"Mpofi means blind man in Bemba, one of the languages spoken in Zambia" explained Mpofu II to me during one of our online conversations, a guest writer who prefers to remain anonymous when posting on Bona Fide as there are "too many psychos and unhinged people out there to go out unprotected".
In this post, Mpofu II has shared a number of links to articles and videos as part of the continued effort to shed light in dark places, to challenge prejudices and share resources on topics often overlooked, misunderstood or misrepresented.
Included also below are some extracts from our conversations.
"We're definitely living in strange times, right now. Right-wing nut jobs are now brazenly popping out of their dark corners in the hope of normalizing hate and violence all over the world. But then again, it's nothing new, considering European history."
- Mpofu II
"What happened to the chains on the Statue of Liberty?"
Dr Joy DeGruy
"...white people and the history of racism, that's something most don't want to talk about, probably due to the evocation of guilt or the realization of having to acknowledge their place within a system where the game is rigged in their favour. There's a good book you could check out by Dr Joy De Gruy 'Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome'. It has a section on cognitive dissonance...or you could just listen to the woman herself on this link."
- Mpofu II
Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government
The mob burned down the offices of the Wilmington Daily Record - GETTY IMAGES
'A violent mob, whipped into a frenzy by politicians, tearing apart a town to overthrow the elected government.
Following state elections in 1898, white supremacists moved into the US port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest city in the state. They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.
Historians have described it as the only coup in US history. Its ringleaders took power the same day as the insurrection and swiftly brought in laws to strip voting and civil rights from the state's black population. They faced no consequences.
Wilmington's story has been thrust into the spotlight after a violent mob assaulted the US Capitol on 6 January, seeking to stop the certification of November's presidential election result. More than 120 years after its insurrection, the city is still grappling with its violent past.' - Toby Luckhurst
BBC News, 17 January 2021
'Colonialism had never really ended': my life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes
Simukai Chigudu at a protest in Oxford in June last year. Photograph: Binta Zahra Diop
"After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own."
"There was no single moment when I began to sense the long shadow that Cecil John Rhodes has cast over my life, or over the university where I am a professor, or over the ways of seeing the world shared by so many of us still living in the ruins of the British empire. But, looking back, it is clear that long before I arrived at Oxford as a student, long before I helped found the university’s Rhodes Must Fall movement, long before I even left Zimbabwe as a teenager, this man and everything he embodied had shaped the worlds through which I moved." - Simukai Chigudu, 14 January 2021.
White Like Me - Tim Wise (Full Documentary)
"Here's a video link to one of Tim Wise's documentaries. He flips the whole race debate on its head by probing white privilege. It's enlightening." - Mpofu II
White Like Me is based on the work of anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, who explores race and racism in the U.S. through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society is to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege.
Below are some excerpts from the documentary:
"Loans provided by the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, allowed working class families for really the first time in American history to own their own homes. But the way the bill was written, (National Housing Act 1934) the American dream of home ownership wasn't within the reach of everyone. For the first 30 years of the program, about 98% of the recipients were white (1934 - 1962). People of color were almost completely barred.
Then there was the G.I Bill which provided immense benefits to returning veterans including low cost mortgages, loans to start a business, cash payments for tuition and living expenses. What the G.I. Bill didn't do is protect black veterans, who qualified for that assistance also from the kind of legal discrimination rampant in pre-civil war rights America. The result was that the vast majority of those who benefited from the G.I Bill were white veterans.
If a program like the G.I. Bill ended up disproportionally benefitting people of colour, you know what we'd call that? We'd call it welfare. We'd call it a reward, a handout, a gravy train. But that's not the way it was described...we're being dishonest if we fail to explicitly acknowledge how they almost exclusively benefitted white people."
"It needs to be understood that for hundreds of years Government assistance programs pumped literally hundred of billions, if not trillions of dollars worth of wealth into the hands of white families before people of color even got to the starting gate. This is what we talk about when we talk about white privilege. The structural advantages built into our very system that have helped white people, often without us knowing it, while making things more difficult for people of color."
- Tim Wise
"It's really strange how Europe gets a free pass considering that most of how the world is structured today, stems from its historical global meddling of other civilizations. Most whites that left Europe to escape royal tyranny for self-rule fail to see the irony that their freedom was and is based on the subjugation and exploitation of non-whites. America, Canada and Australia come to mind when one reads stories about whites telling indigenous people to go back to their country. This is absurd to the extreme. Here's a quote below that perfectly sums up why these things are able to happen. - Mpofu II
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubt while the stupid people are full of confidence". - Charles Bukowski
Jane Elliott - Blue eye and Brown eye experiment
"Tim Wise is someone who does similar work to Jane Elliot, see link below...She's famed for her blue vs brown eyes experiment. She did one for Channel 4 about 10 years ago and the British audience along with Kristian Guru-Murfy (channel 4 News reader) ruined it. They are both really interesting people because they are not afraid to highlight the bias and prejudice in our society. Human behaviour is totally mind-boggling." - Mpofu II
'The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise."
As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed.
She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSwZQ1AzjOg - a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom.
Jean-Pierre Adams: The 38-year coma that can't stop love
Jean-Pierre Adams is a former France International who has spent the last 37 years in a coma. CNN
"What present do you buy a man who has been in a coma for more than 30 years?
That's the question the family of former France international Jean-Pierre Adams, whose life was brutally turned upside down in 1982, asks itself every year on key anniversaries.
Thirty-six years ago the beefy footballer, then 34, walked into a Lyon hospital for some routine surgery to correct a troublesome knee.
By the time he left, he would never talk, walk or move any of his limbs again.
His wife Bernadette has tended to him ever since, barely missing a day's care over the last three decades" - Piers Edwards, CNN, March 11 2020
"An amazing and incredibly rare story that restores whatever little faith is left in humanity after all the crap we've done and keep doing to each other." - Mpofu II
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea
Statues of former US presidents in Croaker, Virginia. Photograph: Randy Duchaine/Alamy
"Before the 17th century, people did not think of themselves as belonging to something called the white race. But once the idea was invented, it quickly began to reshape the modern world"
‘I promised Brando I would not touch his Oscar’: the secret life of Sacheen Littlefeather
"...this article on Sacheen Littlefeather made my day today, especially the part about John Wayne. I stopped watching his movies 20 yrs ago when I watched a video of him spouting white supremacy nonsense." - Mpofu II
She was the first woman of colour, and the first indigenous woman, to use the Academy Awards platform to make a political statement. Today they are almost expected, but in 1973 it was radical. - Steve Rose
“I didn’t use my fist [she clenches her fist]. I didn’t use swearwords. I didn’t raise my voice. But I prayed that my ancestors would help me. I went up there like a warrior woman. I went up there with the grace and the beauty and the courage and the humility of my people. I spoke from my heart.”
- Sacheen Littlefeather
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