The assumption that enslaved Africans encountered authentic faith only upon their arrival in America is a stereotype that needs to end, Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, said during a Feb. 23 Black History Month webinar.
I recently read about another African American man by the name of Andre Hill that was killed by a White police officer in Ohio. The officer mistakenly thought a cell phone Mr. Hill had in his hand was a gun. I also just read that since the death of George Floyd, there have been at least 76 Black people killed by White police officers.
This is a revisiting of an early and ongoing conversation about the shared meaning of Kwanzaa, its particular cultural message to African people, and its core values that speak to the best of what it means to be African and human in the world and for the world. It raises the constantly relevant issues of race and religion and how they relate, not only to Kwanzaa as a holiday, but also to us as a people.
Ethnic regimes were largely ignored in the mainstream media of the global North until the early 1990s, even when troubling events, such as genocide in Burundi, were unfolding. It was only with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and the Rwanda genocide (1994) that it became more than apparent that another wave of ethnic cleansing and ethno-nationalist regimes were unfolding.
It has been four days since the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. It is Halloween, and the funerals began yesterday for the 11 victims. It has been called “the worst attack on Jews in American history.” The coverage has been relentless throughout the media, and touching vignettes of the lives of the victims have been ubiquitous. President Donald Trump has ordered flags at federal buildings throughout the United States to be flown at half-staff in “solemn respect” for the victims. Grotesque irony notwithstanding, United States President Donald Trump also visited the site of the massacre yesterday and met with victims and/or their families.
Ironically, calls for Black solidarity and achievement are often modeled on myths of Jewish unity as both groups respond to American racism