Confusion By Any Other Name: We AIn't "All the Same"

·        REVIEW: ‘We Are All The Same: The Story of a Boy’s Courage and a Mother’s Love’

          The author of this book, Jim Wooten, appeared on a November 15, 2004 segment of “Good Morning America.” The book raises serious questions about AIDS in Africa, but as this review will show, goes much further: straight into the bowels of racism. The following response was written in 1998, I believe.

          After hearing what Wooten had to say, I ordered the book. What a waste of snaps.

          The book is about a South African boy, Nkosi, whose mother had AIDS and, before dying, passed it on to him. Born in 1989, Nkosi died at the tender age of 12 from the disease. Although the book makes positive and productive points about the African tendency to shun those who had AIDS, and how Thabo Mkebi hampered attempts to get anti-retroviral drugs to those suffering from AIDS (a debatable point), the book is actually a cover for white supremacy on a number of levels.

          First of all, the author himself, a correspondent for ABC News. He is covering the continent and watched all of this take place. But at no point in this book does he address the fact that it was the white man who bought AIDS to South Africa. At no point in the book does he address the mythological basis of the Green Monkey theory. Instead, focusing on this lovely young boy, the theme of Wooten’s book is to show how this child “died gracefully.”

          First of all, all children that age die gracefully because they have no real concept of what death is all about. That’s why some of these youngsters can point guns at each other and pull a trigger, because they’ve been programmed by TV that death is temporary. In Nkosi’s case, he understood what the disease was about, but he did something about it: he and his mother filed lawsuits to get him into a regular school and from those actions, other children stricken with the virus were able to attend school as well.

          Secondly, when it comes to blacks, “dying gracefully” seems to be a recurring theme. From referring to dying as “going home,” to Malcolm’s speech about how white folks teach us to “suffer peacefully,” this whole idea of death and dying has two prongs; one for blacks and one for whites. When it’s them, it’s programs, organizations, telethons and million dollar research projects. When it’s us, it’s “he was black, but he had a white heart” as they say or imply with Gunga Din, Booker T. Washington, Ray Charles, and others who tow the company line.

          Third, Wooten spends more time dealing with the fact that Nkosi’s foster mother was a white woman than he does the important issues I’ve pointed out. Why? Because in typical “missionary” fashion, Wooten wants to paint a picture of the white man as saviour. That is what he, in writing this book, is also doing for himself. The jacket of the book claims, “This powerful account puts a human face on a catastrophic epidemic …” Yeah – the face of the victims, but not the face of the culprits who manufactured the disease in the first place. Every white person in this book is an expert or a savior; most of the black people, other thank Nkosi, are silent bystanders.

          Fourth, guess who the mother is? There is of course, Daphne, his biological mother, a dying sister who, as Wooten writes, “moved heaven and earth” to make sure that Nkosi would be provided for after her death. But when you read the book, Daphne doesn’t get as much play as the foster mother – a white woman named Gail Johnson. To her credit, she adopted the child and started a hospice, Nkosi’s Haven, for women and children with AIDS in South Africa. What is NOT mentioned is that she gets grant funding for doing so. You do the math.

          A fifth point is this: the title. Why? Who is “we”? And if it is a truly collective and unified “we,” why must we all “be the same”? Why can’t we all be different, and yet have the same goal, that of freedom? No, that would be too much diversity for the white man to handle. So, in reality, this book has nothing to do with sameness. The African continent is the only one that is headed for extermination. Not Europe. Not Asia. So then, where is the sameness?

          If we are all the same, then why did white folks in Nkosi’s South Africa see fit to create a system of Apartheid while, in this country, their cousins had a situation called Jim Crow? If we are all the same, then why was there two music charts: one for “R&B” and one for “Pop”? If we are all the same, then why can brothers who are 6-feet tall dunk, and very few white dudes can?

          We are NOT all the same, that’s why. This is the white man talking. When he says he’s “color blind,” what he means is that he’s ignoring what race you are and judging you from the only perspective he has; a white one. When he says “we’re all the same,” he can’t prove it. Even his Bible wants to make you think that you’re the “cursed descendant of Ham”! And what was the curse: according to the white minister, it’s black skin!

          We are NOT all the same. This is not to say that this is not what he would prefer. He has the majority of our people thinking the way he does, smiling when ain’t nothing funny, currying favor and carrying water for him. That is about as far as the “sameness” goes. After working, you head back to the ghetto and barrio, and he’s on his way to suburbia, created so he could get away from the likes of you. If we were the “same,” would he be spending billions of dollars doing that?

          Nkosi’s spirit was strong, but no different than what we, as black people, have right here in our midst. Some of us have been broken, but many of us have not. While AIDS is a major concern that must be addressed, it won’t be conquered by alien missionaries who use it as an excuse to beg for grant money. It starts with us re-defining our relationships with one another and working on strategies to care for our own people.

          Using a dying black child in South Africa to promote mythology and a white supremacist agenda is wrong. Jim Wooten should be ashamed of himself.