MY NAME, MY RACE: A Young African’s Untold Story
Author: Prosper Yao Tsikata
With Foreword by Prof. Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor,
Ghana’s Former Ambassador to the UN
Launch Date: Thursday, July 31, 2008 at 5:30 P.M.
Venue: Teachers Hall, Accra
This book lays the facts bare; even though uncomfortable, they are meant to probe the hearts and the minds of society. The reader is warned to literally shed his or her ethnic and racial prejudices before plunging into this book full of pain, angst, suspense, hope and despair, culminating in the search for true justice, for it has the potential to turn people into ‘anti-racism racists’ or ‘anti-tribalism tribalists’ effortlessly.
Ethnocentrism and racism are the most vicious evils that afflict the African everywhere. These prejudices exist the world over, yet they are the most dreaded subjects for any public discourse, as they usually, drive people into a deadly state of denial and indefensible fury. Even to the sanctimonious, ethnic and racial blood are absolutely thicker than the blood of Jesus, or any spiritual leader of today or yesterday. We have seen it in the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’.
This book brings to light the place of the African in the global scheme of things. It is a rare glimpse into the world of bigotry. It is an audacious chronicle which takes the reader through a journey of turbulent experiences in the writer’s search for excellence as he sets out from his small African town in Ghana to seek his rightful place in the new world. In this search, he nearly paid the ultimate price against the grimness and the gloom of which the twin flames of courage and perseverance glow the brighter. His return to his native land, Ghana, will make you stifle a laugh and ask ‘is the reality of the African supposed to be any different from what it is?’
It is intended to wake society up to the reality that excellent ideas can come from anywhere and anyone irrespective of their political, social, economic, racial or ethnic status. We cannot be ‘asleep at the wheels and be proud of it’. Reducing intelligence, competence and skills and confining them to political, economic, social, racial or ethnic familiarity complex is ‘a toxic super simplification of the postmodern reality’.
The method in coming out with this book is unique, not prompted by choice between social theories and methods. It is a matter of life’s circumstances over which we mortals have little or no control—my birth and your birth are not matters over which you and I had any control. Indeed, this does not in anyway shrink its scientific credibility and reliability. The connections between evidence and logic are solid, enforcing its scientific spirit. But, of course, if a simpler proof was available, which could uphold its value, I would gladly have adopted that, wishing it did not have to be sacrificing my very life for these experiments. But in all, I am glad I have laid the facts bare and have brought to the fore issues of those living on the fringes of our society without a voice.
Come, lets soul search what is in a name and a race!