Enslaved Africans, Then and Now

In a recent New York Times book review, Jincy Willett reveals that Henry Alford, the author of Will It Kill You To Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners, sat down with “Miss Manners” to  interview her for the book. During the interview, he learned that “the manners of the Southern white aristocracy were originally imparted by household slaves, whose origins were often considerably less humble than their owners.”

That statement triggered the memory of a comment made to me many years ago by a fellow pilot. He said – and I paraphrase – You must be glad that your ancestors were slaves because you are better off here than you would have been if they had stayed in Africa.

I left him with “If you only knew …” only because it wasn’t the right time nor place to teach History of Slavery 101. The offhand anecdote in the book review and the memory of his comment, however, opened a flood of thoughts about America’s willful ignorance of the ecology of the slave trade. How blind we are to a thoughtful understanding of the impact of one of history’s most barbaric eras even though it was the era that gave rise to modern civilization as we know it.

Enslaved Africans and contemporary Africans were and are not the Africans of popular imagination and stereotype. It is well documented that contact with European explorers, who were equipped with the difference-makers, guns and steel, destroyed numerous local governance structures on the continent of Africa before the discovery of the Americas and the advent of the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Reeling from the rapacious assault of Europeans searching for gold and other continental riches, the political and cultural collapse of many African civilizations in the 15th century was the first blow that led to the eventual burial of Africa’s claim to a heritage of civilization.

The most important aspect of the trans-Atlantic trade in kidnapped human beings is opaque to the orthodox narrative of history and that is this: only the best, only the brightest, only the strongest, only the healthiest Africans were captured and enslaved.

It should be obvious that traffickers in human cargo would leave behind the weak, the elderly, the infirm, the physically and mentally challenged. The raiders faced the prospects of long, arduous marches to the ports and the slavers faced hazardous, often month long sea voyages, both with precious investments that had to be kept alive and healthy. For hundreds of years, raiders and slavers depopulated societies and networked villages of their kings, their queens, their priests, their warriors, their midwives, their farmers, their fishermen, their builders, their hunters, their healers, their skilled craftsman, their laborers, their merchants and their tradesmen. The healthiest keepers and guardians of stability, of infrastructure, of technology and of continuity for society and civilization were marched away from their ancestral environment. Those left behind, if they were allowed to survive the attacks, were the least able and equipped to rebuild even a poor semblance of the former society that was decimated before their eyes. Is it any wonder that, after at least 50 decades of malicious intervention, the result is the varieties of cultural regression that could manifest as stereotypes to the uninformed observer?

Yet, the miracle of the resilient, human spirit is displayed in the talent and industriousness of today’s African, whose capabilities and potential contributions to humanity are blunted but not blighted by artificial political units established by colonial powers for the benefit of the invaders and the detriment of the inhabitants. Despite the crushing history of disadvantage, the continent continues to produce the Wangari Maathais, the David Adjayes and the Jimoh Buraimohs of our times.

So it is by no means a stretch of imagination to accept the idea that some American colonists and plantation owners, many of whom were the dregs of Britain who had no future prospects except to take a chance at viability in a strange new land, learned the basics of manners and courtly behavior from the best and brightest among their African captives.

And no, I’m not happy that my ancestors were enslaved.

Making Things: Part II

Corporate America’s hunger for excess profits and Wall Street’s thirst for short-term growth are no match for the coming wave. They’re doing it with our money.

 

A Chinese enterprise buys 128 new genome sequencers (from a US company) to become the largest research center of its kind in the world.

 

China invests heavily in new airport infrastructure.

 

China invests heavily in high-speed rail.

 

Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Christie cancels the building of a new tunnel to augment the 100 year old two track tunnel that carries all AMTRAK and commuter rail from New Jersey. Can anyone say “hardening of the arteries?”

 

China invests heavily in electric vehicles.

 

China-takes-on-America-in-electric-car-race.

 

We are about to learn how to live in a second rate country because our jobs have been shipped overseas.

