Change.org and Nigeria

Though I was banned from Change.org a long time ago for expressing unorthodox views on race, I still like to peruse their petitions now and then. For my convenience, I receive occasional emails from them notifying me of such petitions.

It’s interesting that even though Change.org has various petitions in favor of increasing the numbers of “diverse” students at universities, like this one for example, they complain when said diversity comes back to bite them. A recent petition, titled “Remove convicted rapist from Big Red football team” bemoaned the light sentence meted out to a rapist, and the fact that the rapist was allowed to remain on the school football team.

What the Change petition conveniently neglected to mention is the fact that the rapist in question, Ma’lik Richmond, being black, is a beneficiary of the self-same policies that it supports. It should be obvious to anybody not living in a cave, that athletes, particularly black athletes, commit campus rape well out of proportion to their numbers.

Another Change.org petition complains about the lack of diversity in the upcoming game, Assassins Creed Unity. The petition reads, in part:

This petition has been created to express the disappointment of Ubisoft fans at the lack of representation of people of colour and females in the four-protagonist line-up of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Unity.

If they’re going to protest the supposed lack of diversity in a single film, or series, then Change.org must certainly have a petition protesting the lack, thereof, in an entire film industry. I’m referring, of course to Nigeria’s version of Hollywood, known as Nollywood. Submit a Google image search for “Nollywood star” and you’ll get endless photos of black actors and actresses, many of them light-skinned, but all of them black.

“Diversity” Nigerian style

Some might expect the people at Change.org to bring this up, to call out Africa’s most populous country on this blatant racism. But we’d be kidding ourselves to expect any sort of consistency from Change.org. The only related result that comes up, from a search for “Nollywood” on their site, is a protest against the use of a biracial actress. This petition reads, in part:

Igbo people, like any other people range in physical characteristics as well as complexion. However, the majority of Igbos are dark brown in complexion. Igbo people do not look like the bi-racial Thandie Newton. Thandie Newton is an accomplished and talented actress in her own right. However, she is not Igbo, she is not Nigerian, and she does not physically resemble Igbo women in the slightest.
As a result, I have created this petition to demand the following things:
1. The use of Igbo men, women, and children, who look like the majority of Igbo people (which means brown in complexion) in the leading roles of the film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, Half of a Yellow Sun.

In an earlier post, I asked if Nigerian Americans might be intellectually superior. A commenter, who calls himself “Wales” (comment #10) cited some statistics and linked to some YouTube videos. His point was that Nigeria is a very large, changing and diverse country. He wrote:

As a Nigerian I do know that it is extremely difficult to generalize or group Nigerians one way or the other. We have it all. The Good the bad and the Ugly. The truth is that we are extremely diverse and you are likely to see lots of extremes both good and bad coming out of Nigeria.

Perhaps, but if we were to hold Nigeria to the same standards that those in power hold the Western world to, it would fail miserably. Actually, a more accurate assessment would be that this is yet further proof that “diversity” simply means “fewer white people.”