Midweek Edutainment #5

Subscribe to get these emailed to you every week

Greetings family,

I trust you are soaring and thriving in every area of life 🙏🏿 Ahead of our reading of Chapter 3 of Amos Wilson’s Blueprint For Black Power this Saturday, here is this week's serving of edutainment.

African Youth are Rising!

I was extremely happy to come across this breath-taking interview with a young Ghanaian boy on the topic of religion. His name is Okomfo Black and he is the son of a singer called Mzebel. If you swapped the voices and gave him an adult voice, and the interviewer a child’s voice, it would make more sense, because Okomfo is the one coming with high-level intellect. Mzebel has apparently been receiving criticism for this. As for me, I say kudos to you Mzebel, you are raising a powerful Black Star!

Everything you know about Liberia is wrong!

I’ve recently been looking into the state of Liberia. I’ve been used to completely dismissing Liberia as being a complete failure, a settler-colonial project whereby African Americans oppressed the indigenous Africans who were there when Liberia was created. But I’ve pretty much completely changed my thoughts on this, having watched lots of videos primarily from a brother called Jabari Lamb of the Black Afrikan Infrastructure Organization. This video is probably the one that most clearly lays out all of the key points. Check it out.

Why Egypt won’t open its borders to Palestinian refugees

The Israel-Palestine conflict continues to throw up fascinating geopolitical dimensions. I’ve previously pointed out that the Arab states have been very forceful in their refusal to accept any Palestinian refugees coming into their lands. This excellent article from Foreign Policy breaks down the reasons for their reluctance. I strongly urge anyone interested in getting behind the emotion and really overstanding world affairs to check out publications like Foreign Policy. Click the image below for the article.

Facebook stoking humanitarian abuses and violence in Ethiopia

One of the worst aspects of social media is the algorithms. They are designed to keep people on these platforms, and part of this involves identifying content which grabs people’s attention and drives engagement in the form of comments, likes, etc. Unfortunately, during times of political crisis, these algorithms can help spread misinformation with violent effects. We all need to be responsible and verify any information before sharing. But these tech platforms need to fix up too. Amnesty International has accused Meta of failing “to take sufficient measures to address dangerous rhetoric on its platforms, despite receiving repeated warnings from Ethiopian civil society groups and human rights experts about the risks this posed in escalating tensions and enabling violence during the conflict.“ Click the image below for more on this.

Mr T was more conscious than you realised!

Finally, those of you of a certain vintage will remember Mr T. He was a pretty big deal in the eighties, starring as BA Baracus in the original A-Team series, as well as Clubber Lang in Rocky 3. He is generally portrayed as a joke/buffoon character, for some valid reasons. But in this clip, he demonstrates that at least back in the day, he had some African consciousness. In this interview, he gives a fantastic explanation of his distinctive hairstyle - and all that gold. Click the image below to check it out.