Sake health center, Goma, Eastern Congo. Jan 2006. Young woman, a victim of rape, waits to give birth. Rape is frequently used as a weapon of war. Tens of thousands of women and girls have been raped since fighting broke out in 1998. Credit: Tineke D’haese/Oxfam
I wrote this yesterday:
…the explosive growth of the Internet over the last ten years took place, in large part, on the backs of a specific group of poor women of color. And most people who use the net are to at least a small degree complicit in those women’s suffering, which renders all online political purism somewhat ridiculous. I’ll explain in tomorrow’s post.
I was referring to this:
It had been no secret that nearly all sides in the Congo’s complex civil war resorted to systematic rape among civilian populations, and estimates were as high as a quarter million victims of sexual assault during the four-year-long conflict. But once fighting died down, victims began coming out of the jungles and forests and their condition was worse than anyone had imagined. Thousands of women had been raped so brutally that they had fistulas. They wandered into hospitals soaked in their own urine and feces, rendered incontinent by their injuries. “Pastors would say to me, ‘Jo, I can’t preach because the church is too smelly,” says Dr. Jo Lusi, a gynecologist and medical director at HEAL. (He and Lyn Lusi are husband and wife.) “No one wanted to be around them. These women were outcasts even more than rape victims usually are. They would say to me, ‘Dr. Jo, am I just a thing to throw away when I smell bad?’ “
What does the horrifying rape war in the Congo — still in progress, despite widespread reports to the contrary — have to do with Internet-based political purism? What, in fact, does it have to do with the Internet at all?
The answer: tantalum, a valuable metal which you are most likely using to read this blog.
Tantalum is a metal with a number of properties that make it very useful in hi-tech applications. It’s relatively easy to refine. It has an extraordinarily high melting point: 3738°C. Its compounds include some of the hardest materials known to science. And most importantly for our purposes, tantalum has electrochemical properties that make it very useful in building highly stable, very small, very heat-resistant capacitors for low-voltage applications. Mobile phones contain tantalum capacitors, as do pagers and iPods. So do laptops, digital cameras, and a lot of desktop computers.
Tantalum reserves exist in Australia, Canada, and Brazil, with more than 50 percent of the world supply coming from just two Oz mines. Southeast Asia and the Arabian Peninsula also hold significant tantalum deposits. And the Congo Basin has a lot, four-fifths of the world’s supply by some estimates, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with some across the border in Rwanda as well. In the Congo basin, tantalum is found in sand deposits containing a mineral called colombo tantalum, locally referred to as “coltan.”
With the boom in consumer electronics starting in the late 1990s, tantalum demand rose worldwide. So did its price. Coltan went from 40 bucks a pound in January 2000 to $380 that December. That kind of money is a huge draw in a place like the Congo Basin, and miners flocked to the east DRC in a Congolese version of the California Gold Rush, complete with shantytowns, destructive placer mines, and depredations on the local wildlife by hungry miners.
Except that California in the 1850s didn’t have more than a dozen warring militias fighting for control of the gold. Armed factions within the DRC, and a few from neighboring countries such as Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Uganda, moved in to seize control of most of the mines, lured by the potential wealth. It paid off. At one point the Rwandan army, which functioned as an intermediary between militias and metals dealers, pocketed $250 million over a period of 18 months.
The militias included some of the most callous people in Africa: the interhamwe, the Rwandan paramilitary group that fomented that country’s monstrous genocide, being one example. Freelance miners were removed from their own operations and forced at gunpoint to work in militia-controlled mines. War raged back and forth as militias fought for control of the mines, conflict raging and abating as the world price of tantalum fluctuated. The price went up, and militas forced more people into slave labor. The price went down and the free workers had no money, some of them joining the militias in order to eat. A Lancet study [PDF] found 600,000 additional deaths attributable to the war in the 16 months following January 2003: 1,200 people a day.
Rape was a weapon used by every group of combatants in the area. Rape was explicitly used as a tactic of terror to demoralize the locals, as a way of punishing a village for supporting rival militias, as a way of rewarding troops for victories or boosting morale after defeats. Some of the rape victims, generally those between ages 8 and 20, were kidnapped and forced to work as “mine wives,” supplying mine workers with coerced sex and domestic labor. Some were killed outright. And some were allowed to survive, grievously injured, often exposed to HIV, and left to contend with social attitudes that cast rape victims as unclean.
It’s unlikely that the war in the Congo would have taken place if not for the region’s valuable minerals. Coltan is just one of the minerals at issue: there’s gold as well, plus diamonds, copper, tin, and cobalt. (The price of tin has gone up of late due to its use in lead-free solder in electronics, reviving hostilities in the southeast part of the DRC.) Conflict over resources has existed in the Congo for years, from the days when King Leopold ran a genocidal regime to extract rubber from the region’s forests. But without the coltan market, the horrendous, largely ignored African World War — so called for the involvment of half a dozen nations in the conflict — would likely never have happened.
And as Canadian writer Paul Harris notes,
[T]he Western media consistently reported, when they noticed at all, that the civil war in DRC was the result of tribalism, an African conflict by Africans themselves. That is largely fiction. Although there are tribal conflicts and the normal strains of pastoral versus farming communities in DRC, the civil war arose out of the machinations of various outside parties: Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and the numerous multinational corporations and individuals who have their fingers in the huge mineral wealth of DRC. Citizens of Germany, Canada, Britain, France, and the United States are well-known players in Congo and there is good reason to suspect that a frank and honest inquiry into what has occurred during the past five years in DRC would point fingers in some very uncomfortable directions.
As the Newsweek article quoted at the beginning of this post says, that rape war continues today, despite many reports to the contrary.
The rapes—and new reports of fistula damage—have not stopped. Even now, “It is still happening, even today,” says HEAL’s medical director, Doctor Lusi. “Every space we have in the hospital is very, very busy with people.” Most of the dozen or so militias in the country have signed on to peace terms, and their battles with each other and with the Congolese Army have mostly stopped since the arrival of United Nations peacekeepers. But many of the armed groups—even those that have made peace—continue to attack civilians, especially in rural areas. “They won’t go ahead and fight each other, [but] they attack that village that supports the other group,” says Lyn Lusi. “This is a horrible perpetual movement of militias. They join after their families are killed, sometimes right in front of them. They see their women raped, and then they go and do the same thing. It’s a cycle of violence.”
To sum up:
– We bought computers, digital cameras and wireless PDAs, making the blog world as we know it possible (among other things)
– we thus consumed 25¢ or so worth of tantalum in each device
- there were hundreds of millions of us buying the stuff
- the boosted price of tantalum attracted murderous rapist thugs to the DRC’s coltan mines
- Congolese women paid, and are still paying, the price.
It’s not just the women of the Congo who suffer, to be sure: men have suffered mightily, some of them raped as well. And rape is ubiquitous in war, historically speaking. But the severity, and the scale, of the targeting of women in the east DRC sets this war apart as especially brutal, especially misogynistic.
Which provides a bit of an interesting perspective to the blog wars about whether you can be a real feminist if you blog about lipstick — on a network built on a foundation of rape war. Or to the claims that blogging about racism and sexism is a diversion from anti-war organizing — on a network built on a foundation of rape war.
The Congo Rape War is probably the most severe taint the internet suffers, but it’s just one. Chinese rivers flow undrinkable and foul downstream from chip factories, but the people downstream have no other water, so they drink it anyway. E-waste recycling is growing but is still basically a joke, nibbling away at the edges of the gigantic tech waste stream, which generally winds up leaching toxic chemicals into places where people live who can’t afford to move away from landfills.
I am not, as one clueless commenter suggested yesterday, saying that just by using the net, we’ve “been oppressing a ’specific group of poor women of color’ for 10+ years now.” Maybe I should say that, but I’m not saying that. Blogs are here, tainted with Original Sin as they may be, and we may as well try to use them for good. Not using them won’t unrape anyone. But political purism is neither helpful nor appropriate here. The “priority purity” I wrote about yesterday is just one form of political purism. There are many others to be found in the blog world. Whether that purity is ideological or strategic in nature, claiming it online can only be done by the ignorant.
Oh, and by the way: Doctors Without Borders is one of many groups helping women who’ve been victimized in the Congo war. They could use your help.
188 Responses to “Focusing On The Important Shit II”
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This post is soooo stupid. If you want to call for better corporate practices in the Congo, please do so. And if you want to point out how ordinary computer users have unwittingly bought supplies from unscrupulous sources and have suggestions about how to improve, by all means go ahead. But this nonsense about “original sin” and this pathetic attempt to guilt me is obscene.
OK, we’ve got the obligatory misplaced accusation of guilt-tripping out of the way right up front. Thanks, Mavis: we can move on to discussing the actual post now.
Mavis, you’re invited to get a fucking grip. But thanks for proving Chris’s point.
Sheelz, I think Mavis forgot that this is a Cat’lic-Hatzoring blog and that all mentions of original sin are thus sardonic, if not sarcastic.
Great post Chris.
Thanks for dragging my attention back to the war. I hadn’t heard much about the resource rush (though I do vaguely remember having heard something about it previously), but you did a good job of tying it all together.
Now, I’ll add–I find myself really conflicted in these situations. I’m very sensitive to consumerism, yet I have a real aversion to embracing consumer choice as the major catalyst for change. It’s too piecemeal IMO. Yet I do think that it’s important that we are cognizant of things like this, defensive whining on the part of people who’d rather not be bothered with it aside. Some perspective would certainly be refreshing on that end.
Really–I’d love to have every consumer item be stickered with a true cost estimate–how many resources were used, how people were exploited, and how much it will cost to dispose of it and how much harm it will do once disposed of (and who gets hurt in that process). Yeah, maybe it’s “guilt” but it’s about goddamn time that people woke up to the fact that we don’t get things from the stuff fairy. Atrocities like the Congo Rape War are so often hidden, and it happens–or is intensified–for reasons that can only be described as trite.
Not to harp on my pet political project either, but Air Serv (www.airserv.org) is another non-profit organization that helps in the Congo region (normally, flying in the same doctors without borders and the medicine).
Anyone want a bite of these apples?
Seriously, have you all read Mahmood Mamdani’s When Victims Become Killers? Because it supplements Chris’s analysis nicely, putting the Rwanda genocide in regional and historical context….
Count me as conflicted too, S. I mean, on the one hand, most of us didn’t know. On the other hand, whose fault was that? The information has been out there almost since it started, as witness the “recycle your cell phones to save the gorillas” thing early this decade. On the third hand, it was only a few cents per tech toy. On the fourth hand, a lot of those tech toys were bought just to have the latest cool toy: I know I picked up a few things to replace old ones that still worked, but were unfashionably slow.
The UN, incidentally, stepped in early to try to restrict the coltan trade, compiled a report on the main corporate offenders, and then suppressed it at the urging of the nations from which those offenders came. We’re talking major industrial powers here.
