The Arab presence in Sub-Saharan Africa — Part 1 The Arab slave trade in Africa
Occupying the vast intercontinental space between Africa, Europe, Persia, and India, the Arab world came to dominate the primary trade routs between sub-Saharan Africa and the wider world of antiquity. Arabian traders brought many positive advances including writing, technology, religion, and new crops. Africans in turn supplied gold, ivory, salt, hardwood, and unfortunately slaves.
Elikia M'bokolo, wrote in the renown French newspaper Le Monde (diplomatique). "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic.
He continues writing "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean".
In the first part of this look at the Arab presence in Africa, I’ll write about the Arab slave trade, and how it differed from more widely known (in the West) trans-Atlantic slave trade that brought slaves from West Africa to the New World. In a later diary, i’ll look at positive aspects of the Arab presence in Africa.
Already by the 8th century, the African continent was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north: Islam started to move southwards along the Nile and also along desert trails through the Sahara. Thus began at least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth). The Arab trade of Zanj (ethnic-Bantu) slaves in Southeast Africa is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years. Just as a side note in the Arabic world ethnic-Bantu, means black Africans but excluding Ethiopians, Somalis, and North Sudanese (they are considered Cushitic people). I will follow that nomenclature.
The main slave routes in Africa during the Middle Ages
Male slaves were often forced to work as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners, while female slaves, including those from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab and other traders from the orient as concubines and servants. Arab, African, and Middle Eastern traders were involved in the capture and transport of slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into the Middle East, Persia and the Far East.
From the 7th century until around the early 20th, the Arab slave trade continued in one form or another. Historical accounts and references to slave-owning nobility in Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere are frequent into the early 1920s.
The conditions of the enslaved Africans under Islamic Arabs, according to Ronald Segal (Islam’s Black Slaves, Atlantic Books 2003) was very different from the conditions imposed by Europeans Christians. The most fundamental difference between the two being that under Islam enslaved Africans were still considered human beings with some rights. Additionally unlike European Christian based slavery where even people who converted to Christianity were kept in perpetual bondage, the children of slaves who converted to Islam were born free.
The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast (East Africa from the horn to Swaziland) and sea routes during the 9th century, especially from the Sultanate of Zanzibar, located on the island of Zanzibar (off the coast of Tanzania). These traders captured African ethnic Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania and brought them to the coast ( William Robert Ochieng. Eastern Kenya and Its Invaders). There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on Zanzibar (Unguja and Pemba islands of the coast of modern Tanzania).
There are large difference in estimated numbers based on what assumptions are made, but some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 1500 and 1900 ( "Focus on the slave trade". BBC). The captive slaves were sold in slave markets throughout the Middle East. The trade in human beings accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labor on plantation estates in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year.
A slave market in Cairo. Drawing by David Roberts, circa 1848.
The Indian Ocean’s slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Ethnic Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers on the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, and European colonies in the Far East of Asia (Gwyn Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, 1 edition, (Routledge: 2003).
Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj, Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast ( Bethwell A. Ogot, Zamani: A Survey of East African History).The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq (see Zanj Rebellion). Ancient Chinese texts also mention ambassadors from Java presenting the Chinese emperor with two Seng Chi (Zanj) slaves as gifts, and Seng Chi slaves reaching China from the Hindu kingdom of Srivijaya in Java Roland Oliver, Africa in the Iron Age: c.500 BC-1400 AD, (Cambridge University Press).
African Slaves in Iraq
The Zanj Rebellion, a series of revolts that took place between 869 and 883 AD near the city of Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq. It is the most largest and most famous African slave revolt in the Middle East. The revolts is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa (Junius P. Rodriguez Encyclopedia of Slave Resistance and Rebellion, Volume 2). It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across the Islamic World and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq" (Revisiting the Zanj and Re-Visioning Revolt: Complexities of the Zanj Conflict (868-883 AD)). The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. As the slave plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labor work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.
It is certain that large numbers of slaves were exported from eastern Africa; the best evidence for this is the magnitude of the Zanj revolt in Iraq in the 9th century, though not all of the slaves involved were Zanj. There is little evidence of what part of eastern Africa the Zanj came from, for the name is here evidently used in its general sense, rather than to designate the particular stretch of the coast, from about 3°N. to 5°S., to which the name was also applied.
