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Bravery in the Face of Hatred: A Brief Look at Mo Asumang

By

Michelle Parson

Mo Asumang is an Afro-German woman whose work in the world of media has gained her critical acclaim.  Her titles include filmmaker, actress and TV moderator. 

While her name was already prominent in Germany, Asumang gained international exposure when she played the role of Condeleeza Rice in Roman Polanksi's movie Ghostwriter. 

After receiving a death threat by way of a song written by Neo-Nazi band, White Aryan Rebels entitled, "This Bullet Is For You Mo Asumang," she chose not to hide.  She set out to uncover the reason for so much hatred and racism towards her and people like her.   

In her first film, Roots Germania, she traveled to gain insight from both her Ghanaian father and her German mother on her roots and racism.

Since the start of her career in 1996, Asumang has won several awards, including the Adler award for Best Media Entertainer, in both 2006 and 2010.

She continues to use her many talents as a creative activist in the area of racism.

Asumang was born in Kassel, Germany, in 1963.  Throughout her childhood, she dealt with racism within her own family.  She was considered a disgrace because of the African blood that ran through her body.

Asumang continuously lectures about racism and social issues around the world, specifically Germany.  Asumang’s message is “We have color,” as she expressed to journalism students in a class at N.C. A&T on Nov. 9.  She stresses how she makes it her “mission to change the perception and idea of the way we think of Germans.”

Asumang speaks freely about her opinions on social issues in Germany.  The documentary Roots Germania was screened for the class during her visit.  She spoke of how difficult it was to find people to interview, because of her skin color.  She was able to interview a Neo-Nazi for the film, by not revealing that she was Afro-German.  During the interview the man wouldn’t look into her eyes.  He made general rude and disrespectful remarks, saying “I don’t want Germany to look like you in 200 years.” 

She did this interview during a time when the Neo-Nazi presence was dominant due to a Neo-Nazi convention and parade.  Asumang’s view on covering an event of that sort is “not every interview is easy.”  One student asked, how did it feel to interview him?  She said, “my hands were sweating.”

Sam Dorfler, 51, a Greensboro N.C. resident, was born in Germany and lived there until moving to the U.S. at the age of 18.  He was asked to give his view on the racial climate in Germany while living there. 

Dorfler is from Bavaria, in southern Germany, home of a U.S. military base.  He explains it was very rare in Bavaria for individuals not of German decent to be treated differently.  When asked if African-Americans that visited the neighborhood from the military base were accepted, Dorfler said, “Yes, they were accepted because we looked at them as soldiers that were protecting Germany.”

He explains how the Mayor told citizens to deal with it, referring to African-American soldiers, because the military is here to stay. 

Dorfler, being white, said personally he never dealt with such issues, but growing up he heard a few stories.  He discussed an incident that his mother, a waitress, had where she asked a white German man to be removed from the restaurant where she worked, for being disrespectful to a African-American soldier.

He told another story about a white female friend who was in an interracial relationship with an African-American soldier.  Initially this caused great division in her family.  Eventually they did grow to accept him and the couple married with all family members present. 

His only Neo-Nazi experience occurred six years ago, when he and his American born wife, visited Eastern Germany.  He explains how two young Germans with tattooed Neo-Nazi stickers on their elbows came into the restaurant where they were dining.  Not wanting them to know that his wife spoke English, he told her to use gestures or answer only “yes” and “no” in German.  When she forgot, they were approached.  Although the conversation proceeded in English and was civilized, he thought it best that it be kept short and cordial.

Leslie D. Hines, an A&T student and JOMC Journal Reporter who attended Asumang’s Nov. 9 lecture, stated “I feel that Mo is an incredibly brave and intelligent woman.”  “Just her message, and her work is so inspiring, she is stronger than her circumstance, and I admire that.”

When Hines was asked whether Asumang spoke specifically about the interracial differences between the U.S. and Germany, she indicated that Asumang said, “there was no Martin Luther King nor Nelson Mandela, and they needed one.”

Journalists often face challenges in America as well.  DeWayne Wickham, professor at N.C. A&T has also dealt with racial issues while being a reporter.  Wickham says, “as a journalist you have to go where the story is.”  Wickham states, he had an interview with George Wallace as well as David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.  He also says, “you have to talk to people who make you feel uncomfortable sometimes.”  Wickham also attended Journalism in the Global Village where Asumang spoke.  He states, in referring to her Neo-Nazi interview, “she handled it well, in fact not just well but courageously.”  “To be a woman, a black woman, in a mostly white society, having her life threatened by the Neo-Nazi, and determining to go find those people and confront them, takes a lot of courage.”

Asumang also shared with the class that the word race, is not used in Germany anymore because Hitler over used it, “it divides people,” she said.  “Race is mankind.”

Asumang Timeline

Passers-by Ignore Toddler Run Over by Vehicles

By Michelle Parson

cbc news 10/18/11

A surveillance camera video captures a scene, as a toddler is struck not once but twice by two vans in Southern China, and dies on Oct. 21.  The child wandered into the street unnoticed by her parents a week earlier where she was hit by the vehicles.  Her mother was hanging laundry while her father was busy tending to the family hardware business.  She was hit by the vans, one after the other.  Each driver fled the scene. 

Wang Yue lay seriously injured on a busy retail market street as 18 people overlooked her.  Individuals walked, drove or cycled past the scene.  She was eventually aided by a “scavenger,” or someone who collects scraps for a living.  The fact that people didn’t stop to help raised many questions about the declining morality and as stated in an article on cnn.com, “China’s fast-changing society.”

