This week, I am taking a hiatus from my Dec 1, 1998 story. I decided to do a couple of things. You shall know them when you see them. And I am sorry if I disappointed you. But in my defense, I didn't write "to be continued next week" in my last post. No, I am not going to leave you high and dry. I would get back to the story, soon, and be on my way to completing the project. But I need to get some things sorted out. The first is this article. I read it on Malaka Gyekye Grant's blog and knew I had to share. It is exactly what I think, what I say, yet what I do not do. Please, take a big chill as you read this. Like they say, the truth is bitter!
You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!
They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.