Page 79 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 5

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Blackness in London to survive in an flection.
atmosphere of outright hostility and in
which they are not respected because In his insightful final article, he made an emotional tribute to his
of their racial origin. The hostility has a late mother, whom he described as having inspired his hawk-
long term objective of causing the vic- eyed political outlook reflected in his brilliant column for The
tims to become hostile towards them- Guardian. Younge went on to sign off his column by describ-
selves. In other words, the objective ing the toxic Brexit situation in United Kingdom as a dispirit-
is to reduce the African immigrant to ing time. “With racism, cynicism and intolerance on the rise,
something “other” than them “self,” or wages stagnant and faith that progressive change is possible
the so called masters. declining even as resistance grows”.He argued that although
To counter this destructive objective, things looked bleak and the propensity to despair appeared
Afrikology therefore calls for the need strong, it should not be indulged.
for Africans to redefine their world, For me, more importantly underlying Younge’s final word is the
which can enable them to advance conjecture that individuals and human kind stands to flourish
their self-understanding and the world more humanely by their understanding of each other’s worlds.
around them based on their cosmolo- Younge seems to rightly suggest that by clearly seeing how
gies. The process of re-awakening and others express themselves, and through responding by finding
recovery has to be one of a historical appropriate landmarks within ourselves, a greater self-under-
deconstruction, consciousness-raising standing will be realized. But, having said that, the fundamental
and restatement not in the way others question for me still remains: why should these anxieties over
have argued, but by Africans tracing post-Brexit Britain be the black man’s burden all over again?
the origins and achievements of their
civilizations with a view to developing
new knowledge production based on
African lived experiences in this global
age.

Consciousness Raising and Self
Understanding
Writer Gary Younge who wrote his last
column on 10thJanuary 2020for The
Guardian newspaper where he served
as a staff writer for more than 26 years
having done more to raise conscious-
ness and understanding of everyday
race, politics and culture in the UK.
In his final article, he revealed that he
was taking up a much deserved new
assignment as professor of sociology
at the University of Manchester. Over
the years, the quality of Younge’s ar-
guments in his column were compre-
hensive and convincing, they gave us
all a healthy human understanding.
In my view, the picture that emerged
from his Guardian account is one of an
integral, responsible and responsive
human knower. As a counterweight to
everyday prejudice in Britain, Younge’s Ronald Elly Wanda is a transdisciplinary
students at Manchester are bound to fellow and executive director of Grundtvig
benefit from him by learning first and
foremost that all judgments especially Africa House based in Nairobi, Kenya.
of a racial nature require serious re- ronald2wanda@yahoo.co.uk

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