Discourses & Explanations/What Is To Be Done? [Pt. 1 of elections and beyond, 2016]

Africa World Now Project

[Note: Produced and aired in 2016]

Image: Wise Two https://www.wisetwo.org/

Over the past week and a half…unless one has been locked away in a cave…with absolutely no access to technology of any sort…the world has been attempting to understand and rationalize the US election of Donald Trump. To be more clear, Donald Trump—the person—and his election is a euphemism for and declaration of…the existence and prevalence of racism, sexism, colonialism, imperialism as the modus operandi of the US.

Articles have been published with titles such as: Seven These on Trump; How Trump Won; welcome to the Fight; Donald Trump won on White-Male Resentment—but don’t confuse that with the working class; Abolish the Electoral College; Panic in America: People in Revolt; It’s Class, Stupid, Not Race; and lastly, The GOPs Attack on Voting Rights was the most under-covered story of 2016.

What does this have to do with the African world?

What makes this moment different from periods of protracted struggle to dismantle the institution of slavery; the fight against Jim Crow; the call for a fundamental restructuring of society during the Black Power Era; efforts to find Pan African solidarity and action during African and other nations of color struggle for independence?

To people of the African world, what is different in this moment than any other moment of struggle against some of the highest forms of human bondage—materially and spiritually? What is to be done? What steps need to be taken?

In an article published November 11, 2016 on the multimedia news commentary platform, Africa is A Country, titled, Trump’s America, Paul Zeleza asserts that: “The world and many Americans are reeling in shock and anxiety at the election of Donald Trump as the next president of this mighty, but deeply disunited and disoriented country. All but a handful of opinion polls pointed to the victory of the incomparably experienced Hillary Clinton. But they were utterly, unforgivably, embarrassingly wrong. They couldn’t pick up Trump’s ‘silent majority’ of ordinary white voters, not just the unapologetic alt-right that quietly cheered on the boisterous candidate, who openly said in public what Republicans and racist whites say in private."

The postmortems will be brutal on the other failures of America’s collective imagination that resulted in this stunning election result...In this popular American political sport of endless punditry and second guessing, few will take real responsibility for having enabled Trump, few in polite circles will own up to having voted for Trump, much as many whites in South Africa denied ever having been ardent supporters of Apartheid...”

Zeleza goes on to ask: What does it say about a country that could elect such an unsavory character? Zeleza answers: Countries get the leaders they deserve.

I would add that the myths that create false historical narrative of the United States maintain a false sense of belonging which simultaneously bolster the legitimacy of the rulers through the coerced consent from those they seek to rule …produce the necessity to demand that the nation—and its components—re-evaluate its functionality whether it wants to or not.

This program: discourse & explanations seeks to highlight new types of praxis in light of this current manifestation of a long process of global white domination.

I sat down with Corey Walker, [former] Dean of The College and the John W. and Anna Hodgin Hanes Professor of the Humanities at Winston Salem State University [now Wake Forest Professor of the Humanities]

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous African and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Enjoy the program!!