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Are Americans prejudiced in their opinions about Africa? They most certainly are. How could they be objective about African Negroes, when they are prejudiced against American Negroes? I disagree with you completely. I think Americans are prejudiced FOR African natives, and are very prejudiced against white people in Africa Well I'm getting confused. How can Americans be FOR and AGAINST Africans at the same time? Then I will confuse you even more. As an Ethiopian, I'm prejudiced against both white people and Negroes In our discussion are four high school students, from four different countries in Africa. Let me introduce them to you now Here is Amelia Addae from the Gold Coast (Ghana), Amelia is 18 years old Here is Susan Renny from the Union of South Africa, Susan is 17 Susan, those school uniforms, are they always that short? No, this is actually a dispensation. I'm a senior, but the other girls have to have them 3 inches above the knee Very interesting study in native costumes, thank you. Now let me introduce the boys Here is our baby for the night, 15 year old Mesfin Binega from Ethiopia And 16 year old Boniface Offokaja from Nigeria Now lets start out by asking you what some of your own prejudices are.
How about you Amelia, have you got any prejudices, say against the Nigerians? Yes, I have my own personal prejudice against the Nigerians. Coming from the Gold Coast, where there are many Nigerians, I think that I sometimes look down on the Nigerians as somewhat inferior to us Because you see, the Nigerians who come to the Gold Coast are mostly beggars, so that's my opinion about Nigerians That's funny I don't see how you have a case for your proposition Personally, I look to the Gold Coast not as inferiors, but perhaps as people that are individualistic...Who are not working towards a communal effort or toward the wealth of all nations They have of course made great strides, because they have a very small country, and yet they have all these differences in their country Mesfin, how about your prejudices, you admitted to several at the beginning Well, as I told you before we have our own prejudices against the African Negroes- we consider them as inferiors, of course we have our reasons for saying so What are they Mesfin? First, we consider ourselves to be of the lost tribe of Israel and not Negroes.
It's only because our faces are burned that we look like Negroes Also, we've been ruling parts of Africa for hundreds of years During the 16th century, we ruled parts of Egypt, Sudan, and as far down as Mozambique What about your prejudices against white men? Well back home, if a woman marries a white man she is considered mean. And when she dies the priest will not pray for her as he would for anyone else. It's considered like suicide Why do you think they look down on the white people so much? Well, the first reason is that religiously they consider them unclean because they eat pork, and that's prohibited in our religion Susan, have you got any prejudices? Oh, I think I've got some pretty large prejudices I think I'm very prejudiced against the foreign press, particularly the American press, because I've come up against a lot of discrimination myself while I've been here As a South Africaneverywhere I go, particularly in schools, the moment I mention I'm from South Africa...I'm discriminated against In the sense that the picture of South Africa, the situation has been so badly distorted, and so exaggerated - because racial news is sensational news and so journalists have so badly distorted the picture in South Africa, that when I come over here I'm looked down upon and I've really felt this discrimination.
I haven't been treated as just an individual and a human being, and I feel that the press is responsible for this I've been wanting to ask you a question for a long time when we all came here, you just took to me, you liked me very much and I like you, and I know you are a South African, and I'm an African so why is it that out here you are very friendly towards me, but in South Africa you won't do the same to the Negroes that are living there. can you tell me? well, it's the whole set up. In South Africa we have a pattern of life which is different to any other country in the world because you have the white population, which came to the country in 1652, and they are much more highly developed, coming from Europe, with European backgrounds and traditions and they have developed the country, and developed a highly civilized community whereas the Negroes, the Bantu as we call them in South Africa is on a very primitive level and the barrier in South Africa isn't so much colour, as civilization, and economically excuse me, on that point...we get into a very, very tense ground you talked about this question of it not being a racial struggle, but a struggle of civilization personally, you see, I quite sympathize with your situation because you live in a country where your economic position, and perhaps your future well being as a nation might be in danger if you allow the strong hearted, strident Africans to take over the government that is of course what will happen if they are given the vote nonetheless, let us come now to that basic issue of racial segregation I hear this honorable gentleman from Ethiopia...I think it's far time, it's high time Ethiopians come to decide where exactly they are i really wonder.
