Chisomo Kalinga, PhD
@ChisomoWrites
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African Illness Narrative & Ethnography | Transdisciplinary #medicalhumanities - HIV&AIDS, sex & reproductive health | #hypothyroid | my view | no DMs | 🔄+❤️≠E
Edinburgh|Blantyre🇲🇼|Chicago
Joined May 2011
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Pinned Tweet
Colleagues in Africana
#medhums
, please share this far and wide. This practitioner database will help bring visibility to African scholars/artists working in
#medicalhumanites
, but also adequately match projects & initiatives w/ expertise across Africa
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Africans were accused of being irrational when they said they didn’t trust this man.
I’ve recently become fascinated by an ancient family of grains called millets. Here’s why:
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If 2 weeks has passed & you still haven't read that article in that tab you're saving, just close it. I had to stop lying to myself today and close 12 tabs.
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It’s amazing how quickly they will shift to this model for every reason except to support their chronically ill or disabled staff and students.
Columbia University has just announced that it will shift to a hybrid model for the rest of the semester
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The fucked up thing about the
#BlackintheIvory
hashtag is most of us are sharing our safe stories.
Marinate on that for a minute.
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We need to talk about the treatment of Black African women athletes who are being put through horrible “genital check” violations to prove that they are in fact women. This is not okay.
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I’m happy for all of you getting booster shots. Truly. But as of yesterday only 633,344 Malawians are fully vaccinated. Out of 18 million citizens. We are entering the fourth wave with omricon spreading. This is an injustice.
#VaccineApartheid
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This is irresponsible as hell. Literally this is a Lucy Letby story but ONE HUNDRED CHILDREN IN UGANDA DIED UNDER HER “CARE”.
Are good intentions good enough?
#SaviorComplexHBO
, a 3-part
@HBO
Original Documentary that examines the story of a young missionary, what it means to help, and the intersection of religion, race, and power, premieres September 26 on
@StreamOnMax
.
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Nah fam, I didn’t expect to ratio Bill Gates today but anyway billionaires need to stay the F away from indigenous plant cultivation. African farmers must have full autonomy and sovereignty over food production.
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It’s not even on their radar that maybe Africans took the disease seriously and have taken steps to protect themselves such as frequent handwashinf or social distancing...
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In the midst of reporting there’s so much acknowledgement of the “quiet parts” being said outbound. The distress because “Europeans with blond hair and blue eyes are being killed..”
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The gender critical analysis of Caster Semenya was far too much to bear. Black people’s bodies in sports are always subjected to scrutiny of fairness. Parents would complain that it was “unfair” that our basketball team had TWO Black girls. We were 14 years old & we sucked.
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Let’s say that Africa actually decided to “move on” from colonisation: took control of its mining, land redistribution, rights to waters and food& tech industries and started implementing fair trade and wages. How on Earth do you think the high income countries would react?
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This is huge. Malawi’s first Pride Parade 🏳️🌈 took place on 25 June.
First gay parade in Lilongwe. We will monitor the parade.
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People perplexed by this need to understand coloniality of the mind. She sees herself and her family having transcended povvo, third world identity. She’s not appealing to like minded British ethnic minorities either. She’s appealing to a white class she believes she is part of.
Multiculturalism "has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it"
Home Secretary Suella Braverman gives speech on migration in Washington DC
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To think in the next few weeks the most extravagant and expensive funeral and coronation the world has ever seen will be followed by the entire nation plunged into fuel, food and energy poverty at depths not seen since WWII is just harrowing.
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People are not as offended with looting as they say they are.
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Naomi Osaka has done something revolutionary here. She really has paved the way for other world class athletes to say 'I'm not okay right now' and focus on their wellbeing. I hope Simone Biles is okay.
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I’ll never forget what a student at MUST said last year at a medical humanities conference. “Colonialism was a holistic endeavour. It actively sought to identify every indigenous aspect of our being and replace it with European sensibilities. Made in their image but never equal.”
