Prashad posted:Where is Mrs. Granjer ?
Prashad likes the cloths that is being worn and the initiative in accordance with the United Nations declaration of the International Decade of People of African Descent.
I am willing to bet that Granger has no idea of the attire that he is wearing. Where is it from? What is the significance is it about? Is he wearing it appropriately?
What makes me laugh is in Lagos the elites dress just like rich American blacks. In Mumbai they dress like wealthy Londoners.
Most Africans (and even Indians) reserving traditional dress for special events, wearing Western clothing on a daily basis, these being especially true of the professional classes, of which Granger is a part.
A Nigerian warned a black American that if they wear certain facial markings then a Juju might attack them, because that entity will be angered by the desecration. Jujus do cross water and they are more ferocious than any voodoo thing that a black American might get from New Orleans. At least so said the Nigerian.
Another Nigerian remarked that she saw some attire worn by a black American female at a festive event. Such attire was in fact restricted to garb worn by the widow at the funeral of her husband. In many African traditions if a husband dies his brother has to get married to the widow to keep the marital contract alive. A Nigerian seeing this might get highly incensed and will think that his cultures is being mocked.
Its like someone walking down the road in a wedding dress to attend a beach event. In fact one year Kamla Persad, tried to court the Afro T&T vote by spending all August dressed in what she thought was African attire. The Nigerians there laughed and said that her clothes are what is worn at a wedding and she looked quite ridiculous wearing this to go to political meetings in remote rural areas where she had to walk through mud.
So the "fake Africans" and the "fake Indians" can engage in their activity, but cultural mistakes can have consequences as an Afro Guyanese woman who was forcefully approached by a Ghanaian man because her attire suggested to him that she was badly in need of a man. She was merely being a "fake African for a day" and had no idea as to what she was doing.
Also prashad you may not know this but many of the designs that you see Africans wearing actually originated in Indonesia and were brought to West Africa by the Dutch. The Africans liked the prints and began to reproduce.
So are those designs really African, or are their an adaptation of Indonesia textiles to suit the tastes of West Africans. Prashad cultures evolve. No pure culture exists anymore.