The Zanj slaves were needed to work the hot humid marshlands of Southern Iraq:
the Tigris-Euphrates delta, which had become abandoned marshland as a result of peasant migration and repeated flooding, could be reclaimed through intensive labor. Wealthy proprietors "had received extensive grants of tidal land on the condition that they would make it arable." Sugar cane was prominent among the products of their plantations, particularly in Khuzestan Province. Zanj also worked the salt mines of Mesopotamia, especially around Basra.
Jalal Diyaab is the leader of the Free Iraqi Movement, which is seeking to have Iraq's roughly 2 million black people recognized as a minority whose rights should be protected.
Corey Flintoff/NPR
The slaves jobs were to turn over the rich topsoil that made the land valuable for agricultural. The working conditions were also considered to be extremely harsh and miserable. Many other slaves from around the Indian Ocean were imported into the region, besides Zanj.
Noted Middle-Eastern historian M. A. Shaban has argued that rebellion was not a slave revolt, but a revolt of blacks (zanj) people. In his research he found that although a few runaway slaves did join the revolt, the majority of the participants were Arabs and free Zanj. If the revolt had been led by slaves, they would have lacked the necessary resources to combat the Abbasid government for as long as they did.
Some descendants of African slaves brought to the Middle East during the slave-trade still live there today, and are aware of their African origins ( "A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight". The Washington Post)
East Africa
In Somalia, the Bantu minorities are descended from Bantu groups that had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion of ethnic Bantus from Lake Chad. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantus from South-Eastern Africa captured by Somali slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Somalia and the Arab world. People captured locally during wars and raids were also sometimes enslaved by Somalis. However, the perception, capture, treatment and duties of both groups of slaves differed markedly.
From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000–50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave market of Zanzibar to the Somali coast. Most of the slaves were from
A photograph of a slave boy in Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a slight offence. ' c. 1890.
the Majindo, Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zalama, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli, which is a term taken from Mzigula, the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave").
Ethiopia also had slaves shipped from there, due to a high demand for non-Muslim slaves in the markets of the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere in the Middle East. Enslaved Ethiopians were mostly domestic servants, though some served as agricultural laborers, or as water carriers, herdsmen, seamen, camel drivers, porters, washerwomen, masons, shop assistants and cooks. The most fortunate of the men worked as the officials or bodyguards of the ruler and emirs, or as business managers for rich merchants (Gwyn Campbell. Abolition and Its Aftermath in the Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. ). Ethiopian slaves enjoyed significant personal freedom and occasionally held slaves of their own. Besides Javanese and Chinese slave girls brought in from the Far East, so called "red" Ethiopian young females were among the most valued concubines. The most beautiful ones often enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle, and became mistresses of the elite or even mothers to rulers. The principal sources of these slaves, all of whom passed through ports on the Red Sea, were the southwestern parts of Ethiopia, in the Oromo and Sidama country.
The Portuguese and the Rise of Zanzibar
By around the 10th century, Arabs had established commercial settlements on the Swahili Coast, and continued to trade there for several centuries. Then In 1497 the Portuguese exploded onto the scene in the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese conquered these trading centers after the discovery of the Cape Road (around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa).
Stone Town, Zanzibar
The Portuguese arrived in East Africa found a series of independent towns on the coast, with Muslim Arabic-speaking elites. While the Portuguese travelers describe them as 'black' they made a clear distinction between the Muslim and non-Muslim populations. Regardless of their appearant race, their relations with these leaders were mostly hostile.
The Portuguese came first as explorers and stayed as conquerors. In a whirlwind campaign, they gained control of the sea-lanes and many onshore possessions along the East African coast, in the Indian Ocean, Arabian Gulf and the Spice Islands. The campaign was well executed. It is highlighted by naval battles against tremendous odds, sieges won against strong walls, and captured cities held by the Portuguese against large and well equipped armies. And it is a campaign that is undeservedly ignored by most historians.
One of the main participants, Afonso d'Albuquerque, was probably the first modern European to fully understand naval strategy. He emphasized controlling sea lanes through the use of fortified bases in or near key straits such as the Straits of Hormuz (the entrance to the Persian Gulf) and Bab el Mandeb. He reasoned that the Portuguese, being so small in number, could not hope to dominate the area through sheer military force. But, by controlling the entrances and exits to and from the area, Portugal could dominate the area economically and control the spice trade.