Throat singing was banned by Christian missionaries throughout the 20th century — now Inuk creator Shina Novalinga is using TikTok to keep the practice alive and teach others about Inuit culture
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Y'all. Please stop saying you're decolonising when you're diversifying or being inclusive. You're spiking my blood pressure with every misuse of the word. As far as I know, not a single department in the UK is actually decolonising. You can't w/out restructuring. Paper to follow.
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Malawi and Kenya sending labourers to Israel to replace fieldworker who fled war. Rwanda receiving displaced African migrants from European countries. Our chiefs are still trading “black ivory”. I cannot overlook the optics of how devalued Black life still is in Africa.
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I’ll never forget sitting in a diabetic clinic in Dedza and the nurse asked the group of newly diagnosed diabetics about what choice they would make as an alternate for nsima and this man said “I guess I’ll choose death.” 😭😭😭
Why Kenyans are being urged to swap their maize meal for rice or potatoes 👇🏿
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“People of colour should describe their experiences of racism in whatever language works for them.”
They did. They settled on the word Karen. British feminists need to eventually engage with the idea that racism is not exclusively American trait.
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About to resubmit a paper w/ minimal changes to the text. This time, my cover letter will explain 1) why I’m privileging indigenous theory/knowledge systems 2) why Foucault can fuck off 3) indigenous knowledge IS knowledge & 4) why the African theorists I’ve chosen are credible.
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Just spent an hour of my morning emailing an Oxbridge African literature imprint to explain to them why it is wrong that their series on colonial/decolonial African literature doesn't include African authors. I shouldn't have to do this.
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Brief lesson on colonialism…
In Nyasaland, Africans were denied access to health care, education or other basic services unless they could prove they were baptised & were given a Christian name. These names that are given now are often legacy family names from “those days”.
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This is medical racism. This is neo-colonialism.
We terms words like “vaccine apartheid” on purpose.
And this is also going to have an impact on people on these countries rejecting vaccines.
UK government confirm tonight that if a person has been vaccinated in Africa, or South America, or countries including UAE, India, Turkey, Jordan, Thailand, Russia…
…you are considered “unvaccinated” and must follow “unvaccinated” rules ⛔️ = 10 day home quarantine & tests
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Sorry y’all but this is hard. Solidarity to Ukraine but trying to keep up with news analysis and balancing the anti-blackness is becoming impossible. We are not accustomed to pain and violence. We didn’t get used to it. And it’s not a reason to dismiss the value of our lives.
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All Jessica Krug had to do was take her white self to the United Kingdom where she could have lived in peace at an Oxbridge African studies department.
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I remember reading archival notes about how many colonisers were eaten by lions in 19th century expeditions and the figures are beginning to make sense.
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Why is it that people with 'a controversial idea' only wants to discuss race and eugenics?
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I really want to talk about Ashley Judd & how/why she was allowed to go into the Congolese forest to research the Bonobo ape, despite lack of any relevant training. But I’m too annoyed because Westerners are given leeway to do way too much foolishness in the name of saviorurism.
Actress Ashley Judd shattered her leg in the Congo rainforest and is now opening up about how the local community saved her life over a ‘grueling 55 hour odyssey’
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A friend asked me if I fear my tweets will harm me professionally... I can answer that I was deeply affected in academic spaces when I kept my mouth shut. Yes, some people strongly dislike me now but it feels better than being the recipient of their harm. It has been liberating.
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Jennifer Garner giving a MASTERCLASS on racial microaggressions…
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I don't think I can articulate enough how decolonial studies has been gentrified by Global North academics and I am over it.
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No joke my first international conference in 2003 a senior professor asked me if I was interested in engaging in master/slave race-play and then showed me a picture of his mixed race child to prove he wasn't actually a racist. Some of you have no idea what goes on at conferences.
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African Studies attracts some highly anti-black scholars. For some, it’s hiding in plain sight. For others, it’s a “safe space” to enact their saviour fetish of “helping” Black people while reacting violently to anyone who shows any modicum independence.
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One of the saddest discoveries I learned was how flogging was introduced by Scottish missionaries in colonial Malawi. Parents resisted sending their kids to school, objecting the beatings & the colonialists would publicly flog the parents to deter other parents from fighting back
A teacher flogged my sister’s friend’s child 50strokes of the cane on his butt. The child can barely sit as we speak, a very small boy.
