Editor's Note
Coming in 2023: AfricaFocus 3.0
I have been editing this publication and its predecessors since 1995, which is a long time – 28
years!
It began as an occasional listserv published first for the Washington Office on Africa, then
for the Africa Policy Information Center, and then for its successor Africa Action. I´ll call
this AfricaFocus 1.0. Since November 2003, I have published it as an individual project. I
think of this as AfricaFocus 2.0.
As regular readers will have noticed, I have sent out very few issues this year, and none at
all in the last few months, although the website and Facebook pages have continued to function.
This summer has been a time for travel and for reflection. Cathy Sunshine and I visited Durham,
North Carolina, where I used to work for Africa News Service (now AllAfrica.com). We went to Toronto for our daughter Cynthia´s wedding in
August. And we took a two-week road trip last month, traveling between DC and Capitol Island,
Maine. At the end of that trip we celebrated my 80th birthday with old friends in their home on
the Hudson River.
I plan to continue sharing news and analysis occasionally on this list, but the format will be
shorter and the content more varied. I´m still working on what AfricaFocus 3.0 will look like,
beginning in 2023. For now I will be occasionally sharing some experimental samples, of which
this is the first.
Today, on Indigenous Peoples Day, I want to encourage all my readers, particularly those in the
United States, to read Not “A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy,
and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, the latest book by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, recently
released in paperback.
It is available from Bookshop.org in the United States (here) and in the United Kingdom (here). Or order directly from the publisher, Beacon Press.
The publisher's description provides an excellent summary:
Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many
Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In
this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest
because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white
supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers
who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are
descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will.
Dunbar-Ortiz always writes clearly, dispelling conventional wisdom and avoiding empty rhetoric. This
book, in my opinion, is a fundamental contribution to understanding the history which has shaped all
of us who live in the United States of America.
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