Making Things

There are reasons why the United States and its allies won World War II. First and foremost was the sacrifice of our GIs as well as the good people of Europe who fought to free themselves of their conquerers. Running a close second, however, is one major fact; the industries of the United States simply out-produced the Axis alliance by a huge margin. Ships, airplanes, jeeps, trucks, tanks, artillery, rifles, ammunition, bombs, clothing, food, tents, communication gear; American factories poured out the material necessities that allowed allied forces to push the aggressors back to their borders and then to crush them decisively. Without our factories and our labor force, the WW II could not have been won.

During WW II there was no distinction between defense and consumer industry. Auto manufacturers, such as Ford, GM and others, converted their capacity to build bombers and fighter aircraft, designed by Boeing, Lockheed, Douglass and other airplane companies while rolling out trucks, tanks and other motorized vehicles for our highly mechanized military. Every machine shop in the country was enlisted in the war effort and they responded by running three shifts per day. Our steel mills and foundries were up to the task of supplying the raw materials for manufacturing that kept those factories humming. Despite the heavy losses of men and material on the battlefield, our stuff could not be kept from landing on their shores. America was about the business of making things.

Fast forward. There are now countless corporations trading on stock exchanges whose sole customer is the United States Government and more particularly, the Pentagon. American defense industries are locked into building arms for wars that are not being fought; arms that have evolved frighteningly high acquisition costs and yet are unsuitable for current threats. Meanwhile, consumer industries, once the backbones of our economy, have stripped the United States of most of its manufacturing capabilities and sent them overseas. They did so to take advantage of lower labor costs but the benefit came not in lower prices for consumers but in ever higher profits for financiers and corporate managers.

Today our military’s highly computerized fighting machines and communication devices are increasingly dependent on components and chips that are manufactured overseas, particularly in countries that have no sympathetic investment in America’s national interests. The immediate result is that our balance of payments to foreign entities are so out of whack that the United States may have to beg the very countries to which we outsourced our manufacturing capabilities to finance and supply our next big war. There is no guarantee that they will be willing to do that. In fact, they may be the countries that we will be fighting. Imagine the United States sending our military to fight the very countries that were (by then, it will be past tense) supplying their aircraft and missile guidance computers with chips and their fighting machines with sub-assemblies? We could not have won WW II under that scenario.

America is no longer about the business of making things. The American people did not vote to outsource our jobs. It was the insatiable corporate appetite for more profits, propelled by the quarterly demands of Wall Street markets that rewarded managers hugely for cobbling together systems – especially the Damocles-Sword of outsourced manufacturing – that produced continual short-term growth at the expense of the long term health of our economy. In turn, the markets cobbled together their own systems for even more profits that fueled both the late unsustainable boom and the current uncontrollable bust. All because an unelected few decided that they could make more money if we stopped making things here.

In my opinion, evidence is mounting to indicate that our corporate class – by investing in placing heavy and even light manufacturing plants and jobs overseas – has invested in the seeds of America’s eventual destruction. I hope that I am wrong.

Emerging World Leaders: Ushahidi

It’s a tragedy that many of us know more about the prison records of dysfunctional film stars and self-absorbed athletes than we know about some of the wonderful young people who are changing the world for the better. Here is another entry in an ongoing series that I have decided to entitle Emerging World Leaders.

It’s time we take notice of an internet service, Ushahidi, that has taken the world by storm and recognize the contributions of its founders, Ory Okolloh and David Kobia . Ushahidi is an open-source software package that allows users to submit eyewitness reports of conflicts or disasters over their cellphones. The reports are translated into geographical data that pinpoint the locations of events as they unfold in real time. Their innovative project has spawned a new word in the technophile’s vocabulary; “Crowdsourcing.”

Ushahidi is a Swahili word that translates as “witness” or “testimony” and it lived up to its name by mapping reports of violence after a Kenyan election when news of riots and repression were blacked out by government controlled media. Ushahidi also aided rescue and aid crews during the first weeks of the upheaval caused by the earthquakes in Haiti and Chili as well as in many other incidences of crises around the globe. The founders, both Kenyans expatriates – Okolloh, a lawyer and blogger in South Africa and Kobia, a software and website developer in the United States – crafted the basic package in one weekend. From there, with Kobia’s guidance the software was evolved into an evermore robustly adaptable tool whose potential for social impact is exciting the international research and humanitarian communities.

