White man making fun of Nkrumah's strange career = "colonistic essentialism." Black man making fun of Nkrumah's strange career = "Kongi's Harvest" = great literature. Right. The young Nkrumah's role in Pan-Africanism was vitally important to the move towards self government, and he is rightly famous for it. However, his wierd paranoia (living on a fortified island), self-induced cult of personality, unwillingness to abandon ineffective economic policies set a pattern that has been enumlated by reams of petty African dictators. Both are equal parts of his legacy, and are fair game for praise and ridicule, respectively. Matt > To solve what problems do exist, speaking as a white man, I guess the > best thing to do is to write questions that are not essentializing or > stereotyping. No needless ridiculing of Lord Krishna or Kwame > Nkrumah in bonus parts (anyone who remembers the Nkrumah "bust a cap" > bonus part from some tourney or another may agree). Be faithful to > the reality that your question research reveals to you, and try when > possible to eliminate the bizarre sort of colonialistic essentialism > that gobbles up lots of non-European history. And be open to new > knowledge. It's out there and worthwhile.
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