My sister and her friend are back from the school after flogging the teacher, the principal and everyone they could find this morning.
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I want to have a heart to heart talk with Global North scholars about decolonial research.
1). Connect to what is being written in global south, Indigenous scholarship especially within settler colonies first. This is where the ideas began & where it keeps re-emerging.
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@yolandebouka
Omg same! They concluded not to send it out for an award because they couldn’t verify that I hadn’t plagiarised it!
I was stunned and really stopped writing for a while after that!
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Global north academics sprinkling in 'decolonising' and 'equity' on every grant application.
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Academics really still are hosting “how do I decolonise my exploitative research?” seminars. 🙄
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Anthropologists arguing that their work is decolonial yet justifying extraction as the primary research framework without once engaging what the communities want is why we need a moratorium in the field.
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Most chronically ill people hide their conditions. In fact, COVID blew our covers for many of us. We had to retreat or reveal to our employers that we were high risk. This “sicknote culture” fiasco is highly triggering because it reinforces a stereotype of us gaming the system.
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Africans literally can’t enjoy anything on a global level without some news agency pointing out that we’re poor, black, violent and/or diseased. 🖕🏾
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Looool!! They signed a letter “without knowing” any facts. Power just followed power!
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@BhadLil_Jawn
@MiQL
At 1st, seeing a snippet of kids talking shit was cute. Then I saw the rest of the thread and realised there is a WHOLE show produced by adults following the romantic lives of kids. I could not.
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This misinterpretation of Audre Lorde's work speaks directly to what race scholars are calling out about 'who' gets to frame the debates around race & who is positioned to review them. Audre wasn't talking about rest/relaxation, she was talking about not dying in the resistance.
@Guerra_Rb
Thanks mate! Trying that "self care" thing Audre Lorde was talking about and that.
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Glasgow residents appear to have stopped a dawn raid deportation. Incredible scenes...
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Okay, I could be wrong but I don't think the rest of the Commonwealth talks about itself as 'the Commonwealth'. I've never met a Jamaican or Indian and said 'We're Commonwealth fam!' That is some straight top-down shit.
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Some advice for marginalised/minoritized scholars: be wary of self-declared “allies”who are always looking for scholars like you to uplift. I promise you the academics who do this work the best don’t declare it; it’s just part of their praxis & they keep quiet to keep you safe.
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Academia is totally like “write a paper about the problem. Try to fix it in this space and we will end you.”
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My colleagues & I drafted an open letter to
@ASRJournal
in response to the Autoethnography article. We offered an explanation of the harms in great detail & have asked them to retract it. Please support us as signatories. All typos in it are mine.
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My first guess is flavour.
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The decolonial work is not compiling a list, it is nurturing a community.
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I'd like to share this brilliant new book by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò. This is a timely intervention that "rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything". It launches this month so look out for it!
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More Africans scholars than I care to count have confided in me that they no longer read papers at international conferences due to the number of ideas that get jacked by N. American/European scholars. And then they get massive funding grants to do that work in their countries.
How many people have shared research ideas, given presentations & later see in published work by someone you know was there & it can't be a coincidence that particular sequence of ideas & arguments used could be repeated? Just noticed something & I should have put a ring on it.
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This latest scandal involving the questioning of a scholar’s race brings into focus a claim that many white women scholars believe that they are better allies to BIPOC women than white men b/cuz of gender. This personally hasn’t been my experience. More importantly…
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Can’t think of a better analogy for how Global North research works.
Somali elephant shrew documented in Djibouti for the first time in nearly 50 years
Although locals were aware that the little mammal lived in the area, there was no scientific information on their populations, researchers say
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In academia, when we tell people to listen to Black women, it’s not because we are magical or have a 6th sense. It is because we are usually the first stop on the tram ride to extraction or exploitation. The 1st to be approached when people realise their projects haven’t hit…
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Let the wealthy ones do this type of activism that they know how to lawyer themselves out of the punishment. Please we know how incarceration is used to stifle working class folk activism.
