I found the whole Shirley Sherrod case to be pretty disgraceful to be honest. I’ve written a number of pieces on it for different publications, as well as appearing on the BBC talking about the nature of the media today and how easy it is to score cheap political points by manipulating the media…

Here are some of the pieces I wrote on the case. In the very first piece, which was written before the full video was released, I questioned how we could possibly make a snap judgement based on a short video clip.

As I wrote: “I’m not saying that Sherrod was right. I don’t know. And neither does anyone else – because we haven’t seen the whole video. Until the entire video is seen, it is not possible to garner from that clip the exact context of what she was saying.”

It’s the same thing I said about Sonia Sotomayor and the ‘wise Latina’ comments. Without context there is no meaning. I didn’t need to see the entire video to know that firing someone (or forcing them to ‘resign’) over a short clip was utterly absurd.

In the second piece – Shirley Sherrod Wants To Talk Race With President Obama – I looked at why Obama needed to sit down with Sherrod. If he was willing to have a beer with Henry Louis Gates and the police officer, surely he could take a while to speak to Sherrod (which he did eventually)

In the third piece – The Firing of Shirley Sherrod –  I took a critical look at the whole incident. I looked at what this means about the media (particularly partisan media, such as the likes of Fox News), the state of the nation’s conversation about race (it is distorted) and took issue with the NAACP saying that it was ‘snookered’. No, it wasn’t, it just didn’t check the facts. Unacceptable.

And in this fourth piece – The White House Can Avoid Future Shirley Sherrod Debacles – I look at what lessons the White House can learn from this.

I also think there needs to be movement which encourages the media to reconsider exactly what we are here for and why we exist. We have power and we need to use it for good….On that theme, in The Guardian, I take a look at the ugly media flaws that this case exposes.

“Unfortunately, “journalism” based on the regurgitation of clips, soundbites and inaccuracies has become all too common. Controversy wins the day over facts, and regardless of the cost – which can include damage to the life or career of an individual, undermining the good work of an organisation (as in the case of Acorn) and losing the trust of the public. Indeed, in recognition of the fact that controversy sells, scandals are increasingly being manufactured and manipulated by the rightwing media to push people out of jobs and to scare the government.

Teesnthings.com

I’m going to be 30 in a few months time. I’m big on birthdays. My new year begins every November on my birthday, rather than on January 1st so I am very reflective in the lead up to it.

This birthday feels big. It feels like the beginning of adulthood.

One thing I’ve realized growing up is that many of us – me included – are children in grown up bodies. We are more adult children, then adults.

There is nothing wrong with being child-like especially it comes to the innocence and wonder that children have for the world. But it is somewhat problematic to be a 28 year old who still responds to the world as if they are a 15 year old and the world is their parents or some authoritarian other that they have to rebel against or even conform to, as if they have no choice in the matter.

I was excited about turning 18. Then 21. Then 25. But even then I still wasn’t an ‘adult’. So what is an ‘adult’?

To me, an adult is someone who recognizes – and lives congruent to that recognition – that they are totally and utterly responsible for their experience of their own life. Everything I see is my choice. My actions and how I choose to view any particular person or situation are down to me.

This can be pretty confronting. It has been for me. Not only does it mean that I am immensely, excitingly and somehow scarily powerful, it also means that I have to be responsible for all of the mess, as well as the good, I’ve created. I can’t blame my parents. I can’t blame my past. I can’t blame the economy. I can’t blame circumstances and I can’t blame anyone else. It is all me!

Well, I could blame other people or things. And many of us do. A lot. Listen to your own and others’ conversations and see how much of it is made up of complaints and reasons (read: excuses) for why you cannot do what you want to do. As if there is actually anyone stopping you. Listen to how much of it is a complaint about what someone else said or did. Now, there’s nothing wrong with complaining either. It just renders you powerless, which you aren’t. All those complaints and reasons are just plausible sounding justifications for not being response-able. They tend to go unexamined as such because in our society excuses are accepted as being totally normal.

I started exploring every single thought I had about why I couldn’t do or hadn’t done something. “I don’t know how” was one that came up. Ok, well, why hadn’t I asked someone? Or gone to a library? Or joined a class? Or read a book?

“I can’t” is another one. Well, what’s stopping me? Is someone physically holding me down? I started to challenge my own thinking. And when it came down to it, it was all a bunch of BS. The truth is I can do all of it because I am response-able all the time. I’m even being responsible when I am claiming not to be responsible. Hilarious really.

