Ama Biney Quotes

I find deeply troubling the repeal of the Roe V Wade anti-abortion legislation in many conservative US states in a country that purports to be the “the land of the free”, alongside attempts in this country to curb the right to protest that has long been fought for.

...if we are to understand historical leaders, we must also interrogate the values, the socio-economic and political processes they help to engender that required sections of society, state and government to concede to dictatorship, genocide and the implementation of anti-people policies.

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.

It is very easy to point fingers at historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Siad Barre, Mobutu, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Margaret Thatcher, Sani Abacha and many other unsavoury figures that carried out anti-people policies, dictatorship, genocide and authoritarian rule across the globe.

If I had to select one, it would be the life of the Mozambican freedom fighter, Josina Machel because I think we need to retrieve from historical obscurity lesser known historical figures who contributed to transforming society

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.

...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.

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.

I was one of the few African children in a white dominated school taught history by a white male tutor in the late 70s.

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.