As the British Empire began to restrict the trans-Atlantic slave trade from West Africa, the Portuguese who still supported the slave trade began to purchase slaves from East Africa’s Swahili coast. The Portuguese presence was relatively limited, leaving administration in the hands of preexisting local leaders and power structures.
This system lasted until 1631, when the Sultan of Mombasa massacred the European inhabitants. Muslim forces from Oman (Sultanate of Muscat) reseized these market towns, especially on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar. In these territories, the Oman Arabs mingled with the local "negro" populations, thereby establishing Afro-Arab communities. The Swahili language and culture largely evolved through these intermarriages between Arab men and native Bantu women. Zanzibar became
The strangling of trade and diminished local power had led the Swahili patrician elites in Mombasa and Zanzibar to invite Omani aristocrats to assist them in driving the Europeans out. By 1698, Zanzibar came under the influence of the Sultanate of Oman, although there was a brief revolt against Omani rule in 1784.
Rather than a form of colonization in the modern sense, this was an invited sphere of influence. Wealthy patricians Zanzibarese invited Omani merchant princes to settle on Zanzibar, rather than the former conquering the latter. In the first half of the nineteenth-century, locals saw the Busaidi sultans as powerful merchant princes whose patronage would benefit their island. Many locals today continue to emphasize that indigenous Zanzibaris had invited Seyyid Said, the first Busaidi sultan, to their island. Cultivating a patron-client relationship with powerful families was a strategy used by many Swahili coast towns since at least the fifteenth century.
Between 1832 and 1840 (the date varies among sources), one the Arabs world’s major royal families Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman moved his capital from Muscat, Oman to Stone Town Zanzibar. This meant one of the Arab’s world’s major royalties was ruling from East Africa. After Said's death in June 1856, two of his sons, Thuwaini bin Said and Majid bin Said, struggled over the succession.
Said's will divided his dominions into two separate principalities , with Thuwaini to become the Sultan of Oman and Majid to become the first Sultan of Zanzibar.
SUDAN
Afro-Arab communities were similarly founded in the Nile Valley, as Arabs intermarried with indigenous ethnic-Nilotic women. Other Afro-Arabs in the Sudans had little biological connection to Arab peoples, but were instead essentially of ethnic-Nilotic and Bantu origins, albeit influenced by the old Arabian civilization in language and culture.
In the mid-to-late 1800s, Arab traders began to move into the interior, in pursuance of the ivory trade in central Africa. Unlike many cases of racial intermixing in the Western World, Arabs generally did not view Afro-Arabs as half-caste or lesser people. Afro-Arabs instead enjoyed similar statuses in their societies as long as the father was Arab] Thus, after the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, many of the Afro-Arabs that left Zanzibar and settled in Oman were able to attain high political and diplomatic positions and be accepted as Arabs. Racial assimilation of Afro-Arabs with non-Arab Africans also aided Muslim missionaries in the spread of Islam throughout Africa.
Afro-Arab man of the Congo (ca. 1942).
In the Central African Republic, during the 16th and 17th centuries Muslim slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile River slave routes. Their captives were slaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa or South the Ubanqui and Congo rivers.
Historian Walter Rodney argues that the term Arab Slave Trade is a historical misnomer since bilateral trade agreements between a myriad of ethnic groups across the proposed 'Zanj trade network' characterized much of the acquisition process of chattel, and more often than not indentured servants.
Historian Patrick Manning writes that although the "Oriental" or "Arab" slave trade is sometimes called the "Islamic" slave trade, a religious imperative was not the driver of the slavery. He further argues such use of the terms "Islamic trade" or "Islamic world" erroneously treats Africa as being outside Islam, or a negligible portion of the Islamic world. According to European historians, propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.
British explorers under Stanley Livingston were then the first Europeans to penetrate to the interior of the Congo Basin and to discover the scale of slavery there. The Arab Tippu Tip extended his influence there and captured many people as slaves. After Europeans had settled in West Africa (Gulf of Guinea) the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. In Zanzibar, slavery was abolished late, in 1897, under Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed.
