THE AFRICAN AMERICAN BRIDGE
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

Just a few days before Christmas, the children of the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center in Washington, DC presented Ghanaian ambassador Alan J. Kyerematen with racquets, wristbands, tennis shoes, and t-shirts for fellow tennis players in Ghana. Their “different kind of Christmas” reminded us that the end of the year is both a season of giving and one of celebration.

The connection between African Americans and our African brothers and sisters is too often a simply sentimental connection, with gifts and goodwill, kinship and kente cloth being exchanged. Indeed, it is a misnomer to speak of the African contient as if it is only a country. There are more than 50 sub-Saharan African countries on the continent. These countries have varying politics, economic systems, customs and cultures. Ghana, for example, had healthy GDP growth thorough 2000. In contrast, a conflict-torn Congo has seen its economy falter. In some countries the primary challenge is clean water and adequate health care. In other countries, issues of trade dominate.

Too many African countries make international news because of conflict or famine. Thus, it makes sense to consider the transfer of power in Kenya where Daniel arap Moi turned over power to Mwak Kibaki. Kibaki immediately indicated that the country he would guide has been tarnished by decades of poor management. Contrary to the stereotype that power transitions are always violent in Africa, Moi maintained his composure and passed the torch.

Too often the torch is passed tumultuously, and outside the spotlight of world attention. How was it that Bosnian carnage garnered international concern, while the massacre of hundreds of thousands in Rwanda drew little focus? Africa is invisible for too many in the world, perhaps because a focus on the developing world is frightening. After all, 46 percent of all world citizens live on less that $2 a day, and most of those folks live in Africa, parts of Asia, or Latin America. With economic survival so low a priority, is there any wonder that there is little political stability?

African American can be advocates for the African continent, for debt forgiveness, and for the economic development of the African continent. Absent our involvement, we can sit by and watch African people caught up in prevailing anti-American sentiment that is a function of the way the United States sucks up a disproportionate share of world resources. We are 6 percent of the world’s population, but use nearly half of the world’s resources. We are like the preacher who came to Sunday dinner, eat all of the bird, save the wings and the back, and wondered why everyone is glaring at us.

We need both the symbolic pairings of tennis children separated by oceans and the policy connections of African Americans who have an economic interest in the African continent. If African Americans do not begin the dialogue, it is likely that it won’t take place.

From USA Today, January 3, 2003