Very interesting blog! By way of context, please note that the intention of this essay, perhaps not the impact, was to sharpen our alertness to the many ways in which all of us, despite our good intentions, sometime slip into behaviors and attitudes that demean and affect others.In other word it is a call for vigilance to our own innate ‘mental conditionings,’ and as such, I agree that the title of this blog, which highlights some of the racial tensions that are surrounding the discussion, perhaps over-emphasizes a particular aspect of the piece at the expense of many others.

I speak about how potentially-crashing childhood incidents have (positively in his case) affected my dad. How set ideas in my own life have had the potential of derailing my own attitudes[eg. the Parisian cab driver incident...]. And how we must all ‘check ourselves and our deep intentions’ as often as possible, with the toughest scrutiny.

By way of comment as well, my family was not actually poor, as one of the bloggers suggested. Both my grandfathers were quite affluent (one, Abdoulaye Fal, was a ‘Chef de Canton’ in St Louis -Senegal- who owned property and was a local notable. The other, Wagane Diouf, was a renowned business man who owned a number of construction ventures in Senegal and across French West Africa. I had a privileged childhood and went to French-Swiss boarding schools as well as Ivy League US universities later on.

So the piece was not meant to be a rags-to-riches fable.

Rather, it was meant to expose some of the insidious ‘underlying mental models’ we must all watch out for as participants in the greatest battle of our time, the battle to end [or significantly reduce...] poverty.

What’s with the remark about Rick Warren? Don’t like him? Didn’t like what he had to say?

I do prefer to be positive when possible, so after criticizing the title for its insensitiveness and lack of real precision (it is only Sub-Saharan Africans who don’t make locomotives, not negroes in any sense) I went back and looked at the book. This unfortunate title does not figure on the book cover nor apparently even on the Chapter it is about in favor of a much kinder and subtler “Locomotives, Needles and Aid.” So perhaps someone got carried away in the rough and tumble world of fighting for careers, attention and web audiences. The author’s original intention in any case seems at second glance much better.

But let me say also why I still think the title is so unfortunate in addition to the scars my own experience has left me which I mention above. A 28 year practitioner of international aid I have often sat at donor meetings in Africa, Asia and even Eastern Europe where the very people we are supposed to be aiding were left out. These were by no means meetings where sensitive information transpired, often project meetings, though certainly not all, or strategic meetings on how to best help the country. Participants seemed unaware that colleagues were working on the next floor, or even the same floor, were being systematically left out. It didn’t have as far as I could see so much to do with racism as jingoism- – we know better than they — but in any case a mixture of both seemed at play.

So it is that a title like this one frightens me about the whole aid project in spite of what may be good intentions on the part of the author, because it says to a whole class of people, in spite of the correction made in the text – this is not about you, anyway you wouldn’t understand.

SS

Diane, the problem is parading it across the headline rather than a sensitive treatment in the text of the sort: Surmounting racist denigration throughout his life like the teacher who repeatedly told him “Whites … Negroes… ,”no matter how bitter his feelings Malik’s father did not attribute this treatment to all whites nor allow them to prevent him from succeeding.

Now that would be a sensitive treatment. Suppose instead of my treatment of the Italian American experience to Laura I led with a headline of the type:

‘NEGROES OF EUROPE’ CHALLENGE REAL ‘NEGROES’ TO BUILD TRAINS RATHER THAN DANCE ‘THE ELECTRIC SLIDE’

As you say in your response about racist remarks ,”How we handle them is what makes the difference.”

SS

“But may be such provocative lines are what we need to awaken the Continent’s Mugabe’s and al-Bashir’s from their alternative universes.”

Racism in the service of race. Such a nice twist on an old theme.

SS

But may be such provocative lines are what we need to awaken the Continent’s Mugabe’s and al-Bashir’s from their alternative universes.

As the author of this piece, I quoted Malik Fal’s essay comparing colonial Senegal with a contemporary business situation. The essay illustrates some of the subtle ways that race and prejudice continue to be a factor (in Africa) today.

I agree that these demeaning comments are intolerable. I admire Malik Fal and his father for bringing them to our attention and applaud how this family has succeeded in spite of such attitudes.

Regardless of who we are (age, race, nationality, etc), many of us have been the victims of prejudice of one type or another. How we handle them is what makes the difference.

Your intention is good enough but I suggest you read the blog post once more. Remember paying attention to periods and commas.