It is preposterous to cow the minister, Dr. Nadia Arop Dudi, to reverse her decision

 By Pal Chol*

"Why is the issue of the NYU taken to become a one tribe affair knowing well that the country is inhabited by 64 tribes? Are these youths wanting to insinuate that it is their birthrights to hold that position? Do they want to confirm that it is their tribe that controls the economy and politics and to prove what is being fallaciously said of one tribe hegemony?" 

Hot on the heels of the dissolution of the National Youth Union (NYU)  whose term has elapsed and the subsequent appointment of the steering committee led by Mr. Bak Salva to prepare for the election of the new body (vide Ministerial Order), there have been some disgruntled and bigoted social media users who have been ranting to have their voices or grievances heard without any semblance of shame.

They consist of two groups, mainly our cousins from Greater Bahr el Ghazal states; those in favor and against the former president of the NYU. These Youth are sharply divided as can be seen from the venom they have been spitting in the media against one another. They have taken it upon themselves to settle their scores using the position of the NYU as a Trojan horse by stirring up the situation and calling themselves names with some even questioning the legality of the Ministerial Order. The other ethnic groups are quite and have become only spectators.

With all that borne in mind, there are pertinent questions that need to be posed and would beg answers to the satisfaction of all.

Why is the issue of the NYU taken to become a one tribe affair knowing well that the country is inhabited by 64 tribes? Are these youths wanting to insinuate that it is their birthrights to hold that position? Do they want to confirm that it is their tribe that controls the economy and politics and to prove what is being fallaciously said of one tribe hegemony? Is it only in that part of the country that there are qualified youths and eligible candidates to fill that position?

I can read between the lines that these youths who support somebody already fired are in fact against the state and they toil round the clock for its eventual downfall. They are 'decampaigning' the Head of State, something we shall not allow to happen under our watch. This has got to be very clear and must be resisted head-on should anybody or a group move towards that.

Those who call for the former leader to be reinstated are showing contempt and disrespect to the Honourable Minister of Youth, Culture and Sport, Dr. Nadia Arop; something which has never been heard of. I am being tempted to believe that there is nothing that makes courageous those who challenged the decision of the minister apart from the fact that she is seen in the way I and they know. She doesn't come from home and considered as somebody just favored and doesn't have civic rights.

Can these youths attempt with any other minister, a tribesman or a woman, and expect to get away with it without consequences in any form? This country is bigger than all of us. The youth forms the nucleus of any society. They need not be divided, used for cheaper selfish political gains and encouraged to lock horns over trivial matters among themselves. It is time for us to unite as our unity is our strength.

I am happy with some of my trusted friends, who see the truth and support the ministerial decision.

They are patriots and nationalists. I vow to stand with them through thick and thin to defend and support the minister and by extension the president. 

I call on my fellow youths all over South Sudan to let go of the past, prepare a conducive environment and ground for the election to be held and if it is won by Bak or whoever, there will be no qualms.

What is it that the former president of the NYU has forgotten to do during his tenure for him to claim that he is still the rightful leader of the NYU?

Having read the Ministerial Order and other voices, his failures surpassed his achievements. Does that need to be disputed given the legion of reasons we all saw with our naked eyes?

In brief, I just want to categorically tell my brother, whose term has expired, to accept the decision of the Minister, congratulate her for the time they spent working together, the trust vested in him and wish the new committee well in their future endeavors. 

I would also encourage him to try his luck by lobbying for any other job in the next government. He has all it takes to occupy any position.

The decision of the Hon. Minister is a fait accompli although we are hearing on the grapevine that there are big fishes leaning on the power center, who want to cow the minister into reversing her decision and reinstate the former leader. If true, it would be setting a bad precedent and it would only be a back-door politicking that must stop!

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*The author is an independent opinion writer. He is also a medical practitioner in South Sudan.   To contact the author, use this email: palcholnyan2016 @gmail.com.

Editor's Note: The views expressed in the article don't reflect the views of The Philosophical Refugee Site but the author.

