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RI will vote on trimming name to cut slavery tie
Rhode Island voters will decide next year whether to shorten the state's longest-in-the-nation formal name because of its association with slavery.
House lawmakers approved a resolution Wednesday calling for a statewide referendum on whether to trim "Providence Plantations" from the state's official name. The vote will be held during the general election in November 2010.
Senate lawmakers earlier approved the legislation.
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Blacks still drawn to Islam despite FBI raids
By now, Sekou Jackson is used to the questions: Why does he need to leave a work meeting to pray? Don't black Muslims convert to Islam in jail? Why would you even want to be Muslim?
"It's kind of a double whammy to be African-American and Muslim," said Jackson, who studies the Navy at the National Academy of Science in Washington. "You're going to be judged."
Jackson's struggle may have gotten harder when the FBI on Wednesday raided a Detroit-area warehouse used by a Muslim group. The FBI said the group's leader preached hate against the government, trafficked in stolen goods and belonged to a radical group that wants to establish a Muslim state in America. The imam of the group's mosque, a black American named Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in a shootout with agents.
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Blacks still drawn to Islam despite FBI raids
By now, Sekou Jackson is used to the questions: Why does he need to leave a work meeting to pray? Don't black Muslims convert to Islam in jail? Why would you even want to be Muslim?
"It's kind of a double whammy to be African-American and Muslim," said Jackson, who studies the Navy at the National Academy of Science in Washington. "You're going to be judged."
Jackson's struggle may have gotten harder when the FBI on Wednesday raided a Detroit-area warehouse used by a Muslim group. The FBI said the group's leader preached hate against the government, trafficked in stolen goods and belonged to a radical group that wants to establish a Muslim state in America. The imam of the group's mosque, a black American named Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in a shootout with agents.
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Sanitizing history
In the article about the study called for by Congress on the Cherokee Indians' Trail of Tears (Nov. 25), Republican Rep. Zach Wamp refers to the uprooting of Cherokee Indians from their homes and the looting of their property by the American government and its citizens as a "mistake," just as slavery was a "mistake."
Spelling the word "cat" with a "k" is a mistake, but driving Native Americans from their lands, slavery, the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, as well as what is going on in Darfur today are not "mistakes." They are abominations, crimes against humanity.
Americans are never going to understand their own history as long as politicians like Rep. Wamp continue to linguistically sanitize it.
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Chinua Achebe returns with a collection of essays
"The Education of a British-Protected Child" (Knopf, 208 pages, $24.95), by Chinua Achebe: Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's new book, his first in 20 years, is not especially new. And maybe that's part of the point.
"The Education of a British-Protected Child" is a collection of essays that all share as their backdrop the tangled, tortured history of colonial Africa. Most are also 10 or more years old, culled from Achebe's writings and speeches over the years.
This could have the effect of making the collection feel dated. Sadly, in this case, it does not. Instead, it seems to highlight a persistency to Africa's troubles, a complicated bundle that Achebe both dissects and laments.
An apology is a process of healing, especially for Virginia while celebrating its 400-year anniversary. "Nobody now living was involved in slavery" is an ignorant statement. The effects of slavery are still living.
Real Americans appreciate American history and those who shed blood contributing to this nation. History has built wealth, and our Constitution has protected this great nation and its wealth.
Americans should know their history. Know of the indentured servants who came to America from the English society, the African explorers arriving in Hispaniola with Christopher Columbus in 1494. Know that all the slaves in America were not black, some slaves were white. Know that African slaves came from the western nations of Africa. Somalia is on the far east side of Africa. The nations of Africa are not pathetic, I know them as places of great resources such as oil, diamonds and science.
In the 1600s we could add servants to that list. I would reserve the word pathetic, sick or inhumane for the rape of young boys and girls as young as 5 and 6 during slavery.
Shedrick Mills
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