Driving While Awake

Everyone has their own opinion of what constitutes reckless driving but on the interstate or other limited access highways, excess speed is not high on the list. I say that because only a tiny percent of the cars that I observe on those roads are driven at or below the posted speed limit. Yet many drivers believe that speed kills and hold in low regard people who drive faster than themselves; that is, those who exceed the posted speed limit more than they do.

A recent blog on the New York Times website, Want to drive 90 in Nevada? Buy a Pass, highlighted this issue and the readers’ comments corroborated my observations. The blogpost examined a Nevada gubernatorial candidate’s proposal to sell passes to drivers who wanted to drive at 90 miles per hour on Nevada highways. Without going into detail about the merits of that proposed system, I think that the concept has promise but it does not go far enough.

The vast majority of drivers do not take to the highways with the intention of scaring themselves witless. In other words, drivers are not going to drive so fast that fear is something that they must stifle in order to function. Therefore if higher speed limits are set, I don’t believe that we will see a large spike in the actual speed of cars on the highway. People tend to drive at speeds with which they are comfortable.

The Interstate Highway System was conceived during the Eisenhower administration. Highway’s were designed to enable trucks to be driven at 100 mph speeds during the era when the trucks and the huge cars of the day were fitted with narrow bias-ply tires, fade-prone drum brakes, slow responding power steering and weak, soft suspensions. Raising speed limits were considered in the early 1970s before the first oil crisis rocked the nation and 55 mph became a federal mandate, providing a bonanza for local and state law enforcement. Currently, here in the northeast where the posted speed limits never exceed 65 mph, many if not most drivers drive between 75 and 80 mph, well within the design range of the highways and the capabilities of modern cars and trucks.

Driving is a privilege, not a right. That much is clear even with the loose licensing and registration processes here in the United States. Unfortunately, the requirements for obtaining the privilege are set relatively low in order to satisfy the profit margins of the auto and petroleum industries. As a result, virtually everybody who reaches the age of maturity has obtained a drivers license, except perhaps in the public transportation mecca, New York City. However, another result is that the level of driver competence and skill is minimal at best.

My proposal is simple and straightforward. States should issue graduated drivers licenses much as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does for pilots. I suggest a Beginner license (level Z) for drivers, age 15 through 17 with passenger and night driving restrictions, a Basic license (level C) which is equivalent to the current license, an Intermediate license (level B) which would require more training and would allow drivers to add 15 mph to any posted limit above 55 mph and an Advanced license (A) which would require a driver to have still more training plus a special certification package – an inspection tag and transponder – for her or his vehicle. Level A drivers will be allowed to add 30 mph to any posted speed limit above 55 mph but the license would revert to a level B license in a car without the certification package. Progressive licensing and certification package fees would guarantee increased revenue for the state while increased training for all drivers – with an emphasis on lane discipline – would promote highway safety.

With his proposal, the Nevada politician placed his state’s potential revenue windfall above highway safety by catering to the fantasy of many drivers while requiring nothing more from them than money. Lost in the quest for votes is an opportunity for public discussion about the regulation of a major component of our way of life, one that kills too many citizens and maims too many more.

Cars are safer and more capable than they have ever been but the laws of physics have not been repealed. In the chain of decisions and events that lead to highway accidents, it is the driver that is the weak link. That is the only conclusion I can come up with as I drive on snowy days in my supposedly unmanageable rear-wheel-drive sedan and notice that most of the vehicles that have spun off the road are four-wheel-drive SUVs.

People We Should Know

People We Should Know

There is an antidote for the headlines of the day. Positive people doing positive things who don’t make the evening news.

David Blackwell, mathematician who influenced probability and game theory.

Philip Emeagwali, mathematician whose algorithms made the internet feasible.

Ted Ginn, Sr., high school coach and mentor to young men.

Lonnie Johnson, nuclear engineer and inventor of the very successful Super Soaker squirt gun.

Jamail Larkins, founder and CEO of Ascension Aircraft.

Michael Seibel, co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv the largest live video site on the internet.