How anti-racism becomes inadvertently racist

By Kuir ë Garang (Website Editor)

"If Canada is a racist society, then what moral conscience do we appeal do when we ask European-Canadians “not to be racist?” Are we appealing to the moral conscience of people who cannot change yet we keep on saying the same thing to them?: “Please don’t be racist!” We need to be clear as anti-racist writers because we are doing a great disservice to racialized people and to the Canadian public that needs to be enlightened about Canadian past and contemporary ills."

I grew up with race and racism in Sudan, and I now live with race and racism in Canada. I also came to Canada as a refugee student so I would be one of the people some scholars would call part of “the periphery of the periphery.” Yet, race, racism, and anti-racism continue to vex me, but not in the way you might think.

Essentially, no self-respecting scholar in any part of the world, in any field, can adorn an expert hubris and proclaim to know how to unequivocally define what race and racism are. Modernity gave them to us raw, yet postmodernism, with its pretentious egalitarian propensities, is either helpless when it comes to race and racism, or it adds to their complexities given how it reduces meanings to our use of language. So, scholars only give ad hoc definitions that make sense within their world.

However, this humbling reality will not prevent confident proclamations not for what race and racism mean but because of the tragedy this infamous duo has meted out on what Canada mind-bogglingly refer to as “visible minorities” or “people of color.” Race and racism feature in lived experience; so, for many, they don’t have to be defined.

In his essay, Distorted Mirror: Canada’s Racist Face, Cecil Foster, a Canadian renown novelist, scholar and journalist, proclaimed unequivocally that “Canada is a racist country and always has been. Nothing proves this point more than the hostility of the Canadian establishment to two things ethnic minority treasure dearly as signs that the nation is slowly accepting them.”

Foster’s statement means two things: that inclusion was happening means that a certain group of people has been excluded; and that such inclusion is slow yet detested. Given that Canada portrays itself as the epitome of western liberalism, inclusion, and freedom, Foster’s statement is demoralizing. As Canadians, we only expect such an un-Canadian behavior from our neighbors Down South!

However, it is our Canada! It is in this same land where our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, tweeted on January 28, 2017, that “those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” Yet, it the same Canada where Foster’s five-year-old son emotionally comes home from school crying for having been excluded from a birthday party by his kindergarten classmates because “he was black.”

Yeah, I know, savvy and critical readers might say, “but that was in 1991. Canada has improved.” Not so fast. In his 2010 book, Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions, Joseph Mensah of York University argued that “Many Canadians are reluctant to admit that racial oppression and inferiorization exist/persist in this country.” Mensah added that Canadians “have the tendency not only to ignore our racist past but also our contemporary racial incidence as aberrations” of a few bad Canadians.

So, when Hitesh Bhardwaj of Mississauga, Ontario, records a European-Canadian woman in 2017 saying, “I would like to see a white doctor. You're telling me there isn't one white doctor in this whole entire building?", Canadians become shocked. Perhaps we might dismiss this incidence, like the Canadians we are, as a case of “a few bad apples.”

However, “the few bad apples” theory gets really confusing and concerning when once hears everyday lived experience of the so-call “people of color.” As Robyn Maynard tells us in her 2017 book, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, a Kindergarten student in a school in Mississauga was handcuffed by the police with the permission of the school without parental presence or consent. Neither the school administrators nor the police officer, two agents of protection and care, thought it necessary to treat the youngster like they would treat any child. While the school and the officer would dismiss race or racism in this case, we can argue that the child was treated that way—like Foster’s son—"because he’s black.”

Yet, we can assert all these and none of us can say what race and racism are, really. While scholars say that race is an illusion, a fiction, or a social construct with no biological basis, most of these scholars will still say that racism exists. Joseph Mensah, like Ta-Nehisi Coats, in Between Me and the World, argues that race doesn’t exist but racism does exist. Well, scholars like Connell West would say that Race Matters.  

Since racism was derived from race, many readers might find this confusing and, in some cases, amusing. How can racism exist if there is no race? For these scholars, racism preceded the invention of race in the 19^th century. The there-is-no-race-but-there-is-racism proposition is a postmodernist discourse so let’s leave it there. Well, we’ll come back to it.