Google celebrates Nigerian writer Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa with a doodle

Google celebrated Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa, Nigerian Igbo author with a doodle on her 86th posthumous birthday yesteday.

Flora Nwapa, the mother of modern African literature and forerunner to a generation of African women writers, is acknowledged as the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain and achieve international recognition, with her first novel Efuru being published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books.

Source: Google celebrates Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa with a doodle – Vanguard News

88 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists still missing

Twenty-four more Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists have escaped but 85 are still missing, an education official said on Friday.

Some of the 129 young women who were abducted jumped off the back of a truck when they were kidnapped before dawn on Tuesday from a high school in the extreme north-east of Nigeria.

Others escaped into the Sambisa Forest, which bordered their school in Chibok town and was a known hideout of militants of the Boko Haram terrorist network.

Militant Muslim Leader Abubakar Shekau made the comments in a video posted online on Saturday, saying the group attacked a bus station in retaliation for the what he described as the government’s collusion with the United States in the killing of Muslims, but reamained mum on the fate of the schoolgirls.

Read more at theguardian.com.

Elite Marathon Runner Mami Konneh Lahun is Missing After London Marathon

Mami Konneh Lahun was due to fly home on Monday but did not return to her temporary accommodation in Greenwich on Sunday and has not been seen since.

Read More at BBC  News

Attackers Abduct 200 Nigerian Schoolgirls

Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school in Chibok, Borno state, late last night, and ordered the hostel’s teenage residents on to lorries.

Parents told the BBC’s Hausa service that at least 200 girls had been abducted. The attackers are thought to be from the Islamist group, Boko Haram.

Read more at BBC News – Nigeria unrest: ‘Attackers abduct 200 schoolgirls’.

What is a Mino Warrior?

Mino warrior of the Royal Dahomey Guard

I have changed my blogging name to Mino Warrior and eventually the name will replace all the contact information connected with this blog . The Mino were the female royal guards of the king of Dahomey. The original amazons who used to cut of one breast so that they could shoot their arrows straighter. When Dahomey was turned away from all things that made it a great empire and succumbed to the greed of slave trade they hunted their fellow humans at the behest of their regent. I see my self as a warrior because I keep getting knocked down but powers that be, but keep pulling myself back up. I been the recipient of amazing  grace.

I also take this name because I am aware of how easy it is to dehumanize others on this planet. I live in a country denies this, America sees itself as the bastion of freedom. The United States built on the bones of its native people, the forced labor of Africans and did not deem to see many from Europe as white for centuries. When people of color mention these irrefutable facts America tells us to “stop whining.”

W.E.B. Du Bois stated  that African Americans must know how others look at us while we keep our own identity and culture. It is not easy so much of when the mainstream culture of the United States has labeled African Americans as deficient. Not wanting an education is supposed to be black, not wanting to be safe in our home is black, wanting to be poor is black, wanting to be a gangsta, baby mama is black. If this is true then I am not part of this culture and I know I am. I want those who think they are “just a nigga” to recognize before they are wiped out. It is a thankless job but those of us who got a lil have to help those who don’t. It is fading value of African Americans, don’t let it die.

Kenyan woman could become the 1st black African woman to scale Mt. Everest | theGrio

Helen Kinuthia will attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest with a charity climbing expedition in 2014. Kinuthia who is from Kenya was selected from a pool of 150 climbers after she successfully completed an audition climb on Mt. Kenya, Africa’s second-tallest mountain. The climbers will attempt to scale Everest as part of Expedition Everest a charity that organized the climb to raise  $500,000 for the Flying Kites Leadership Academy in Njambini, Kenya.

via Kenyan woman could become the 1st black African woman to scale Mt. Everest | theGrio.

Racism and the Mormon Church

This why Romney will never attack the president on religion.

“I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people,” sings Elder Kevin Price in the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon.” The line is meant to be funny, and it is — in part because it’s true.

In a June 1978 letter, the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaimed that “all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.” Men of African descent could now hold the priesthood, the power and authority exercised by all male members of the church in good standing. Such a statement was necessary, because until then, blacks were relegated to a very second-class status within the church.