The conflict in the Congo, one of the longest-running and horrific wars in the world, gets ignored not only by the mainstream media but also, largely, by the Left (who should at least be up in arms about U.S. complicity in murdering the Congo’s best chance at peace and self-determination).
Thanks for posting this.
I knew about the fighting in DRC (which I still think of as “former Zaire”) over mineral resources, but I figured it was over diamonds, gold, and such. I didn’t know about the tantalum. And I didn’t know about the connection to the boom of the Information Age.
As someone who makes a living in computers and internet stuff, this distresses me greatly.
I am very glad to see Medecins Sans Frontieres on the case, though. That may just be my favorite charity group in the world.
:lets out a long breath at the end of reading this:
Thank you for posting this, Chris. This is something I never knew about…horrifying.. but thank you.
gotta say though, it makes it easier for me to go, “you know what? I don’t need a new mobile phone/ipod/laptop as much as consumer lust tells me I do.”
While I sympathize with the arguments made in this piece (yea, it’s a little guilty, but its heart is in the right place, so that’s acceptable. If that came off as condescending, it wasn’t meant as such.), this whole thing just gets at the larger point of how Europe has underdeveloped and exploited Africa for centuries now. While the Congolese need our help, so does the rest of the continent. Darfur needs help. People have to bring attention to the travesty of a state that is Zimbabwe. Chad is developing into a problem. The continent is on the upswing, for sure, but that doesn’t mean that things are where they should be, where countries have the ability to fully support themselves and their populations. There are clearly a lot of priorities, but it’s immaterial which one is more important. I hate that women are getting raped for metal as much as I hate that my beloved country (yes, I do love America deeply) being entangled in a war that is completely unjustified and being represented by politicians who do not represent my interests (and yes, I do vote). They are all equally important. I’m glad that this sort of position piece is written, expressing the viewpoint of this particular blog and its editors.
The reality is that everything is tainted. But instead of focusing on how to destroy everything, the focus should be on how to build a better society/world. (Not saying that you’re focusing on destroying, of course Chris)
The problem is that doing all of this from the bottom up, while helpful, in the long run just isn’t enough. These are issues that need to be dealt with from the top down, or in other words, there needs to be core changes to how we do business.
I would argue that the focus on infinite profits over infinite time is the real stumbling block to real change here, in that we as a society are very slow to do anything that might interfere with that percieved “right”.
All the media is worried about is Anna Nicole Smith! What about global warming or this, for example. I am very happy that this was posted. I think teenagers must be better informed about these kinds of tradgedies happening currently and in front of their noses. We have to get the message that there are real and present dangers and sadnesses in the world. It makes me sad when I hear that nothing is being done about these kinds of occurences.
Quite a revelation we are having today:
To sum up:
– We buy products
– Products are made of resources.
- there were hundreds of millions of us buying products
- the boosted price of resources attracted murderous rapist thugs to the location of the resources.
- Women near the resources paid, and are still paying, the price.
You all rush to flame Mavis, but up until now his is the ONLY post that actually discusses anything relating to the issue. He is stating that the fault lies with those committing the crime, not the unwitting consumer.
Try actually responding to people who disagree with you. You may actually learn something.
Very well written Chris, and speaking as a foreigner, it is really nice to see some internationalist perspectives here now and then
I particularly like how you don’t pose a solution either. Too often pieces written like this end up with some snappy suggestion at the end … ie guilt people out through the article, and then provide some kind of penitence at the end so that the reader can not feel shitty when they finish reading.
The Western world owes its privilege, wealth and standard of living on the backs of developing countries, and particularly the people therein …and specifically, Africa. Like Sheelz, I don’t believe in a consumer resistance to this because it’s piecemeal, and it really honestly isn’t challenging the uber-capitalist system that allows this stuff to go on … hell, encourages it.
There are no easy answers here … but a good fucking start would actually you know, be starting something.
Do you need me to explain some of the big words in the post, Grilltacular?
Thanks, Grilltacular. I think I probably agree with the poster and the commenters on the nature of the problem, I just really resent the tactics of the post.
“the fault lies with those committing the crime, not the unwitting consumer”
And we walk away unaffected, fingers placed tightly in our ears to block out the screams we wish to deny…
Grilltacular, you’ve got a great career ahead of you in either politics (Republican of course), or as a spokesman for the tobacco industry…
What are the tactics of the post that you resent so much? Either you feel guilty about participating in a consumer culture that fucks the less fortunate or you don’t, the post merely points out what is happening. And this whole “unwitting consumer” thing is pretty much complete bullshit, we all know that are buying practices are connected to horrible treatment of people all over the world; just because you choose not to ask many questions about it doesn’t make you “unwitting.”
It’s unlikely that the war in the Congo would have taken place if not for the region’s valuable minerals.
I don’t know if I’d go that far. It’s undoubtedly true that exploitable resources has made it many times worse, but I doubt that all would be sweetness and light if if those resources weren’t there. Humans seem to be able to find things to kill each other over pretty easily. National borders for example.
I do resist the implied guilt trip though. I should view the Internet as tainted because of the horrors of the tantalum mines? I mean, come on Chris. Go down this road and before you know it you’re back to Manifest Destiny and Christopher Columbus, the genocide of the Native Americans, where does it end? At what point can we say, “here is where it all started to go wrong?” Recorded history is largely about atrocities committed by one group or another. Watch the History Channel’s “Barbarian Week” that’s going on right now.
I agree with the premise wholeheartedly, if that premise is:
It goes further than that. We consume so much compared to what we produce that some person, animal, or environment must cover the difference through some form of suffering.
Where do we go from there?
What I don’t agree with is Amanda’s “6 degrees of suubjugation” method of guilt tripping society in general with her “Original Sin” analogy. It doesn’t stick.
P.S.
Chris: your lame attempts to position yourself as “smart” are betrayed by your constant ad hominem attacks on anyone you disagree with. Be the bigger man!
Except that it isn’t clear how unwitting those consumers really are. I first read about coltan back during the dot-com boom, I think from Salon. Plenty of dot-commers did. So you got one day of everyone kind of hanging their heads and going “Ooh, not good” before it was back to business as usual, get that code out, look at my striped shirt, rah rah rah.
The top-down solutions are going to be the most effective, vastly more effective than one consumer delaying a cell phone upgrade. I don’t think anyone here disputes that. But as Kyso pointed out in her review of Fast Food Nation, just because your action may be futile doesn’t mean it’s an action you shouldn’t take.
That goes double for the hardcore geeks who upgrade just to stay ahead of the curve. I see no difference between them and women who obsessively purchase flashier and pricier jewelry–the only difference is, in a sexist society we’ll dish some shit out to women for failing to ensure their diamonds are conflict-free, but we won’t utter a peep at the male nerds buying their tech equivalents.
Thanks for this, Chris. I’ve been looking forward to it since yesterday because I was sure you were going to head this direction with it.
Here’s another thought. I wouldn’t even know about the horrors of the tantalum mines if it wasn’t for the Internet.
Thanks for this excellent post, Chris. And thanks for the comic relief near the end: “Which provides a bit of an interesting perspective to the blog wars about whether you can be a real feminist if you blog about lipstick — on a network built on a foundation of rape war.” Of course, you probably had no way of knowing what kind of zany hi-jinks awaited you in the comments.
Dude, why are the Pandagon tubes mad at me? I’m always in moderation now.
sigh. Like a flashback to that godaweful term paper I wrote about Angola.
Only this time, ronald regan isn’t paying for half of the stupid, I am personally.
The point of this post, per StotheL
1. Inform unwitting consumers like me that Internet requires tantalum contributes to war includes rape.
2. Remind consumers who are aware (does that make them witting?) that their tech usage comes at a high price to poor women, men, and children of color. Just like their coffee and gemstones.
3. Start a conversation about the guilt implicit in that understanding.
So where did we get to guilt tripping and Christopher Columbus? I thought this post was well written and informative, and I somehow bypassed the imaginary finger-wagging that Mavis and Grill seem to have found.
StotheL
P.S. Grilltacular: you seem to be saying that Mavis, whose first sentence was “This post is soooo (sic) stupid.” is being the bigger person and intellectual. That seems kind of dumb.
Let me see if you’ve been added to the blacklist. I haven’t read anything of yours that’s objectionable, so I don’t mind fishing you back out, but be advised that one of the other bloggers will likely you throw you back in if there’s good reason for you to have been there in the first place.
Grilltacular’s about to tread where An Arrogant Tool of the Matriarchy has been if he doesn’t watch the fucking piehole.
Oh, and to clarify: pointing out actual guilt does not necessarily equal guilt tripping.
That’s not what I am saying at all Mike. What I am saying is walking away pointing fingers in all directions is misguided and childish.
Everyone involved in the consumer culture should be aware of the price of the items they consume, in terms of effects on people, the environment, etc. As a smart person wrote above, these costs are not always included in the “price” (money) that we pay for the item. None of us are omniscient to the point of including the long and short term costs into that figure. So where does that leave us?
To Amanda, that leaves us all in a place of guilt where women of color shouldered the burden for the growth of the internet. And this is constructive how?
I love how some readers of this blog assume anyone to the right of Amanda is a Republican. As I’ve said before, I constistently vote for Democrats, and that is why I am here and not over at Salon. I am more interested in the opinions of people like Amanda and readers of this blog because you are killing the party worse than the wingnuts ever could. Amanda’s comments about Catholicism and the Duke Lacrosse case have created Republican voters and killed Edwards’ candidacy faster than Rush Limbaugh could ever dream of, and if you don’t realize that you are a fool.
Political battles are *always* fought over the large centrist block of voters. You know, the same people you alienate with your misguided name-calling…
What could I have possibly done to get blacklisted? You have to understand–the penis enlargement pills I’m selling really do work!!!
I am so sick of hearing this bullshit. No one does consensus politics like the Canadians, but check out Preston Manning. Hell, check out Goldwater and Reagan. The “center” is always being redefined in modern politics.
Grilltacular–
You do know this post wasn’t written by Amanda, don’t you?
Nothing is unmitigated good. Certainly the internets aren’t–aside from the present debacle, there’s also the energy demands of the net to consider. Certainly, more than a few greenhouse gases are created by the demand for electricity driven in no small part by the net.
That doesn’t mean that the net is an unalloyed evil, either. All it means is that, like almost everything else we consume, there are truths about its creation that we don’t really want to know. (Quick, meat-eaters: how many of us have gone to visit an industrial slaughterhouse? Not me, that’s for damn sure. Quick, clothes-wearers: anything you own from Indonesia? Myanmar? Cambodia? Yeah, me too.)
What we need to do is take off the blinders and really see what’s going on. The internet may not be the proximate cause of the war in the Congo, but it’s certainly a contributing factor, and so if we are honest with ourselves, it’s incumbent on us to do what we can to mitigate the damage. At the very least, we owe it to those who we’re hurting, even indirectly, to acknowledge their pain.