Today In the Arab states countries of the Persian Gulf, descendants of people from the Swahili Coast perform traditional Liwa and Fann At-Tanbura music and dance of East African origon. The mizmar is also performed by Afro-Arabs in Eastern Saudi Arabia. In addition the music known as Stambali in Tunisia and the Gnawa music of Morocco are both ritual music and dances, which in part trace their origins to West African musical styles.
ISIS and Modern Slavery
Earlier this year a video of men appearing to be sold at auction in Libya for $400 has shocked the world and focused international attention on the exploitation of migrants and refugees the north African country.
"Eight hundred," says the auctioneer. "900 ... 1,000 ... 1,100 ..." Sold. For 1,200 Libyan dinars -- the equivalent of $800.
Not a used car, a piece of land, or an item of furniture. Not "merchandise" at all, but two human beings.
One of the unidentified men being sold in the grainy cell phone video obtained by CNN is Nigerian. He appears to be in his twenties and is wearing a pale shirt and sweatpants.
He has been offered up for sale as one of a group of "big strong boys for farm work," according to the auctioneer, who remains off camera. Only his hand -- resting proprietorially on the man's shoulder -- is visible in the brief clip.
After seeing footage of this slave auction, CNN worked to verify its authenticity and traveled to Libya to investigate further.
Libya is the main transit point for refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe by sea. In each of the last three years, 150,000 people have made the dangerous crossing across the Mediterranean Sea from Libya. For four years in a row, 3,000 refugees have died while attempting the journey, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the U.N.’s migration agency.
The combination of chaos in Libya and a militant debased form of Islam that wants to turn the world back to the 8th century has lead to an underground slave trade. Luckily the world is watching and switch action from the international community including several African nations are working to swiftly shutdown the human rights crisis. In the 21st century the Arab slave trade in Africa is finally after 13 centuries ending.
COMING SOON
But Arab trade and influence in Africa has not all been negative and about slavery. In the next part we will look at how the spread of Arab technology and Islam helped to spark the creation of some of the wold’s largest, wealthiest, and most powerful empires.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A new viral video shows police at a Waffle House in Saraland, Alabama, throwing a black woman on the ground on Sunday, exposing her breasts and suggesting they might “break” her arm after she didn’t cooperate.
According to CBS News, the woman, Chikesia Clemons, was waiting for a waitress to give her the district manager’s phone number after she refused to pay for plastic utensils that she had asked for with her order. Clemons’s waitress canceled the order after Clemons said that she and her friend didn’t have to pay for utensils at the same Waffle House the previous night, Chiquitta Clemons-Howard, Clemons’s mother, told AL.com.
As Clemons waited for the district manager’s card to file a complaint, the officers arrived. The video, filmed by Clemons’s friend Canita Adams, shows the officers grabbing Clemons and throwing her to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Clemons asked.
“I’m about to break your arm — that’s what I’m about to do,” one officer responded.
The officers proceeded to arrest her. She was booked on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to Clemons-Howard.
The Saraland Police Department is investigating the incident. “When the facts of the investigation are gathered, we will have a response,” the department said in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Waffle House is also investigating the incident. Spokesperson Pat Warner said, “there is reason to doubt Clemons’s version of events.”
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Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture.
Bill Cosby’s legal team was never afraid to invoke America’s history of anti-black racism. During the closing arguments of his trial on sexual assault charges —which just ended with a guilty verdict on three counts of indecent sexual assault — they referred to the #MeToo movement as a “witch hunt” and likened the men who had been accused of criminal behavior to the victims of lynchings. Earlier, they had sought sympathy for Cosby by suggesting he was the victim of the racist justice system.
Many of the complaints against Cosby predated #MeToo, but he became the first celebrity to be tried during this era of heightened awareness. While Andrea Constand, whose accusations led to the recent trial, is white, his dozens of accusers over the years were women of many races. The judge allowed testimony from five other women besides Constand as the prosecution set out to prove Cosby’s pattern of sexual predation.
The racial elements of the trial offer an opportunity to recall that the first “me too” movement — literally using those words — was launched a decade ago by an African-American woman, Tarana Burke.
Indeed, it’s important to recognize that years of black women’s anti-rape and anti-sexual assault activism have helped produce our current robust national conversation about sexual violence. It may not be a full moment of reckoning just yet, but the tireless organizing of black women has made it possible for us to have more productive conversations about rape culture and the meaning of consent.
