[Read my previous post: Vaccines Produce Polio]

-----------------------------

UN Forced to Admit Gates-funded Vaccine is Causing Polio Outbreak in Africa
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 BY NEWS WIRE

This really should be one of the biggest public health scandals of the decade, but instead it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organisations involved.

Rest of article here.

Of course, the COVID-SCAM is a great way to cover up real public health emergencies.

And who cares about Africa, anyway?

Gates Vaccine Produces Polio

Gates Vaccine Produces Polio
Via Tradition in Action

From article:
United Nations forced to admit that vaccines from Bill Gates
are spreading polio throughout Africa
Natural News
September 08, 2020

-------------------------

United Nations forced to admit that vaccines from Bill Gates are spreading polio throughout Africa

(Natural News) A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), a branch of the United Nations (UN), confirms everything we have long been saying about the deadly nature of Bill Gates’ vaccination programs in the Third World.

Entitled, “Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 – Sudan,” the report outlines how polio vaccines from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are spreading more polio throughout Africa. Not only that, but these “relief” jabs are killing young black lives in places like Chad and Sudan where outbreaks of the vaccine-induced disease are spreading like wildfire.

Amazingly, the WHO openly admits that the strain of poliovirus currently circulating, known as cVDPV2, is “vaccine-derived.” This clearly indicates that it is being spread by the very same vaccines that Bill Gates claims are helping to “save lives” and “eradicate polio.”

“Sequencing of viruses isolated in Sudan so far reflects that the viruses are related with viruses reported earlier in neighboring Chad from where there were multiple separate introductions into Sudan from Chad,” the report explains.

“There is local circulation in Sudan and continued sharing of transmission with Chad.”

As far as we know, this is the first time that an official government body – and the WHO, no less – has used the words “vaccine-induced” to describe how and why polio is still spreading all throughout Third World Africa.

Original here.

Ethiopia's Unity

Entrance to Unity Park, in Addis Ababa

PM Abiy is working to unify Ethiopia, contrary to the accusations that he is deliberately fomenting the country's splinter.

The Story of All of Us: Ode to Unity Park in Addis Ababa
Alemayehu G. Mariam

On a partly cloudy January morning
I took a walk in the (Unity) park
There I found His(Her)story with a puzzled look
Asking me curiously,

“Do you know?”

On these grounds of power and glory
In this place of honor and shame
Where hope and despair tangled to the bitter end
Is written the Story of All of Us.

“Do you know?”

In this place of sadness and joy
On these grounds where victory was conceived and defeat born
Where horror, terror and torture were hid in a dungeon
Is written the Story of All of Us.

“Do you know?”

On these grounds of promises made and promises broken
In this place of truth and deceit
Inscribed on the ancient granite walls
Is the Story of All of Us.

“Do you know?”

On these grounds of virtue and vice
In this place of darkness and light
Where quest turned into conquest
Is written the Story of All of Us.

“Do you know?”

On these grounds where trees stand tall
In this place where they stood silent sentry for a century
New flowers today sing in dazzling colors
And write the Story of All of Us.

Do you know?

On these grounds where our leaders prayed and sinned
In this place where they plotted and schemed
Did they forge one nation indivisible
Is written the Story of All of Us.

“Do you know?”

On these grounds where we founded our nation’s capital
In this place where our ancestors came together in wisdom and folly
To do dastardly deeds and recite sublime poetry
Is written the Story of All of Us in blood, sweat, tears and laughter.

Answered I to His(Her)story:

Now is the time to turn a page
To inscribe a new chapter filled with hope and optimism
To affirm in this hallowed park the sanctity of our unity
To boldly declare our humanity in our diversity.

Answered I to His(Her)story:

Now is the time to write the new Story of All of Us
To sing out loud our songs of peace, prosperity and unity
Rebuild our City Upon a Hill amidst a bed of new flowers
Then let our “sons and your daughters prophesy, our young men see visions, and our old men dream dreams”

Answered I to His(Her)story:

Somewhere ages and ages from now
A generation will walk in Unity Park and sigh in relief and pride:
“Thank God, our ancestors seized the moment
On two roads that diverged in the night
They took the road marked ‘Peace and Prosperity’
Made a right turn on a road named “Reconciliation and Forgiveness”
And that has made all the difference in the Story of All of Us!”