This is a sequel to an earlier blogpost, the title of which -as an incentive for you to scan back and check out my earlier stuff – I won’t reveal. As I continue to encounter barely noticed stories of cultural contributions by people of African descent, I will share them in this blog as a way to balance the weight of negative media.

Charter Cities?

Stanford University economist, Paul Romer proposed an idea that he believes can bring an eventual end to the cycle of poverty in undeveloped countries (Sebastian Mallaby; “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty.” The Atlantic. July/August, 2010.). His proposal is to establish “charter cities” in poor countries to provide an economic model of development that is not tied to their government’s presumably dysfunctional policies. The logic is analogous to charter schools which, by not being required to follow the work rules of the teacher’s unions, can enforce accountability while operating in the same environment as public schools. Another analogy is the influence of Hong Kong which, Romer asserts, provided China with a model of an acceptable path to economic vitality. Romer’s “charter cities” are to be administered by the governments of economically advanced western states.

The precedent for this proposal is the 12th century establishment of an international city to serve as a mecca for merchants by bypassing the tariffs, the taxes and the entrenched hierarchies that were common in the principalities of the time. This city, Lübeck, now in Germany, was the foundation for the Hanseatic League, an economic dynamo that powered European commerce for nearly 500 years.

Not only has Paul Romer conceived this big idea, he has been flying around the world in an attempt to implement it. That he has had no success should come as no surprise as the proposal bears a striking resemblance to colonialism. The few governments that indicated that they were willing to implement Romer’s charter city approach faced political turmoil and worse. Romer’s failure to promote the concept of charter cities rests directly on unexamined assumptions about undeveloped states – particularly those in Africa – which blind him to the realities that derail his enterprise.

The first assumption is that poverty in the undeveloped world is caused exclusively by inherent indigenous weakness and have no basis in policies generated by the governments and corporations of the nations that he envisions as charter city administrators. In the fifty years of independence in Africa, foreign aid and World Bank loans have had the effect of impoverishing African governments through debt while recycling the majority of the funds back to western contractors who design and build infrastructure projects. Corporate investments are little more than payoffs to the Swiss bank accounts of local strongmen for the exclusive rights to natural resources. The funds do not get to the colony-states’ national treasuries, yet their governments must pay off the debt. The societies get no technology transfer and often, no functional infrastructure. The people get no educational advancement, no useful skills, no permanent employment, except in commodity farming that pay’s the governments’ debt but deny them subsistence. Meanwhile any manufactured or processed item deemed necessary for modern existence must be imported. One can only conclude that the western countries’ policies toward Africa have been an unqualified success.

The second assumption that Romer and most western observers hold is that the governments in Africa are legitimate and representative. Further – as I outlined in my blog-piece Cut Africa Loose – the assumption is that African countries are viable in the long term as nation-states when, in fact, they are colony-states. Most of the recently stable nation-states of Europe are populated by ethnically and linguistically homogeneous peoples, perhaps with relatively small indigenous minorities that have signed off on the current governance order – Bretons in France, for example. No African state has that luxury, their borders having been drawn centuries ago by foreign powers. For example, instead of the Yoruba state of Ife, the Hausa state of Kano and the Igbo state of Biafra the world must enforce the existence of a country named by the wife of a British colonial functionary, Nigeria, whose many governments have yet to prove that they rule by the consent of the governed.

Romer’s third assumption is that his personal success, his academic standing and his reputation as an innovative thinker give him a special insight to solve problems for which he has no basis of understanding and that they prepare him to negotiate with African governments to advance this latest brainstorm. The fact is that his obvious hubris defines his failure. “I revived growth theory, I made technology work in higher ed. I am two for two, and I think the impossible can be done.” As a result there is blood on his hands. Romer convinced the president of Madagascar that a charter city should be established but, in his ignorance, he failed to meet with the leaders of the opposition group to gain their public support for the project. The result was that the agreement gave political leverage to the opposition leader who organized street demonstrations and strikes. In the violence that erupted as government police fired on demonstrators, 28 people died and the president with whom he negotiated was deposed. Paul Romer cannot repeal the law of unintended consequences.