Long before the Bill Cosby trial, black women were at the forefront of anti-rape activism
There is a decades-long modern history of black women’s anti-rape activism. Anti-rape activists such as Rosa Parks are part of a long tradition of black women advocating for the victims/survivors of sexual violence. Contemporary anti-sexual violence activism is deeply and directly indebted to the formation of organizations such as A Long Walk Home, Black Women’s Blueprint, INCITE Women of Color of Against Violence, and We Are the 44% Coalition. These groups center on the experiences of women of color while providing tools and strategies for ending sexual violence against all people.
Whether it’s demanding that R. Kelly finally be held accountable for his alleged predatory behavior or organizing to support the victims of Daniel Holtzclaw, the former police officer convicted of raping or assaulting eight black women in Oklahoma City, black women have been in the trenches of anti-rape activism. They have reframed conversations about sexual violence to account for the distinct experience of black women, girls, trans, and gender nonbinary people.
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For 150 years, Ethiopians have been asking when Prince Alemayehu will come home. The orphan prince, a descendant of Solomon, was taken to England – some say “stolen” – after British soldiers looted his father’s imperial citadel following the Battle of Maqdala in 1868.
Prince Alemayehu
He died at the age of 18, after an unhappy childhood, and was buried at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle at the request of Queen Victoria. Now, as discussions take place with the Victoria &Albert Museum about the return of royal treasures taken by British forces during the battle, the Ethiopian government told the Observer it is “redoubling” its efforts to finally bring back the prince’s remains. Last week there were celebrations in Addis Ababa to commemorate the life of the prince’s father, Tewodros II, on the 150th anniversary of his death in the battle. A selection of the objects in the V&A’s possession went on display last week.
Lemn Sissay, the poet and author, has joined the campaign to repatriate the young prince’s remains. Sissay, whose birth mother was Ethiopian, has been invited to speak about Alemayehu by the Ethiopian goverment in June.
“It’s my goal, my sincere hope that in my lifetime [Alemayehu] will go back to Ethiopia,” Sissay told the Observer. “This isn’t going away because I’m not going away.”
Sissay, who was fostered then put into care in Lancashire despite the wishes of his mother, feels there is a resonance between Alemayehu’s life and the widespread international adoption of Ethiopian children, a practice which was banned by the Ethiopian government earlier this year.
“The first corrupt theft of an Ethiopian child was this one in 1868,” Sissay said. “He was taken from his family. He deserves, too, for his remains to go back to Ethiopia, back to where he was stolen from.”
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A Brazilian network’s programs demonized adherents and possibly incited violent attacks on houses of worship of an Afro-Brazilian religion. BWOB: Afro-Brazilian religions win court ruling against Record TV.
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In past posts, this blog has tried to alert its readers about the treatment of Afro-Brazilian religions such as the Candomblé for some time. Ever since Africans brought their religions beliefs and practices to the lands that would become Brazil, their spiritual practices have been condemned as the work of the devil, evil, “voodoo” and “macumba”. Millions of Brazilians, usually followings of Christianity, believe that these religious practices shouldn’t exist and have long believed in a long list of negative stereotypes about adherents to these religions.
Religious worship is yet another area that Brazil has long wanted to destroy in its centuries long goal of the stomping out of all things that connect Brazilian society to its African heritage. And one of the leaders in the demonizing of African origin religions has been the Rede Record television network and its owner Edir Macedo, who is also the founder of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), “one of the largest evangelical denominations in Brazil, with a community of over 1.8 million people (IBGE, 2010), over 5 thousand temples, 10 thousand pastors and communities in over 200 countries.” In 2013, Macedo was listed as Brazil’s richest pastor and a biopic about his life, Nada de Perder, is currently playing in Brazilian movie theaters. Having raked in over R$ 72.8 million, it is already Brazil’s third highest grossing film of the year. Macedo’s books have sold over 10 million copies and his blog attracts over 4 million visitors per year. With such enormous influence, one can imagine that this man could single handedly influence millions of people to either love something or despise it. Guess which side Macedo is on…
Historically, Brazil has long been the world’s largest Catholic country, but with declining numbers in the Catholic Church, the Evangelical movement has emerged as the the fastest growing denomination in the country. From 1970 to today, the number of Brazilians defining themselves as Catholics has declined from 90% to about 50%, while the Evangelical membership has swollen from about 5% to about 30%. Macedo’s enormous church (Templo de Salomão or Temple of Solomon) is one of the leaders of the charge and one of his platforms has been to use his leadership in the church and the nation’s third largest TV network to present sensationalist, negative depictions of Afro-Brazilians in not only church ceremonies, but also in the television programs. Evangelical churches such as Macedo’s Templo have been at the center of controversy by divulging the idea that they can “expel” demons and in 2005, Macedo’s book Orixás, Caboclos e Guias – Deuses ou demônios was prohibited from sale due to prejudiced content against Afro-Brazilian religions.