Oh, never mind–Grilltacular’s just a troll. Moving on.
Sfil, fair question. My off-the-cuff response is that a. where does this kind of culpability end? and b. what’s the solution?
Oil causes wars, metal causes wars, and water causes wars. The fight over and use of resources can and does lead to violence, social stratification and subjugation, extreme poverty, and enviornmental degredation. It’s a major problem. (Some of these problems can be attributed to the injection of Western money and/or Western corporations. But there was fighting in the Congo long before Microsoft.) Every expansionary act has both positive and negative consequences - Manifest Destiny, the Industrial Revolution, Globalization. We must look at those consequences and decide which roads are worth taking and which are not. If you wish to live in a pre-Industrial Revolution world, be my guest. I do not. What we responsible citizens must do is rectify the negative consequences of our trespass.
There are only two types of solution. One is revolutionary: out with the economic structures that commodify and allow for poverty. People of world unite. Good luck with that. The other option is liberal: Find ways to use the wealth and power of the United States and other willing nations to increase food supply and equality, reduce violence, and stop environmental degredation. It’s not an easy road, but I think it’s the only way to go.
As to why I find the post obnoxious, it’s because it’s infantilizing and a waste of time to tell us all to feel guilty about buying computers. Who gives a shit about feeling guilty? Justice has nothing to do with feeling guilty for what you have. It is about recognize the plight of others is undeserved. Gotta run
AATOTM, try going by your other handle or maybe changing what you enter for the URL. If that doesn’t fix it, then I don’t know. I can’t turn up a match on your email or IP in the blacklist.
Weird.
Okay!
Chris isn’t using ad hominem, and you’re boring people by trying to have a dick-swinging contest with him.
Please discuss the post, not how smart is Chris Clarke. He’s vain enough as it is.
Some people really are incapable of reading for content.
The post, Mavis, was not about “making poor beleaguered Mavis feel guilty about buying computers.” It was about cutting the rug out from under the constant fucking petty guilt tripping to be found on the net.
Truman said something about telling people the truth and them thinking it was hell. Dunno why I just thought of that.
In other news, I suspect that it would make Grilltacular very smug and happy indeed were he to be banned by us choir preachers. And I am nothing if not generous.
I will go ahead and defer to Mavis. He puts the issue in context better than Chris ever did, and he also gives constructive analysis of where do we go from here.
Eveeryone else, continue to tilt at windmills.
Gritt, Amanda didn’t write this post and I can’t find a comment by her on this thread. Learn to read. While you’re at it, look up the term “concern troll”.
This is hardly a way to get a poster to take a commentator seriously. I think that Mavis had a point but it was already contaminated by the first sentence. Chris is right to call Mavis for bad intent and Grilltacular, you are not earning any credits by ignoring it.
Guilt by association is what has finally gotten people past the pretty deBeers ads on diamonds and if it works on any level to get people to think before upgrading their PC, getting a new cell phone because the new one is prettier or just taking the time to recycle their old tech toys properly than so be it. On some levels we are all guilty because we don’t want to pay the real price of things and we prefer to put it off on a future generation. Cheap crap is costing us in innumerable ways that we may never see, but as with all aspects of industrialization, the technological revolution comes with a price tag. I would rather know what I am guilty of so that I can try to do what I can than remain ignorant.
Grilltacular: Speaking of names… Amanda didn’t write this post. And also, “killing the party…” Excuse me, weren’t you complaining about mis-guided guilt trips?
Great post, Chris. Thank you for the information.
Sorry, folks, a bunch of y’all beat me to it.
Thank you.
I tried self-deprecation once.
I wasn’t very good at it, though.
I will note for the future that it’s a sign of intellectual elitism to prefer that responses actually address what the post actually said. Good to know.
In 2001 while trying to find a unique political topic for a poem and googling random words, I stumbled across the phenomenon of ape eating cell phones.
Bonobos, gorillas, and other wild animals including elephants are being poached for food by coltan miners and militias. This poaching often involves desperate miners force to work in near slave by Congolese warlords.
The effect on species was so pronounced the UN issued a special report on the connection. At the time, reports said phone companies attempts to avoid tainted metal were hampered by third party suppliers who mix good and bad sources.
It’s sad the connection between coltan and endangered apes has gotten more play than coltan and rape.
Then there’s the other end of the spectruum: How Lagos, Nigeria and other African cities have become grotesque dumping grounds for old electronics. Urban poor, especially women, risk their lives salvaging valuable toxic metals for a few pennies. These urban areas of environmental inequity also have problems with the sex trade, AIDs, abuse, etc. Not a direct connection but still.
Then there’s the bad labor practices of computer factories including sexual harassment. This is largely a foreign problem, but there were sweatshops in Silicon Valley until 2000 at least.
The facade of the information industry is how it runs on intangible - and thus clean - data. The reality is a poison garden of electronic delights where net users frolic with devices which rooted in squalor, pain and exploitation. It’s a nightmare combining Bosch and Stephenson, Gibson, Coupland and Corey Doctrow.
I wish some cybersaavy writer or filmmaker would piece together the fragments of this story into a single powerful work, a la Fast Food Nation.
At this point writers are only nipping at the edges, concentrating on soft exploitation like C. Doctrow’s fiction which mentions virtual sweatshops in online games.
I am stepping away from the keyboard…put down the flamethrower.
I am here to learn, not to fight. How about you?
I’m here to fight. Learning brings up all kinds of scary feelings for me, like “guilt.” But then I just remind myself that I “consistently vote for democrats,” and I realize that I am entirely blame-free from anything bad that happens anywhere in the world!
Really? Wow … I mean, from your belittling, arrogant, condescending, rude and dismissing attitude through your ENTIRE history of posting here, we must have TOTALLY got the wrong impression …
Our bad.
I’m only here for the snack chips.
Alas the net ate my post with all the links, but if one does the research one can find that the supposedly clean information industry is in reality a poison garden of electronic delights were a lucky few frolic with devices which originate and end up in exploitation and pain. I first read about this coltan when the UN released a report connecting cell phone use with the poaching of bonobo apes and other endangered species by starving miners, often forced to work by Congo militias.
Ape eating cell phones are just the start. There’s the horrible labor practices in computer factories which included sweatshops in silicon valley until at least 2000. Then there’s electronic waste which is turning Lagos, Nigeria and other intensely poor African cities in to grotesque dumping grounds where the poor get paid pennies to salvage valuable toxic metals for reuse. Not to mention the weirder soft exploitation of foreign workers getting paid pennies per hour to farm gold in online games.
Of course there’s sexual abuse and harassement every step of the way.
What we really need is the cyber equivalent of Fast Food Nation to wrap up all the strands of this into one fascinating package, possibly fact based fiction.
I’m suprised Stephanson / Gibson / Coupland / Cory Doctrow hasn’t taken this on. Perhaps there needs to be a new, perhaps female, voice describing the toxic blacktop of the information superhighway.
Sorry, I rewrote my post twice because I thought me first was lost.
If you’re here to learn, lurk longer. Stop posting.
Uh, I obviously meant to address that to Grilltacular.
Thanks for writing about this. It’s yet another horiffic example of how mineral wealth is a curse to those that inhabit the land above it. I haven’t seen much comprehensive writing on the horrid events that have been occuring in that region of Africa.
Anyway, regardless of whether this causes a guilt impulse in anybody or not, it’s generally better to be informed. Every time I turn on a light switch I’m reminded that I’m irrevocably burning away another little bit of my native Allegheny Plateau, and even though it makes me sad, I’m glad I’m aware of the connection.
You bastard! Funyuns are made from tortured baby Montenegrans!
Shame!
Shame!!!11!1!
OT: softdog - I ran into that too the last few days … apparently the spam catcher is doing funky things for some reason.
Fuck you Chris.
Here you had a fantastic piece of work about something that matters, and you had to go and fluff it with a bunch of bs about who gets to take the high horse on the high road.
It wasn’t me who wrote that in the last fucking graph of my post:
I still say you accused us of what I now see is basically genocide, and then acted coy about it. Fuck you if I would like to see proof for that kind of talk.
And fuck you for being right about it.
Damn Chris … look at all those exclamation points you are wasting there! Don’t you feel guilty?! Your should feel soooooo guilty! You need to conserve your exclamation points!
heh this kind of reminds me of a semi joke some of my freinds have about “oh what thing can we not use today because of trying to be politically pure [i even have freinds that dont eat honey because of “bee exploitation”]
you just cant do it though. if you want to stop doing X because it makes you feel like your doing something good, more power to you, but i cant stand the holier than thou ones that get on everyone else.
[…] The Most Important War You’ve Never Heard About For a conflict that killed around 3.5 million civilians, give or take, the Second Congo War is remarkably unknown to the world. Chris Clarke has a good post about the coltan angle of the conflict, which is basically Johann Hari’s report with less fluff; it’s riddled with standard issue guilt-based arguments, but there are enough gems in the post that any sane person should be able to focus on its important parts. […]
[…] For a conflict that killed around 3.5 million civilians, give or take, the Second Congo War is remarkably unknown to the world. Chris Clarke has a good post about the coltan angle of the conflict, which is basically Johann Hari’s report with less fluff; it’s riddled with standard issue guilt-based arguments, but there are enough gems in the post that any sane person should be able to focus on its important parts. […]
I’m not eating Funyuns, though. I’m eating Responsibilityuns. For some reason they don’t sell as well…
Thank you, Chris. I was not aware of that which you quite rightly document. It’s always good to act with knowledge.
I love the Internet. It’s beautiful to watch how a post that’s about the SILLINESS of consumer purism and guilt-tripping is now being accused of that self-same flaw.
I’m trying to have NoFunyuns, but when I open the bag all I see inside are bible verses on little slips of paper…
Okay, off-topic, but I’ve switched back to my usual internets handle. I apologize to the administrizzles for any inconvenience caused by my screen-name chicanery.
[Ed.: You son of a bitch. I had to click the mouse a second time.]
Note to all:
Being described as
now equals being
Please make a note of it.
Also, Leia at 6:05 pm?
I love you.
Fuck all Chris, what the fuck are you writing about?
What exactly is your point?
Why did you spend all this time writing this if it is only tangentially related to whatever the fuck it is you are talking about?
Is this important or isn’t it?
Are you/ am I complicit in this or not? Are these women and others being persecuted because of demand for consumer electronics or not?
My head is about to explode because I really can’t figure out what the fuck it is you are doing if the answer to those questions is no. Was this just some kind of prop show so you could show off how you could out-Godwin anyone else’s won’t-somebody-think-of-the-X? Are we really still on some SadlyNo bullshit?
I’m pretty sure you drew a fairly straight line from consumer demand for electronics to what you yourself described as the suffering of these women at the hands of murderous rapist thugs. In my understanding, our (world) demand is the cause and their death and suffering is the effect. 1,200 people a day, over 600,000 people dead sure sounds something like genocide. Isn’t that the fucking point of your post? Why did you write this if it wasn’t?
