Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Express: Your Afrikan Name
Express: Your Afrikan Name
Vol. 3, issue 3
H
otep (peace) and Akwaaba (welcome) It was not until my wife and I went to live in
to the third issue, volume 3 of Alkebu- Hong Kong that my view of the world, and the
Lan (Afrika) Express. We hope you place that race occupies within it, was to be
enjoy reading Alkebu-Lan Express utterly transformed. Rather than seeing race
through the prism of my own society, I
– “Izwe lethu I Afrika!” “Afrika is our land!” – learned to see it globally. As a White person,
Eds. I found myself treated with respect and
deference; my wife (who is Malaysian),
In this edition of Alkebu-Lan Express: notwithstanding her knowledge of the
language and her intimacy with Chinese
• Your Afrikan Name culture, was the object of an in-your-face
racism.
• The Global Hierarchy of Race
• Melanin Top 10 In our 14 months in Hong Kong, I learned
some brutal lessons about racism. First, it is
• Afrikan History Month Diary not the preserve of Whites. Every race
• Final Thoughts displays racial prejudice, is capable of racism,
carries assumptions about its own virtue and
superiority. Each racism, furthermore, is
Your Afrikan Name subtly different, reflecting the specificity of its
own culture and history.
“Your name is what establishes your
presence on earth. Your name is the Second, there is a global racial hierarchy that
evidence of your existence. When a name is helps to shape the power and the prejudices
attached to you, certain specific forces of of each race. At the top of this hierarchy are
conscious intelligence are Whites. The reasons are deep-rooted and
stimulated…Without our true names we had profound. White societies have been the
no connection to our true identity.” (Source: global top dogs for half a millennium. With
www.swagga.com) global hegemony, first with Europe and then
the US, Whites have long commanded
The Afrikan names for this edition are: - respect, as well as arousing fear and
resentment, among other races. Being White
Female: Farisa (pron. Fah-ree-sah:”To make confers a privilege, a special kind of
happy”) deference, throughout the world, be it
Male: Fela (pron. Fel-la: “Warrior/Warlike”) Kingston, Hong Kong, Delhi, Lagos - or even,
despite the way it is portrayed in Britain,
Harare. Whites are the only race that never
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suffers any kind of systemic racism anywhere
NIGGERS, NEGROES, BLACK PEOPLE & AFRIKANS! in the world. And the impact of White racism
has been far more profound and baneful than
A brutally honest debut book by Paul Grant on the any other: it remains the only racism with
Human Dimension of Building Effective
Organisations from an Afrikan-Centred Perspective global reach.
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and racism, and the power relations this
The Global Hierarchy of Race involves. We are invariably the beneficiaries,
never the victims. Even when well-meaning,
As the only racial group that never suffers we remain strangely ignorant. The clout
systemic racism, Whites are in denial about enjoyed by Whites does not reside simply in
its impact. Colour is something White people an abstraction - western societies - but in the
never have to think about because for them it skin of each and every one of us. Whether we
is never a handicap, never a source of like it or not, in every corner of the planet we
prejudice or discrimination, but rather the enjoy an extraordinary personal power
opposite, a source of privilege. bestowed by our colour (“White”).