— Ode to Unity Park in Addis Ababa, written following my [Alemayehu G. Mariam's] visit on January 28, 2020

Email to Chuck Baldwin

From: reclaimbeauty@gmail.com
To: office@chuckbaldwinlive.com
Sent: Sunday, August 9, 2020
Subject: Article: We Are Facing The Greatest Assault On Our Civil Liberties In Our Lifetimes

Dear Mr. Baldwin,

I read your column "We Are Facing The Greatest Assault On Our Civil Liberties In Our Lifetimes" where you quote Dr. Ron Paul's article "Empire is the Root of the US-China Hostilities."

Please read my article, Liberty, Taxes and Hypocrisy, on China's "new imperialism," which is far worse than the US hegemony of the past several decades. I would even say the the US has had a beneficent effect on the world as a whole.

China's "imperialism" will be far more war-prone than the US ever was (for example, China is helping build naval bases in Somalia, giving it access to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean), and it induces devastating economic effects around the globe, and especially in Africa. There will be no "free market" under China's rule.

I have explained this at my website Reclaiming Beauty, in my article Liberty, Taxes and Hypocrisy.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

African™

Courtesy of The Real History Channel.

Conciliator and Unifier

Abiy Ahmed Ali, PM of Ethiopia, is a conciliator and unifier, in the tradition of past Ethiopian leaders (Emperors), who led a diverse country of religious groups (mostly Christian and Muslim), ethnic groups, and languages, and formed one nation. Abiy takes that role further, in the tradition of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, as a leader of Africa.

Here, PM Abiy, on his daily post on his Facebook page, informs us that today, May 25, is Africa Day.

Our vibrant & diverse continent with many assets is destined for multidimensional prosperity. As we celebrate #AfricaDay today, let’s strengthen our solidarity for the #AfricaWeWant.

The 2020 agenda for the African Union is "Silencing the Guns."

No more war. A united Africa.

Influencers

Fascinating!

Derbyshire of Radio Derb has his own link at the VDare site, even getting the prime-space main page link.

- John Derbyshire's: VDare's Contract Man
- Where do Derbyshire's Expertise Lie?
- Letter to VDare

I wonder how Mercer didn't get the same with her "Youtube" "reporting?"

- Glib Stuff: The World According to Ilana Mercer
- The World According to Ilana Mercer: Part Deux

LOL!

The World According to Ilana Mercer: Part Deux

Ilana Mercer, in her biography on her website, writes:

Ilana is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies (an award-winning, independent, non-profit, free-market economic policy think tank).

She is listed at the JIMS website "team" as a "Media Fellow."

The JIMS states its mission as:

...promot[ing] social progress in Israel through economic freedom and individual liberty.

What is Mercer doing writing for an organization with political roots in Israel?

Which leads me to the following biographical information (on her website):

Ilana was born in South Africa, which her father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, decided to leave pursuant to harassment by the South African security police on account of his anti-apartheid preaching and activism. (Ilana herself, on return, decades later, fought petty apartheid tirelessly.) The family departed in the 1960s for Israel, where Ilana spent her formative years. She returned to South-Africa in the 1980s, married and had a daughter. The family emigrated to Canada in 1995, and then went on to settle in the US.

And who is Rabbi Ben Isaccson?

Another courageous fighter [against Apartheid] was Rabbi Ben Isaacson. A graduate of Bnei Akiva and some of the finest yeshivot, he understood that the oppressive apartheid regime ran counter to Jewish values. As a rabbi, he felt compelled to condemn such injustices from his pulpit and he did so with gusto. Not all his congregants were sympathetic to these fiery sermons. As he berated successive communities for their compliance with apartheid, they responded by firing him. [Source]

Perhaps Mercer's conflicted cannibal imagery stems from her background as a fighter against Apartheid, which led to her post-Apartheid Apocalypse exposition. Perhaps what Mercer needed was a psychoanalyst!

The South African situation is tragic, and difficult to wrap around. The Boers/Dutch built that beautiful country, which is now reviving somewhat. But they did make an expeditionary risk, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles to find their Jerusalem on a Hill. The American nation is built on such adventurers. At some point, the natives might rebel.

Mercer, adamantly, writes "Yes I am a Jew" and continues on to vilify the author who questioned her, among other things, on the image she chose for her book cover Into the Cannibal's Pot.