You’re the most brilliant person on the planet. I give up.
My name is not Chris, but given that I actually read what Chris wrote, I consider myself qualified to say the following:
Shorter Chris:
“We all have blood on our hands, and we should remember that; but given that we all have blood on our hands, it’s exceedingly wanky and even hurtful to spend time accusing other people of having blood on theirs as though the finger we are wagging isn’t bright red.”
strix, let me see if I can ramp this down a bit.
First: What Auguste said.
Also. There is a straight line from electronics purchases to the Rape War. Does that mean you did an evil thing when you bought your iPod? Well perhaps, but not because of that necessarily. Events are complex. It would have been possible to buy just as many Treos without a single woman being assaulted. Each assault was an act of volition by the rapists, who bear the responsibility for their own actions.
When I talk about degrees of complicity, I mean something more nuanced than a simple “guilty/not guilty” metric. One really can bear a trivial amount of responsibility for a heinous genocidal war. I think a person should be able to mention the connection between consumer purchases and geopolitics and land somewhere between denial and hauling people into the Hague for buying two dollars worth of tantalum. If I was going to write a post accusing Pandagon commenters of genocide, I think I’d start somewhere where the degree of complicity is a bit starker. Like living on land stolen from the victims of genocide, for instance.
And yes, you could say that I brought up the Congo War to, as you put it:
That’s an uncharitable way of putting it, to be sure, but in essence correct. The fact is that I’ve been considering writing on the Congo for some time. The recent blogspats are what pushed it forward in my long list.
But I’m also a person who generally tends to write about more than one subject at once. This post is about the civility spats: that’s the general context in which it’s written, as you saw in part I. But it’s also about the Congo War. Maybe I didn’t make the connection as seamless as I’d have liked, but the fact is that there is no issue that isn’t connected to another issue. Many of the commenters here seem to have understood the point I was making, and a different but overlapping set of many seem to have valued the information on the Congo I put up here. That’s good enough for me.
So…NOW THAT WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THIS, what are we going to do?
And just for the record, the blame lies with the rapists and thugs–not the people logging on without knowing any of this was / is happening.
Furthermore, Africans -at some point- need to actually take responsibility for their own destiny. WHITE people and other non-Africans can give hand outs and advice; however, the actions necessary to secure a decent, safe, economically viable place / places to live in Africa lies squarely in African hands.
I know someone’s going to blast me for saying it-but it needed to be said.
Oh, hush up Jeff — you’re taking away my secret giggles…..Each drop in the water creates ripples, which mixes with other drops in the water, and hopefully in the long run it does some good.
There’s a reason why certain issues seem to stick together. It’s because they’re related..maybe not obviously, maybe very subtly, sometimes stuck together like glue. But something affects something else, and that continues on, and so on.
Thanks for writing this. IMHO, Americans need to prioritize better in terms of what we get outraged about. There are injustices everywhere, to be sure, but some are simply bigger than others. Hundreds of thousands of dead Africans is a Big Deal. Someone calling Barack Obama “articulate” (to pick just one example) is Not a Big Deal.
I only disagreed with one thing: your overemphasis of tantalum. IMHO, this would be no more and no less of a tragedy if tantalum weren’t involved. Tantalum is not the root cause of the conflict. An amplifier, perhaps, but not the root.
Also, for whoever wrote this:
this whole thing just gets at the larger point of how Europe has underdeveloped and exploited Africa for centuries now
Absolutely right. But progress is being made…now the Chinese are underdeveloping and exploiting Africa!
Uhura,
Yes, thank you so much for saying that. I was getting sooo sick of all the people in this thread claiming that rapists should not be blamed for their horrible actions, and that nobody in Africa should attempt to make conditions in their own country better…. Wait a second, I just actually read this thread, and no one actually ever said anything like that. But then again, people like me are killing the democratic party, so you should probably just ignore me.
Shorter Chris:
“We all have blood on our hands, and we should remember that; but given that we all have blood on our hands, it’s exceedingly wanky and even hurtful to spend time accusing other people of having blood on theirs as though the finger we are wagging isn’t bright red.�
And isn’t that a truly terrible point? We should ignore the 101 Fighting Keyboarders? We should just forget - or at least cut some slack - that some people advocate foolish policies that cause death and destruction because we are all impure? Come on!
Oh, and sorry about putting too many “o’s” on “soooo stupid.” Totally my bad.
Ironically, the slogan of the site Uhura gives as a home page is
A soccer site, eh?
Um, excuse me, do you know what soccer balls are made of?
damit. Missed Chris’ latest post.
Also:
I think that a primary motivation for the whole “how can you talk about X when Y is sooo much worse and is also happening” is that often times Y is something that is really easy to ignore. For instance, when actions of sexism, racism, etc. are pointed out, these are things that people may actually be able to see in themselves, and therefore would really rather not think about. Thanks in part to our nifty media, the incredibly horrible situation that is going on in DRC, or sweatshops in Asia, or other similar problems are extremely easy to ignore, because they are not a part of my every day life. However, discussion of issues like objectifying people based on their appearance, racism, sexism, etc. make me examine the actions I take on a daily basis, and I think many people don’t want to examine their own actions, lest they realize that they are active participants in societal racism, sexism, etc. I don’t think it’s any coincidence then, that the first response to someone actually writing about the situation in the DRC is met with “why are you writing about this, I am not guilty, blame anyone else but me,” attitude; it doesn’t matter what you actually write about, if you point out the truths of what are going on in this world, some people just don’t want to hear about it.
Wait, Mavis. I’m confused. Are you pissed off because you think I guilt-tripped people, or because you think I don’t guilt-trip people enough?
Chris,
I think I can solve your problem with a mere Top Ten list:
1. Buy a Prius
2. Sell your computers and use an internet cafe for blogging
3. Send the cash from your computers to a Ruwandan rape tratment center
4. Send $25 to Bono (be sure to get a receipt)
5. Ask John Edwards to sell his 28,000 sq. foot house and donate the proceeds to the poor in the African country of your choice
6. Ask Madonna for the name of her adoption contacts and save 3 children from the fate you describe
7. Make credit cards illegal, to reduce demand for the products that are impoverishing Africa
8. Send 25,000 “take back the night” placards to Ruwanda
9. Ask Keith Olbermann to get mad for your cause
10. Vote for Hillary. She consumes tons of the stuff you say causes African suffering and maybe she’ll buy less if shes busy in the White House.
In the absence of the above, buy some of those chains the Shi’ites use to beat themselves on Karbala day.
In the absence of any of the above, well…you may not be serious.
FSF, you left out the part about how I should post from a hemp computer, and you didn’t suggest that maybe the militias have been falsely accused. Are you sure you’re an actual wingnut? Seems like you’re not that experienced yet.
FSF,
Will you have my baby?
I actually rather like many of the folks who are being dismissed as trolls - they encourage me to examine my biases (note that this does not apply to the genuine one-shot sniper trolls).
Anyway, for Mavis and Grilltacular, here’s my understanding of CC’s point:
(1) We are morally responsible for the consequences of our actions
(2) Sometimes our actions provide an additional incentive for people to do evil
(3) When people respond to those incentives (which would not be there but for our actions), we bear some responsibility for the harm caused
(4) Our responsibility is not eliminated by the fact that our personal contribution to bad incentives takes place in a context where hundreds of millions of people are making similar contributions.
Karmakin
Mar 7th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Each drop in the water creates ripples, which mixes with other drops in the water, and hopefully in the long run it does some good.
There’s a reason why certain issues seem to stick together. It’s because they’re related..maybe not obviously, maybe very subtly, sometimes stuck together like glue. But something affects something else, and that continues on, and so on.
——————————————————
Karmakin…yeah….a butterfly farts in the Yukatan Pennisula and a giant snowstorm shuts the Federal Government down for 24 hours.
Auguste-there is a defference betwixt “helping people achieve their goals” and “enabling them to continue their crap.”
People who really want help want halp in order to eventually function independently. They don’t steal food (given as charitable donations) from their own people and rape women to the point of fistula.
www.melaleuca.com
So because some men have raped women, those women “need to actually take responsibility for their own destiny”? Got it.
No one has made any suggestions about what we can do to help.
WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?
Auguste-You know full well that an obvious straw man is a bad strwman.
Try again.
You mean aside from the one in the post itself?
And the one Antigone added?
And yes-survivors of rape and abuse in Africa (and elsewhere) have taken steps to manage their own destiny.
There is a village in Africa comprised of women who decided to leave abusive husbands and stike out on their own.
It’s called the Umoja Village.
Strawman? You write a “those people” comment about a continent of millions of people, and when I point out that your bootstraps fetish actually marginalizes the very people who are being oppressed, you call that a strawman?
It seems almost certain that your comment deserves only this reply:
“Do you need me to explain some of the big words in the post,” or maybe, “Some people really are incapable of reading for content.”
But, unlike some, I’ll grant that my prose isn’t always unfailingly clear.
My point is that by suggesting we are all guilty of various crimes and misdemeanors, you undercut the real guilt of parties that have actually done something wrong knowingly and intentionally. And additionally, you alienate those millions of people, myself included, who refuse to feel guilty about shit weren’t informed of and is only marginally connected to our actions. And, yes, that’s the way most people will interpret this.
You argue that we are connected to the violence in the Congo and it’s an interesting case, but you hardly prove it. You don’t examine the levels of violence prior to our interest in these metals. And the mere existance of valuable natural resources and the interest of corporations doesn’t necessarily mean that war and rape are sure to follow. It could (and should) be good news for indiginous populations. But something went wrong. That doesn’t mean it’s the consumer’s fault (though she might be able to do something to rectify things). A convincing article would make a much stronger connection between the problems in Congo and the bad behavior of corporations that I’m supporting with my tubes habit. It’s a blog post and you’re unpaid and I’m not giving you a hard time about not having the time or resources for ground-breaking journalism, but it’s a step you really need to make to complete your case. That’s my 17 cents.
The post does not suggest what we an do about the mining etc. I guess the easy way would be to donate to Doctors Without Borders. Write your check and soothe your conscience-LOL.
Auguste, here is what I said:
————————————
People who really want help want help in order to eventually function independently. They don’t steal food (given as charitable donations) from their own people and rape women to the point of fistula.
————————————-
My comment actually condemns the rapists yet you are stating I blamed the people who were raped. It’s a classic strawman.
thanks togolosh. but I do need to shut up.
Etc.
I recognize that you intend to be constructive here, Mavis.
But that’s not what I’m suggesting. As I’ve said. Repeatedly.
I guess I fall into the cynical point of view–we can argue that anything we use on the planet manages to exploit someone, somehow, unless we grow it ourselves. Somehow I don’t think that we’re going to willingly go away from modern technology any time soon, with all the ramifications of “exploitation” that that might include.
