"One huge fellow, ridiculously dressed up in skins, was beating on a gigantic xylophone, which he carried slung round his neck; he was the conductor of the women's dance; these, singing and uttering savage yells, swept the ground before us, waved great stalks of manioc or broke them under our feet by beating them noisily on the ground; it was a scene of delirium. The children, too, leapt and danced", (Andre Gide, Travels in the Congo, p. 69). That is how the French traveler/writer, Andre Gide, described one of the many social occasions he witnessed in 1927 on his way to the Congo. The Swedish Academy still saw it fit to award him the much coveted Nobel Prize in 1947. Western literature about Africa is replete with such racist references to Africans and their civilization. From Hegel, through Conrad, to the recent publication of Brigit and Joel Samuels, we constantly see dirt thrown on us by people who cannot live up to a simple fact: black people are here to stay. Against such a barrage of insults and negativity, we ask ourselves "what are we going to do? what form of protest are we going to adopt?" In 1975, Chinua Achebe delivered what was considered a stunning lecture at the University of Massachusetts on an issue captioned "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness". He tried to set the record straight by debunking Conrad's picture of an Africa of uncouth savages and tall impenetrable forests. About three years ago, at a public lecture delivered to the Association of Students of African Descent at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, Professor Olufemi Taiwo attacked, in the same vein, Hegel's "The Philosophy of History". As quoted by Professor Taiwo, this is what the precursor of der Fuhrer had to philosophize about Africa: "Africa proper, as far as history goes back, has remained for all purposes of connection with the rest of the World shut up;it is the Gold - land compressed within itself - the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of Night" (Hegel, The Philosophy of History, p. 91) It therefore falls back on us Gambians, and Africans collectively to redeem our image; to discard the "dark mantle" of ignorance that envelopes most corners of Western society and institutions through publications, public lectures, symposia, even manifest cultural pride. Or maybe sometimes a good beating from a "kankurang" or "pakin" to some recalcitrant would suffice. Hamadi. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------