Incidentally, double-barreled surnames are largely a feminist affection. “Mathis-Lilley” happens to be male. Or, rather, an excuse for a man. Real men don’t bully, berate and bitch baselessly.

(I forgot Mercer's knack for alliterations!)

Again, sloppy journalism and a little insight into Mercer's unremarkableness. She's not the world connoisseur she purports to be

In British tradition, a double surname is heritable, and mostly taken in order to preserve a family name which would have become extinct due to the absence of male descendants bearing the name, connected to the inheritance of a family estate. Examples include Harding-Rolls and Stopford Sackville.

There you have it, masculine and traditional.



Above: "Yes, I'm a Jew" Ilana Mercer with her Irish Catholic-South African husband Sean Mercer.

How will "Yes, I'm a Jew" Mercer bring up her mixed-marriage Irish-Catholic/Jewish daughter?



And below is Ms. Mercer with VDare's Peter Brimelow, at a Mencken Club conference, which hosted the "usual suspects." Brimelow and Mercer have likely met on many other occasions.

VDare has reviewed her cannibal's pot:

Not surprisingly, no mainstream publisher would have anything to do with this a stunning indictment of the state of affairs in Bantu-ruled South Africa...

There is a wiki-link for "Bantu," in case erudite VDare readers don't know that we're still in the same continent.

Glib Stuff: The World According to Ilana Mercer

One commentor makes a (clever) observation on Ilana Mercer's article Coronavirus and Conspiracy: Don’t be A ‘Covidiot’ [KPA: Why in scare quotes? Is Merecer trying to soften her blow?] posted on April 16, 2020, at the UNZ Review:

Ilana Mercer is a little too glib here … stylish see-thru top in the video, tho

The image is a screenshot from her video discussing the ways to be or not to be a covidiot.

And how about the stylish background now that "everyone" is "working" from home? I especially like the ethnic throw pillow effect.

The article and the video are also cross-posted at her website.

Mercer writes in her usual condescending, journalistic attack-dog "style," with her clever "Who's the covidiot?" But who needs clever when your bank account is zero?

The article not being enough, Mercer launches into a 2 1/2 minute Youtube video, just in case you are the usual covidiot suspect who doesn't understand written script.

Please read the piece and try and decipher: Is Mercer pro or con - any of it? Mercer has a knack for luminous muddiness.

Here is her book The Cannibal's Pot. I presume the cannibals are the black south Africans who killed, boiled and ate, the whites during those terrible post-Apartheid years.

It must have been a difficult, and exhausting, book to write. None dare to write a "con" for this book. I may do so one day.

Below is the image for the book cover she decided (accepted, Mercer states that she wasn't involved in the choice of image, but she could have refused the editors such a choice).

The cover art, of course, is the publisher’s purview, not that of the author.
Mercer

I guess all those hands are those of the black men who raped that white woman - metaphorically.

She should have called her book, more honestly perhaps, The Rape of South Africa.

But then, Cannibals, Savages, and sub-par black Africans make for a better title with their grubby gorilla hands plastered on a crouching white lady victim.



Writing with style is a talent. Which (style) Mercer doesn't have.

"You Said it, Faith"

Here is the wonderful Faith Goldy, who vouches to be a Catholic, (but I wonder if she is a converted Jew?), talk about the WHO-World Order:

You said it, Faith. https://t.co/GV8rMtgPWE

— Roger Kimball (@rogerkimball) April 29, 2020

Beautiful. Goldy and her VDare crowd insist on playing the race card to present their agenda. Close the border!

Well, news flash, the majority of Mexicans would rather close their border, and shut out the pervasive, persistent, Gringo influence. I know, I lived in Mexico for two years.

Who exactly is it that is pushing for the American influence? Who exactly is luring Mexican villagers to abandon their homes in search of menial jobs that "no American would do?" Maybe VDare and their crew should look behind their closets.

So, how about a white communist, such as, well, Bill Gates? This "black" communist, to whom Goldy refers, is the Eritrean Tedros Gebreyesus, about whom I wrote here. He hardly qualifies the "black" that Goldy is fetishizing. But then "race realists" are hardly in tune with the fine tunes.

And this White Communist now runs the world, including those ineffectual countries in the depths of Africa, which the world largely ignores until some "worthy" news occurs.