Are you negroes? you say you are not negroes. are you whites? you're not whites. what are you? well I told you the answer, we are not negroes, we are one of the lost tribes of Israel, it's just because our faces are burned that we look like this yes, yes, I got the point that you are "lost", i think that makes a conclusive end to it I'm wondering if Susan and Mesfin have something very much in common. neither one of you admit you're African, and yet both of you live in Africa and have for generations and generations I would say not actually, because we're a different ethnic group we're not Africans in the same sense as the negroes and other groups that actually originated in Africa but I consider South Africa my homeland and my fatherland, and I always will and there is a misconception that exists, most people think that the white settlers came to South Africa and took the land from people who...
It was so! oh no it was not, and I'll prove it to you! ...they think we came to South Africa and took it away, like the whites came to America and took it away from the indigenous occupants in 1652 when the first white settlers arrived at the cape, the Bantu, as they are now known - the negroes in South Africa were still coming down from equatorial Africa, migrating, and it is a fact they had not yet entered what is now known as South Africa, the borders of South Africa the only indigenous occupants in South Africa at that time were the Bushmen, and they were exterminated by the Bantu coming down excuse me Susan, on that point...I think you've read your history upside down how come? yes, you see what happened is that these Dutch, I think these were Dutch men, they didn't have a place in their homeland - no means of living let me finish...
Then I can prove to you how wrong your historical facts are no, you see your history is the South African history. mine is a bi-partisan history ...well these men came without any means of livelihood in their own country, with an economic background that had no meaning at all they came to South Africa and the real fact is that as they came, and there was an influx of these Dutch people from their unwanted homes there was this influx, the Bantus tended to push their boundaries up into the country, until came the Zulu war in which the Zulus were finally defeated, in the most bitter and agonizing struggle they had against these Afrikaaners...is that what you call them? I don't know where you get your historical facts from I got my historical facts from, I think is it...Mr. Trebilian , British historian Mr. George Trebilian knows nothing, and I'll say that Because it so happens that these penniless whites as you call them, didn't come up because they didn't have homes or any kind of persecution they were sent out as officials of the Dutch East India company to establish a refreshment station for ships passing around the bottom of the Cape just as the Dutch settlers were sent out to America by the Dutch West India company, to settle and to make a refreshment station here ...said that the settlers came up because they were penniless, they'd be just as indignant as I am and as you say that the white settlers came and pushed the Bantu back...
Yes it's a fact, that the whites went into the interior of Africa and didn't come into contact even, never even saw a Bantu until 1795 which is more than 100 years after they had arrived in South Africa how did you have the Zulu war, what brought it about? the Zulus had already...I think you need to have a look at a map Zululand is very far from the Cape where these people arrived a hundred years after the arrival of the white settlers, the Zulus, who are a part of the Bantu group, had already come down to Natal and then you had the two groups, one coming from the north, one coming from the south, and they mixed. and that's where you get the Zulu war it was not even a clash in the sense you are taking it, it was the British... it was a clash! ...the British, in their benevolence... because they had seen the facts that this is not good they were exercising their tempering force upon the people Boniface, just to make things more complicated for you and Susan, I've heard a third interpretation of this which just might settle it that was the fact that the Bantu were a migratory people, and it may be true that at some point when the whites came there were no Bantu there because they were migrating somewhere else but this is all past history now, I'd like to hear something from Mesfin and Amelia on their interpretation of South African history or rather, lets bring it up to the present, can't we? yes, yes, we'll bring it up lets come back Sue to your violent prejudices against the press, because they're misrepresenting what goes on in South Africa, do you want to clarify that a bit? yes I would.
I know one outstanding example of misrepresentation we read in an American magazine, i won't say the name although I could very easily this journalist quoted Dr. DF Malan who is an ex-prime minister of South Africa as saying, and I quote "the negro does not need a home, he can sleep under a tree" well not only is this absolutely fictitious, but he forgot to mention the fact that brick and concrete trees - known to most people as *houses* are costing thousands, millions of dollars of the white taxpayers money annually what did you say? i didn't get the point, what houses? well, you see this journalist said that Dr.
Malan... yes, I got that point, but what houses are costing the government millions of dollars? concrete, brick, and cement houses for who? for the Bantu people but this if for the Bantus that are working for you in the factories! and how did you get the money? they mine the gold, got the gold, and you sell the gold outside. you get the money and you say the money is yours of course it is! you can't do that, that's a contradiction, please look, we came along, we bought the machinery, we developed the mines where did you get the machinery for the mines in Johannesburg, do you work the mines? who works the mines? we got our machinery from Great Britain...from the money that was got for the diamonds, and...