The fourth assumption is a subset of the first three; that the success of western governments and economies make them the best hope for solving the problem of poverty in Africa. After all, the west is two for two, isn’t it? Sending the fox to guard the henhouse, however, can only have predictable results.

It is appalling that Paul Romer can do so much damage without being called to account and held liable. He admits to no mistakes and feels no sense of responsibility or remorse for the lives lost as a result of his meddling. Of course, it’s not as if they were members of his family. They were only 28 Africans, a small price to pay for burnishing his reputation and embossing his name on the pages of history.

Cut Africa Loose

The colony-state experiment on the African continent has failed. Africa, the cradle of humanity, contains some of the richest mineral deposits and some of the finest arable land in the world, yet, since “independence” was wrested from European colonizers in the 1960s, Africa cannot offer much more than political instability, coups d’etat, kleptocratic, dictatorial regimes, poverty, disease and warfare as its most visible legacy.

The idea that the world system of civilization should be based on the nation-state model within currently recognized, sacrosanct borders is an ideal that can only be realized if the borders of nation-states follow rational principles of ethnic and linguistic cohesion. These rational principles can only evolve through natural cycles of localized political and military struggle that are necessary to establish the social contract between population and their governing entities. No matter what form government power takes, the consent of the governed peoples is necessary for long-term political and economic stability. Despite structures erected to enforce national sovereignty by the international community, African colony-states – whose boundaries are defined, not by natural evolution of indigenous military, economic and political forces, but by rapacious European colonial powers that held dominion for 500 years – cannot stand. It’s time to cut Africa loose.

The apparent stability currently observed in Europe, is made up of regional and local groups which have coalesced into statehood with populations who, to varying degrees, accept and are willing to uphold the existing governance model. This governance model was established, as revealed by even a cursory study of European history, by centuries of warfare, empire building, empire collapse, more warfare, treaties, alliances and still more warfare. Stability in Europe, finally galvanized by the senseless, traumatic horror of two mechanized 20th century wars, is still a work-in-progress rather than a fait accompli.

Grading contemporary Europe on a scale of zero to ten, one has to consider the failed Yugoslavia experiment as a zero and as a European analog of the eventual fate of the Africa colony-state experiment. The international community supported the Yugoslavia experiment until the fault lines in that nation-state cracked irrevocably, precipitating its disintegration and collapse. The fault lines in Yugoslavia were modest, on the surface. There, relatively homogeneous ethnic populations that intermingled, intermarried and spoke the same language were split by a centuries-old, externally imposed religious distinctions and mutually exclusive alphabet systems, also externally imposed and centuries old. These differences were enough to tear asunder the fabric of Yugoslavia – families, villages and states – in bloody warfare. The result is Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo (still claimed by Serbia), Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Vojvodina ( an autonomous province of Serbia). Clearly, the last has not been heard from the typically fluid political cauldron of the Balkans.

States such as Spain can be graded as a six. Their cobbling together of Andalusians, Catalans, Basques, Galicians and other groups – all under the hegemony of the Castilians – is slowly reverting into semi-autonomous regions where the over-riding Spanish language (actually Castilian and referred to as such in Spain and South America) is now taught in schools but only alongside the regional tongues. Belgium might be graded as a three. In Belgium, the Walloons (the more Latinate French speakers) and the Flemish (the more Germanic, Dutch speakers) barely associate with each other. A remnant of a complex political history with its origins in the Roman Empire, the Belgium experiment remains fractious and divisive to this day. Some observers opine that the fact that its capitol, Brussels, has been designated the seat of Europe’s post World War II effort to form a European Union is the glue that is holding this small country together. Interestingly, a peaceful dissolution played out recently when the former Czechoslovakia experiment, held together in the last half of the 20th century by the Soviet Empire, decided in 1993 to become two states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, commonly known as Slovakia.

If the European geopolitical map can evolve – sometimes peacefully, sometimes not – why must the borders of Africa be so rigidly enforced by their former colonial masters, by the current world superpower (a wonderful pseudonym for empire) and the “international community?” Why, for example, must the ethnically, religiously and linguistically coherent nations of the Igbo, the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba be forced to masquerade inside of a fiction called Nigeria?

