If there’s one thing that blacks of the diaspora share, it’s that our people’s history is obscure. We know general trends: the regions in Africa from which most slaves were extracted, the busiest slave ship routes, the typical routines on various types of plantations, etc… But we lack specifics. I don’t know from which African…
English is the national language in Ghana. But, like in many colonial states, local languages are usually learned first and Ghanaians don’t really start learning English until they are of schooling age. There are a lot of tribal languages spoken in Ghana and it is quite common for a Ghanaian to speak English, 3 or…
I’ve been in the Motha Land for a little over three weeks now and I’ve yet to deliver on my promise to my many anxious followers that I would blog while I was here. I’ve had a lot of poignant moments which deserve sharing but it’s a little hard to know where to start. So,…
During the Spring of 2006, I decided to change my name. I had always figured that my last name, Goodridge, was a slave name. It is my father’s name, his father’s before him, and his father’s before him. All black men. Goodridge certainly didn’t seem like an African name so I assumed that it was…
“Although some African Americans are doing very well—enrolling in universities and graduate schools at record rates thanks to affirmative action—as a group, African Americans are doing no better than they were when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated… Nearly one-fourth of African Americans live below the poverty line today, approximately the same as in 1968.…
In my recent post about Trayvon Martin, I wrote that racism has evolved. I didn’t get any comments or questions about that post but I could tell that as millions of people across America were reading it they were thinking to themselves, “What do you mean, Anand? How has racism changed? PLEASE TELL ME MORE!”…
After making my last post I’ve had a little time to think and I’d like to expand on something that I don’t think I was clear about.
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want…
