forward contest is here. Based on reader choices, Left Foot Forward came up with the usual suspects (among others, economist and columnist Paul Krugman, columnist Polly Toynbee, journalist Will Hutton, author and academic Owen Jones, and Caroline Lucas, the leader of Britain’s Green Party) but also with some strange ones (Tony Blair? Barack Obama? Bernard Henri-Lévy?). On that latter group: it is true that one man’s leftwing is another’s rightwing. That said, an inevitable blind spot of Left Foot Forward’s list was that “left-wing thinker” is synonymous with “Anglo American,” and of course heavily British. So, it got me thinking: If we could ask our readers (and critics, and everyone else) to do the same thing, who would you pick?
Our tech posts never stray from tweeting new data on Twitter and Facebook usage on the continent–but now and then–as occasional readers of Gizmodo and Kotaku–we pause:
You’ve seen those “Are you smarter than a 5 year old” videos on Youtube (it’s an actual TV show) or marveled at the intelligence of Miss Teen South Carolina, now here’s the kids from a suburban high school in Washington State. We learn that “Somebody Bin Laden” is the Vice-President of the United States, that the US gained its independence in the Civil War, that Canada is actually a state in the US, that “South America is a country that borders the US.” Oh, and one student suggested Europe and Utopia are countries that start with a U.
I still mourn the day I walked around to Le Grand Dakar, one of my favorite restaurants in Clinton Hill, and found it was closed. The restaurant, run and owned by Chef Pierre Thiam (check out his interesting family backstory) was a fixture in the block around Grand Ave and Lafayatte. (Pierre, incidentally, is a great supporter of the African community in the city; he started a summer street festival; he also hosted a party for Chimurenga Magazine a while back.) Recently, driving on Franklin Ave I spotted him on the street. He confirmed the bad news, but promised he’ll open a restaurant again. He just needs a space. Meanwhile, Chef Pierre remains busy (he was even on Iron Chef and published an award winning book on Senegalese food, for example). Later this month, February 28th, at a “special international feast” for the Japan Society in Manhattan, he’ll take on “the challenge of integrating Asian ingredients into 11 Senegalese dishes.” In the video, above, he talks about his “sushi style” Sombi dessert, one of the dishes he’ll do at the Japan Society benefit. And here’s the recipe for the “sushi style” Sombi dessert: [Read more...]
It has come to this. Don’t focus too much on the ‘your scholarship’ line. An email from an American lawyer in my inbox:
I am writing to request your help in a matter based on your scholarship on South Africa. My immigration law firm is currently representing a family of white Afrikaner farmers who are seeking asylum and withholding of removal based on allegations that they are the victims of discrimination based on their race and political affiliation. We are seeking an expert witness who could testify to the current situation in South Africa and confirm that this family would indeed suffer similar persecution if they were to return … If you or anyone you know would be able to give us an expert opinion, please let me know. Your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.
This is just a reminder to not forget that we also have a new @Africasacountry account on Twitter where we tweet and retweet media criticism and analysis as well as new music, sports, arts and photography. Follow us there. The same goes for our Facebook page. Like us there too.
How many times can you replicate an experiment before its underlying questions and possible conclusions turn banal? You’d think the conclusions of the 70 year old Kenneth and Mamie Clark doll experiment would have seeped into Latin America’s public consciousness by now. Apparently not, since the Mexican anti-racist campaign doing their version of the doll experiment quickly went viral recently, as if they saw it for the first time. Of course Mexican kids are no different from the ones in Clarks’ original setting. Why would they be? Some Mexicans hold views about black people that belong in the United States circa 1930. And if the makers of the video below — in an attempted parody trying to acquit Mexico as a country from the campaign’s accusations — think the kids prefer the white doll over the black doll not because the black doll represents a black person but because it is black (with its what they consider typical Mexican associations of superstition, black cats, black death, or “a psychology of colors”), they miss Clarks’ point completely: it is a segregated society that breeds distrust and internalized racism. Which makes Mexico a very ordinary society. The punch line: “I’m not black, I’m a mechanic.” [Read more...]