A perverted, selected, imagery of African Women

Real Beauty
From the exhibition: The Way She Looks
At the Ryerson Image Centre

The gyrating "African Woman," exploited by those who claim to be on her side, but who voyeuristically inspect her every fold of fat, which feed in nicely into their "African Woman as Our Savior" discourse.

African Woman

Jodi Bieber
Babalwa, from the series Real Beauty
2008, pigment print

Above image from the Ryerson Image Centre exhibition: The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, on view also at the RIC website, and other publications such as Canadian Art. More information at the RIC Facebook page.


African Woman,
Dj Shimza (South Africa)

Sino Imperialism: Take-Over through Fake Indebtedness

Comments on the video:

Uriel Zaldivar:
The new jews

Mwidini Njuguna:
Soon African countries will be forced to adapt to communism due to failure of servicing Chinese debts.

Mengele Ugulumo
..."there is no free lunch, in fact there's no lunch at all" hehee!

Junaid Anwar
Don’t worry, the whole world soon will be subservient to China falling into their debt trap

The Third World Liberal: A Conservative at Heart

The basic characteristics of all liberals and liberalism are the same. But there is an added nefariousness to the foreigner, Third World, liberal.

An American (or a Canadian) liberal is after civil disruption and maybe even civil war. But he is an American or a Canadian first, and has that legacy of the history, culture, ancestry, heritage etc. of the country, and might at some point be convinced to conserve his country, especially as he sees it being destroyed and transformed by immigration and Third World foreigners.

A Third World foreigner "liberal" comes to invade. He has no regard for the country's history, culture, ancestry or heritage.

The Third World foreigner "liberal" comes to destroy, although his initial approach is parasitical by living off the host country's riches.

He hates his host country (eventually, if not at his arrival) for a variety of reasons: envy, inferiority complex, inability to live at the same level as the host's cultural sophistication.

His ire translates to destroying what is before him, which he then replaces with what he knows: his own culture, his own religion, his own way of life.

He is a conservative at heart.

But this replacement has no cultural anchor or cohesiveness within the national context of his "new" country. Somali immigrants are VERY different from Ethiopian immigrants.

I don't think this was the case between say German and Irish immigrants. There is some unified European culture. This is not the case with Africa or Asia (or even Latin America, despite the language).

Wherever Third World foreigners congregate in large enough numbers, there is a sense of emptiness. There is no attempt to develop their neighbourhoods, with flowers and gardens, trees on the sidewalks, etc. An Indian restaurant next to an Ethiopian coffee house does not add diversity and interest, but rather a hodgepodge of unrelated elements with no aesthetic cohesiveness.

A Third World foreigner, although he comes to stay, is always referring to his native country. His activities, his choices, his lifestyle, deeply reflect this native country. He may have come to find better shores but his heart and his imagination are with the homeland he left behind. He has no desire to reconstruct and to rebuild a new home, and instead lives in perpetual upheaval with his suitcase, metaphorically, left unpacked even after decades and generations of habitation.

This temporality continues down the generations. Immigrants' children and grandchildren have a nostalgia for the country their families left. This manifests itself with their persistent references and adhesions to this far-away land: through their cultural choices, their earnest attempts to meld their cultural and personal lives with the country left behind, and eventually with their loyalties in politics and other social ties given to those which best represent this homeland.

They have never really left home.

And they have a latent anger, unfocused and diffused, at this difficult life of divided loyalties they are forced to live. And when made to chose a culprit for target, instead of directing their wrath at their families, which pulled them across nations to this land of apparent opportunity, they glare at the country itself, calling it "racist" and "discriminatory" and "hateful."

But they are the ones who hate, or learn to hate, this land which they believe only pretends to give them everything as it curtails all their potentials.

They lose hope and optimism. They become grudgeful and dangerous citizens. Rather than generic liberals, they become far-left leftists who hold their fists up in revolutionary fury.

"Me Too!" they cry out with raging anguish.

All nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth

Acts 17:26-27

26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us

Making Africa

View From the Right
September 27, 2009

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

There is never a dull moment at VFR!