There are 25 million Igbo in Africa. There are 35 million Hausa in Africa. There are 30 million Yoruba in Africa. There are 8 million Swedes in Europe. There are 2.5 million Slovenians in Europe. There are 13 million Portuguese in Europe. There are 6 million Slovakians in Europe. Guess which nations listed above have no state nor status within the international community?

The legacy of colonialism weighs heavily on Africa today, more than fifty years after “independence.” In Africa, the political instability, the wars, the coups and the dictatorships of the last half century, the consequences of “liberating” colonies whose artificial borders simultaneously separated viable cohesive ethnic groups and corralled multiple hostile ethnic groups, while superimposing foreign systems of linguistic, political and economic governance, were predictable and very likely intended. Stable and credible regimes in the region would have prevented the rape of mineral resources that helped to fuel the post-war industrial renaissance that buoyed the economies of the western nations in the same way that the African slave trade did five centuries earlier.

While the Czech and Slovak model of dissolution would be a preferable solution, the legacy of colonialism and the current international doctrine of the sanctity of current borders promise the dissolution of African colony-states by processes resembling the bloody Yugoslavian model. The natural beginning of that process was aborted when the Biafra revolt was crushed in 1970 but one has only to look at the Sudan or the Congo today to witness again the agonizing death-throes of the failed Africa experiment. As much as the sensibilities of the West might be offended (as if they never had anything to do with violence and genocide on African soil) and as much as the developed world’s uninhibited access to the riches of the continent may be compromised, the dissolution of the colony-states in Africa is the only vehicle for the long term prosperity of African people in their own lands. That is why it won’t be allowed to happen.

Textbooks

Ideations on $200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math.

This is a nice enough article but these players are stuck at least halfway within the old paradigm.

Why not truly make open source school textbooks available to anyone for FREE on the internet not “different value-based pricing models.” Level the playing field for the poor and disadvantaged. No more heavy school textbooks. Bypass the state regulators. Defrock the textbook publishing priesthood.

How can this be done? By building on the Wikipedia open source model. If they were to do it (they own the “Wiki” trademark so don’t do this at home) it might conceivably be structured as different websites; WikiMathGrade1, WikiMathGrade2, etc, … WikiWorldHistoryGrade7, etc. … WikiEnglishGrade12, etc. … WikiCollegeAlgebra, etc.

Scott McNealy has the bucks and the clout to do it. The name of his non-profit, Curriki suggests that he gets the Wikipedia concept but his website is just another weak, old-school clearing house. Wikipedia didn’t simply direct internet surfers to Funk & Wagnalls. Wikipedia crashed the party and blew them away. McNealy shows us why he lost control of Sun Microsystems; No vision.

Pipe Dreams

One of the retirement benefits that I have bestowed upon myself is to take the opportunity to make the rounds of pipe organ concerts in NYC. Some are free (I love that) and others have low admission with senior rates (I have a love/hate relationship with that).

Ever since seeing Captain Nemo in the Jules Verne film “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” I have had a serious Jones for pipe organs. That’s a lie; my uncle Vernal Matthew was a fine concert/church organist and I had been surrounded by world-class organists throughout my life (more on that later). I did, however, learn to love Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” so there …

Anyhow, this evening at the Riverside Church, I had the surest confirmation that I had found the “Sweet Spot,” the optimum area of seating to get the best sound in the building. I had gotten there early and, based on my experience at First Presbyterian Church in the Village the week before, I had guessed that the sweet spot was 3/5s to 1/3rd of the way back from the front seats. During the short intermission after the organist finished a sterling, church-shaking rendition of Marcel Dupré’s “The Three Preludes and Fugues, Op. 7,” I turned around and recognized, sitting in the row directly behind me, Arthur Phillips. Sweet spot, indeed!

For some of you, Arthur Phillips needs no introduction. To those who don’t know him, Arthur Phillips and his late wife, Myrtle Gauntlett Phillips, were, for decades, Harlem’s go-to organists, choir directors and music teachers. I was fortunate to have grown up listening, on a regular basis, to their fine artistry.

The program’s organist, by the way, is a wonderfully gifted and accomplished African American artist by the name of Mickey Thomas Terry, Ph. D. You all should know about him.