Category: Uncategorized

As a prelude to some serious review of the work of Skip Gates it is reasonable to evaluate the sources of dissonance. Generally speaking I would disregard attempts at apparent pop psychology but in this case one is seeking a basis for understanding rather criticism and a basis for linking apparently unrelated aspects fo a persons work and personality. To this extent the allegation of impostor syndrome should not be seen as a derogatory slur but a suggestion for…

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One of the techniques of psychological warfare and international propaganda is a standard operation of feeding false stories to the media. It is a widely used technique of Governments to affect public opinion. It was widely used by apartheid South Africa and her supporters to influence opinion against Africans. Outrageous news stories would be carefully fed to the media as ‘breaking news’ . African news media in general and Nigerian news media in particular are regularly played upon and…

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Many speakers are getting caught out by Black speakers rehearsing deep racists comments. Prof Stuart Smith (Note 1) was caught out by Skip Gates  making points about  skin colours that  were quite racist. It must be quite difficult to accuse your influential host of being a racist. There is quite a difficult point here. Skip Gates like Appiah is obsessed with skin color and even stated that he is very dark for coloured person!!! For both Gates and Appiah…

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Reviewing statements by Kemi Badenoch led me to go deeper into her  worldview.   A strange world it is. She is clearly a follower of Trump. I discovered she has created a world of alternative facts starting with her CV. The Spectator reports: ‘Badenoch grew up in Nigeria and, aged 16, won a part-scholarship to Stanford University to study medicine, but the fees were still prohibitive.’ Note 1 This would appear to be an outright lie. Firstly, one wonders…

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One of the dreary developments of recent decades has been the development of and nurturing of Black faces to mouth statements that conservative whites are  too frightened to say anymore. Like Anthony Appiah defending claims that African women like gorillas as lovers, or that young black Americans prefer to spend their days in endless drug induced sex orgies (Malcolm Gladwell). These Black faces say the otherwise  unsayable. They are like the Conversos in Spain who made very lucrative careers…

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Roy Strong caused some sensation when he was quoted as saying: ‘”I couldn’t believe it when some woman on the radio said Nelson’s Column ought to be demolished because he believed in slavery. Well, listen, dear, that was about 1800. Once you start rewriting history on that scale, there won’t be a statue or a historic house standing. It’s ridiculous. The past is the past. You can’t rewrite history.”(Strong & Freeman, 2017) I am reminded of the quotation from…

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There is a great deal of confusion over class and race. This year of BLM has also led to renewed focus on the theoretical question of ‘race’ and the rising inequalities also led to revival of interest in Marxism. This resurgence of interest in Marxism has also led to a revival of interest in the relation between class and race. At some point a heavily researched article will emerge in the Journal on this topic but the matter is…

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We have a possible reconciliation. Leigh Jenko has now distanced herself from  the apparent separation of Chinese and Western philosophy in terms of ‘rational’ and non-rational’. She wrote to me on 23 November: ‘Regarding reason/rationality, I am not keen on using such terms,………., so I think we are in agreement here. ‘ Bravo.

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This is a discreet (Note 1) follow up: Prof Leigh Jenco let me know that she held to  a  three part distinction: rational, non-rational and irrational. Western philosophy is rational, while Chinese philosophy is non-rational. Frankly this concept of ‘non-rational’ seems merely a polite version of ‘irrational’. In all my life I have never heard of non-rational thinking. My response to her was: “I think you will find it untenable to maintain  a distinction between rational and non rational…

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Leigh Jenco seeks to acclimatize  classic Chinese thought to Western philosophy in her talk at Aristotelian Society (16 Nov 20). Her first gambit is to place Chinese history into a similar historiography as the West and to make it share an ‘early modernity’. There is this underlying wish to help accommodate and rehabilitate China by showing how similar it is to the West. This is pretty violent in creating an imperial China when China shares more with Ancient Egypt…

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