In recent years, many have pointed to the content and acts by Macedo, Record and other Evangelical churches for inciting violence against Afro-Brazilian houses of worships by zealous followers. In recent years, these violent attacks have seen an upsurge as many Afro-Brazilian spiritual leaders have been terrorized by Evangelical drug dealers and other “Jesus warriors” who have invaded, burned down or destroyed spiritual temples and artifacts used for Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies. For these reasons, a recent decision obligating Rede Record to broadcast positive programs about Afro-Brazilian religions should be considered a victory. I will present a follow up on this report in a coming post, but for now, here is a short write up on a recent decision.
Afro-Brazilian religions have suffered an upsurge in the number violent attacks, many of which have been attributed to negative depictions broadcast on Rede Record
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AN HOUR east of Johannesburg, on the rolling highveld plains, six massive cooling towers sit around two belching smokestacks. The Kendal power station (pictured) is among the world’s largest, producing 4.1 gigawatts (GW) from burning coal. A few kilometres down the road there is another coal-fired plant, Duvha, which is only slightly smaller. An even bigger one, Kusile, is under construction next door.
When sub-Saharan Africa comes up in discussions of climate change, it is almost invariably in the context of adapting to the consequences, such as worsening droughts. That makes sense. The region is responsible for just 7.1% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, despite being home to 14% of its people. Most African countries do not emit much carbon dioxide. Yet there are some notable exceptions.
Start with coal-rich South Africa, which belches out more carbon dioxide than Britain, despite having 10m fewer people and an economy one-eighth the size. Like nearly all of its power plants, many of its vehicles depend on coal, which is used to make the country’s petrol (a technique that helped the old apartheid regime cope with sanctions). A petrochemical complex in the town of Secunda owned by Sasol, a big energy and chemicals firm, is one of the world’s largest localised sources of greenhouse gases.
Zambia is another exception. It burns so much vegetation that its land-use-related emissions surpass those of Brazil, a notorious—and much larger—deforester. On a recent descent into Lusaka, four fires were visible from the aeroplane. “If you had come 30 days later, it would have been worse,” says Davison Gumbo of the Centre for International Forestry Research, a non-profit. Most burning happens during the dry season, which starts next month.
South Africa and Zambia may be extreme examples, but they are not the region’s only big emitters (see chart). Nigerian households and businesses rely on dirty diesel generators for 14GW of power, more than the country’s installed capacity of 10GW. Subsistence farmers from Angola to Kenya use slash-and-burn techniques to fertilise fields with ash and to make charcoal, which nearly 1bn Africans use to cook. This, plus the breakneck growth of extractive industries, explains why African forests are disappearing at a rate of 0.5% a year, faster than in South America. Because trees sequester carbon, cutting them counts as emissions in climate accounting.
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New lynching memorial confronts the nation’s brutal history of racial terrorism. Washington Post:‘Lynch him!’
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A white mob yelling “Lynch him!” pulled Matthew Williams from the Negro ward of a hospital in Salisbury, Md., on Dec. 4, 1931.
Williams, who had been shot in the leg, was accused of killing the white man he worked for after a pay dispute.
Williams denied the allegation, but the 23-year-old was bound in a straitjacket and thrown out the hospital window. The mob stabbed him with ice picks and dragged his body three blocks to the courthouse in downtown Salisbury, a small city on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. There, they laced a rope over a tree and tied the other end around Williams’ neck.
Standing on the courthouse lawn, the mob taunted Williams, raising and lowering his body several times before finally dropping him to his death. After more than five hours of abusing the body, the mob cut the rope, tied Williams to the back of a truck and dragged him through Salisbury’s black community. Before burning his body, they cut off his fingers and toes and threw them on porches in the black neighborhood, shouting “Make n—– sandwiches!”
