Series, Part

Killing the African to Save the Child!

How a ‘Nice White Lady’ From Minnesota Exported America’s ‘School-to-Prison-Pipeline’ to Ethiopia

Following the season of heavy rains, October is springtime in the Horn of Africa, erupting in colors so riotous—a powdery blue sky, gleaming yellow daffodils and foliage greener than reality—that the landscape seems a kind of earthen womb, birthing a renewed and resplendent land, south of Eden, though far from grace.

The warming sun had begun to burn off the morning dew in Addis Ababa as I was wrapping up my first period class at the American International School of Ethiopia late last year. My 12th grade English class also seemed pregnant with possibilities, resembling the first buds of a bumper harvest, or better yet, a jazz orchestra rehearsing for a gig. It was six weeks into the first semester at AISE, the newest in a chain of private Ethiopian schools founded by a white educator from Minnesota, Dr. Leea Gibson, and her husband, a wealthy Somali businessman. Mapping out a mock trial the night before, I arrived at school the next morning giddy to describe the case I wanted adjudicated and assigning a shy girl we’ll call Ayana to play the role of the defendant. Her English was quite good, but like the rest of the class, she needed more reps producing meaningful language and I thought that playing the part of a young woman accused of murdering her wealthy, elderly husband would afford her an opportunity to elocute.

After we’d agreed on everyone’s courtroom role, I asked Ayana what she had to say for herself. With all the panache of Claire Trevor in a 1940s film noir, she replied unhesitatingly:

“I was set up.”

Story Archives

Killing the African to Save the Child!

How a ‘Nice White Lady’ From Minnesota Exported America’s ‘School-to-Prison-Pipeline’ to Ethiopia

Series, Part

Step Right Up, and Get Your Ticket to The Greatest Show on Earth

Harvard’s Three-Ring Circus, Starring the Minstrel Scholar, Roland Fryer

When the Colonized Join the Colonizers to form a New Global Rainbow Coalition Series, Part 1

How Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC Came to Symbolize the Movement’s Tombstone

From Atlanta’s Vine City to D.C.’s Chocolate City, Paying Homage to SNCC’s Black Power Blueprint

Series, Part

Unearthed Bones Reveal a Graveyard for Maryland’s Enslaved, A Funeral Pyre for Democrats Nationwide

Activists Accuse Congressman Jamie Raskin of Failing to Protect Cemetery that Contains the Remains of Sex-Trafficked Slave Girls

Cemeteries & Graveyards Series, Part 1

Violence is Their Religion!

How Murder Gives the White Settler Purpose

Murder Inc: The White Settler Republic as Homicidal Maniac Series, Part 2

Ride or Die

Rachel Corrie's Body and the Bittersweet Legacy of White Allies

Murder Inc: The White Settler Republic as Homicidal Maniac Series, Part 1

Scapegoat

Why the white settler blames Blacks for antisemitism, homophobia, and everything under the sun

America's Bizarre Ritualistic Scapegoating of Blacks Series, Part 1

The Republic of Black Suffering

On Being Four, Five, Seven Generations beyond our Lifetime from Recovery...but we Voted

Elections 2022 Series, Part 2

No Justice, No Peace, No Voting, No Piece

Misandry and the Dem's Manufactured Divide in Black Politics

Elections 2022 Series, Part 1

Marion Barry, Man of the People (1936-2014)

Elections 2022 Series, Part 3

Black Owned Conversations

Join the BRM Team for Black Owned Conversations 

Black Owned Conversations, where the white gaze means NOTHING.

About BRM

Black Republic Media is a monthly online publication that explores the afterlife of chattel slavery in America through documentary and long-form narrative journalism. Fundamentally, BRM is a critique of the white settler project from the perspective of 42 million Black people whose political and economic struggles, and acts of daily resistance remain mostly unaccounted for in American culture and yet are the cornerstones of public life in the New World.