The revelation may have lifted the ban, but it neither repudiated it nor apologized for it. “It doesn’t make a particle of difference,” proclaimed the Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie a few months later, “what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978.”

via Racism and the Mormon Church – NYTimes.com.

Scientific Racism at Forbes Magazine: The DNA Olympics — Jamaicans Win Sprinting ‘Genetic Lottery’

Forbes is a magazine for wealthy white business people. Even though they are not as blatantly racist as National Review they have come up with some extremely biased doozies like If I was a Poor Black Kid, which inspired a furious backlash and great memes. Forbes doubled down with this mess from a whiny white guy who assumes his inability to reach impoverished black children is because they are all criminally ignorant and not really poor.

Their latest dip into the pool of white elitism is an insult the Olympians of the Caribbean, Africa and Africans Americans athletes by retreading the racially biased pseudobiology that held away in America and Europe after slavery and only began to die after the Holocaust. Scientific racism never seems to completely die out and John Entine one of the most vocal proponent contents that blacks are simply better for running. This nonsense seems even more ridiculous due to the availably of DNA analysis. 70% African Americans have white ancestry and about 15% have Native American ancestry. Those few whose genetic contributions that hail completely from Africa are an admixture of numerous ethnic groups. Caribbean people are more mixed with the aboriginal people of the islands, the shortage of white women in the West Indies and the white colonial aristocracy’s tendency to breed their own “stock.” After emancipation some of the South Asian indentured servants married black natives.
Most Jamaicans simply consider themselves Jamaicans. Colorism may be an issue but race isn’t I have Jamaican maternal linage that is white, South Asian and African. You can look at a pictures of the Olympic team and see the variation. Why do racists like you deny the fact that the average person of a different race can be more similar genetically than two people of the same race? Why do racists deny that Africa has the greatest genetic variation on the planet and skin color varies throughout the continent?
Black people have made headway in “traditionally white” sports like golf, fencing, tennis swimming, diving, water polo and gymnastics, how does this racist twaddle explain that? Individual, genetics, opportunity, resources and hard work make a good athlete. This post started as a comment on this fact that this racist tripe still gets publicized as fact. My post was magically removed. I posted it again lets see if it is jettisoned into the ozone again by the author of this trash. Come on, John Entine, put scientific racism in the dustbin of history next to eugenics where it belongs. For more detailed discussion on how wrong this Entine character is check out Resurrecting Racism: The attack on black people using phony science.

Check this racist tomfoolery here….

White South African Model’s Racist Tweets Enrage a Nation

The more things change the more they stay the same. With a name like Dos Santos, she wouldn’t be white in this part of the world.

FHM model Jessica Leandra dos Santos used the word “kaffir” in a tweet on May 3, summoning South Africa’s nasty history of racism and segregation. “Kaffir” is South Africa’s version of the n-word in the United States. It may even cut deeper in South Africa, however, in South Africa, because the wounds of apartheid are still fresh.

“Just, well took on a on arrogant and disrespectful kaffir inside Spar. Should have punched him, should have,” she tweeted. The backlash came immediately, forcing the model to delete the tweet within hours. Dos Santos later claimed that the incident inside Spar, a South African supermarket, came after she was confronted with sexual remarks.

Read more

London 2012: Black Locals Feel Forgotten

Wightman Road, Haringey, London, UK

The Borough of Haringey,  where me and my sister was born, is an area considered one of the most deprived areas in all of Britain. More than half of its 250,000-plus residents are ethnic minorities. But as the Olympics go on across town, Finsbury Park’s run-down sports center faces shutdown. The local council says it can’t pay for the center’s upkeep and is considering handing it over to a consortium of sports clubs that may not offer round-the-clock access. That worries Johnson and his friends, a group of older men, most of them from immigrant families, who gather daily to do punishing circuit training on the track and in the bare-bones gym. In between circuits, they joke and catch up on life. “They should have done this place up for the Olympics,” says Johnson, who is now 57. “We don’t get a lot out of the games at all.”

via Continue reading at The Root.