Thursday, March 28, 2024

Cynthia Erivo Casted As Harriet Tubman & Black Intellectuals Respond to Explain the Problems? (WATCH)

Cynthia Erivo - Harriet Tubman
Cynthia Erivo – Harriet Tubman

*Calls to replace the Nigerian-British actress Cynthia Erivo who was casted as Harriet Tubman are making waves on social media. From twitter to instagram many are asking the question aren’t their descendants of American slavery that could play the role.

Despite what many have posted this whole discussion stems from the larger question black intellectual leaders  Yvette Carnell (Breakingbrown), and Attorney Antonio Moore (Tonetalks) have been asking about the recreation of American blackness as an African identity. Both have been strong advocates for looking at whether American DOS as they call them or Descendants Of Slavery are being forced to bear the cost of America’s oppressive legacy as their families struggle economically. All while newer immigrants create a veil covering that lasting shadow.

Moore & Carnell recently spoke to the issue with respective shows on the Tubman movie, Nigerian commentator Luvvie Ajayi who was caught making disparaging remarks about slavery on twitter, and a larger talk about why this even came to be where American #DOS are carved out of affirmative action created by Lyndon Johnson to be directly for their access. They cite to both Henry Louis Gates New York Times piece which makes clear 90 percent of African slaves were sold by west African traders. And the recent blockbuster New Yorker piece “My Great Grandfather the Nigerian Slave Trader”, in which a Nigerian writer in America on her own volition admitted to her family’s involvement with the transatlantic slave trade.

Watch their respective shows below. What are your thoughts Eurweb should she have been casted as Harriet Tubman over all the other great American black actresses?

Moore published a powerful piece here on EURweb on the topic “African Americans are more than just Africans in America”

Yet despite all of this, recent immigrants from the continent of Africa are striving to create what amounts to a solidarity of sameness with American DOS. One built largely around a narrative which encourages all blacks to view the continent of Africa as a sort of unified country, and the United States of America as merely a transient one. They envision a broad solidarity built on an identitarian oneness that—by its very nature—undermines the unique claim of reparations being owed to American DOS as a result of particular injustices they have borne since arriving in the country. Furthermore, this imagined coalition complicates the issue of who should even have a right to speak as a representative of American DOS on repairing the damage wrought upon black American families. Essentially the solidarity is the painting of a fantastical unified Africa that fought to get American DOS back since the day the first among them were stolen in 1619. It is truly a version of history in which Wakanda and Zamunda might as well exist. In effect this solidarity through African Americanness has become a one-way door that admits everyone with melanin and African origins, and allows them the ability to integrate—at least superficially—into the culturally embedded position that American DOS have traditionally exclusively occupied in the United States. While giving no specialized access to African countries for American DOS.

As a result, African immigrants just like American DOS are also provided with access to affirmative action policies which—importantly—were conceived as a manner of recourse for the American DOS community following centuries of discrimination. President Lyndon Johnson—in his 1965 commencement address at Howard University—emphasized how understanding the particular historical situation of American DOS, and its consequences, prompted such legislative action:

“But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

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