@Kunjufu

ooooh reallyyy



Take it personal if you want

Lenny Henry is a sell out and anyone that marries a white person

If you think I am a sellout then it is guaranteed you are a sellout

Well I would say the indifference that many of us feel to label those Africans who have white partners as sellout is a contributorary factor to the epidemic that African Carribean men in particular face.

That also applies to what Kunjufu outlined as:

Drug dealers


Gun man..


Criminals..


Distators in Neon Colonalist countries..


Posters boys and Girls for Right wing Regimes like the USA..Think Powell, Coondaleeza. etc etc..

I personally have no problem with labelling the above as sellouts of the highest degree. There definately should be the same degree of fire bun on the above as those who date white.

But as SDK said.

"If you involve yourself in the activities of a sellout, you are a sellout."

Whats so complicated about that.

@Fazuan

Your friend to me lives a life of supreme contradiction. While I say that him and his wife are good people.. practicalities are practicalities.

On one hand he associates cause with effect with what he does for the African community.

On the other hand for me he seeks to separate cause from effect/ from his choice of wife. He is not perpectuating Africans.Fact. And any cursory look at history ancient and most recent will identify the implications associated with such a liason.. especially on the scale it is at now which is more than at any time in the last 30 years.

Ostrich behaviour.

The original question was...........

Lenny Henry......How is he viewed by Blacks in the UK?

Is he a comic genius with a long career? Or someone who will stoop to any level to get a laugh?


____________________






Let meput my cards on the table I am a whiteman visiting this site (some will know me)

You aint doing yourselves or your "cause" any favours with all this banter,and maybe that is part of the problem...Lenny Henry at the end of the day was born here ,of Caribbean parentage and to be fair to him he pays homage to that every time he performs.He is ploughing his own furrow,doing what he sees to be right...not a bad guy...not a shining light for "black" advancement....just a simple man doing a job....and he is good at what he does......like him or not......I like him, and even that may be held against him.....so sad really.

Do you all as "black" people have to justify/judge all other "black" people? I ....as a white man feel no need to justify the likes of Mr Bush or Mr Hitler....why should I? Because they have the same skin tone as me? .....no sorry.To add another cliche to my post ....we are all in this together...the facts are that most blacks and whites are too busy paying the mortgage/telephone/council tax/ etc. to be "right on" for any cause.I am not "dissing" the militants amongst us....there are wrongs to be righted....but dont pick on the likes of Mr Henry.The facts are that the majority of us will just go through life trying to cope with what life throws at us.Sidestepping when we can,fighting when we have to....there is no great white conspiracy....no great black cause.....people are people are people are people doing what they can........cant say there aint no bar*tards out there.....people with agendas/scars attitudes...but that has nothing to do with skin tone or culture....just people being people.

As my step daughter says "Peace out" what ever that means....

Geoff

As an after thought.......

Ian Wright...........sell out?

Oh perlease dont go there.......

Geoff

mansamusa wrote: Manusamusa: What is 'complicated' to answer your question directly is that instead of criticising those who by direct action damage and undermine our community, its interesting the amount of time we still spend railing up against those who choose white partners... So friggin what?!!, to put some much emphasis on this and practically none or the other behaviours seem very strange to me.. After all the activities of the type of Sell out I identfied will do far more harm that some wannabee or some confused person who aspires to the white ideal.

This is principally is where i have a major problem with this judgemental and fundamentalist approach to blackness.. Sorry but it is a serious contradiction in my eyes to adopt this holier than thou approach to other people, who make choices we do not like..

Bottom line is that I really wish people would place as much energy into building on common denominators instead of trying to CONvince others that Cross cultural relationshipsare either a GOOD or a BAD thing.. The end result for me is that some of these super blacks who speak the words that others want to hear, then get away with serious contradictory behaviour, whilst we are all looking the wrong way at people like Lenny Henry..who after all has NEVER to my knowledge pretended to be anything other than a Comic who was black..

Is Lenny a sellout. Ask yourself would Lenny have made the 'success' he has if he'd married black?

Also add absent fathers, sorry, make that 'active' absent fathersto the list of sellouts.

sounds like the afrocentric group in north london won't get anywhere...

@Kunjufu

To be fair there havent been many threads about drug dealers.. or criminals.. but the little from what there has been said on these threads there is a clear distinction as to what Black people expect from ourselves as a group.

Oprah Winfrey.. and her ilk well most of the posters views on this thread are well documented in that one too..and Black dictators.. Im sure a search of the word sellout can be seen in both threads..

So respectfully Im not so sure where you see this emphasis is heavily placed on labelling Blacks who date whites as sellout. You cant look at a man and know if he's a criminal. A white woman on the arm however is a much clearer indication of his polictical views. Is that not true?

But again I would venture to say is the man who dates a white partner and has children with them not as damaging to the Black community as a gun man.

One removes our people resources through violent means..

The other through non violent means.. Why shouldnt I be equally as upset when I hear someone get shot up the road/ as to when I see a group of 15 year old Black boys all with their white girls..

Plus the damage it does to young Black minds seeing their Uncle/ father/ brother with a white girlfriend and adopting wannabe ideals and behaviour.. nah I say these wannabe whites are just as damaging to the African community as the Gun man. Criminal. And wotless father's.

So why is there ambivalence on one and concensus on the other. Does one have to be a Super Black(lol) to make such a statement. Or are we just resigned to the fact that a signicant minority of Black men are dating and having children with white women. When is this "sell out" behaviour then.. when it reaches 70%. In this racially biased society we live in are we saying that this has NO MAJOR implications for Africans people as a whole.

Am I the only person who thought Geoff completely wasted his time with a couple of redundant posts?

confused3

Kunjufu wrote:

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Greetings

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Quote: IR is an issue,which I guess many other Africans here on this threaddo not debate with anybody - not even here at Blacknet, because we have already set our positionon where we stand on this phenomenon. Its normallyother posters with time or a need to clarify their own position to themselves or others, who contribute to those threads.IR is a component of the title of this thread, but not the core of its content.

Quote:

You say you could make a compelling argument that most of us on this Thread are sell outs. I don't think it would stand up to the backlash it would no doubt get in return. We are all ( which includes yourself)much to mature in this struggle to tolerate such attacks on our integrity, and would only be simply an exercise inyour ability to debate (which is already known) rather than pushing us forward.

When you asked the abovequestions, you did indeed move the debate on. We stepped away from the personality of Lenny Henry. We then movedon to thequestion of culture, and how we define certain elements of it.

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What is culture? Do we have a culture? Is culture important? Why?

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Yourobservations about certain Pan Africanist groups are correct -but they, have moved on to the subject of culture. Their inability to moveforward and build further, has been partly through a backwardness in leadership,which in my opinion comes from the movement not answering the culture question.

Culture, and its definition, isinherent in this thread and is what you are addressing by questioning how do we define someone working against group interests.

If we cannot define, which practices are beneficial or not, to the group then.........


As you have implied, culture is

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more than wearing African garments and speaking Swahili.

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Culture needs to propel us politically, safeguarding and developingour future.