Sawubona! (hello). Unjani (how are you?). In: isiZulu, language spoken in South Africa and parts of Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. The following entry is my first ever piece written in Zulu!!

Mistaking Africa: Problem Defined

On a recent trip to South Africa, I experienced some of the misunderstanding that Curtis Keim explains in his book, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind. As I was giving a walking tour of Zonkizizwe, South Africa (the township I had been living in for three months working at a children’s center) to a visiting group of Michigan State University students, several girls began to take pictures of children standing by the side of the road.

     It is refreshing to read African perspectives on the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed on African countries by Bretton Woods institutions, as is the case in Our Continent Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment.

January 15th, 2009. 5pm.

Hello everyone, and welcome 2009 Class of YP4-- you've almost made it through your first day of the Summit!

I know about structural racism …. Racial oppression through entrenched systems in society through various public bodies, laws, corporations, the prison system, universities...you name it. But when the idea of racial oppression through use of language was introduced to me, I was suddenly taken aback. I had never though about it before-- was there such a thing as a linguistic hierarchy?

For those of you in Michigan or around the greater Lansing area, we hope you can come out for this great event!! Please let others know!

Last week I wrote about a certain transformation of mine--one of racial transcendence and of forming bonds of solidarity with African-African Americans. I told you how I overcame my fears about personally interacting with Black people and how I was able to build strong relationships with people I would have otherwise avoided, simply because they were “different” from myself.

Before most people meet me, they assume that I am Black. Take one look at my resume, academic major, class schedule, the walls of my room, or even my Facebook page interests, and if not accompanied by a picture or the real thing, people are often taken for surprise.

Hey everyone, here's an update about the worker's strike going on in Chicago from the People's Weekly World Newspaper, 12/11/08