Mother, dare I?

While contemplating the possibility of a future with a potential [White] love interest, Ethiopian-American author Metasebia Seifu [“If I could only draw and knew how to paint” and “The Ethiopian – a love letter”] writes:

I wondered how he lost his legs, if he has ever been to America, and how he feels about black girls [for, sooner or later, one must choose sides. And my side, it has been amply made obvious to me, is with the black in America: with the children of ex-slaves, Affirmative-Action-Jacksons, and welfare queens; with violent men who behaved like pimps, with overweight women whose anger is matched only by the un-attractiveness of the face that wore it, and with kids whose violent tendency is paralleled by how badly they did in school].

After reading that passage, a mind blind to sarcasm [or suffering from a rare form of dementia] may wonder if Metasebia Seifu does indeed believe that her lot is justifiably cast with “the black in America: the children of ex-slaves, affirmative-actions-Jackson’s and welfare queens”. If she believes every time a non-black person sees her, they should associate her with obese women, angry kids, and men who wear their pants close to their knees when they aren’t decking themselves out in a flashy luxurious attire that reminds one of a male-peacock; albeit a very unattractive male peacock with a golden tooth.

A mind not blind to sarcasm, on the other hand, or isn’t suffering from a rare form of dementia, would not only realize that she doesn’t but in fact it is the bitterness brought about by such associations that makes her go into detailing other [more personal] stereotypes against her “skin kins”, as she sometimes refers to them: How they are considered violent, lazy, fat, angry, ugly, and of interior intelligence. [The late Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice nonetheless, has gone so far as to observe [during a court hearing!, in the presence of the media!, and black prosecutors and white defendants!]: “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”] And how she feels her skin-color, through those stereotypes, is putting her at a disadvantage not just in life but in love as well.

Lessons learnt on race and sarcasm is the gist of this article by Siri Srinivas on The Guardian as it relates to Justine Socco’s infamous quote from 2013 and the fall out thereof. It argues how Justine’s comment was “so outrageous that it had to be a joke”. How, according to researchers in Israel who constructed an algorithm that can detect sarcasm, the very definition of the word is “The activity of saying or writing the opposite of what you mean, or of speaking in a way intended to make someone else feel stupid or show them that you are angry.” But since the “snowflake” “PC Police”, as Bill Maher disparagingly refers to anyone daring to take an offense against insensitivity, have made a habit of flying into [“fake”?] out/rage at any hint of whites trying to be funny or sarcastic at the expense of inferior races/minorities and/or groups of people, she was prosecuted unjustly.

Etcetera. Etcetera.

[Final conclusion provided by the blogger of this post who is fucking tired of Bill Maher’s attack on few well-meaning guys while the bad guys are tearing America and decency and goodness thread by thread]

[Speaking of stand up comedians, has any one of you came across Gary Gulman? His “It’s about time”, free on Netflix, has become my go to place when I need to laugh. Ricky Gervais should take a page from his book on how to entertain an audience without having to resort to utter vulgarism, See Ricky Gervais pedophile jokes]

Alas, Justine Socco and what became of her because of that stupid and/or misunderstood joke [but mainly stupid – because it didn’t come with a second tweet explaining how and who it was meant to mock] isn’t the reason for this post. The reason for this post is the pleasure – the absolute delight – of coming across the following article by an accomplished! gay! black! African! man [one doubts it can get more bitter/sarcastic than that] – attached to the aforementioned The Guardian article.

[Have I mentioned how I love, nay, worship Kenyan men? How I believe them to be the most elegant, intelligent, and well-spoken guys in Africa?! How I have had a crush on four of the four Kenyan men I have had the pleasure of working with – while still in love and in a relationship with men of my choice?! And how I would not hesitate to spend the rest of my life with a man from Kenya, granted he is also cute, if I were to break up with Troy?!]

The article is entitled “How to write about Africa”. See if you can spot the sarcasm.

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT AFRICA
Binyavanga Wainaina

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African’s cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Continue reading!

Another white man mispronounces Negus [Nəgūś] as “Niggas”

First there was this  retarded kid:

Followed by the retraded judge from the spelling bee.

Then all these posts on google search trying to find a correlation between the word “Negus” and “Niggas”.

Even a Nick Cannon video entitled “The Real Niggas Versus the Real Negus”

[Then again, “what do you expect from a one dollar dish”, as Seble, my college class-mate, used to say]

Now it is someone you’d have thought would do his homework before going ahead and insulting a whole nation of people on national TV: One Alex Trebek from Jeopardy!.

So … the difference between a Nigger and a Nəgūś

A Nəgūś has head of states and royalties bow to him, the way Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip did for Ethiopia’s Emperor, Haileseassie I:

A “Nigger”, , on the other hand, wears bling and diamond grillz, marries a fat white chic, and begetts mixed-race children who are lazy, fat, and entitled.

If that.

Year Nine: I am a changed woman

So much that, in the space of 11 months, I have switched:

A city: because Seattle is being taken over by East Indians, becoming less attractive by the day

A career: because an immigrant can go only thus far avoiding her fate – of earning her living in the medical field [albeit after graduating with a 4.0 GPA, bitches!]

And a relationship status: because you gotta either shit or get off the pot, as they say, after 5 years of dating the same man.

[I chose to shit, because good pots are hard to come by]

But not all news is good news. And not all change is for the better. For circumstances has seen to it that I become estranged from the only family I have in America, trudge through the day without my best friend the radio, [what is there to listen to but how Obama’s legacy is being dismantled every day?] and not be able to take a stroll without being seen and commented upon by either my co-workers or Troy’s.

All this may or may not have contributed to my alcohol abuse problem, my 3+ years insomnia, and the fact that I am unwilling to have a mammogram done despite the Planned Parenthood lady finding a potentially cancerous lump in my right breast [although I never cease to tell “my” patients how early diagnosis is important for good prognosis; and my dead-beat insurance can probably ill-afford the treatment].

But is that what sometimes keeps me up half a night, twiddling my thumb like a timid character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel? No, sir, what keeps me up half the night twiddling my thumb is the fear that something bad would happen to Dr. Abiy Ahmed and all would be lost back home; the way America became undone because Democrats decided to write off the 2016 Election as their last love-letter to the Clintons.

እግዚአብሔር ኢትዮጵያን ይጠብቅ!!