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I wanted to jump on here and remind people about the days when participating in strike action was a deportable offence. No for real, my first day of employment fell on a strike day in 2018. I had to report to HR with my passport & biometric card on that day or lose my residency.
Story time. My first day of postdoc fell on a UCU strike week in 2018. I agonised about what to do but decided I needed to go in. Why? Because I’d been living below the minimum wage for *years*. It was late Feb/early March in Sheffield and I hadn’t had heating for weeks. 1/
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The absence of gendered pronouns in African languages is only the beginning of a larger discourse about colonial contention. And what the process of “Christian names” & social re-engineering meant for those who didn’t comply (see Ongoing marginalisation of Tonga & Yao in Malawi).
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Class today:
#colonialism
and
#anthropology
in Africa. Introducing students to some top tier theory.
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We been asking Global North anthropologists to stop studying us and to look into their own communities.
Not even as a joke but there are not enough anthro articles published about health seeking behaviours of white Americans or Brits during this pandemic and I want to know why.
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Most of the humanities books on Africa being published right now are not written by Africans. I’m dead tired of the narrative that Africans need training or mentoring into these spaces. There’s a fundamentally different issue of gatekeeping that needs addressing.
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One day, I’ll write an essay on the very unique brand of pandering to white supremacy that comes from the African continent.
My brother, you still aren’t getting a visa so calm down.
@ninaturner
I live in Africa and even here, no one is interested in watching a black mermaid.
Mermaids are white.
We have our own stories.
3000 distinct ethnicities and 54 countries and you couldn’t find an original, authentic African story?
Gerrarahia🖕🏿
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A 🧵
The state of hiring Black British staff in the U.K. is dire. I’m sympathetic on the potential pile on the recent case so I’ll broaden the discussion b/cuz ultimately Black scholars in the U.K. have been pointing out the pitfalls of the post-BLM hiring spree for long enough.
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This is the single most reason I have stopped talking about my work online.
It’s not fair but I’m being protective of my work. I’ve had people I trusted lift ideas from under me and promote as their own in addition to the Academic Twitter vultures.
Every time I tweet about African history, there are white authors who come and follow me. I hope none of you are thinking of turning our tweets into your books.
There are african writers who are already writing about our history , let it pre-colonial or post.
Rest!
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One month in, this is not 'allyship fatigue'. Some are beginning to realise that they don't want the system that benefits them to be disturbed.
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If I see one more “Kanye was right” tweet…
He was explicit in his adoration of white power, white masculinity, and white supremacy. Aligning with antisemitism will not liberate Black people.
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Namibia taking a stance against Germany. Please support our southern African comrades for their bravery!
#ALutaContinua
🇳🇦
Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza
On Namibian soil,
#Germany
committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most…
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How do we begin to address the issue of overresearched/research fatigued communities in Malawi? Some communities are tired of researchers & it shows. A colleague who was in Livingstonia said that there are azungu daily knocking door to door asking questions...
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I actually can’t type this without laughing or crying because the memory of racism was awful but we were so unathletic and uncoordinated, yet caused so much panic because we were Black and had fly Nike gear.
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The United Kingdom is by far the most unserious nation on Earth.
In the phone hacking case, Prince Harry told the court that every single article played a destructive role in his life.
There are no cameras in court so as part of a special programme Sky News has recorded what was said by the Duke, played by an actor.
Watch ☟
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J.K. Rowling really woke up and decided black people have had enough attention.
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Just last year, it was revealed that between 600,000-1,000,000 Tigray citizens were killed in civil conflict. Please show some humanity to those whose deaths are still being ignored in the global discourse.
Words don't do justice in telling the pain and suffering in
#Tigray
, and the indifference and utter failure of the world. 💔
Concepts like humanity, international laws/community, human rights laws/norms and so on make no sense.
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If there was a week for gender critical feminists to keep quiet & listen to discourses on how deeply entrenched white supremacy is—from medicine to police—it’s now. The 🇬🇧Empire sought to eradicate LGBTQI identities from its colonies as they were seen as antithetical to whiteness
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White replacement theory - publishing edition
(a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own "privilege.")
