It ends when there is a decolonised education system so that there is no chance of a person being miseducated by a David Subran, that’s when. His 19 June letter to the editor criticising the calls for the removal of Christopher Columbus’ statue was a shameless genuflecting to the west’s …
Read More »Gilkes: Deconstructing religion; Zionism, US/European exceptionalism and the rest of us
Back in the mid-80s, when I was in Form 3 or 4 at St Benedict’s College, a film was shown about the Rapture—an event in which the ‘righteous’ would suddenly be swept up into the clouds to be with Jesus and away from the horrific tribulations that would befall everyone …
Read More »Of what bloody use is (African) history anyway? Gilkes responds to trivialisation of non-Western narratives
What the hell is History good for anyway? I mean really? Well I suppose the answer depends on what you use History for. Napoleon Bonaparte called it a set of lies mutually agreed upon, which is a very important point to consider when studying how the West has used ‘history’ …
Read More »Gilkes: Message to the Barbergreen; the continuing struggle for emancipation
Despite my shameless semi-appropriation of Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots,” this in no way suggests that I place myself close to the same league of this giant ancestor. This is just my paltry message to those in my country, particularly those who live where there isn’t much grass, far …
Read More »Claude’s comments: On Black identity (Pt 2): What Europe did with our African names—and Moor!
Ancient Egyptians believed that a person’s name, the “rn” (ren), was “the foundation of a being as an individual.” A person’s name had a power of its own and lived as long as it was spoken; thus, the proverb, “To speak one’s name is to make him live again.” This …
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