Trying to follow

This is not meant to be directed at any particular blogger, writer, podcaster, or reader; It’s probably as much something I need to hear as anyone else.

I was listening to a podcast today and the people kept talking about “Africa.” They said things like, I have a heart for Africa, I’ve been really interested in Africa, I looked into going to Africa, and so on. Now, out of full disclosure, when I was in sixth grade and I did a family album and I wrote down the place I most wanted to visit, I wrote down Africa. So, here’s were I have a problem…

Africa is a BIG place. It’s not a people group, or a village, or a town, or state, or country, it’s a gigantic continent! The coninent of Africa is nothing like the United States where you have 50 different states under one central government, and most people living there generally speak the same language but with different accents (broad generalization). Africa is 1/5 of the world’s total land area, and 12% of the world’s entire population. There are 61 territories, many different religions and thousands of languages.  Yet, us naive folk in the U.S. of A. keep on acting like Africa and African’s are a niche we’re interested in.

Before I go off in that direction too much more let me say, there are some collective elements of Africa. Being a connected land mass has it’s collective impacts. The AIDS pandemic knows no country borders as it spreads through Sub-sahara Africa. Imperialism and the wicked oppression of the land and the people through out the continent is another shared experience of many in the continent of Africa. There are collective elements, but I think it’s best for our own well being that we stop talking about are interest in such naive general terms.

And here’s where it get’s a little gritty… I think most of the reasons we talk in generalizations about “Africa” are inherently racist. You might have scene a infomercial about starving children, full of young dark skinned children longing for help, and you decide something must be done for those Africans (little did you know all those kids where from the Carribean). My point is that far too many of us and our ignorant generalizations on race see a dark skinned person and place them as being from (recently, or ancestorally) Africa.

In our ignorance African’s are in a terrible dilemma: They all have AIDS (thanks for letting us know Bono), they are starving (infomercials), they just got through a genocide (Hotel Rwanda) and now they’ve got another one going (Save Darfur). We think African’s live fairly unciviled lifestyles (National Geographic), they get their hands chopped off in the diamond trade (Kanye West), they still haven’t dealt with racism (Aparthied), They send their children into war with guns (Invisible Children), they are uneducated and need sponsorship (World Vision), and they are all “African.” Do you see the problem with lumping ever person and issue of an entire continent into one category?

Maybe, I’ll start doing a spotlight on Africa post highlighting a different country each week and what is unique about their people.  Anyone care to inform us of the uniqueness of a country they’ve been to?

I received this email a while ago about a letter from the President of Iran to President Bush. It was interesting, but I didn’t think much of it except that it was just a forward someone had written themselves, not a factual letter from the real Iran President.
Well, it turns out the Washington Post believes it’s real, so I’m going with them on this one. It’s a long, but easy to read letter and I would strongly encourage you to do so.

Read the Complete letter here.
Below are some excerpts:

After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people — who had been immensely traumatized by the attacks — some Western media only intensified the climate of fear and insecurity — some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?

The question here is “what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign, produced for the citizens?”

As Your Excellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty. Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem. Of course these problems exist — to a larger or lesser extent — in other countries as well. With these conditions in mind, can the gargantuan expenses of the campaign — paid from the public treasury — be explained and be consistent with the aforementioned principles?

Are you pleased with the current condition of the world?

Do you think present policies can continue?

If billions of dollars spent on security, military campaigns and troop movement were instead spent on investment and assistance for poor countries, promotion of health, combating different diseases, education and improvement of mental and physical fitness, assistance to the victims of natural disasters, creation of employment opportunities and production, development projects and poverty alleviation, establishment of peace, mediation between disputing states, and extinguishing the flames of racial, ethnic and other conflicts, were would the world be today? Would not your government and people be justifiably proud?

Would not your administration’s political and economic standing have been stronger?

And I am most sorry to say, would there have been an ever increasing global hatred of the American government?

By way of the suggestions of Lynette, I thought it wise to take a concious look at my blog reader, and see what ethnicity and sex the authors of the blogs I subscribe to are.
I figured I would be sadly disappointed to find it dominated by white males, but it’s actually 50-50 in both sex and white/not-white.

That didn’t include my friends blogs (people I know personally) but after further research, those are split about 50-50 too.

I think it would be wise to lean a little more heavily away from white male dominated influences, so I’m going to try and still think through that a little.

I think I’m going to take a few picks from Lynette’s great list of female bloggers…

The evoca mic is the funky little box on the side bar with the bright red REC button on it. Andrew wants my to try it out and see what my readers think.

Basically all you have to do is plug a microphone into your computer, hit the record button, hit the allow button, and then talk. Not too entirely complicated. It’s sort of for the more techie folks, but it’s really easy to use.

What are you supposed to say once it starts recording? I don’t know, tell me a joke.

I find this video fascinating. Kiri Davis is a high school student who put together a fascinating video and revisited a famous experiment that was used to support the desegregation of schools in Brown vs. Board of Education.
The video is sad and telling of how little we’ve come in helping raise our children without inherent notions of racism. At the same time I find it wonderful that a high school student like Kiri has taken the initiative to learn and speak out about this. Her film was featured in the Media that Matters Film Festival.