Christina M. Rodriguez, Psych. Dept. UNCG professor, commented about what is referred to as “Group Diffusion” or the “Bystander Effect,” a social psychological phenomenon where individuals don’t seem to have the same sense of responsibility in public.  The thought is that someone else will step in and therefore a psychological process takes place to justify this behavior.  During a recent conversation, she also said that this occurrence happens more often than would like to admit here in the U.S. because people are not inclined to get involved. 

The news of this event has drawn so much international exposure and outrage.  It paints a picture of Chinese people being heartless and lacking compassion for human life.  Rodriguez says the shock and debate inside China may be because, until recently, this would have been unheard of.  The case is bringing attention to a different China, where there is no village of people who care for each other.  This refers directly to the statement in the CNN article, regarding the district where the father of the young girl owned his business.  There are other store owned by individuals from different parts of China who hardly know each other.  Consequently, there is no village friendly community.  There is the fear of becoming more of an individualistic society as cities increase and become more modernizes, and economics take priority. 

In contrast, an interview with truck driver, Allen Parson, who was involved in an incident in N.Y., expressed a very different experience.  New York City has the reputation of being a place where the people lack the Good Samaritan attitude.  Parson stopped in a desolate area of an inner city block there, to make what he thought was a minor repair on his 18-wheel tractor trailer.  He was badly injured by a part that came loose and struck him slightly above the eye.  He moved from under the truck hoping to get the attention of anyone in the area, but there was no one around.  An officer circled pass and found him staggering and bleeding, and called for medical assistance. 

Parson, a native New Yorker said, “I never believed there were actually people, especially in New York, that cared the way this officer did for me on that day.”  The officer even came to the hospital afterwards.  Parson believes the Policeman showed a side of compassion that went far beyond the call of duty.

Greensboro, N.C. resident Kathleen McGirty, tells the story of falling on the sidewalk of heavily trafficked area in her neighborhood.  She said, “It’s still painful to this day thinking about it.”  Her knee was twisted and she was unable to get up and walk.  Nobody stopped to help as she lie face down for more than 10 minutes.  McGirty states, “It was a sad reality that nobody bothered to care.”  “It made me pay attention more and not always think that someone else will stop to help a person in need.”

In review, there have been many opinions on the subject of why there seems to be this absence of care and concern.  The lack of these in China, has been blamed on the education system as well as their being little benefit to being the Good Samaritan often creating more of a hardship.  Certainly with the international attention of the video, showing the unconcern is a reminder that this can and does happen everywhere.

List of Sources

CNN. (2011, October 25). Retrieved October 25, 2011, from CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/20/world/asia/china-toddler-dead/index.html?on.cnn=1

MSNBC. (2011, October 25). Retrieved October 25, 2011, from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44983903

FlameHorse. (n.d.). 10 Notorious Cases of the Bystander Effect. Retrieved from 10 Notorious Cases of the Bystander Effect: http://listverse.com/2009/11/02/10-notorious-cases-of-the-bystander-effect/

FlorCruz, J. (2011, October 25). CNN. Retrieved October 25, 2011, from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/22/world/asia/china-toddler-reaction/index.html?iref=allsea

Wines, M. (2011, October 25). The New York Times. Retrieved October 25, 2011, from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/asia/chinese-toddler-who

Courtland Milloy:The Race Man Cometh

Courtland Milloy: The Race Man Cometh

By Michelle Parson

     JOMC Journal Reporter

Washington City Paper-11/26/10

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy proudly acknowledges the “collective struggle of those who came before us.”  His knowledge of the African-American experience is immense, as is his connection to his cultural roots.  As a columnist, Milloy writes from the perspective of being more “comfortable with his own,” but an awareness of current events enables him to connect the two.

 Milloy’s message about himself and race was recently delivered to journalism students at N.C. A&T.  He began by telling how he became interested in being a journalist.  His journey began with his father who taught journalism, and young Milloy often helped him grade assignments.  He said he thought journalism would be easy because he knew the answers to all of the test questions.

Indeed, when Milloy discovered that one could be paid for the use of words, his career as a journalist began.  He encouraged the A&T journalism students to improve their grammar skills, and stressed the importance of reading and writing.

“Readers write and writers read,” he said.

Milloy began working at The Washington Post in 1974 after working for two years at The Miami Herald.  A native of Shreveport, La., Milloy said that being reared in that region during the 1950s left a strong impression on him where he saw both suffering and broad accomplishments of African Americans.

Milloy left the South to attend college at Southern Illinois University.  He spoke of having taught at the college level, and seemed at ease expressing what he observed when comparing his generation to the generation of the present day.

Milloy voices a concern about what he regards as a lack of personal interaction skills among young African-Americans, saying there continues to be a fear of white people among some young blacks.  He advised the students : “Be fortified and get rid of your fear of asking questions.”

When presented a question about the meaning of a  “Race Man,” which is how Milloy was introduced,  the term was defined as a person who stands strong against racism.  DeWayne Wickham, a USA Today columnist and A&T professor, explained that Milloy writes about the truth and “will aggressively attack racial issues to bring attention to it no matter which side it comes from.”

Wickham, along with Bonnie Newman Davis, teaches the class in which Milloy spoke.

Later, in providing the students interviewing tips, Milloy encouraged them to not be afraid to ask a question.  Yet Milloy was vague about answering certain questions, such as his age.  A 2010 online article titled, “What’s Tweeting Courtland Milloy?” states his age as 59.  (He failed to respond to an email that requested confirmation.)

Milloy did not leave the students before discussing current events and politics. In an almost nurturing manner, he reminded the students that despite the many strides made toward racial progress, racial issues still exist.  He suggested there is a silent conspiracy against African-American males, and advised young women that abstinence remains a strong attraction for many males.

Courtland Milloy with JOMC Students

Just before departing, Milloy left the students these final words of advice by saying, “Write your own obituary.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

http://www.nydailynews.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/
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