    
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 458
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 | | Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 02:40 pm: | |
abm: Phllips position is about whether it is racist, while Achebe's is much more. Achebe's discussion is academic and in the academic realm, our socalled towers of higher learning, Conrad and others are being taught as unproblematic classics.
So, it not not that he is surprised about the racism or he is not a "thinking man." If you reread the section on palm nuts and the thread on Phillips analysis of Naipaul, it is clear that he respects Conrads' work but is disappointed, for it is something to keep. Yet, if this is so, then it must be taught correctly, and so this is Achebe's contribution...changing the way it is taught!
The point is, similar to Carter G. Woodson's in Miseducation of the Negro, that these texts be taught correctly, because they are the canon, which is taught to our children from elementary school to college. As Passion has noted, many of our black students don't no anything about their people, and it is worse when they read aboutt them that they are dehumanized.
This work is hateful not only to african americans but it also contributes to and exacerbates conflict between us and africans. Remember these comments from Cynnara Collins:
ABM I don't understand. Why should we go back to Africa when we never been to it? We're Americans.
I don't see what I could do in Africa that I can't do in America. In some ways, the white people did us a favor.
She says again:
But I am not African. I am American. I am 20 and will be 21 in May thank you very much.
Yes the white people did my ass a favor and I don't like Africans because they don't like me. Not to mention, I ain't no African. I don't know nothing about Africa and I do not wish to know nothing about Africa.
These comments though extreme, are not unusual, nor is the same from African students, though it is for other reasons. |