My Madiba Moment - Part 5

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

I think what fast endeared me to the South African anti-apartheid epic narrative, more than anything else, had to do with the predictably cavalier attitude towards us, Africans, by several of the City College of New York professors. One professor, in particular, likely drove me into forcefully and radically forging a common cause with the small, albeit close-knit, purposeful and readily recognizable South African student community on the City College campus.

And that professor was none other than the Canadian-born Irish-American man by the quite common name of Michael Keating. He was roughly about the same age as my own father, who was in his mid-fifties at the time. I would inadvertently coax Professor Keating out of his rock-ribbed carapace of debonair white supremacy in due course. In fact, sooner and much faster that I had imagined possible.

The incident that fully convinced me of the fact that his Principles of Journalism class was an invidious platform from which to cavalierly preach and promote Aryan supremacy, occurred quite early in my undergraduate experience at City College in the spring semester of either 1986 or 1987. I forget precisely what the theme, or topic, for the week in the class was, but Professor Keating arrived in class with a rolled-up map of Africa which he immediately hung on a hook-like projection up the the mid-top section of the black board.

Being an avid enthusiast of geography, I readily recognized it to be a political map of the proverbial primeval continent, and my heart almost jumped with great excitement, except for the fact that this particular map peevishly looked like the conceptual cartography of a rabid racist. It had probably been produced sometime at the turn of the twentieth century, when African political liberation was still the prime grist of dreams. It had the then-Apartheid Republic of South Africa colored white and distinct from the rest of the countries of the continent. Then also, if memory serves me accurately, North Africa was colored white as well.

Professor Keating then proceeded to lecture the class about how, indeed, there were no such thing as an organically unified African continent. He further pointed at the mid-section of the map with what looked like a white swagger stick and deliberately announced, "This is Black Africa!" I riposted by saying that there was no such a thing as "Black Africa." That is purely the figment of the febrile imagination of the white world. I also quickly added that the term, "Black Africa" was a patent misnomer and an unpardonable contradiction in terms. An oxymoron, to be certain. I made sure to emphasize the "moron" part of the word, for such exactly was how I envisaged this chronically disheveled man who routinely bragged about having reported for the Associated Press (AP) and later, served as News Director of CBS-TV in New York City.

To hear him so beautifully and passionately retail it seemed liked a privileged treat at the Copa Cabana or Small's Paradise, or some such posh and chic center of culinary culture. Keating and a small group of media men and women had righteously protested what they deemed to be grossly unsatisfactory working conditions and gotten promptly fired. It simply had to do with a screaming demand for fatter paychecks, of course.

That was sometime between the late 1970s and early 1980s. That was how he found himself teaching print journalism at City College. Keating also claimed, with credible evidence, to be on first-name basis with just about every recognizable media operative: Walter Cronkite, Jim Jensen (whom he also claimed to have directed in the CBS newsroom), Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, David Broder... you name the personality, and Keating would tell you, without batting an eyelid, that he had him or her on his Rolodex, and that they used to hang together out at a drinking bar somewhere near New York City's Central Park.

Anyway, Keating had brought along with him from CBS-TV a portly light-complexioned African-American former program host or news anchor of some sort - it was never quite clear to me - called Tony Barton. The two, who apparently had been fast friends in the past, would later have a falling out. Keating would bitterly accuse Professor Barton of being an ungrateful chap who had rudely bitten-bloody the proverbial hand that fed him so generously.

For his part, Professor Barton found his old buddy to be a snooty O'fay whose ethnic whiteness was about the only salient cachet that commended him to his classroom job.

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

Department of English

Nassau Community College of SUNY

Garden City, New York

Dec. 10, 2013

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

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