Disappearing Me Softly...

So much to blog about this time, i hope i can remember it all. I can across this post:
Disappearing Me Softly and it touched me so. And to find out that this man was currently a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa (Ottawa U's little brother university hehehe....), I was so proud of what he wrote. In my final year in university I decided to take an Intro to Feminism course. The course was very interesting as we talked about everything from hegemony to gender and minority discrimination, etc. However I noticed that within the discourse of feminism African women were conspicuously absent, and even more so African women were completely "disappeared". Because of my own history and my familiarity of African Feminism in particular, I kept on trying to challenge the class's thoughts on what exactly is Feminism but to no avail and I was outnumbered to say the least! My only way of fighting back was my final thesis paper for the class in which I decided to explore African Feminism in particular. My professor just didn't get it. Even after including works from African Women, she just could not understand. There was a particular phrase that I highlighted which was that african women were never interested in bra burning, afterall traditionally, they've always worked outside of the home, trading etc. African women were fighting another battle, who do the children belong too? My husband's property is my property not his extended family's? Widowhood....Education...........Alas, these struggles where never relevant to Western Feminism so they just chose to ignore it, "disappear" it. Very sad.........

NEXT UP
I'm just reading this stuff on new york times -
"Blacks are Inferior" and I can tell you i'm no more prouder to be African than I am at this moment. I first had a discussion like this believe it or not with an AFRICAN person, more or less a Nigerian man. He really and truly believed that white people, or people of European descent must be more intelligent than Africans in Science, Management and Leadership. His whole thing was that different races have different gifts so African were gifted in music, dance, arts while the chinese are gifted in technology, engineering, maths, while European people are gifted in Strategic thinking and the sciences. He said to me that why is it that it is the Europeans that were curious and wanted to explore the world? Why didn't Africans invade and colonize Europe? Not only that, but we welcomed and HELPED these guys when they landed on our shores. Even though I disagreed with him, I never could come up with an argument that would absolve all his questions, so I just shook my head and told him, "you know you're wrong right?" I wasn't sure how exactly to prove to him that he was suffering from "kolomentality" but I knew he must have been.

I wanted to read the above article with an open mind. Could there really be scientific evidence about all of this? Was it being repressed because of the social consequences? The researcher inside of me is thinking of all the possible biases that can go into any such scientific studies i.e, if you don't allot for all the environmental/developmental influences how can you come to such a conclusion? Also, if a Nigerian person for example, came to the "scientific" conclusion that "Oyinbos" were mugus because of the many evidences of them falling for 419 pranks, or that they can go to the market and pay N1000 for something that an African would pay N50 for, would that research be valid? or is this particular argument relevant at all? I think my final conclusion is that it all depends on who's deciding what intelligence is?

LASTLY
The Future Nigeria Awards season is on again! As many of you may know, I was graciously nominated for an award last year in the "Professional of the Year" category. Though I didn't win (Modupe Adefeso of YDNX won.......but she's outta town *hint*hint*) it was such an honor and I had such a FABULOUS time with FABULOUS people. So...........let's do it again this year! I think i'm promising myself I won't nominate myself (since i'm still thinking that's weird?) but I will enjoin, PLEAD, BEG, ASK NICELY..............all you wonderful readers of my blog to take a minute of your time and NOMINATE! NOMINATE! NOMINATE! me at the future nigeria website: www.thefuturenigeria.com

GOD WILL BUTTER ALL YOUR BREADS. AMEN.