I’m not exactly sure what people think is the “morally correct” thing to do–stop the Congo war? We’re trying that. Stop buying computers and devices? Well, that might lower the demand for tantalum, but if the demand drops, price drops, and one can argue that there will be MORE violence because a greater amount of raw material will have to be obtained and sold to maintain the same amount of money coming into the area.
Can one starve a war to death by removing sufficient economic incentive from the fight? This only would seem to work if the war is fought purely on an access-to-materials term. I think a lot of the wars in Africa also have tribal, nationalistic, and religious aspects as well, so there’s a question as to how much effect shutting down the demand for tantalum will have on the wars.
What one could do is get the word out about this enough (using the Internet, ironically), that companies get driven to find “good-sourced” tantalum (possible), or there’s enough incentive to develop a substitute (also possible), or something happens which gets rid of the need for the devices entirely (not very realistic, IMO)
What you said was:
which is victim-blaming at its finest: Is ethical investment a handout? Debt forgiveness a handout? Is anyone saying that Africans won’t eventually self-determine?
When faced with a story like that Chris wrote about, it’s pretty damn arrogant to say “I wish those people would get their shit together.” And if you don’t think what you wrote is classic dog-whistle symbolism for just that sentiment, then you probably haven’t been paying much attention.
Just to clarify, again: I understand perfectly that white people and westerners do not hold the key to self-determination. I also understand perfectly how economic realities translate to real-world action by any economically oppressed (or even recently economically oppressed) people; there’s advocating for self-determination and then there’s parroting right-wing talking points.
Whether you meant to or not, I found you to be doing the latter, and I called you on it.
tzs, there is something concrete that could be done. it’s not the kind of thing likely to make Uhura happy, because it involves holding corporations to account. It would also be difficult to implement, given that the Bush administration is one of the groups stonewalling.
But as I said upthread, the UN has squelched a list of corporations that trade in Congo tantalum. From what I can tell, quite a number of firms are interested in clean tantalum, and if the UN were to make the results of their investigations public, manufacturers with a conscience could avoid the DRC stuff, which would bring that old “free market” into play.
Hey, don’t forget me!
Oh yeah, and colonialism.
Uhura said:
“Furthermore, Africans -at some point- need to actually take responsibility for their own destiny. WHITE people and other non-Africans can give hand outs and advice; however, the actions necessary to secure a decent, safe, economically viable place / places to live in Africa lies squarely in African hands.
I know someone’s going to blast me for saying it-but it needed to be said.”
Yeah, I’ll go ahead and blast you for that. You might have a point if white people had only been giving handouts and advice to the people of the Congo for the past few hundred years. Of course though, that isn’t the case. In the real world, after years of pillaging the Congo through the slave trade and colonialism, white people bought coltan from the “thugs” you mention, and looked the other way while they raped the millions of women in question. If we’re talking about degrees of guilt, I think the merchants putting money in the hands of rapists in the name of cheap coltan are pretty high up on the list of criminals.
Also, plenty of citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are working to build a decent, safe, economically viable place to live. However, we make that very difficult when the only money we spend in their country goes to rapists, rapists who use that money to buy guns and political power.
And what do we do now? We figure out how to hold businesses we patronize accountable for their actions. Or, at least, stop them from more criminally irresponsible business activity.
Boy, alot happened since I refreshed last.
I have no idea why this comment was rejected previously.
Chris thinks he’s getting at the core of the problem by blaming Western consumers, but he’s not. The fact that the Congo has rich resources of a valuable mineral should be a good thing. Why isn’t it? After all, as Chris points out, many of the reserves of tantalum are located in Australia and Canada, and I certainly haven’t heard about either of those nations being torn apart by civil war as a result.
The real question is why Africa can’t seem to create decent governments. This isn’t a rhetorical question; it is a very serious issue that needs to be carefully studied, as it is the underlying cause of many of Africa’s problems. A decent government would be one that would be accountable to the people of the Congo and would exercise sufficient control to end the epidemic of rape and civil war. Why doesn’t such a government exist there, or in most other nations on that continent? South Africa has a reasonably good government, though it certainly has its flaws. Botswana, from what I’ve heard, has done a pretty good job of ensuring that the profits of its diamond bounty are fairly shared. Why do all the other governments of Africa, without exception, suck so bad? No doubt colonialism is part of the answer, but it can’t be the entire answer. I wish there was something the West could do to help, but Bush’s Iraq war has made it impossible for the U.S. to intervene without ulterior motives being suspected. Furthermore, whatever system is developed, it has to be self-sustaining and not depend on the benevolence of outsiders.
This is a difficult question and you do it an insult by claiming that the Internet “took place, in large part, on the backs of a specific group of poor women of color�. The fact is that Africa was a nasty place full of strife and civil war long before the 1990s.
Auguste, you didn’t call me on jack shit.
You accused me of blaming the rape survivors when clearly-that is not what I did.
Then you take the OTHER portion of my statement about self determination -which you agreed with later on by the way-and translated it into something else. You are still creating strawmen and strewing them about & this makes it impossible to have an open and honest discussion about race, sex, money, and power.
What is it that White liberals fear the most? Blacks who actually do not REQUIRE their help. Please trust and believe that I have witnessed this firsthand and experienced it in raw form.
I have YET TO HAVE an HONEST discussion about race with any WHITE PERSON that I know personally or on any online forum.
Ready for a “those people” statement? Here it comes: YOU / WHITE PEOPLE are delusional, arrogant, and disgusting. You see what you want to see, and experience social wrongs only to the extent that is comfortable and convenient for you because you get to be White in a White world, and if & when shit gets too hot or too personal-off you go to the safety of your proverbial home and lock the proverbial door.. “I think I’ll befriend a negro / hispanic today and try to get down to the bottom of things…”…”Don’t SAY that the Africans need to get their shit together.” What ever mofo.
This is why NO ONE can enter a discussion with White liberals and say: The folks you’re are trying to help WILL NOT be helped if the main ingredient is your alleged benevolence. The key ingredient in any assister-assisteee relationship is the desire of the assistee to get out of their current situation. Certain folks up in here cannot (or don’t want to) wrap their minds around that becasue it takes the importance of almighty YT out of the equation.
Snerk.
Exactly:
1) Chris thinks he’s getting at the core of the problem by blaming Western consumers, but he’s not.
2) The real question is why Africa can’t seem to create decent governments.
3)Furthermore, whatever system is developed, it has to be self-sustaining and not depend on the benevolence of outsiders.
Thanks Firebug.
Of course you don’t.
All of a sudden I am very tired.
Chris thinks he’s getting at the core of the problem by blaming Western consumers, but he’s not.
Ilyka, stop hogging the whole sofa.
Auguste, I’ll read your response tomorrow if I feel like it. I am guessing that the hearty helping of Black Anger that you just experienced will probably leave you bewildred and confused.
Uhura said: “2) The real question is why Africa can’t seem to create decent governments.”
No, the real question is why people who can’t name most of the countries of Africa (a continent) think they can pontificate about “Africa’s” problems.
Firebug, do you have a knowledge of Africa’s history? Your comment on failed governments seems to indicate a big no. Have you looked at Ghana? Kenya? Somaliland? Mali? To ask a relevant question, it helps to proceed from a base of knowledge. Simple assumptions about an entire continent only lead to ignorant comments.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you both know more about African history than I think you do. If so, maybe you could look at specifics, and contingent circumstances rather than generalizing about an incredibly diverse and complicated place.
Except that, well, that never works. It’s not the first time somebody in this part of the blogosphere is doing that; Lauren already did that with her “Every time you take a shower, you’re guilty” post. It didn’t work then; and it’s not working now.
That said, most of this thread looks surreal to the point of wankery. You’ve written about the single deadliest, most brutal conflict since World War Two, and you’ve written cogently. Now, I’d expect that the thread about it would be a historical debate over the relative importance of coltan to the conflict, or comparisons to similar wars. My own reading of the situation is that the war would’ve been just as deadly even if there was a coltan deposit four times as big as the Congo’s in Nevada. Obviously, yours is different.
Instead, commenters focus on some minor blogospheric kerfuffle involving a handful of players who nobody outside the blogosphere has even heard about. At least you use American spelling. If you didn’t, people would be derailing all of your threads, wondering whether it’s correct to refer to what’s between the left and the right as the centre.
Dammit.
My browser just crashed and ate a five-paragraph comment I was about to Submit.
Uhura, this’ll be a bit truncated because I don’t feel like writing that much twice.
I never said you were blaming the rape survivors. I said that, in your correct assertion that self-determination is vital, you were also implying - using the aforementioned coded language - that the rape survivors were included in the “they need to want it” formulation.
Plus, in an online forum I have no idea who you are. The only thing I can do is read your rhetoric, and your initial rhetoric would not have sounded out of place at a meeting of the CCC.
I believe you’ve experienced it. I also call it a straw man - you’re assuming we’re all white liberals, and you’re painting all white liberals with the same brush. I’ve been down this road before, you know, and while I will admit to lazy thinking, I will NOT admit to some sort of paternalistic White Man’s Burden, not in the way you’re describing anyway*.
Please note, again, that I didn’t say “the Africans.” I said (as if in your voice, of course) “those people”, as in “the particular people affected by the war in the Congo.” As in, I found it inappropriate (and highly suspect, at the time) that you were inserting a “they have to do it for themselves” sentiment into a post about a very real, very acute, and very contributed-to-by-the-West crisis.
Actually, people enter discussions like that all the time, but they’re usually able to avoid using dog-whistle language.
No one here, that I can see, was advocating a “long-term benevolence” model. Chris’ suggestion was a donation to MSF, who deal with things like measles and typhoid outbreaks, and if you’re implying that a typhoid outbreak would be better than giving “them” money, then I have to, um, disagree. Does that imply that I think that the West should be responsible for fighting every typhoid outbreak which ever occurs in Africa from now on? Of course not. Where the self-determination comes in is in the future infrastructure which will allow such local anti-epidemic measures; but, again, the immediate aftermath of a civil war is not the time, it seems to me, to criticize a country for not having infrastructure.
As for being “bewildered and confused” by a “hearty helping of Black Anger” - I’ve been on the receiving end of helpings much heartier, and with much more reason.
—-
* I totally believe that there may in fact be a way in which I think in WMB terms in some unexamined corner of myself, but the way you’re describing just isn’t it.
Why can’t African nations form decent governments?
I don’t know the full answer, of course, but one possible contributor was being caught between two superpowers in the Cold War, where the African (and Asian, and Latin American) nations were used as proxy battlegrounds.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, I should point out, was called “Zaire” for many years, and was ruled by a rutheless right-wing dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, who was installed and kept in power by the CIA as an “anti-Soviet” ally.
