Earlier JBHE reported that five African Americans were included in this year class of 32 American Rhodes Scholars. Another Black student at an American university has also been selected as a Rhodes Scholar.
Rutendo Chigora, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, has been selected as one of the two Rhodes Scholars from the African nation of Zimbabwe. At Penn, Chigora is majoring in international relations and political science. She has served as vice president of the mock trial team at Penn.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania this coming spring, Chigora will pursue a master’s degree in public policy at Oxford.
Congratulations Chigora and to all scholarship recipients!
This opportunity speaks to the rising times of industrious women who seek to change the status quo. Keep up the good work even as you advance in your academic and professional endeavors.
It’s quite evident this student is not fully aware of the brutality of Cecil Rhodes committed against Black Zimbabweans. What I find rather interesting is the influx of African-born students who hail from the middle and upper strata within their respective homeland are so inclined to be intellectual vessels for Eurocentric thoughts and paradigms in the US and abroad. As a result, the evolving intellectual cadre from Sub-Saharan African merely solidifies and recapitulates a Eurocentric paradigm. As a result, the African continent continues to be plundered both externally and internally.
For those who dissent, do you think one could find scores of Jewish students accepting an “Hitler Scholarship”, or Native Indians students accepting a “Trail of Tears scholarship”, Japanese students accepting an Enola Gay scholarship, or Black Americans students accepting a “Bull Connor scholarship.
What the African community needs to realize that obtaining from the American Ivies, the Sorbonne, or Oxford will not intellectually prepare African with the knowledge needed to eradicate European colonialism and neocolonialism from the deepest dormant of their thinking.