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But it didn’t matter because there were two of us and parents would always demand that our coaches bench one of us to be fair to the other girls. Yet, we were the bench warmers. Those people cannot extract the racism from their criticism.
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What exactly are all these academics for academic freedom groups doing? Dr Arnesa is a genocide survivor and a top scholar on genocide who has just had a position rescinded for sharing statements on what is happening in Palestine and Israel.
Anyway, some sad news…I was THE contender for a dream job. My literal dream job. 6 interviews & countless talks & meetings. They loved me. I’ve been told I didn’t get the job and the headhunter has advised me that I either close my account or don’t discuss my political opinions.
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… more white women academics must acknowledge that they, too, continue to benefit from racism & hiding behind people of colour who gleefully perpetuate injustice or inequality does not let you off the hook either. This has been an immensely distressing event to witness online.
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Apparently, people in this world don’t seem to understand the concept of transgenerational trauma. Meaning you can be affected by something you didn’t experience—war, poverty, enslavement, genocide—b/cuz the people who raised you did. you carry that trauma thru your development.
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Y'all. Apparently someone is collecting spoons across Scotland to donate to school food programmes in Malawi.
Spoons.
"Well-meaning" Scots... you don't have to send all your used shit to Malawi. We have shops. They sell spoons.
#whitesaviors
#waste
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I know someone on
#AcademicTwitter
may need to hear this but I submitted my PhD 20 minutes before the absolute deadline. 4 years in the making. Take your time. You’ll get there.
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Yesterday, a friend said to me that“People feel entitled to the strength you have gained through tribulation.” And this could not be a greater reflection of what Black womanhood is. I’m not the strong Black woman who is here to be the world’s shoulder to lean on.
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I have 1 article that I’ve been working on for a year & a book which is passing the 5 year mark. They rely on knowledge systems that aren’t easily accessible & require sensitivity. It’s absolutely okay to work on things at the pace that is needed to produce good work.
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I don't take an opportunity like this for granted, especially during times like this after a difficult stretch of precarious employment. Thank you all for your well wishes & support as I take on this new post
@EdinburghUni
.
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Watching the internet turn Ukrainian President Zelenskyy into 'war bae' and I'm at a loss for words...
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'I am a white cis-hetero woman who benefits from stable employment & live walking distance to Whole Foods' is not a positionality statement. It's a confession that is meant to lead to absolution. Take your penitence to your priest. It is not justification for extractive research.
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I would like for Global North academics to stop offering partnerships and start passing the mic.
There are brilliant African scholars and programmes who need money and not partnerships.
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Solidarity with Blackfullas ✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
Australia votes no in historic Indigenous Voice referendum, national broadcaster ABC reports
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Let’s just address this ancestral disrespect quickly.
Many of our ancestors fought like hell, resisted like hell, were imprisoned, tortured, abused… they were not silent.
They were overpowered. Many of them did not give up, nor should you.
The end.
'Dear colonisers, we did not inherit the silence of our parents!'
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I never throw away a receipt until I walk out the door due to the number of times a “Karen” has reported me to security at Sainsbury’s/Tesco as she was “concerned” about how I packed my bags. “Karen” is not about poshness. It’s about abuse of authority.
H/t
@claudiakincaid
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There are distinctions between being a Global South scholar, a scholar from the Global South, and a scholar who uses & legitimises knowledge systems produced within global south area studies as a decolonised research methodology or intellectual framework.
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It’s very sad/triggering watching that young Black gymnast in Ireland. Sadly, when you’re the only Black girl in predominantly white setting, you get used to being bullied (yes that was bullying) by grown as adults who are supposed to be your teachers, counsellors & mentors.
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And so it begins...
Kenya drops two female sprinters over testosterone levels
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RIP the British Diversity and Inclusion Project (June 2020-April 2023)
📢 New Generation Thinkers reveal 📢
10 academics have been chosen to bring their exciting research to a whole new audience through our partnership with
@BBCRadio3
.
Meet our Thinkers -
#NGT2023
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Anyway John Comaroff is still employed by Harvard so please spare me your false outrage.
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