Responsibility is distinct from blame. It is not a judgement. It is about one’s ability to have a say in the matter. And the truth is, once you stop being a child (age-wise), when do you not have a say in your life? Even people who have been in terrible situations such as being held captive or falsely imprisoned for several years have shared tales of how they still owned their power because they knew they had a say in what their experience of that situation was going to be. Nelson Mandela (27 years in jail) and Viktor Frankl (sent to a concentration camp where he watched his whole family die) are just two such well known examples.

Adulthood in that way, then, is an immense privilege. It means really being able to shape and create the life that you want. It means that you can have immense security in the knowledge that you always have a say.

It is virtually impossible to have the life you adore if you are not responsible for yourself and what you are creating. For as long as you don’t own your choices in each moment of every day, you will be a victim of circumstances and people.

So you know that relationship you claim you don’t want to be in? That’s your choice. And that job. And that financial situation (note to self!). And that friendship.

Living a life you love means owning every part of it. It means giving up the idea that there is someone or something out there ‘making’ you feel the way you feel. There isn’t.

For me this has meant owning that I had chosen the guys I’d dated who I’d previously complained about and then choosing to meet a totally different type of man, one who was in line with what I really wanted. It has meant owning that the debt I have was down to poor choices and scarcity thinking. It means owning my thoughts and feelings as emanating from me and realizing that they have nothing to do with what someone said or did.

I’m no longer a child in a woman’s body. I’m owning my life and stepping forth into adulthood! yay! Are you joining me?

The Hunger Project is an organization which empowers people to end their own hunger and poverty. Yes, you heard that right – they work with people to end their own hunger and poverty.

I met with them last week, and am massively inspired by what they do and their commitment to people and the planet. They are doing amazing work around the world, transforming people, communities and societies. In five to six years, people can go from being starving and poor to having self-sustaining communities which they themselves created along with The Hunger Project. Five or six years is no time at all. The Hunger Project does radical, revolutionary and vital work.

Heal the world = Heal people

The premise of The Hunger Project (one which I believe in whole heartedly) is that the solution to persistent issues – that is, the way to ensure that such issues are transformed and do not re-occur – is empowering people. It is not about giving people food or money, but about providing them with the tools (I’m not talking physical tools alone by the way, I’m talking spiritual, emotional, psychological, economic, social and in whichever other form they may come) to produce and create their own.

Although there is a common notion in our society that the main way to end problems is to change policies or to give people who go without whatever it is they don’t have, it actually has not been proven to be effective. What we see are that while things may change or be relieved temporarily, the underlying, unsolved issues always resurface. Then we will go and do the same thing we did before (change another policy, throw more money at it etc) to try and solve that issue. Remember the definition of insanity, anyone?

Aid in Africa is just one such example – it has not solved Africa’s issues, and quite frankly, it never will. Another example is that even though American schools have been desegregated, there is still much segregation that exists. This is because a lack of money or integrated schools are just symptoms of underlying, deeper-rooted issues, not the issue themselves.

Can we apply this to African-Americans/Africans/black people around the world?

In the past year in America, there have been various debates and discussions about the issues facing African-Americans especially in the current economy. People have suggested that the government needs to provide more jobs, more resources, or more money, or more [fill in the blank]. I don’t believe that more of any of these things on their own would solve the problem because it is not ultimately the root cause.

Be the change, See the change

A much more effective solution – as the Hunger Project model demonstrates – would be to empower people to be the change they want to see by implementing programs which work on shifting the ingrained, and often undistinguished, community and/or societal conversations, beliefs and notions which perpetuate suffering.This is a sustainable model since once people have the tools, they can are able to create opportunities for themselves over and over and over again. Whereas when you just throw aid/jobs/money/food at a community, they are back to square one once all of that runs out or stops working in any way.

The human aspect often goes ignored when talking about solutions, but it is the most important part. If we lived in a world of empowered people, we’d have a very different world.

I believe that the Hunger Project model can be replicated with any community… Empowered people lead to empowered actions which lead to empowered families, communities and societies, which lead to a world that works for all. Do you think this could work for black communities around the world?

photo from telegraph.co.uk

It’s time for the UK to have a party leader who is not just a white, Eton-educated, Oxbridge middle aged male. Enter Diane Abbott who has been on the political scene for decades – she was the first black female MP in 1987 – and is now running for the leader of the Labour Party. Even if she doesn’t win – she’s currently in a close second – she will have opened the door for people to even start thinking differently about what a party leader looks and sounds like.

Frankly, the the next potential ones to lead the Labour Party are ridiculously similar. Ed Miliband. David Miliband. Andy Burnham. Ed Balls. John McDonnell. They could all be the same person. Abbott got into trouble when she called them “posh white boys” but she is right that having several candidates who are virtually the same is not healthy for democracy nor representation.