I really do think that Ethiopia is the exception in the African continent. Much of the current Ethiopian border was forged by a succession of 18-20th century Kings (perhaps more correctly known as Emperors). It started with a rather mad and universalist Emperor Twedros, later on moved by the northern Emperor Yohannes, who was more concerned with his tribal group (the less influential northern Tigray) than nationhood, and sealed with the Amhara—the leading group throughout Ethiopia’s history—Menelik. The rationale behind Menelik’s decisive nationalization was to put an end to the ethnic and tribal differences, and make one nation out of the region. Haile Selassie continued with that legacy. I personally think this imperialistic nationalization actually did more harm to Ethiopia proper, which led directly to the communist rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam. But that is a topic for another time.

Yes, there were European influences, perhaps the most notorious being the Eritrea question. In fact, the acquisition of Eritrea by the Italians was a territorial exchange to prevent Italians from encroaching further into Ethiopia. So, the argument stands the Eritrea was once part of Ethiopia, but had to be forfeited for general national security. It was later returned to Ethiopia.

Similarly, the Ogaden was, by imperialistic acquisition, part of Ethiopia long before the European intervention. In fact, the great Muslim conqueror of Ethiopia of the 16th century came from that region—so conflict between Ethiopia and the Somali of the Ogaden is perennial—it still continues.

One reason why Ethiopia didn’t descend into a non-nationalistic fragmentation of tribes is because a leading group, the Amhara, held firm throughout at least the Christian history of Ethiopia (which dates as early as the 3rd century) as leaders of the various regions, which they controlled earlier on as tributaries. Of the three Emperors I mentioned above the two Amhara were most influential in consolidating these tribes under one “civilized” Christian nation.

I am still trying to figure out how all this happened. But, I think it wouldn’t have happened without the Amhara, and without Christianity.

LA replies:

“I am still trying to figure out how all this happened. But, I think it wouldn’t have happened without the Amhara, and without Christianity.”

The two most important elements of society that I always emphasize: a majority ethnicity, and Christianity!

Exclusive Christianity

Arthur Rimbaud's House in Harar, Ethiopia

(A post from 2005 at Camera Lucida)

---------------------------------------------------------

Arthur Rimbaud has his own house/museum in the city of Harar. Perhaps it is in the name of literary tradition that Canadian novelist Camilla Gibb has made a special ode to this walled, Southern Islamic city in Ethiopia in her new book Sweetness in the Belly.

It is always curious why writers pay such high praises to this city. Although Rimbaud initially said he was living in boredom, he stayed in Harar on-and-off for ten years.

Sir Richard Burton preferred to investigate Harar in his First Footsteps in East Africa rather than travel to the northern Christian Highlands of the Amhara people. And even Evelyn Waugh couldn’t see the ancient strength of this Christian civilization, and in his journalistic travelogues Waugh in Abyssinia and Remote People at times appeared much more complimentary toward the Southern Harare/Somali Muslims. His novel Scoop, based on his journalistic experience of the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, is centered around the fictional "East Africa" country of…Ishmaelia. This is all the more surprising in light of Waugh’s recent conversion to Catholicism. But it could just be that he was temporarily side-tracked by the Catholic (yet fascist) Italians. And such a basic Christianity may have been too much to handle.

I suspect that it is mostly atheist/pantheist/agnostic writers who are lured into the facile spirituality (sensuality) of places like Harar. As always with exotic works, the subject rings of the writer/traveler himself, in his spiritual (or similar) quest to find some meaning in his life. Usually, the farther away from home, the better.

The disciplined, ancient and exclusive Christianity of the highlander Amhara is too difficult and too demanding, and too close to home. I think this Biblical fear drives these writers away. It is easier to wallow in the accessible sensuality of a Southern Muslim city, in search of a generalized spirituality.

The Islam of Harar may be beguiling, and easier to enter. But it is far less forgiving and far less compassionate than the Christianity of the austere Highlanders.

Flora

I went through my post on the new Miss France, Flora Coquerel, to review the photograph I posted of her with her African cousins.



I made a small error (well, big in the context of the analysis I later make), but I think I missed it because of the re-writes I did of the post to get to the core meaning of the words and images.

Flora says:

...je pense que beaucoup de personnes peuvent se retrouver en moi.

I translated "se retrouver" and "en" as:

...I think that many people can identify themselves with me.

Later on, in an analysis of this statement, using the correct pronoun for "en" and a different, but more precise phrase for "se retrouver," I wrote:

"find themselves in me"

I think finding oneself is an existential quest. There is only one self to find. Whereas to identify oneself is a fluid, changing, and less traumatic quest. One's identity can be linked to a family, to a gender, to a culture, to a country, to a region, and so on. If my family's link is not solid, then I always have my cultural links. If that is not enough, there is always my country, and so on.

