gathara Profile picture
29 May, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Question: Why do Western do gooders feel they need to travel thousands of miles to help poor, starving people in Africa, rather than help the poor starving homeless Europeans and Americans on their own doorstep?
Europeans and Americans have told me how as kids they were reminded of starving children in Africa to shame them into eating. None ever told me of being reminded of starving kids in their own nations and neighbourhoods. Few thought that strange or were aware of the contradiction.
"Even prior to the pandemic, the situation had been dire with nearly 14 percent of the US population dependent on food aid, one in every six children not having consistent access to food and nearly a million suffering from chronic malnutrition".
aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/…
"As Fanon argued, humanism was not only a highly politicized category complicit with the violence of colonialism: humanism was also a crucial part of the ideology and legitimisation of colonialism."
scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…
"Africa serves as a backdrop for white fantasies of conquest and heroism...: a nobody from America or Europe can go to Africa and become a godlike savior or, at the very least, have his or her emotional needs satisfied.'"
theatlantic.com/international/…
"Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child."

- Rudyard Kipling

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More from @gathara

28 May
Question: Anyone done a study on crying on Western, and especially US, reality TV shows, whether there's more of it seeping into the coverage of news than there was before, and what it all means? Much of it seems to have performative aspects that would be interesting to explore.
"Crying has broken out of its talent-show confines. They’ve always done it on The X Factor, on MasterChef, on Great British Menu... Everyone, everywhere on television: please dry your flipping eyes before we’re all washed away on a great tide of tears".
radiotimes.com/tv/entertainme…
Men, too, are not just crying more on TV, but wailing over different stuff than they used to.
google.com/amp/s/www.wash…
Read 4 tweets
23 May
Terrible. LeClerc and Scuds' paying the price for yesterday's crash in the worst possible way. He's out even before the race starts. Now we just have Sai in P3 whose Q3 was compromised by the crash. #MonacoGP #ForzaFerrari #F1
Scuds just can't catch a break. Every time they try to take risks, cut corners even, they get severely punished. But let's hope Sainz at P3 can save us blushes and get on the podium. #MonacoGP #ForzaFerrari #F1
Formation lap. #MonacoGP #ForzaFerrari #F1
Read 15 tweets
23 May
Dear Kenyans,
Notice the images of GoK vehicles? The "Africans" who inherited the colonial states to this day continue their odiero forefathers invention of "tribes" and "traditions". Notice too how references to the odiero Bible are used to legitimise the fake miro practice.
“What is a tribe? It is very largely a creation of laws drawn up by a colonial state which imposes group identities on individual subjects and thereby institutionalises group life.” - Mahmood Mamdani
theelephant.info/features/2018/…
The ideas of pre-colonial miros regarding who they were and how they related to the world around them bear little resemblance to what we call tribes today, which would probably be completely unrecognisable to them.

theelephant.info/features/2018/…
Read 5 tweets
12 May
Western expressions of "dismay" and "grave concern" at Palestinian death while proclaiming the "right" of the brutal colonial occupier to commit mass murder, and claiming that as "moral clarity", are reminiscent of the worst justifications for racist colonial violence in Africa.
Here too, colonial land grabbers claimed the right to terrorise, brutalize, torture and murder the natives, whose land they were stealing, under the rubric of "self defense". Their "moral clarity" justified the expulsion and confinement of entire populations, even genocide.
Today in Gaza, the same "moral clarity" justifies as "self defense" attacks on a refugee population by the colonial power that took their land, blockades them in an open air prison, visits death and daily indignities on them, and then claims the right to do so in peace and quiet.
Read 4 tweets
8 May
Dear Kenyans,
Remember the story of Long Teeth and the Seven Dwarfs?
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1… Image
Here's a little context. It involves what was then considered to be the "world's richest ruby mine", the President's wife and niece, and the "black mark in the middle of the Kenya pudding."
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1… Image
Here's how @TIME reported it in October 1974.
content.time.com/time/subscribe… Image
Read 11 tweets

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