Office of Multicultural Affairs: Risks of reckless stereotyping
Usen Eslet
Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: Campus Life
Since the end of the fall semester, I had been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to write this article because I knew it would be my final article to appear in the Multicultural Affairs section of Le Provocateur. At the start of the holidays, I made the decision to use this article as an opportunity to reflect on my undergraduate experience here at Assumption; an experience that has been nothing short of fulfilling. I intended to touch on key parts of my experience here at Assumption where I had made progress in both my personal and leadership development, with the hopes of ending the article with a personal message to some of the students, asking them to take advantage of the opportunities available to them here at Assumption. On Friday, December 25, 2009 that idea for this article was immediately thrown out the window.
Sitting in the living room of my uncle's apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, barely a week after my mum had arrived from Nigeria to spend the holidays with my brother and I, my world was turned on its head as I heard the news of the attempted terror attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. My heart sunk once I heard that the suspect was a Nigerian national. A mixture of sadness and disappointment ran through me as more details of the incident on Flight 253 were revealed. It was on that December morning that I decided to use this article as an avenue to express some of my thoughts on the incident on Flight 253.
Nigeria is a country with an extensive history and rich culture. This is a country with more than 250 ethnic groups and where over 500 languages are spoken. Beyond its culture, with its abundant supply of natural resources, Nigeria boasts a thriving economy and has been cited as one of the "Next Eleven" - countries identified as having a high potential of becoming the world's largest economies in the 21st century. Nigeria has given birth to the likes of Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature and Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African writing. For these reasons and many more, I am proud to be Nigerian. Nevertheless, all of my pride is still unable to blanket the infamous name Nigeria has created for itself on the international scene.
Sitting in the living room of my uncle's apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, barely a week after my mum had arrived from Nigeria to spend the holidays with my brother and I, my world was turned on its head as I heard the news of the attempted terror attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. My heart sunk once I heard that the suspect was a Nigerian national. A mixture of sadness and disappointment ran through me as more details of the incident on Flight 253 were revealed. It was on that December morning that I decided to use this article as an avenue to express some of my thoughts on the incident on Flight 253.
Nigeria is a country with an extensive history and rich culture. This is a country with more than 250 ethnic groups and where over 500 languages are spoken. Beyond its culture, with its abundant supply of natural resources, Nigeria boasts a thriving economy and has been cited as one of the "Next Eleven" - countries identified as having a high potential of becoming the world's largest economies in the 21st century. Nigeria has given birth to the likes of Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature and Chinua Achebe, the father of modern African writing. For these reasons and many more, I am proud to be Nigerian. Nevertheless, all of my pride is still unable to blanket the infamous name Nigeria has created for itself on the international scene.
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