Flora instinctively realizes that there are many like her in France, and although she may not be able to articulate this, in the West as well, who are "finding themselves." Her example, and her candid declaration, may help those others, lost and searching, who cannot feel comfortable with the France they grew up in, but who can still fight to reach the pinnacle she has reached. She is truly "Miss France," but for the disenfranchised, as she has pronounced in her unsophisticated, but sincere, language.

And later on, as she gains more confidence, and without doubt becomes more political, she will try to forge a new "France" where the metisses, the neglected offspring of Africa and Europe, can win more than decorative titles. Why not from Miss France to Madame La Presidente?

Flora's quest is serious and deep. She may have won Miss France, but who is she, really?

Back to the photographs. Flora's parents took her to Benin as a young girl, and from my understanding, took her there regularly. Her mother is very dark-skinned (and I think attractive with her high cheek bones and very dark, ebony skin), so it is not surprising that these cousins also have this blue-black skin color.

Flora seems at ease in the photograph, and is even leaning slightly on the cousin to her right, in a kind of loving gesture. These are family, after all.

But look at the scowls of the boys. And look at how the one on her right is pushing into her, squeezing her between him and the other cousin. It is as though she is to be protected by them, but that she also belongs to them. This beautiful, light-skinned, half-white cousin of theirs is like a trophy. Even the cousin at the far right is vigilant, forming a bodyguard of boys around the girls. I would think the other girl is also a cousin, and she looks like another mettise, although perhaps not as favored as the French Flora. I have to speculate that this other metisse cousin has a difficult life in Benin. Metisse may be good coming from France, but black Africans would most certainly not tolerate such a different looking "relative" in their midst, and would treat her as an alien. That could be the reason for her slightly dejected, and vigilant - in her own way - look. She does look like Flora, but isn't as pretty. And that could be another reason these dark African boys flocked around Flora in their protective/aggressive manner.

Flora is not at all frightened. Her father (whom I assume is taking the photograph) is there after all.

I wonder if Flora were left alone with these boys and the other metisse girl for an extended period the protectiveness of the boys would turn to violence? I think the metisse girl would be an accomplice with the black boys, since she has to deal with them when Flora is gone. She is not Flora's ally. For these black boys (and metisse African girl), Flora is the pretty French cousin who comes from that far-off white world which they see on television and which the whole world admires. She is a trophy, and an enemy. To have her in their midst, and to claim her, would give them prestige. And no-one in their community would denounce them.

This is the volatile world in which Flora lives, as she happily and innocently claims her trophy in the name of her metissage.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Je pense que mon métissage est une force"

Miss France 2014 being crowned

We think that through our multicultural mind-set, other cultures will follow our (pious) example.

Well, people don't want to change.

The new Miss France is a metisse: the offspring of a black mother and a white father.

I've tried to find a current definition (and translation) of "metissage" but have decided to keep the word in its French. Tiberge from Gallia Watch has come to the same conclusion, and explains her decision here. She writes:

Here is my rendition of his words. It is far from perfect, because his grammar seems a bit off at times. Except for two places, I have retained the French word "métissage" (crossbreeding), and it's various verbal and adjectival forms, since "crossbreeding", "racial mixing" and other similar terms don't always convey the right meaning. "Crossbreeding" sounds too scientific, as when farmers crossbreed crops. "Miscegenation" is too technical and refers to marriage. "Mongrelization" and "bastardization" are too graphic. It looks as if "métissage" will join "laïcité" and "communautarisme" as French words that are so troublesome, it's better to just leave them.

This Metisse Miss France says:
"I think that my metissage is a strength."

Which is a variation on "Diversity Our Strength."

She says about her "metissage":

Je pense que mon métissage est une force. Ca montre que la France d’aujourd’hui est une France mélangée où il y a toutes les cultures. Et je pense que beaucoup de personnes peuvent se retrouver en moi, que ce soit les Français de souche ou les Français d’origines diverses.

--------------------------------------

I think my miscegenation is a strength. It shows that today's France is a mixed France, which has all cultures. And I think that many people can identify themselves in me, whether they are "les Français de souche" or those french from diverse origins .