He was hardly the only such dictator in Africa, either. Both sides propped up dictatorships like that of Mobutu or Idi Amin to use as playing pieces in a monumentally wasteful Cold War, and this coming just after many of those countries gained independence. And once the Cold War ended, we basically left the decrepit dictatorships we propped up to rot; the Soviet Union did the same when it collapsed.
Frankly, I don’t think most of the nations of Africa have had time to develop good governments. Between the resurgence of old tribal conflicts, widespread poverty and hunger, the AIDS epidemic, and continued economic imperialism by pretty much the rest of the world, I think the fact that there are as many stable, reasonably free, relatively prosperous nations in Africa as there are is pretty damn miraculous.
There was a very interesting commentary in the FT the other day about the history of the slave trade in the region now known as Uganda and how in fact a lot of the impetus for tribal wars was what developed into the tradition of selling the vanquished off as slaves. Slavery-of-the-vanquished had always been a bit of a tradition, but “slavery” as practiced by the then-Ugandans was very different from “slavery” as practiced by the people the slave traders sold people to.
I’d say the major historical actions now shadowing Africa are a) the slave trade, b) colonial map-drawing of borders without regards to population groupings, and c) the ability of African despots to play off the US and the USSR against each other to keep themselves in power. Mugabe in Zimbabwe has managed to play the “black noble Marxist freedom-fighter against the West” schtick far longer than anyone should have paid attention to him. The world outside Africa didn’t dare try to pressure Mugabe, he has totally ruined his country, and now everyone is stuck trying to figure out how to pry him and his cronies out of power while not causing more tribulation to the average person in Zimbabwe.
2) The real question is why Africa can’t seem to create decent governments.
Hear hear, Flewellyn.
Ilyka, stop hogging the whole sofa.
Aha! Now you, too, are worse than Hitler!
Did you have some kind of trigger set up, or what? Jesus.
Auguste:
Children?
Again, Mamdani covers a lot of the ground this debate has taken. When Victims Become Killers, people. Check it out of your local public library or buy it from an independent bookstore of your choice. You may now go back to arguing over misreadings of Chris’s post.
Says Auguste the White man: “You’re anger is irrational” …”I didn’t say what you thought I said and I never accused you of anything.”
Typical Ignorant White response.
As I said, an honest discussion of race and power is impossible with the likes of you.
Uhura, thank you for speaking out with such passion and eloquence. You are absolutely right about it being impossible to form a viable government that relies on Western benevolence for its survival, and you are also right that FAR too many whites think that the solution is for them to insert themselves into the solution.
Your anger is righteous and real, and don’t let anyone steal it from you. I am not a person of color (I’m Irish American, so I guess that’s debatable… my father certainly was a person of color as a child, but the world has changed and the Irish are “white” now), but my days are constructed around issues that disproportionately affect people of color, and I spend a great deal of my time handing back power that my position and privileges (class and white) have given me. My job is made easier when someone has retained her anger and determination, rather than sinking into despair.
I try to be a good Ally. I may not always succeed, but I think that the very first step in Ally work is to never discount the life experiences or emotions of someone I’m supporting, even if those aren’t my own. The only way to learn is to ask, and the only way to grow is to discover. Thank you for giving me food for thought.
oh dear lord! this sucks! where can I buy an organic, locally produced soy-based computer?
Thanks Odanu…your comments are much appreciated.
Why can’t they have stable governments in Africa?
1. Europe developed guns before Africa.
2. They supplied guns to rival factions in Africa to undermine stable governments.
3. Instead of having to pay fair price for resources(labor, gems, spice, wood, minerals), all we have to supply is more guns to rival factions.
4. Europeans enjoy resources and prosper!
5. Continue strategy in Middle East when Oil is discovered to be important.
6. Continue to to exploit the resources from the African continent and reap the benefits.
7. Blame the victims.
Africa is a huge and diverse continent. It cannot be a coincidence that no corner can support a stable government.
Uhura’s made some good points, I think, that aren’t being heard. I think Chris did a good thing in his well-presented post on this issue, and I appreciate that he doesn’t try to sum it up with a righteous “this is what we all need to do” conclusion. But. The thing is, and I notice this in going back and forth between particular blogs, it’s regrettable that on this page an issue like this is brought up in the context of intra-blogger business. This is part II of a discussion in that context, and up there in the comments Chris and a commenter seem to agree that the point of the post is about people guilt-tripping each other on the internet. When no possible solutions or ways forward are presented, it makes it sound like the real interest of the group isn’t necessary in working on this issue. In no way do I think this is intentional on Chris’s part, but it’s a dynamic that keeps coming up in the blogosphere.
Why is it that issues like this are brought up in service of a “larger” rhetorical point, usually concerning the behavior of white bloggers? I hesitate to say it because I love this blog, but I’ve been noticing this and it bothers me.
I’m pretty sure Uhura has a point, under all the anger. A body of people must be allowed to self-determine, with as little involvement from “us” (the first world) as possible, apart from giving them the tools (i.e. money and resources) we took from them in the first place.
This does not, of course, apply only in Africa. First Nations in Canada, anyone? Aboriginal groups in Australia/New Zealand?
But it needs to be managed carefully, in partnership with people who have resources. That means, Uhura, that African countries interested in self-determination as should be able to demand help from the world community without being accused of “not doing it for themselves.” Whether that help involves asking for debt relief, asking the World Bank for help in financial restructuring, or for first world academics or government officials helping to set up non-partisan systems within the country, I think that “Africa” should take advantage of the knowledge and experience that they have not had hundreds of years to accumulate.
But I’m not saying that African countries can’t do it themselves, if they wanted to. I’m just sayin’ that it doesn’t hurt to ask for help. And then, of course, the helpers must helpfully step away when they are asked to, and not believe that they “owed” anything.
And I forgot to say “word” to Chris. Your piece is important (and educational - I didn’t know this stuff) and I pity the fools who miss the point.
Wow. I’m obviously still expressing myself badly. Of course I accused you of something - I accused you of making comments in the kind of language usually used by unrepentant racists.
You did eventually make clear your point, and I agreed with it in a macro sense but definitely not in a micro sense. As for supposedly saying that your anger is irrational, that wasn’t what I meant to imply. Maybe I was just reacting to the strangeness (not to say offensiveness) of the argument that because I hadn’t responded in a couple of hours, I was somehow othering you and refusing to continue to debate due to your ethnicity.
Well now I’m all confused. Is Chris seriously sayiing we all need to feel guilty about our Internets being made on the backs of Congolese women, or is he snarking about blogwankery at Sadly, No?
I guess I’ll just stick to Amanda’s posts from now on. At least she’s clear about when she’s snarking and when she’s not.
cassy, would that be the corner in the south, or the corner in the northeast, or the corner in the northwest? morocco, algeria, south africa, egypt…i suppose there are no “stable” (whatever that means to you) governments in any of those countries, right. i should cancel my travel plans, i suppose. all of africa is a shithole, and it’s no coincidence, blah blah, long-standing tradition of exploitation, nothing we can do, throw up your hands and sigh about europe.
i’m sure a lot of grad students and phd candidates would love to borrow your analysis, as it reduces years of study to some cute bullet points. simuitaneously succint and in depth!
Lizvelrene makes a fair point here.
I’ll note in somewhat feeble defense that I’ve been writing about global human rights issues for a couple decades, and that the bulk of said writing mentions white bloggers not at all, but 99.9 percent of readers here won’t have read any of that previous writing, and thus her point still stands.
As for not providing a possible solution, guilty as charged. There is a solution, of course, but it’s not simple, nor is it likely palatable to a number of the readers here, as it involves overhauling the basic economic system of the Western world so that corporate resource colonialism is made more difficult, if not impossible.
As noted in the Paul Harris quote in the post itself, much of the heat in the region would be diminished if outside players in the developed world were kept from making things worse.
But that would be a whole post just on its own just to scratch the surface. Which I could work on if folks are interested.
liberalrob, I wasn’t snarking at all in the post itself. Some of the comments, sure. But the post was utterly sincere.
Neither was I saying we all need to feel guilty about anything. Why is feeling guilty somehow the default state when a connection between our lifestyle and its remote effects is pointed out? It’s not like anyone here set out to hurt women in the Congo. We’re locked into an economic system that amplifies the consequences of our actions, and sometimes those consequences are dire. What good does guilt do?
Do you really have a problem with a post being about more than one thing? lizvelrene made a good point about the way it happened in this post, but does it really bother you that much when a piece of writing has more than one intended message?
But that would be a whole post just on its own just to scratch the surface. Which I could work on if folks are interested.
I’d love to read it. Seriously.
—————
Magic Kitty sayz: …That means, Uhura, that African countries interested in self-determination as should be able to demand help from the world community without being accused of “not doing it for themselves.â€?
—————-
MagicKitty I am uncertain as to WHY you directed this comment towards me because it unrelated to MY point that outside benevolence is not the KEY INGREDIENT to changing things anywhere-and certaily not in Africa.
——————–
Another pearl of wisdom from Magic Kitty:
But I’m not saying that African countries can’t do it themselves, if they wanted to. I’m just sayin’ that it doesn’t hurt to ask for help.
———————
WHY are we on this KUMBAYA tangent-Does anyone smell a preachy White Woman?
————
Magic Kitty brings it home with: And then, of course, the helpers must helpfully step away when they are asked to, and not believe that they “owed� anything.
————
And THAT is exactly what is and has been happening in Africa & the Middle East huh? SMH
Uhura
Are you here for a flame war or what?
“Does anyone smell a preachy White Woman?”
daaaaaaaaaaaang
Mavis Beacon:
So, Chris is to blame because *you* will decide his words mean something, and that’s *Chris’s* fault, even though it’s *your* interpretation, and the reason you’re acting this way is you hate it when someone blames an incidental party (like Chris) for something that is done by another (like you, for choosing your interpretation of what Chris means).
You know, I’m not unsympathetic to what you’re saying. It is possible to dress something up in a language of “what terrible people we are!” to the point that it’s ridiculous.
But there’s a lot of things that we have some level of responsibility for, and without that knowledge, we can’t even begin to make any changes. We can’t even contemplate it.
To dress that language up in ways of saying “now, you don’t have to feel huge amounts of guilt over this” would weaken that writing to the point that the message wouldn’t get out to anyone.
So the best solution is to lay the truth bare, as best as you can, and hope people like you can divorce yourself of your prejudices enough to accept that the author might be trying to impart information, and not manipulate you through guilt.
So, if I come into the forum and tell what I perceive to be the truth, I am inciting a “Flame War?”
What is a Flame War anyway?
Furthermore-I have been posting here since before Amanda and Pam took over-back when Ezra was here.
I am not here for a war, I am here to read other people’s opinions & to tell the truth about my experiences…What I have found thus far (not just here, but on other forums and in other live discussions a well) is that most Whites and others in positions of social priviledge -especially the “benevolent” ones-DO NOT wish to hear what is really going on.
