The Lessons of Ubuntu
How an African Philosophy Can Inspire Racial Healing in America
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A roadmap to healing America’s wounds, bridging the racial divide, and diminishing our anger.
Mathabane touched the hearts of millions of people around the world with his powerful memoir, Kaffir Boy, about growing up under apartheid in South Africa and was praised by Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton. In his new book, The Lessons of Ubuntu: How an African Philosophy Can Inspire Racial Healing in America, Mathabane draws on his experiences with racism and racial healing in both Africa and America, where he has lived for the past thirty-seven years, to provide a timely and provocative approach to the search for solutions to America’s biggest and most intractable social problem: the divide between the races.
In his new book, Mathabane tells what each of us can do to become agents for racial healing and justice by learning how to practice the ten principles of Ubuntu, an African philosophy based on the concept of our shared humanity. The book’s chapters on obstacles correlate to chapters on Ubuntu principles:
• The Teaching of Hatred vs. Empathy
• Racial Classification vs. Compromise
• Profiling vs. Learning
• Mutual Distrust vs. Nonviolence
• Black Bigotry vs. Change
• Dehumanization vs. Fogiveness
• The Church and White Supremacy vs. Restorative Justice
• Lack of Empathy vs. Love
• The Myth That Blacks and Whites Are Monolithic vs. Spirituality
• Self-Segregation: American Apartheid vs. Hope
By practicing Ubuntu in our daily lives, we can learn that hatred is not innate, that even racists can change, and that diversity is America’s greatest strength and the key to ensuring our future.
Concerned by the violent protests on university campuses and city streets, and the killing of black men by the police, Mathabane challenges both blacks and whites to use the lessons of Ubuntu to overcome the stereotypes and mistaken beliefs that we have about each other so that we can connect as allies in the quest for racial justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South Africa born Mathabane (Kaffir Boy) examines race relations in the United States through the lens of racial healing principles employed in Mandela's postapartheid South Africa in this fervent plea for a better future. He espouses the philosophy of ubuntu, a renewed commitment to common humanity, empathy, forgiveness, and love, for American culture and politics. Using his own story as a backdrop, Mathabane highlights commonalities between the South African and American experiences, discussing obstacles faced in both societies. He connects the hatred he felt for South African ghetto police to that felt by rioters after the Rodney King case. More provocatively, he recalls forced segregation and the "pass books" (akin to internal passports) required for blacks to enter into white-only areas, and aligns these experiences with the self-segregation of "safe spaces" on American campuses, saying the latter is "well-meant... oftentimes undermines the benefits of diversity." In the second half of the book Mathabane elaborates on the principles of ubuntu through quotes from leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Mandela, and philosophers, yet is light on logistics when applying them to America today. Instead he relies on hopes that "President Trump will embrace and champion the inclusive and humanizing principles of ubuntu in the same way that Mandela embraced and championed them." For many readers, this might seem like wishful thinking.