Some notes on the translation:
- "find themselves in me" implies a deep, even ancestral identification rather than through skin color or looks.
- "Les Français de souche" is a difficult phrase to translate, and Tiberge has given a brief definition here, where she writes: "[I]n French the word "souche" means "root", a "Français de souche" being, therefore, an ethnic Frenchman."
- Rather than say "French of diverse cultures" Miss France goes one step back and says French of diverse origins, as though these are not French people - i.e. les Français de souche - but other peoples of the world. But more specifically, she means French of diverse origins who come from non-European countries.

Miss France is pretty. I thought she was Arab when I first saw her photo, and that her "metissage" was white and Arab. But, here are her parents:


Miss France's parents

Her father is from Orleans, the heartland of France, in the beautiful Loire Valley, in whose town center stands a statue of Joan of Arc.

Her mother is from the west African country Benin.


Statue of Joan of Arc in the city square of Orleans


Statue of King Toffa in Porto Novo, Benin

She looks nothing like either of them. How does she identify with her parents? Children often resemble at least one of their parents, and if they have siblings, the resemblances would be distributed amongst the two parents. They can say "I come from that family," which of course leads to the bigger identification of "I come from that culture," and eventually "I come from that country."

Although Miss France's mother speaks fluent French, she has a slight accent. French is the official language of Benin, which also has a plethora of indigenous languages. Most African countries which were colonized by the British or the French use these European languages as their official ones, but also speak one or more other native language.

I wonder how Flora reacted to her mother's accent growing up? Young children are very discerning of differences. This must have accentuated her mother's "otherness" to her even more. Her father, like her, speaks French like a Frenchman.

Miss France has to invent an identity for her amorphous and difficult-to-identify mixed-parentage of such different racial and national backgrounds. Even countries where metissage is common in the core identity of the country, like Brazil, for example, the strong and confident groups are not the metisse, but those who claim a particular racial group, like blacks or whites. In Canada, there is a racial group called Metisse, but they have never forged alliances either with the "Natives Canadians," i.e. those with Indian ancestry, or with whites. Their cultural and political, and even personal, strength is minimal.

I don't know how strong metissage will prove in France. I don't think it is a strength, as Flora says above. Whites may be having a hard time identifying their whiteness with strength, but there is a group which is not at all shy of doing so, and it is growing in strength and in numbers: Muslims. And this group doesn't tolerate any kind of metissage, either in racial or religious terms. It jealously guards its religious, and cultural, identity. And it eventually seeks to put everyone within its own religious identity, possibly with hierarchical categorizations of Arab Muslims at the top and with white and black Muslims at the bottom of the ladder. The religious superiority of Islam is mandated through their religious book, the Koran. Muslims show this repeatedly throughout history in whatever country they have amassed numbers any strength. Why should France be any different? Where would the black and white metisse like Flora fall under this categorization?

Here is Flora's more specific association with her African roots:

"Je suis franco-béninoise. Je mets en avant mes deux origines. Mes parents ont une association au Bénin, qui vient en aide aux enfants et s'occupe du forage. Au cours de mon année, je souhaite soutenir l'insertion des femmes dans le travail et l'alphabétisation", a-t-elle expliqué après son sacre.

Below is my translation:

I am Franco-Beninese. I give equal importance to both my backgrounds. My parents have an association in Benin, which helps children and drills wells. During my reign, I hope to provide work and literacy for women [in the Benin project, I presume].

In the Wikipedia definition of Beninese (the English translation for Béninois) such a person is:

From Benin, or of Beninese descent.

Flora thus identifies with the culture (or racio-culture) as well as the nationality of Benin.

Her metissage does not place her white and black backgrounds on an equal level: she is more black than white. Her diversity does not put all cultures on an equal footing: she is more Béninoise than Française.

Whenever a mixed-race child with one parent who is white and the other Asian, African or Hispanic, is asked to chose his identity, he will always identify with the non-white parent. This seems to be the rule of racial identity.

This of course also leads to identification with the non-white parent's cultural and national background, even as this mixed-race child lives, and benefits from, the culture, civilization and accomplishments of whites.

I will try to refine this and coin a definition (or definitions) in the manner of: First Law of non-whites' racial and cultural identification.


Flora in Benin as a small girl, visiting her cousins, as Mr. Coquerel informs us in this video.
Her parents kept her in direct contact with her mother's country from an early age.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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