Guest Post by Jogchum Vrielink
“Tintin,” the brainchild of the late Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi (better known as Hergé) is experiencing new and exciting adventures these days. Not just in the cinema, but in Belgian courts as well. A Brussels court has rejected the suit of a Congolese student and a minority organization to obtain a ban on the comic book ‘Tintin in the Congo.’ The main conclusions about the case: One, despite this outcome, the reasoning of the court jeopardizes free speech. And two, as regards the applicants: offensive as the comic may be, their recourse to the law is both misdirected and counterproductive. [Read more...]
The adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Law
April 30, 2012 By 3 Comments
The other African election: France’s first round
April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
What is there to say about that other African election, the one in France? Sunday was the first of two rounds in this presidential contest, which is a lot more about Europe—specifically Brussels, but also Berlin—than it is about Africa. Still, it will have real effects on both shores of the Mediterranean and of the Sahara. [Read more...]
Germany’s Namibian Legacy
April 10, 2012 By 6 Comments
So the Bundestag have once again refused to acknowledge that the systematic murders of four ethnic groups in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 wasn’t genocide. Late last month, March 22, the German parliament debated a motion proposed by the Left party to officially recognise the genocide which took place in Namibia between 1904 and 1908. The Namibian confirmed that the motion has been overturned. It is not a coincidence that in a review of Sebastian Conrad’s book German Colonialism: A Short History, Richard J. Evans notes that evidence of this history can be seen in present-day Namibia: “If you go to Windhoek in Namibia, you can still pick up a copy of the Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper which caters for the remaining German-speaking residents of the town. … In Tanzania, you can stay in the lakeside town of Wiedhafen. If you’re a businessman wanting to bulk buy palm oil in Cameroon, the Woermann plantations are still the place to go. In eastern Ghana, German-style buildings that once belonged to the colony of Togo are now advertised as tourist attractions.” (London Review of Books) German colonialism in Africa, obscured by the comparatively more substantial colonies of other European countries and numerically superior crimes of the Nazi genocide, occupies a diminished place in German national guilt.
‘Banana republic’
March 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment
World Soccer magazine explains Russian football’s anti-racism strategies:
Anzhi Makhachkala have expressed their disappointment over an “idiotic” banana throwing incident involving recent signing Christopher Samba. The Congolese defender had a banana thrown at him from the stands after Sunday’s defeat to Lokomotiv in Moscow. Samba picked up the banana and threw it back. “I hope this incident will become a example of how not to behave for those children who saw it at the arena,” he said afterwards. Lokomotiv president, Olga Smorodskaya, a former graduate of the ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil’ school of public relations, pleaded ignorance of the incident. “There were no incidents at the stadium on Sunday,” Lokomotiv president Olga Smorodskaya said. “I was watching our fans during the match with great attention. They conducted themselves exemplary during and after the match.” Russian Premier League spokesman Sergei Alekseyev said the league would do whatever possible to “change the situation” with regard to the country’s appalling record of racism, but that legal action was not always possible. “The stadium in itself is a democratic environment,” he said. “The police can seize flares, but how can they seize fruit?” he asked.
The #Kony2012 show
March 7, 2012 By 96 Comments
Photo by Glenna Gordon. Sudan-Congo border, April 2008
The boy had lost his brother, and as he wept before Jason Russell’s camera, Jason Russell brushed back the loose strands of his magnificent blond coiffure (who will play him in the movie version?) and told the boy in hushed tones: “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Jason Russell promised the boy that he, Jason Russell, would do everything he could, would stop at nothing, would move mountains if need be, just to make sure that everybody in the world would finally come to know the name of Jason Russell.
Mexican dolls
January 11, 2012 By 2 Comments
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...]
The Year of Frantz Fanon
December 21, 2011 By 3 Comments
Four moments that stirred heated debate in France this year were the cases against rapper Youssoupha and IMF Head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the unveiling of the Paris exhibiton Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage, curated by former French footballer Lilian Thuram, and the 50th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s death. With the latter came the publication in French of Fanon’s Œuvres (La Découverte, 800 p.), with a preface by Achille Mbembe (‘L’universalité de Frantz Fanon’). When we approached Mbembe for an English version of the text, he sent us the following shorter essay — which we offered to translate from the original French.
I remember Black Pete*
November 25, 2011 By 1 Comment
As a child, I never believed in Santa Claus.
I believed in Saint Nicholas and Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). I remember waking up as a child on December 6, 1983, three hours before daybreak. I also remember waking up early on December 6 for years afterwards. Always early, always too excited to go back to sleep the night Saint Nicholas came by our house. Over the years, I got to share this rush of euphoric anxiety with my two younger brothers. We would be jumping on our beds, calling our parents, yelling out to ask whether it was time yet. They were never amused. My brothers and I knew there was no way we could pussyfoot downstairs into the living room to see which presents He had left us. Because each year, Saint Nicholas’s black servants, those sneaky Black Petes (‘Zwarte Pieten’) would have locked the room’s door on their way out. My parents held its only key.
You know Black Pete?
Ingerland, Ingerland, Ingerland
November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Late last month the English goalkeeper David James wrote in The Observer that he was surprised at the accusations of racism against his national teammate John Terry. The latter was accused of racially abusing an opponent, QPR player Anton Ferdinand. James also claimed racism has been rooted out of the game a long time ago. James suggested that racism was now limited to a small number of fans.
