Ndey,

Prof. Ali Mazrui's critique of the BBC/PBS series "Wonders of the African
World" by Havard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. could not have been more apt.

Having closely followed the programme on PBS myself, I was astounded by
Prof. Gates's utter disregard for certain significant facets of Africa's
past and his sneering and distorted view of present-day social and cultural
practices in Africa.  His presentation, while having the allure of a
fruitful intellectual research, bore the hallmarks of Western prejudice
against Africa's contribution to human civilization. On the surface, it
looks like Prof. Gates is trying to uplift Africa's past from that abyss of
prejudice to show the whole world that "look, after all, we also did
contribute something".  Therein lies the contempt and the irony!  In some
instances, he arrogantly portrays the colonial picture of a
Stanley-meet-Mutesa.
That a historian of Prof. Gates's calibre would deliberately ignore the
black origins of pharaonic Egypt is an indication of the very Western
prejudice he was all along speaking against.  He, without any doubt, needs
to re-read Cheikh Anta Diop!

It is time that African-American intellectuals such as Prof. Gates discard
their Hollywoodian approach to reading African history.

____________________________________


>From: Ndey Jobarteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Fw: [BRC-NEWS] A Preliminary Critique of "Wonders of the African
>            World"
>Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 00:51:07 +0100
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ali A Mazrui <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>Date: 31 October 1999 05:42
>Subject: [BRC-NEWS] A Preliminary Critique of "Wonders of the African
>World"
>
>
> >October 28, 1999
> >
> >A PRELIMINARY CRITIQUE OF THE TV SERIES by HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.
> >
> >By Ali A. Mazrui <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> >Since I have myself done a television series about Africa, perhaps I
> >should keep quiet about Skip Gates' WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD
> >especially since I agreed to write a blurb for his companion book. I saw
> >the book as a special *African-American view of Africa*. But I had not
> >seen the TV series when I wrote the blurb for the book. In any case Skip
> >is a friend with whom I have profound disagreements.
> >
> >I believe the TV series is more divisive than the book. The first TV
> >episode sings the glories of ancient Nubia (understandably) but at the
> >expense of dis-Africanizing ancient Egypt. On the evidence of a European
> >guide, Gates allows ancient Egyptians to become racist whites trampling
> >underfoot Blacks from Upper Nile. Are ancient Egyptians no longer
> >Africans?
> >
> >The second episode of the TV series on the Swahili supremely ignores the
> >scholarly Swahili experts on the Swahili people. He interviews none on
> >camera. Instead Gates decides to confront either carefully chosen or
> >randomly selected members of the Swahili community with racial-questions
> >which were abstracted from survey-forms of North American opinion polls.
> >
> >The program is obsessed with RACE in American terms. Did the people Gates
> >was interviewing have the remotest idea what he was really talking about?
> >What is more, his translator seems determined to give the worst possible
> >interpretation of what was being said by interviewees in a place like
> >Lamu.
> >
> >Who is the best authority on Muslim atrocities in Zanzibar? Well, of
> >course a Christian missionary priest in Zanzibar! Gates does not find it
> >necessary to balance the testimony of such a biased witness with anything
> >else. Any journalist worth his salt would have done better than Gates!
> >
> >I thought that in episode three, which concerned the Trans-Atlantic slave
> >trade, Gates would at last regard the West and the white man as relevant
> >actors in the African tragedy. Before seeing the episode I said to a
> >colleague in Ohio that surely Gates could not deal with the
>Trans-Atlantic
> >slave trade without regarding the West and the white man as crucial!
>Boy!
> >Was I wrong? Gates manages to make an African to say that without the
> >participation of Africans there would have been no slave trade! How naive
> >about power can we get?
> >
> >Without the involvement of Africans, there would have been no colonialism
> >either. Without the involvement of Africans, there would have been no
> >apartheid. Without the involvement of African Americans, there would have
> >been no segregationist order in the Old South. Without Jewish capital,
> >there would have been less trans-Atlantic slave trade. Why did Gates pick
> >on the Asante (Ashanti) as collaborators in the trans-Atlantic
>slave-trade
> >and never mention European Jews at all as collaborators in the
> >slave-trade? (Leonard Jeffreys paid a price for involving the Jews in the
> >trade, but will Gates pay a price for involving the Asante?)
> >
> >I was so afraid that Gates' fourth program would be insulting to Ethiopia
> >that I was relieved that it was merely disrespectful. I wished he was
>more
> >politely dressed when he was granted an audience to a major religious
> >leader. I wished he kept his sarcasm about the authenticity of the
> >Covenant in check. I wished he did not make as many snide remarks which
> >trivialized other people's values. And I wished viewers were not kept
> >informed on camera as to how many car breakdowns he had had. Surely he
>had
> >better footage of African scenes!
> >
> >His fifth programme on Timbuktu returned to the issue of Africans
> >enslaving each other. Gates seemed incapable of glorifying Africa without
> >demonizing it in the second breath. Mali and Benin, countries of great
> >*ancient* kings, were also countries of *contemporary* slavery.
> >
> >Gates refused to listen when he was told that the new "slave" could
> >disobey his master, and was free to take autonomous employment. Gates was
> >given this information and chose not to pursue it. Was it really a case
>of
> >slavery?
> >
> >In this fifth episode Gates chose to denounce "the barbarity of female
> >circumcision". And yet the institution had just been mentioned in
>passing.
> >There was no attempt to introduce the viewer as to why millions of
> >Africans belonged to this culture of female circumcision in the first
> >place. Africans were not, after all, innate barbarians. So why had this
> >tradition survived for so long? The institution was mentioned as a
> >throw-away "play to the Western feminist gallery" (I am myself opposed to
> >female circumcision but I do not call its practitioners barbarians).
> >
> >His sixth episode on Southern Africa was to be the least upsetting. Gates
> >did try to capture the glories of pre-colonial Southern Africa and did
> >pose some of the challenges of the post-colonial and post-apartheid eras.
> >But even this sixth program was more of a tourist travelogue than a
> >serious portrayal of a people. It is hard to believe that such a TV
>series
> >was the product of such a brilliant mind!
> >
> >These are my first reactions. If I can bear to view the series again,
> >perhaps I should give it a second chance! But I fear that we have been
>let
> >down badly.
> >
> >
> >Ali Mazrui is Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies and Albert
> >Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, State University of New York at
> >Binghamton, New York, USA; Albert Luthuli Professor-at-Large, University
> >of Jos, Jos, Nigeria; Ibn Khaldun Professor-at-Large, School of Islamic
> >and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia, USA; and the Andrew D. White
> >Professor-at-Large Emeritus and Senior Scholar in Africana Studies,
> >Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
> >
> >-30-
> >
> >
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