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Writer/Author Nikole Hannah-Jones attends the 34th Brooklyn Tribute to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House on January 20, 2020 in the Brooklyn section of New York City.
Photo: mpi43/MediaPunch /IPX (AP)
We, the undersigned, believe this country stands at a crucial moment that will define the democratic expression and exchange of ideas for our own and future generations. State institutions across the country are attempting to ban frank and rigorous conversation about our history in the classroom. Few single works have been threatened with more restrictions than the 1619 Project, a landmark exploration of America’s deep roots in enslavement. And now, the 1619 Project’s founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, has had her appointment as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill with tenure blocked by its Board of Trustees.
Why and how we should talk about race We need a framework drawn from a constellation of contributions By Yacoob Abba Omar - 07 April 2021 The author believes there are several dimensions to the issue of race and privilege. Image: 123RF/ LIGHTWISE
This article is not about former Wits vice-chancellor Adam Habib and the use of the “N-word”.
Pan-African thinking pioneer WEB du Bois declared in 1900 that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the colour line”. Twelve decades later the problem persists, and will persist until we have overcome the legacies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid.
To understand why, we need to acknowledge the different dimensions of race. There is the historical, including the transatlantic slave trade initiated in 1526 by the Portuguese and the April 6 1652 landing of Jan van Riebeeck at the Cape, followed by the colonisation of most of the world by European powers.