#WhyI’mTalkingAboutRace | On African Writers, Empathy, Woke Identity Politics, and Skewed Priorities

#WhyI’mTalkingAboutRace | On African Writers, Empathy, Woke Identity Politics, and Skewed Priorities | Ikhide R. Ikheloa

Weeks ago, the South African writer Panashe Chigumadzi published an essay in Africa Is a Country, “Why I’m No Longer Talking to Nigerians About Race: On Writers, Empathy and (Black) Solidarity Politics,” which demands an uncomfortable conversation on race, Black, and African solidarity politics. Our #WhyI’mTalkingAboutRace series features responses. The first is by the Nigerian […]

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The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...

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