Uhura:
Having read the rest of your additions to the thread, I’d like to point out that one thing that I think engendered some confusion is this: right now, Africa’s destiny probably *isn’t* in the hands of Africans. While it might not take the actions of non-Africans to fix Africa, I think it would take a lot of non-action by non-Africans… and it would take quite a bit of positive action to create that level of non-action.
I’ve heard some folks state, insistently and for the record, that our nation is great because we cared about using our resources well enough to make a great nation, and “other places” (which, I’m sure, includes Africa) didn’t… as if we all started on a level playing field, with no conquest and colonization, with no encouragement of warfare, etc..
Those folks would probably make the same claim (the fate of Africa is in the hands of Africans), but it would be a message of condemnation (”so it’s okay to exploit them, because we can, and they haven’t forced us to stop, yet”)
I agree with Chris completely. The racism and over-consumption of the American public are the source of a great many (perhaps even most) of the world’s troubles today.
Well, I’ve been here for awhile too and it seemed to me that you swung in, scanned the post and made some heated assertions about its meaning that weren’t borne out by the text. The interaction with Auguste and magickitty added to that impression. If that’s not what you meant, then I apologize for misreading you.
But (and this is a large but) much of this thread indicates that people (of whatever ethnicity, race, what have you) are interested in knowing what’s really going on and thinking about what can be done about it.
There are huge tragedies in Africa. I don’t see that there are any easy solutions. It’s not a matter of either self-determination or intervention because there are a web of causes internal and external.
We’re all talking about our experiences, knowledge, and beliefs here (trolls excepted). Those are bound to come into conflict for obvious reasons, but it seemed that you were calling people out in bad faith and Ijust don’t have a clear idea of the discussion you want to have.
Not know what a flamewar is? And you wrote that you’ve you’ve been posting here since Pam came on? Come on.
It’s easy to ascribe Africa’s problems to ongoing or recent intervention by outside powers, but that misses a really important point about functioning civil societies, namely culture. Only if the vast majority of people buy in to principles like rule of law and equal rights can a civil society really function. Unfortunately the traditional mode of social organization in Africa is tribal, and the arbitrary borders tend to include multiple tribes as well as splitting tribes between countries. The canonical African success story as far as civil society goes is Botswana, but that country is the most ethnicaly homogenous country in Africa (or at least it was until the recent massive influx of Zimbabwean refugees). Botswana also has never been colonized - it was a protectorate under the British Empire, and most of the traditional forms of governance were preserved through the protectorate period. In addition, there was never mass expropriation of land as occured in many African countries.
In most colonized African nations the traditional forms of governance were destroyed or subverted to the ends of the colonizers. That leaves the current generation of Africans with no good indigenous model of governance within living memory (and when we talk about culture we are talking about people and their direct experiences, so those traditional forms of governance may still be known to us, but the underlying cultural attitudes that allowed them to work have been lost). The governance model that *is* within living memory is that of the colonialists, which is inherently exploitative. Even after the colonialists have left there remains an attitude of disrespect for government and a sense that those in power get to feather their nests and those out of power are entitled to violate the law because it is imposed from “outside” even though the people involved are all of the same nationality (but not necessarily the same tribe).
I don’t know what the solution is, but I have confidence that the people directly involved will figure it out eventually.
It is amazing how little has changed in western discourse on Africa over the past hundred years.
In so many comments here, the perception is that Africa remains a dark continent. Apparently, everyone thinks that Africa is in a perpetual state of war. We assume that African social structures are at their deep, dark, atavistic base “tribal” and therefore ahistorical. We use pejorative terms like “thug” and “tribe” and use the language of morality to condemn governments we have little real knowledge of. More culturetalk, one step removed from racetalk. Africa is either tradition bound in our minds, or fitfully impersonating the west. We can’t imagine that Africans might have identities and histories as dynamic as our own.
No wonder neo-colonial power structures persist.
Right, Uhura. I apologise for not being clear before, and for trying to sugar-coat my post to be palatable to all. This is what I really wanted to say:
Most countries in Africa will never be able to self-determine on their own in the near term because they do not have a large enough class of educated revolutionaries to do the work. (Going to the London School of Economics or Harvard makes one neither educated or revolutionary.) They need people to go to other countries and study self-determination of other first-people’s groups, to work out a satisfactory system of what might work in African countries, and then to bring those practices home with them and incite revolution amongst their own governments, who are heavily armed (for the most part) and hold corrupt power. That takes a lot of time and money, and self-determining Africans aren’t going to be able to hold bake sales to raise necessary dough. They will have to rely on the white Western world, and I feel that the Western world must give this assistance and money freely, with no strings attached.
(I’m not saying that the so-called educated revolutionaries must therefore adopt a Western mode of capitalist statecraft; that is what killed much of Africa in the first place.)
This revolution will not take place without Western involvement, participation, and encouragement. That’s unfortunate, but there it is. However, I consider it necessary that the capitalist first world should to try to right some of the damage they have done in Africa. Revolutionary Africans need to take advantage of that, on their own terms.
Just to flesh that out, Botswana’s social structure was profoundly influenced by the British. Here’s how. The British colonized Africa by what they called “indirect rule.” They chose local leaders to govern in their stead, and take care of the quotidian details of life and law. However, in choosing these leaders, the British revealed their own biases. They expected to see “tribes” everywhere, led by all powerful, mystical, potent chiefs. Men who made decisions in “primitive” societies. Problem was, most African societies were not arranged that way. Many supposed “traditional” power structures were actually invented by the British. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger in “The Invention of Tradition.
Also, to bring it all back to Feminism and gender politics, Ifi Amadiume wrote a fantastic book called “Male Daughters, Female Husbands” investigating real precolonial African gender roles. She found that often, the British sidelined female leaders because the idea of women in power didn’t fit with their idea of “traditional” Africa. Colonial anthropology was incredibly chauvinist and totalizing, and we live with its assumptions today. To break the cycle, read. Please, stop pontificating about what “Africans” need to or can do when you’re working with such a distorted paradigm.
Steve, I don’t see anyone saying that parts of Africa need to reorganise along Western, capitalist ideals.
I never said “western capitalist.” I said “western.” Marxism is intensely western. And your idea of western money being given to an educated vanguard of revolutionaries out to serve the imagined will of the people by bringing down their governments, if that isn’t a heavily Marxist inflected idea, I don’t know what is.
Also, let’s not forget, there are a great many democratic governments throughout Africa. It is a persistent myth of western historiography that popular participation in government is somehow inherently western. A great many people in South Africa, Mali, Kenya, Ghana and others are working to problematize both the idea of “traditional Africa” and the idea of democratic-civil society to work towards a home-grown version of the nation-state. Western money will do nothing but prescribe western solutions. Mahmood Mamdani’s book “Citizen and Subject” addresses this in detail.
sorry, I’m going nuts with the scare quotes.
I can see some common ground here, Magickitty. I just think that western aid to Africa has always been strings attached, and the idea that Africa needs aid is a colonial notion. Africa did fine before the west got there. It’s one thing to pay for famine relief, drought relief, and things like that. Just the same as when foreign countries offered us money to help rebuild after Katrina. But the aid regime is colonial.
Anyway, Chris’s post seems to me to be about ceasing destructive activity in the Congo. First, do no harm. First things first, let us worry about funding a revolution once we’ve stopped plundering the continent.
Agreed Steve. First, do no harm.
Argh, sorry, that was meant to be “agree wholeheartedly, first no harm,” rather than sounding all pissy-like.
I think that most of us can agree with ‘do no harm’. What is important about Chris’ post is that most of us were unaware of what level of harm our supposedly simple purchasing decisions have in the wider world.
Pond+pebble=ripple
Steve - I assume that this is mentioned in the references you give, but it does bear repeating: Traditional (pre-colonial) African societies included a large number in which the society was governed by rules that are much more democratic and equitable than the big chief model of 19th century colonialists. I can’t speak with any authority about most of these societies, but I grew up in Botswana, so I know a bit about Tswana tribal organization. One of the features of the Tswana traditional government is the ability of the people to expel chiefs without the need to resort to violence (effectively impeachment), which is unthinkable within the big chief model. The traditional form of government involves large community meetings in which issues are hashed out and decisions are made, with the chief and the elders serving primarily as moderators, only intervening by fiat if no community consensus emerges.
Obviously this model doesn’t scale well to groups of people much larger than a big village, but the seeds of government of, for, and by the people are there.
Do you really have a problem with a post being about more than one thing?
Not at all. Just be clear about it. This is not a medium that tolerates much ambiguity or implied meaning. I didn’t expect to see snark related to so serious a topic on a serious blog. It kind of threw me for a loop but the subsequent discussion has cleared the air I think.
This is so depressing. I’m never buying anything NEW again. From now on, it’s all Goodwill, Salvation Army, EBay and consignment stores.
The damage will have already been done, for sure, but at least I won’t be making it worse.
I need a drink.
Lemme tell you about the history of rum…
This is racism, which is (as always) remarkably counterproductive. Why hasn’t anyone else called this out?
* * *
What I think Chris did here, whether deliberately or not, was create a kind of Rorshach test. Mavis Beacon and Grilltacular assumed he was springing a poorly-crafted guilt-trip on them, and lashed back. Uhura assumed he was playing Rudyard Kipling, and blew her top. The image that appears for me, which I hope is approximately what Chris intended: it’s ridiculous to one-up each other about whose issues are “more important” when there are so many important things to talk about–and that’s ignoring the issues that, like the situation in the Congo, with which most people aren’t familiar.
As far as Original Sin is concerned: I could buy a hybrid car, as someone snarkily insisted upthread as the #1 litmus test for “seriousness” about environmental and human-cost issues. On the other hand, that car uses tantalum in its onboard computer, and is made using hydrocarbon-based synthetic materials for lightness, and may or may not have been assembled by fairly-compensated labor… and I could go on.
Everything has a cost, and it eventually boils down to how many people were hurt in its production. Of course that doesn’t make buying an iPod morally equivalent to raping a Congolese villager, but it does mean that I have a responsibility to be aware of the policies of companies I patronize, make the best decisions I can, and remember that my comfort incurs a debt.
See here. There’s a better explanation on that blog somewheres which notes that discrimination with economic and judicial power behind it trumps discrimination in the just-generalizing-on-a-blog sense every time, but I can’t find it right now.
Anyway, roll with it.
Actually, if Uhura is still around, I would be interested to read what ideas she may have to do something about this, rather than having everything bog down over her initial remarks. Everyone tends to shoot from the hip in comments sections, especially early on. That shouldn’t imply she hasn’t thought more about it since then.
Btw, y’all should be buying fair trade chocolate, too.
Magickitty: yeah, but only because organic (fair trade) coffee tastes heavenly
ilyka–you have a solid point, and I tried to roll with it/ignore it, but that comment in particular itched at me all afternoon.
