I am trying to avoid the media blitz on the Superbowl and anybody keen to enthuse about all the “amazing” commercials. But sometimes I can’t look away. One trope gets me every time. It involves The New York Times and Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka. Last week The Times did a profile of Kiwanuka. It recounts his tragic family history back in African: he’s the grandson of Uganda’s first prime-minister, Benedicto Kiwanuka, who was murdered by Idi Amin. Here’s what interesting: Basically the same story was published about Kiwanuka last week, in the Times in 2007 and before that in 2006. Like that’s the only story to tell about Kiwanuka.
Super Bowl Predictions
February 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
You need Nicholas Kristof
October 15, 2011 By 6 Comments
By Dan Moshenberg
O my friends, there is no friend! If you’re an African girl in trouble, there are only two things you can rely on. Your courage … and Nicholas Kristof. At least, that’s what Kristof would have us believe.
The story Kristof tells is the story he’s told before. This time he’s in Sierra Leone. A 15-year-old girl named Fulamatu is raped by her neighbor. This happens repeatedly, and Fulamatu remains in terrified and terrorized silence. She loses weight, becomes sick. Finally, when two girls report that the pastor had tried to rape them, Fulamatu’s parents put two and two together, and asked their daughter, who reports the whole series of events. They take her to the doctor, where she is found to have gonorrhea. Fulamatu lays charges against the pastor, who flees.
That’s where Kristof comes in.
This Generation of African Women Leaders
June 22, 2011 By 3 Comments
Dan Moshenberg has written guest posts for AIAC before and we’ve HT’d him a few times. But this posts marks the first of his weekly posts here on gender politics. He’ll keep the focus on Africa. Like today when he discusses Michelle Obama’s South Africa trip. Dan, who has lived in South Africa (I’ve known him for about 16 years), blogs at Women In and Beyond the Global (go check it out);and is director of Women’s Studies at George Washington University in Washington D.C.So watch out for it on Wednesdays–Sean Jacobs
The Smiling Faces of Young Africans
February 28, 2011 By 10 Comments
Joy is possible amidst poverty and material commodities are not necessary for happiness. This was the lesson that Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Clayton Kershaw learned during his recent trip to Africa. A feature in the New York Times by Karen Crouse describes the Dodgers player and his wife, Ellen’s trip to Zambia with the child sponsorship ministry, Arise Africa.
Bwana Saves Africa
December 5, 2010 By 13 Comments
Today’s New York Times Magazine carries a fawning profile of John Prendergast, the force behind the Enough Project (reference: Congo, Darfur and now southern Sudan). Prendergast is described by reporter Daniel Bergner as “America’s most influential activist in Africa’s most troubled regions.” A former Clinton White House official, Prendergast probably wrote the book on how to utilize celebrity diplomacy. (Actors George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Don Cheadle’s status as foreign policy experts originate with the Enough Project.) At best the article is interesting as a how-to manuel on influencing US foreign policy on Africa. At the same time reporter Bergner also undercuts his own thesis by conceding it is difficult to measure exactly Clooney and Prendergast’s importance in the recent surge of US public focus on Sudan. For the profile Bergner followed Pendergrast to southern Sudan where a referendum on the south’s political independence from the north is planned January 2011. Much of the information in the piece won’t be new to people familiar with Prendergast or developments in Sudan. Some readers may get a chuckle out of Bergner’s man-crush on Pendergrast. Bergner writes that Prendergast has “… wavy gray hair that fell to the shoulders of his T-shirt. The hair, along with the unshaven scruff on his chin, made for a look of dashing flamboyance that was undercut by bursts of boyish energy.” We also learn that Prendergast has no time for critics of his methods or his grasp of the issues, that he “has devoted all of his adult life to Africa,” and discovered “human suffering” when he saw scenes of Ethiopia’s 1985 famine on TV. Prendergast can’t stop himself from describing a first trip to Sudan in the 1980s as “… a bit of ‘Apocalypse Now’.” Not surprisingly, we also learn that he has been betrayed by Africans whom he has admired. Etcetera, etcetera.
Anyway, Howard French, former New York Times West Africa correspondent, best summed up the piece in a tweet: ”Bwana saves Africa. Part 3,276. Barf. Will we ever get beyond such stories?“
Stuff White People Do*
July 14, 2010 By 18 Comments
He’s back.
If you’re new to the discussion, here’s a brief recap: Kristof recently answered some of his reader’s questions, including one submitted by Texas in Africa (TIA) in which she asked why his columns about Africa seem to portray “black Africans as victims” and “white foreigners as their saviors.” His answer left a little lot to be desired (as Sean noted here), so he is back with another response, titled “Westerners on White Horses…”
Now, for some people this is great—at least he hasn’t gone all Alex Perry on us, right? Well, some people is not me. And, let’s be honest, who still reads TIME? Anyway, on to Kristof’s latest response.
Nicholas Kristof prefers “white saviors”
July 12, 2010 By 3 Comments
Nicholas Kristof is at it again. Last week he announced that ‘over the next several days’ he will ‘… be responding to questions submitted via YouTube from readers.’
The first question: ‘Today’s question asks Nick why many of his columns about Africa seem to portray “black Africans as victims” and “white foreigners as their saviors.”‘
“Fierce is Iman”
June 7, 2010 By 9 Comments
Tonight, Somali-born former model, and current entrepreneur, Iman will receive the Fashion Icon award from from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Past winners of this special award, which is “awarded to an individual whose signature style has had a profound influence on fashion,” include model Kate Moss (2005), and actresses Sarah Jessica Parker (2004) and Nicole Kidman (2003). Whatever you may think of the fashion industry, this is huge, and signals that Iman is (finally) getting the due that she deserves. Because, as we all know, fashion (still) doesn’t much care for Black women, or women of color in general. You don’t have to see the recent short documentary, The Colour of Beauty, to know that. You need only read the New York Times article announcing Iman’s award. Some highlights:
Kristof promotes the missionary position
May 23, 2010 By 18 Comments
Via @Siddhartha Mitter: ”… The Great White Savior really outdid himself with this one. A blame-the-poor classic with particularly overt Calvinist moral messaging, even less appreciation than usual for colonial legacy, public finance and global economics, and that condescending Kristof brand of Savior Feminism Lite that verges on misandry.”
What Siddhartha is talking about; Nicholas Kristof’s latest column. Here’s the intro:
There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.
Bujumbura is hot*
May 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The newest in expat chic? Bujumbura, “a freewheeling city of palm trees and colonial-era Art Deco buildings thrust against the shores of Lake Tanganyika [where] Congolese, Rwandans and aid workers from across the region are flocking to the city’s nightclubs, dancing till dawn and nursing their hangovers on the area’s fine lakeside beaches.” That’s according to the New York Times.
*Pun intended.