The country needs a diversity of viewpoint, background, perspective and thought in its leadership. The Labour Party, currently in the midst of a crisis of direction, definitely needs that. Abbott could provide that.

With the World Cup being held in Africa for the first time ever, the focus of the mainstream media has increasingly turned towards Africa and will continue to do so as the games get underway.

This is a major opportunity for a rebranding of Africa in the mainstream media. This is a great time for the mainstream media to move away from the typical stories about Africa – HIV/AIDs, poverty, crime and so on – and start to look at the bigger picture which includes African successes and progress. Of course, the other stuff exists, it just is not the whole story – and quite frankly, the partial story got boring a long time ago.

There’s a lot to be said about African innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, business and social progress. There’s a lot to be said about emerging political leaders and other people with new ideas about Africa’s future. There’s much to be covered about the ‘brain gain’ currently happening and how people moving from the UK and US back to Africa will shape the continent now and into the future. Let’s hear them.

I’ll post any interesting stories that speak to this, and please feel free to point me in the direction of anything interesting that you hear too.

In the meantime, feel free to have a look at some of my previous posts about Africa.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jWX2EFzRho

Is Jacob Zuma, with his 4 wives and 20 children an embarrassment to Africa and Africans? Is he setting a bad example to the citizens of the country he leads based on his relationship status? Or, should we all be focussing on more important issues rather than treating Zuma’s life as if is it’s latest episode of a reality TV show?

If Jacob Zuma is to be called into question as a leader, there are some things that are more serious and troubling. His belief that HIV can be washed off in the shower, for example. That is certainly questionable for a man who leads a country with such a high HIV rate. But as regards his wives and many children, not so much.

Zuma isn’t breaking the law of his land. Apparently the women have consented to the arrangement, they are all adults, and one of his sons even released a statement in February saying that he is happy to have that many siblings and to share his father amongst them.

While polygamy is seen as outdated and even amoral in the west, it isn’t viewed as such everywhere else. The argument that polygamy reinforces patriarchy also doesn’t wash – there are still millions of women who feel disempowered and oppressed within monogamous marriages.

Monogamy and polygamy are just two different family and relationship structures, neither inherently good nor bad, nor better or worse than another. The view that he is wrong simply for practising his own tradition smacks, to me, of a colonial mentality where everything is judged against some apparently objective moral yardstick.

Isn’t Zuma just adding to the negative stereotypes about Africa?

However, this does further fuel stereotypes about Africans (men, in particular) and Africa. Unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily have much to do with Zuma. That’s to do with a media already obsessed with looking at Africa through a lens that caricatures the continent as backwards and uncivilized, and one relishes a story that can fit into that narrative. The UK’s Daily Mail (not the highest quality publication, let’s be honest), for example, ran a piece in which Zuma was described as a “vile buffoon” next to a photo of him dressed in traditional clothing. It’s just part of the same-old African story of hyper sexualized, uncivilized men and suppressed women.

Zuma’s polygamy is misrepresented in the media as being a regular African occurrence. Polygamy isn’t even practised, or supported, by many Zulu people let alone many Africans.

This is only international news because those who shape the media have decided that it should be so. Forget Zuma’s calls for sanctions to be lifted in Zimbabwe, forget about looking at the future of the ANC or the future of South Africa. All of that has got a great deal less attention than his family.

And let’s compare how he is being treated to the treatment of Silvio Berlusconi or, say, Bill Clinton. They definitely bore the brunt of media attention for their indiscretions – and let’s face it, these were men who had extra marital affairs which were not consented to by their wives, and there were prostitutes involved in Berlusconi’s case – yet were not, and still are not, seen as being representatives of entire societies, even though there are other Western leaders who can be mentioned who do the same. This isn’t though about who is right or wrong. It is just worth nothing the difference in terms of how their actions are represented in the media.

If the focus really is on Zuma’s image as a leader, all leaders need to be held to the same standards.

I don’t believe in polygamy. I also don’t believe in stereotyping.

This is my latest piece for The Guardian:

Sarah Palin speaks during the Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Photograph: Josh Anderson/Reuters

Sarah Palin may not know that Africa is a continent, but if there is knowledge that she is not lacking, it’s a canny ability to spot, and seize, any opportunity that will propel her into the spotlight.

Palin’s delivery of the keynote speech at this weekend’s Tea Party convention in Tennessee was a reminder that it was not, and is not likely to ever be, substance nor innovative ideas that characterise her mainstream political career. What gets Palin ahead is her way of maximising and exploiting what are, essentially, gaps in the market for her own gain.

One gap that was open, and seemingly filled by Palin on Saturday night, was leadership of the fledgling Tea Party movement. Both the movement and Palin have been branded, and ridiculed by commentators and politicians, as hollow and devoid of any substance; both are seeking to assert themselves as legitimate political forces.