How did you get the diamonds out of the ground? no native labour there, Boniface how did you get the diamonds out of the ground? they weren't dug out of the ground, they were luvel diamonds, no native labour there my boy Oh, what did the natives do then? You know Susan, there is one point you must get that gets right down to the crux of the matter which is that in this country, the Africans are really the backbone of your economy and it is one of those places where you get to the question of man's inhumanity to man and yet you come here to complain about misrepresentation in the American press when as a matter of fact, the American press has given a fairly good view of the situation, because they have the coloured problem themselves have you been to South Africa? I wouldn't even pay a penny to go there well then how can you talk? because I have the facts.
People have no means of living there, how can I go there? I want a house, I want a home, I want a position in society well look, they are getting it, they're getting exactly what they want I'd love to hear from Amelia and Mesfin, if their picture of South Africa is the same as Bonifaces? it should be the same way coming from Africa myself, naturally I would be a little embittered against the whites in South Africa because from what we hear, they are mistreating the Africans there but personally, I have no preconceived ideas against the whites, because frankly I haven't been there and you can't always trust what you hear from people, or what you read from the press so I have no solid facts about the South African problem Actually, I myself am against the (white) South African.
Because how can you come to someones house and take away their property? they haven't taken it away! because what they are doing now, the white people are mining and taking the property for themselves they shouldn't do this. the native people who are living there should have the right to their property actually, before I came from Ethiopia I was reading about this in the press, and they were pretty harsh about this, they were against the white people the same thing could happen to them of course on this oppression business...if you say the Bantu in South Africa are oppressed, how do you account for this fact - that every year, regularly, hundreds of thousands of Bantu, and Negroes from other territories adjoining South Africa such as Portugese East Africa etc. are invading our country illegally, in spite of the laws. Are they coming for oppression? They know what goes on in South Africa, yet they come back year and year again those who've worked in South Africa and have been sent back, come back. are they coming back to seek oppression? your query does not answer what I am driving at the Africans have the land, they were there before you, they mine the gold oh no, they do not have the land, and they were not there before us! wait a minute Susan, let me get my point straight before you go they mine the land, they get the diamonds, you sell the diamonds outside.
And when you get the diamonds you say they are not to be given their own fair share of the quota have you read "cry, the beloved country"? yes I have. It's a one sided view one sided view, yet it was written by a European, how can a European have a one sided view about his own kith and kin? there are radicals in every nation radicals? ah, you are radicals in South Africa then oh no we're not look, Mesfin was just talking about..and as were all of you, about the importance of news about South Africa in the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Ethipia I'm wondering whether news about racial problems in the United States also takes up a good deal of space in your countries? Does it in the Gold Coast? Yes, very much, because after all the Negroes come from the Gold Coast and we feel very badly about what the Americans are doing to our Negroes and I know that one of my ancestors probably came here too, and from what I hear in the Gold Coast, the Americans don't give the Negroes a fair chance of activities here For instance, they don't give the Negroes the same education as they give the white Americans And also for instance, a Negro wouldn't be permitted to ride on the same bus with a white man As for me, I don't think that color - which is purely a natural thing, can be such a great bar to human understanding And I think America is a democratic nation, as it calls itself, but this one thing really doesn't show that all's well as in a democratic country Amelia, you've been in the New York area for about a month now.
Does the picture you had of America that you've just described correspond to what you've seen here, in the schools and the communities you've been in? Well, when I came up here, most of the people in New York told me that segregation is only practiced in the south, and in the north they have now began to have integration I didn't think much about it, but one day after school I went to a restaurant with a friend of mine, and she's an English girl And we sat there and we waited to be served by the waiter Well the waiter just came around, looked at us and passed us, and went around serving others who came in after us I knew at once what he was doing, but my friend didn't know it so she walked up to the waiter and said, "Well, we've been waiting here so long, won't you serve us?" The waiter just looked at her hard, and then looked back at me Then I told her that we'd better leave the restaurant, because I understood it.