It bothers me to be dismissed as arrogant and disgusting by someone who knows nothing about my experiences or circumstances–I’ve been called out for unconscious prejudice before, by intelligent and righteously angry people of all stripes, but never by a total stranger.
That said, the “racism” charge was unwarranted, and the result of a crappy work day as much as anything. Uhuru, I apologize for that remark, and I am interested in your suggestions about constructive steps to take about the issue.
Way back when, Uhura asked what we who really want to help can do to help. My experience is on the micro and neighborhood level, certainly not the national level, but I can think of several things:
1) Show respect to everyone with a dog in the fight, and make sure that everyone invested in the issues at hand is invited to participate in drafting a solution.
2) Create a safe neutral space for these issues to be wrangled out. Permit room for venting that does not leave the room.
3) Before even discussing the issues, take an inventory of the strengths that the people, systems, cultures, economies, etc., involved have available to them in the production of a solution.
4) Use those strengths to develop a role for each player that is real and necessary and productive, while drafting a plan
5) As the plan is implemented and more players emerge, invest them in the solution and get their sign on. Make sure the final plan is agreed to by everyone, everyone agrees on definitions and terms, and the final plan is both written, and flexible enough to allow for necessary changes.
6) Those whose interest was wholly or primarily in stabilizing the region, once that stabilization has been achieved (primarily by those with more vested interest in the stability — i.e. those who live there) BACK OFF.
I have thought about it, and my thought still stands.
Plus if you look @ the definition of racism-I can’t be racist because I do not have any power. What I said may have been insulting but it was between 90-96% accurate.
I am not dismissing anyone-It’s impossible for me, A BLACK WOMAN-to “dismiss” White people because we all know the hierarchy in the USA. My body, personal safety, economic viability, and sexuality is pretty much up for grabs-and my intellectual ability is always in question. Nuff said.
Are you an arrogant, ignorant assed White mofo? Let’s see…
-How many of you invite your “Black friends” over to your house (or-gasp-go over to their house) and feel compelled to bring up the topic of race?
-Are you EVER able to look at a Black person and not think “They’re Black” before thinking “They’re a person.”
-How many of you have ever told a Black person “You are different from the other Black people I know.”
-How many of you have ever come back from vacation & compared your tan to a Black person’s skin color (”Look! I am almost the same color as YOU!!”)
-How many of you have ever said that Colin Powell does not have alot in common with most Black people? and here’s the bonus question: How many of you have “forgotten” that Colin Powell is actually Black?
-How many of you DO NOT act surprised or (gasp) get upset or curious when a Black person is obviously living better than you are.
In my youth, I truly believed that open discourse was possible and -lordy-have I tried…But racism and sexism is interwoven into this country’s fabric so damned tight that pulling it out would be like performing micro surgery with a rusted pick axe and no anesthesia.
But I digress…
The bottom line is this: There are very few people who would willingly give up social and economic priviledge or power over other people-even if they could somehow see that it would make things better form themselves. This is a fundamental fact of human nature, and it’s the wall we are butting up against in the fight against racism and sexism.
When the people who claim to be benevolent and good and kind enter the UNcomfortable zone, their behavior is remarkably similar to the behavior of those who they refer to as openly racist / sexist. Meaning Brad is TOTALLY for Affirmative Action and shattering that glass ceiling for the womenfolk until it means that HE has a lil’ less elbow room.
It is what it is.
The Africa problem is historical, circular, and complex. The fact remains that until Africans want change there will be none. This is not victim blaming. I am simply stating a fact that is as old as the earth: GIve a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day-show him how to fish and he’ll never go hungry. But ole boy has got to have the desire to learn how to fish. He cannot go around and beat up the other men who have also received fish from you, take their fish and then rape their wives and mutilate their children for good measure.
Sigh
Sure we can continue to make food drops and enact debt forgiveness, but it will be to no avail-especially since our beloved country has less than benevolent intent behaind taking those “benevolent” actions.
Do I have a end all be all solution to Africa? Heck naw. But I am not going to pretend that the Interenet usage of hundreds of thousands of Americans is the root cause of any issue in Africa.
Plus if you look @ the definition of racism-I can’t be racist because I do not have any power. What I said may have been insulting but it was between 90-96% accurate.
Just because it’s not institutionalized doesn’t mean it’s not racism.
Do I have a end all be all solution to Africa? Heck naw. But I am not going to pretend that the Interenet usage of hundreds of thousands of Americans is the root cause of any issue in Africa.
That’s great. I don’t think Chris Clarke is, either.
Uhura, I wrote a long and detailed response trying to undefensively defend myself from (perceived? implied?) charges of racism, and then erased it. Just please get to know me and form your own opinions. Fair enough?
yup, I was right. Uhura misread the original post.
And hey, guess what? I’m not white!
Robert M:
Well, now you know a bit about how racism feels.
And you and Uhura are both worthy of respect, and able to deal with each other, and in the fullness of time, things will be fine. Or, at least one of you isn’t worthy of respect, or you two can’t work together, and there’s not much point in being upset long term about that.
I’m not trying to dismiss what she said as not being a rude shock to many folks (and there was a time it would have been to me, as well), but think of this:
when someone oppressed makes a comment like that, if you assume it’s based upon valid experiences (note: not “assume it’s true”, but that it’s fair for someone with those experiences to feel that way), maybe you have a chance to learn something. Or, maybe not.
If you assume it’s *not* based on valid expereiences, you’ve definitely removed any chance you had to learn anything.
Uhura, let me clue you in about something. If you ever hear a Jew talk about the need to support Israel no matter how destructive its policies are, don’t take him at his word. When you bring up Palestinian self-determination, he’ll call you an Israel basher; when you persist, he’ll call you an anti-Semite. Don’t surrender a square inch of territory to him. When he calls you an anti-Semite, lash out; call him on his deep irrationality, his smug sense of superiority, his inability to consider the fact that the gamut of political views on the I/P conflict doesn’t run from moderately pro-Israeli to extremely pro-Israeli. Once he’s called you an anti-Semite for disagreeing with him, there’s no turning back; he’s revealed himself to be too fanatical for rational discussion, in which case all that’s left is to ensure the audience realizes that he shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Years ago, I was tutoring a young refugee from Eritrea in English. He was remarkable young man because in two years he had managed to overcome a lifetime of lost oppurtunities to begin a college education, while working in two strange languages. In his entire life before coming to Canada, he had not known a single day without war. He said that that was the strangest thing about North America, that calm and distance from war. He was the same age as I and yet he had done so much more than I.
One the point of racism, he had one fascinating observation that has stuck with me. He said that coming to North America he had no preconceptions about how he would be treated by whites, as he had never met one in Eritrea and so he took each encounter on an individual basis. What bothered him was how he was treated by black North Americans, he said that they always rejected him when he couldn’t feel for their suffering and how they seemed not to hear him when he talked about Eritrea and the situation there. He was amazed by the gap in understanding and it was one thing that I couldn’t help him with and I knew that I couldn’t. What I did learn that racism is much more nuanced than most arguments would make it and that the problems of Africa would not be solved on the backs of those types of arguments.
That’s where I screwed up. I know that Uhura’s statement was false, because I know people that don’t fit her mold (and I’d prefer to include myself in that category); my first reaction was to confuse “that’s incorrect!” with “your experiences can’t possibly support that conclusion”.
Racism is as endemic to American culture as misogyny, and just as likely to appear in casual conversation even with people you respect. I’ve had several years of seeing how racism affects my wife and friends, and it fuels my frustration with the shortsighted, racist policies (both foreign and domestic) that the conservative half of the country keeps pushing.
I agree with Uhura that self-determination is the key, and that unenlightened benevolence is unlikely to solve the problem. What do you all think about the sort of solution we pursued during the recent unrest in Somalia? What was good about it, and what was bad?
I would like to edit my original statement about WHITE people to include the word “many” and make “mofo” plural:
MANY WHITE PEOPLE are delusional, arrogant, and disgusting. You see what you want to see, and experience social wrongs only to the extent that is comfortable and convenient for you because you get to be White in a White world, and if & when shit gets too hot or too personal-off you go to the safety of your proverbial home and lock the proverbial door.. “I think I’ll befriend a negro / hispanic today and try to get down to the bottom of things…�…�Don’t SAY that the Africans need to get their shit together.� Whatever mofos.
I would also liek to add this: If you think MY anger is offensive, irrational, and unjustified…then you need to meet some REALLY PISSED OFF Black people.
And for ITS-I did not MISread the first post, I asked: So now that we all know about this, what are we going to do?
All of my other comments have been addressing something else entirely.
Uhura, it’s worth mentioning that the aforementioned Jewish nationalist you’ll meet is very familiar with the spectrum of Israeli politics. He’ll always be able to tell you he’s not a real fascist because the real fascists are those who openly advocate bombing civilian targets in Arab countries and who think Israel should get to expand “up to the Euphrates and the Tigris.” Again, ignore him just like you’d ignore a Leninist who says he’s not pro-totalitarian because Stalin was worse.
First, I’d like to thank you, Chris, for writing this post. I hadn’t even heard of this war until a few days ago on Abstract Nonsense, and this is post really helped to flesh out some of the details I didn’t know about. I’ve only been interested in politics for the last few years, but I’m still surprised that I’ve never heard of this.
One thing I’d like to mention to everyone reading this that one thing they can do is talk about this more often. I have no doubt that A LOT of people were like me, and had no clue about any of this.
Finally, to Uhura and a few others, I’ve seen a few people mention this, but it bears repeating. I agree that self-determinism is necessary, and no government can be built depending on the benevelonce of other nations, but there is one thing we can do, which is to stop Western corporations from fucking up places like the DRC even more. I’ll even go far as to say it is our responsibility to hold them in check. There is a big difference between stopping ourselves from screwing Africans over and giving handouts to African nations.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
That’s my take on this.
I don’t think this is a guilt-inducing post nor do I think that was its intention. I do think people tend to have a guilty, knee-jerk reaction when they’re reminded that something they’re doing has repercussions, and they respond by bristling: “It’s not my fault! I didn’t start it! Why don’t you blame those who have done something worse?” It may be a childish reaction but it’s probably inevitable when one wants to be able to keep doing what they want to do and not have to feel guilty about it. The adult response would be to acknowledge participation and responsibility without attempting to make excuses. Guilt is beside the point. No one leads a perfect, pure life. Where people tend to go wrong is in trying to alter their values to make them conform to their actions instead of simply acknowledging that their actions are not perfect, but their values are too important to ditch.
The reason why we care about social injustice is a function of our basic decency and humanity, it’s not out of guilt. I don’t think any of the activists we most admire would say they fought for justice because they felt guilty. These are political issues and practical issues, not moral issues. Instead of wasting energy on feeling guilty or being offended (by the perception) that one has been made to feel guilty, we need to look at issues as clearly as we can and set aside our own vanity and egos.
Thank you for writing this post.