You can read the rest of the piece here

Recently I have begun advocating for a new approach to media output. I would like to see a media that is focussed on looking at solutions, rather than just regurgitating scary and titillating images and statistics (or sometimes speculation, rumours and misinformation) which don’t help the people/situation being discussed and leave those watching, reading or listening feelings depressed and helpless.

With a 24 hour news cycle we have even more need to look again at the nature of media output. There is an opportunity, with such a wide window, to introduce new approaches. We can start to look not just at we’re putting out, but why and what for?

The media coverage surrounding the situation in Haiti has been pretty interesting, and has really highlighted to me the need for a shift. Every hour of every day we are given the estimates of how many people have died. We have been shown some of the most horrendous photos and video images of people caught in the disaster. People who have sought to help Haitians, like Wyclef, are being treated with suspicion and are being subjected to media gossip. Pastors and prominent personalities are coming out and making heartless statements… and we are now being given predictions of violence and unrest.

What is the point of all of that? What does all of that ‘information’, speculation and comment actually count for? Seeing bodies, hearing about death toll estimates, having commentary on the shoulda, woulda and coulda’s, and people giving their predictions of what might happen (which are usually the most negative things) do not help me, do not help those with family and friends in Haiti and certainly do not help Haiti.

All of this passes for ‘news’ and information, but isn’t it about time we start looking at what exactly constitutes news, and why? I’m not saying we shouldn’t give people the facts, but after the facts have been given, what benefit is there to repetition and embellishment of them?

We could give 2 hours of facts, for example, and 22 hours of great ideas and solutions about what we can all do to help not only the Haitian community, but any other community that needs help, or indeed just making our world, societies and communities a better place.

We cannot underestimate the power of the media when it comes to shaping public discourse and private conversation, as well as influencing the feelings and ideas that people have about the kind of environment and world in which they live in. So, those who produce and create media would do well to start questioning what the role of the media is, what the need for a particular type of output is, what effect that output may have, and what new approaches can be employed.

It is great to see stars and celebrities using their media power in these times to raise money, and so on. But it has to go beyond this. I think it’s time that we start having a media that is a great deal more socially responsible and conscious and uses its power and influence for the greater good. In a time of tragedy the necessity for that becomes even more apparent.

Happy Martin Luther King day! I wrote a piece for The Guardian – “King dream meets Obama’s reality” - on Obama’s first year in office and what it means for Martin Luther King’s vision for America.

The crux of the piece is that one person cannot singlehandedly change everything, particularly in the space of one year. We all need to be involved and take responsibility for having the dream come to life, not just the President. I also wrote that MLK’s vision – part of which was that America would hold “self-evident, that all men are created equal” - will not be totally fulfilled until “…the notion that “all men are created equal” come[s] to life as an integral part of American beliefs, such that all America’s systems – educational, economic and the rest – continue to change to reflect that.” Have a read!

Dr King’s focus on equality is very important. We can change healthcare policies, education policies, change laws and adopt new practices, but if they are changed on top of an already-existing notion that people are inherently unequal, the same issues will be perpetuated and continue.

Why we must keep on dreaming

What really inspires me about Martin Luther King is that he created and spoke a dream and a vision that bore little or no resemblance to the circumstances that he was faced with at the time. His dream – and the way that it continues to live on – tells us a lot about the power of one’s word, and the power (or lack thereof) of circumstances.

I have no doubt that when Dr King gave his “I have a dream” speech, he had no idea how exactly the dream would be achieved. He probably didn’t know the details nor the exact steps that needed to be taken. He also had a reality which was not at all in line with what he believed to be possible. His circumstances – the America of 1963 – were of oppression, denial of rights, conflict, violence and inequality not of the freedom, peace, connection and equality of which he spoke. Yet, he believed that his vision could become reality and took steps – in the face of the most horrendous of circumstances – to make that real.

We can all learn a lot from that act alone. Often we have dreams or visions that we do not express or do not act on because we look at our circumstances and believe that our dreams cannot come true in the light of circumstances. Often we feel stopped, resigned, beaten down or victimized by our circumstances. And if we do decide to go ahead and take action, we become stopped when we aren’t sure exactly which steps we need to take.

What I have learned from Dr King is that circumstances do not matter. There will always be circumstances to deal with. If you have a dream for your life, or for the world, speak it. Share it. Talk about it. Believe in it. Act on it. And if you don’t know the exact steps, do it anyway. Once you commitment to something and share your commitment with others, doors will open.

Martin Luther King was an incredible man who didn’t allow himself or his vision for his country to be hindered by what was going on around him. Today I commit to the same, for my life and for the world.