Nearly 100 years later, community members working with the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal rights organization in Montgomery, Ala., collected soil from the site where Williams was killed, put the soil in a jar and carried it to Montgomery, where the jar will be displayed in an exhibit at EJI’s new Legacy Museum, which opens Thursday.
More than 800 jars of soil from lynching sites across the country will be exhibited in the museum that traces the history of enslaved black people in America from the horrors of slavery to the terrors of lynching, the humiliation of Jim Crow and the current crisis of police violence against blacks.
Marian Indianana Lynching
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James has won three championships and four most valuable player awards, for starters, in his 15-year career. Earlier this season, he surpassed Jordan for the longest streak of games with at least 10 points scored. On Wednesday, when James hit a game-winning three-point jumper to beat the Indiana Pacers in a must-win playoff game, it was instantly compared to one of Jordan’s iconic shots.
But the 33-year-old James is much more than a living sports legend. He is an actor, a media mogul, and a cultural icon. He rose to the top of his sport at the same time that America was forced to confront its systematic violence against black people, especially young black men, and James has taken up that cause as one of the most famous young black men in the nation. He is perhaps the most socially and politically influential athlete since Muhammad Ali.
When Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently told James to “shut up and dribble,” it became a national news story. When James called President Donald Trump a “bum” on Twitter, defending players who bucked the tradition of championship teams coming to the White House, it was a headline on the front page of the New York Times. He held a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
James — LBJ, Bron, the King — has used the platform afforded him as the best player in the NBA at a time of unprecedented popularity for the league to speak out about racial injustice and other political issues. SB Nation’s Tom Ziller wrote that we were living in “the decade of LeBron James.” ESPN ranked him the most famous American athlete (the second most famous in the world) and called him “the most powerful voice in his profession.”
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Slack has been outperforming other Silicon Valley companies when it comes to employing minority employees, according to the organization’s latest diversity report. The Atlantic: How Slack Got Ahead in Diversity
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Last week, Slack, the company whose popular, plaid-themed messaging app has simplified office communications and introduced custom fox emoji into our daily routines, quietly released its 2017 diversity report. Diversity reports, which list statistics like the percentage of women in management and underrepresented minorities in technical jobs, have become something of an annual rite of passage among Silicon Valley tech companies. As public concern about gender and racial inequities in tech has grown, companies have begun, over the past several years, to share numbers.
Slack has been outperforming other Silicon Valley companies, and its current numbers show that the trend has continued. At Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, women hold between 19 percent and 28 percent of leadership positions and between 19 percent and 20 percent of technical roles, according to those companies’ most recent figures. At Slack, women make up 31 percent of leaders and hold 34 percent of technical roles. Also, in Slack’s U.S. workforce, percentages of underrepresented minorities (including black or African-American, Hispanic or Latino, or American Indian or Alaskan employees), are, in some cases, triple that of peer companies. At Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, underrepresented minorities hold between 4 and almost 8 percent of technical roles and make up less than 11 percent of all employees. At Slack, by contrast, underrepresented minorities make up almost 13 percent of technical roles and roughly 13 percent of all employees; they also make up 6 percent of leadership. The number of Hispanic women at the company has more than doubled since last year. The number of Hispanic men more than quadrupled.
What’s notable about this is that Slack has achieved it without a designated “head of diversity,” a role that has become ubiquitous at tech companies—Google, Facebook, and Microsoft each have one—and might soon become more so; the lobbying group that represents tech companies in Washington, the Internet Association, hired its own director of diversity and inclusion last week to focus on “diversity, inclusion, and workforce-related policies,” after members of the Congressional Black Caucus pressed the organization on the lack of diversity at big tech companies. While studies by the Harvard University professor Frank Dobbin, and colleagues, suggest having someone overseeing diversity efforts can increase the numbers of underrepresented groups in management, other measures, such as mentoring programs and transparency around what it takes to be promoted, are also important; a diversity chief alone may not be enough to make much of a difference. At Slack, the absence of a single diversity leader seems to signal that diversity and inclusion aren’t standalone missions, to be shunted off to a designated specialist, but are rather intertwined with the company's overall strategy. As the CEO, Stewart Butterfield, has said, he wants these efforts to be something “everyone is engaged in.” Indeed, as the research by Dobbin and colleagues shows, involving employees in diversity policies leads to greater results.
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