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Ama Biney Quotes
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Ama Biney (born 1960s) is a British Ghanaian historian, journalist, political scientist and academic, who for more than 25 years has lectured and taught courses on African and Caribbean history, the History of Black People in Britain, and on international relations in the UK and in Ghana including at such institutions as Middlesex University, Birkbeck College, University of London, the University of Liverpool, and Webster University Ghana. Among outlets for which she has written are New African magazine, African Studies Quarterly, South African History Online and Pambazuka News, for which she
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I am very selective in what I watch on TV as there is so much rubbish to act as a new societal opium.
It is deeply inspiring that young people around the world, such as the Ugandan, Vanessa Nakate, are taking up the cause of climate change, as it is their future that will be affected.
Action on climate change has the potential to bring people together across towns, cities, societies and countries as we are all impacted by the ongoing environmental crisis. Solutions lie in collective action.
I was one of the few African children in a white dominated school taught history by a white male tutor in the late 70s.
Perhaps it is with nostalgia that human beings look back in history as there is certainly a romanticisation of certain aspects of the past that erases the ugly deeds of human beings.
I started with African Studies as my first degree and on account of my interest in the history of the African diaspora studied and taught both African and Caribbean history.
As there is a current bandwagon of “decolonizing” everything i.e. the curriculum, the archive, museums etc, and using “decoloniality” and “decolonisation” as synonyms, I think it’s important to clarify what one means by these terms, in addition to how decolonisation is done?
My interest in history was sparked by introduction to the transatlantic slave trade as a 12-year-old child in an East London comprehensive secondary school in which the National Front were prevalent in the local area.
We have to remember that many media houses in Africa inherited their journalist training programs from colonial rulers. And a lot of the press in several West-African countries do tend to be dependent on CNN, Reuters or BBC.
...what lives did these African people have before they were packed like sardines aboard this ship? Did they survive? To say that such an image unsettled me is an understatement.
I think it’s important for people to grasp that historical figures required systems and structures and specifically other people to be complicit in the operation of such policies and to buy into the societal vision they promoted. Such figures could not act alone.
One could say that reporting about famine and NGOs helping African people is a good thing, but there is a negative side of how humanitarian disasters are often portrayed: African people are always in need, they are dependent of the white, industrial society. I think this is ultimately harmful to Africa.
The Police Crime, Sentencing & Court Act 2022 is being pushed through and it seems the police will have powers to shut down protest in anticipation that such protests will inevitably be disruptive. Yet, the police no longer seems to have the confidence of many people on account of the recent alarming findings of Baroness Casey report into Metropolitan police.
The Brookes ship, built in 1780-81 in Liverpool and co-owned by Liverpudlian Joseph Brooks, is the famous illustrated ship of 454 enslaved Africans, that most British school children are likely to have seen in history books.
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