Don’t Patronize Me, Dr Kennedy!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

As usual, I read Dr. Arthur Kennedy’s rejoinder to my article with no small measure of amusement (See MyJoyOnline.com 5/8/10). For somebody who has written tons of articles celebrating the achievements of President Kwame Nkrumah (both real and concocted) to presume to instruct Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe on how not to offensively celebrate the achievements of illustrious Ghanaians who also happen to be my ancestors and relatives, constitutes the very height of arrogance. But this is only in synch with the character of Dr. Arthur Kennedy, Our Latter-Day Moses!

It also rather characteristically absurd for Dr. Kennedy to assert that: “It should trouble all of us that some members of Mr. [sic] Danquah’s family seem to share Nkrumah’s unhealthy penchant for naming things after himself” when, to the best of my knowledge, the critic did absolutely nothing in protest of the renaming of the former Kumasi College of Technology after President Nkrumah. And also, just what did Dr. Kennedy say or do recently when an oil tanker was named by Ghana’s First Lady after Mr. Kwame Nkrumah?

It is also rather cowardly for the former NPP presidential aspirant to hide behind his rejoinder to my article and call my family and sub-ethnicity names. This is not the first time that Dr. Kennedy has used insolent epithets like “Akyem Mafia” and “Kyebi Mafia” in an article; and on those past occasions, such usage had absolutely nothing, whatsoever, to do with any perceived crime or offence that I might be plausibly said to have committed against this Fante native of Asebu.

Fortunately, like me, most Ghanaians can clearly see through the wiles and devious antics of Dr. Kennedy, as was amply and deafeningly demonstrated by party delegates some three years ago.

At any rate, all that I sought to point out in my response to Dr. Kennedy’s woefully misguided and intemperate plaint on the Commonwealth Hall issue, is that Mr. Kofi Annan is neither the critic’s peer nor Dr. Kennedy’s classmate for the latter to cavalierly drag Ghana’s lone Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former United Nations Secretary-General into such a petty matter, regarding whether women get to reside in a taxpayer-funded residential abode. And just exactly what does Dr. Kennedy mean by the following statement: “I urge Dr. Okoampa-Ahoofe to mind his language. His disagreeable pieces do not serve the causes and the people he supports well”?

Is it either because Dr. Kennedy thinks he has a peremptory right to regulate the language and tenor of my speech via blackmail, whatever the latter may entail, or simply that he reserves the mandate over whom Ghanaians choose to elect as their leaders?

Maybe somebody ought to inform Dr. Kennedy, in plain language, that with illustrious ancestors or not, Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe’s social and personal worth is not predicated on heredity and/or ethnicity. I also feel the need to inform our readers that recently when I promptly declined a request from a Kennedy camper to review the Asiedu Nketia-inspired “Chasing The Elephant Into The Bush,” I did so purely on the basis of merit, rather than anything personal.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is a former Undergraduate Ford Foundation Fellow at the City College of the City University of New York. He is currently Associate Professor of English at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York. ###