The girl was shocked, but I wasn't surprised because that was what I was expecting to find How about you, Mesfin? Well in my country... No, I mean your experience with segregation here, have you had any? When I came to America, I was in Dwightmoral , are there any Negro students there? Well there are quite a lot of them, in fact about 3/4 Negroes in the school, and they are well treated as much as the other white people, and I'm happy about it In fact one of the vice presidents of the school is a Negro himself, Lincoln Marsh How about you, Boniface, have you met segregation at all here? I have not met it, I think I must have been pretty lucky because I've been looking forward to getting the segregation against me, but I have not got it yet It's an irony that the South African would get it, and I wouldn't get it myself Well Susan really has felt some here, it's interesting that you're the only one who has not ...yes? what are we up to now, I think we've come to that question of United States racial problems Well, I feel of course that the outlook here has continued to be better you do? I do But on the other hand, this racial segregation, which of course - and I'll always make that point clear, is an outcrop of insecurity in economic conditions and also somehow of low point of opinions and that sort of thing ...it provides other people a pretext by which they can criticise the United States Asians and Africans can't understand why a country devoted to the greatest ideals of freedom and democratic government should discriminate among their citizens We didn't get to ask Sue whether in South Africa her newspapers play up racial news in America too? Oh yes, they play it up a great deal Naturally we get all these stories about the riots in Clinton, Tennessee And how they had to escort these people to school, to bring out the national guard and so on and so forth Mrs.
Waller if I may interrupt, I think there are more riots in the Johannesburg area, the Negro area, than there are in Tennessee Am I right, Susan? Oh, well...there are a couple of... Riots, yes No, I wouldn't say riots And wait a minute, in the Johannesburg area you have only one telephone for the whole Negro population Oh rubbish! Yes! Where do you get your facts from? Facts, facts, facts from books, books, books written uncountable times on South Africa That is absolutely ridiculous! Absolutely true! I'll get this for you afterwards, I can guarantee you... Let me finish my statement please ...so much ignorance One telephone in the whole Johannesburg district. Why? that's not true! They don't want them to have a means of communication by which they could rebel against the people.
I'm speaking from facts, John Gunther wrote that that's absolutely ridiculous! ridiculous? you didn't say it was wrong... it is ridiculous but it's not wrong! It is wrong! You could've gotten your facts from a one sided source It's not one sided, Mesfin It could be, because what you've got is almost all... I can give you four concurrent sources: John Gunther wrote that. An African newspaper in Nigeria wrote that. A British paper wrote that. A Lebanese paper wrote that. Is all the world prejudiced against South Africa? Well you can't criticize the country so much without actually going there and seeing what is happening, you see? I don't need to go there, I told you I wouldn't pay a penny to go there. How can I go there? You should. Here we come to America, and we see what they are doing in America.
Otherwise we might have had false ideas about America In America the outlook has continued to be better. In South Africa, the outlook has continued to be worse And that exactly, Mesfin... Wait a minute, Susan That exactly, Mesfin... And Susan you should better think about this, when the (native) South Africans come to learn that they are really being discriminated against... And they are learning now And when they realize what has been imposed upon their people by law, what you'll get when the people realize they really are suppressed... When they realize this, they will throw away this same government Look, you've had your speech, I'm going to have mine now It so happens, that this apartheid, which you most probably have misinterpreted already...
No, you have Just a minute, let me speak... Is working towards a solution in South Africa, and it so happens that there will be no riots, nothing like that This apartheid policy, which I will speak to you about after, seeing how now there is very little time left, is working towards getting self-realization and self-rights for the black people within their own areas And I think if you make a careful study of apartheid you will see this. Already they've started legislating in South Africa and spending vast sums of money Within the next 20 years we're going to have a solution to our problems I've spent 15 years learning it, and every day I become more prejudiced against South Africa, I don't need to spend a day more I think you're getting your facts from the wrong source is all I can say Not from the wrong source, please, you're getting your facts from the government which led principles and practices of segregation and discrimination Well, I live there, I ought to know, you live 7000 miles away, how can you know? That's much better, I have a home, I have a hous, I can walk anywhere I want You're reading propaganda Unfortunately, our time is running out I wonder if anyone has got a final word to say on this subject of prejudices, and where they come from.
Mesfin? Of course I understand I'm becoming an African, I suppose Well, I think Susan that government policies sometimes conflict Because, you and I get on so well together, and I'm sure this time our governments are in the wrong So if they get on together, I'm sure that in the future they will try to understand each other better too Boniface? I think that the important thing to consider, is to whether on the balance the direction in which a nation is going is the right one If two different, even contradictory opinions or points of view, can exist in hospitality in the US... You're talking about Amelia's point at the beginning now? Yes When she said that Americans were confused because they could be pro and anti at the same time Yes. have hospitality in the US, this is progress - it is not weakness The dynamism that gives hospitality to the two points of view. I'm sorry, that's all the time we've got, we'll be back again next week.
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