actually thinks that you have no culture or you have no history you know when they ask if someday someone to ask a black person the other day how many generations can you you trace back go you know but because people don't know their history and they don't know their culture they can't even ask the questions when people give them their stupid questions they can even add to the problem so that's th e answer if we don't want our kids being stupid and acting stupid and not having a vision of where they've been and where they're going where hopeless and so black history month is to make children aware of their long long long ethnographic history in the world their contributions to culture their contributions to the culture of this society like i wrote a book called the black  revolt and it's about how blacks liberated themselves you know historically in the united states you know and we didn't just get liberated because they wanted us to be free you know we had to go through a whole kinds of devices to make white people decide they cannot keep this society going the way they were going in there were over four hundred slave very few people know that you see and that's part of this long history of liberation and so black history is about teaching about all of these strategies   coalitions with other ethnic groups in order to you know get more political power which is what blacks are trying to do now to put maybe put somebody in office like obama who  out so i'm going to do it that way read out certain things i want to i want everybody to be aware that there are many people who don't know anything about  italians were taken prisoners of war situation and the direction of our future closed the chapters of two protagonists standing with people determination one to colonize and dominate and the other equally to determine  it was a compact between david and goliath as in the biblical stories the bully lost and the and to this day remains the pride and joy of the people of color all over the world now the  independence and the liberation movement in africa and the pan african movements in diaspora as well their own governance of that victory the history of black people in the you're in the united states is even more mike in a fight by the fact that it's being celebrated the closing of the black history month i don't know if any were teaching in ethiopia when you were younger and the reason i bring it up is because when i was looking for people to interview i ran into this ethiopian man who works for one of the universities to seattle you and he says his father was an american black american from a black college and his brother was an atheist been and his father had gone to ethiopia to help transfer technological  education to ethiopia is in other words black from black black professors from black colleges at work already going to ethiopia to transfer providing for them while they were in the country so there is a big connection between african americans going back many many decades and ethiopia stimulated by what he was telling you about pan african ism and how these black americans saw a free ethiopia as a as a way of freeing all black people including the black people in the south where the students were still in segregated schools so there is a real connection and it goes back a long time in fact one or two americans became a hit head masters at some of the schools in ethiopia at that time and if you if you look it up you'll see that that's true to blacks in south african blacks in america who were not free right  same characters as he says he's protestant and they're the they're the persecuted ones he's actually says that ok the point i'm trying to make is we have to remind ethiopians and african americans that tribalis he says you know we're treated like black people until they see here accent they were treated better than african americans i mean that's an honest statement he's not bragging he's just telling you how the world works you know it's a statement about how america works and you're talking about the same thing you can be seduced into believing that you're being given advantages when in fact you're being put in a situation where you're going to have to be fighting the same people of color over the same jobs rather than compete cooperating together so that everybody goes up together you know and so i think we have to in all of our communities we have to sell that idea that we're in this together and a rise when when when when the sea is as it is rising together you know that kind of thing so i'm hoping that a lot of the young ethiopian americans who see themselves as more american than ethiopian will make this transition into melting into the general black american population which includes you know not just ethiopians but africans from all over and so forth even people blacks from south america and puerto rico and venezuela and so forth you know that kind of thing i  mean they because of their accent they're sometimes treated better because they're seen as less of a threat but you know that's only for a moment because think about it if obama who is who you know is half white is still black actually then map to to current our current world and how we can learn from that and i think a lot of us who are first second generation can learn from what you experienced and what you're in with you research it ask your question yes what do you think the prospects are for young ethiopians born here or brought here when they were very young assimilating into the general  population what do you think the prospects are and do you see that happening and that have a very good question i think there are good prospects but i think it's a journey i don't think it's an easy turn  that integration is i think is a journey rather than something that happens when i think if you were to ask question two or three generations from now the very different because by they were perhaps the fourth or fifth generation ethiopian americans who we would assume by they would have generally assimilated in the local after american will be considered like you said by other groups as african americans so but we're hoping that there is a retention of that pride cultural understanding of the information you just share with us about cooperation it could happen and how we can benefit from that for the general betterment of our people where you have children correct yes so how are they thinking what is  they keep to themselves and that is we should very strongly wish that they remain ethiopians when they not talk why do i say that for the simple that they don't even late they are their kids know all they all languages parents they don't teach their languages those those kids grow speaking english they think of getting married you're not going to tell me definitely that that they're going to get married twenty zero they either get married to an african american  so there are assimilating linguistically there is in terms of popular culture they are similar but like you said in terms of  further i would say ok those kids who were born here grew up here got education here got to work on the job and started working and got married here and so on they know very very well very clearly that in the job world they're having a problem they're not going to get to where they want to get because you know you have to go some weeks ago or so i heard that if two people went to an office for an interview a black man and a white man the black man is a professional  yesterday that office would accept that white man doesn't care about the black professional this is a kind of world they would find out those those that guide a child that and then he comes to a certain age and his years and start asking a very serious question still who exactly am i what to my roots this is what i'm afraid of any child of any of the children growing up here no matter how they might pause to be americans it's just the surface the very superficial very serious thing agree with you one hundred percent i just want us to think in terms of dimensions because we've been talking about dimensions so there is some assimilation going on but there's a lot of areas like i said religious groups limited this is what you're saying and i know you know and you in fact i went to interview for a job to be a dean at one of the white colleges and he heard my background right then you would think that he would think well this guy's pretty well cut qualified he graduates from great schools so forth and so on his first question was do you think as a black person you're ready to be a college professor at the white school so you could i mean that i said to him the interview was over very point is well taken that we're talking when we talk about assimilation there is language and some of the customs and courtesies that kids are learning but that it doesn't go so far as to be the same friendship group in the same church and same things like that and so that that is going to take more time because not because the ethiopian kids or the african american kids who are not ethiopian wouldn't like to simulate more but like the to be running into the same situation and so we would like to see all of us would like to assimilate better because what we could have better encodes better educations and so forth but american society is not necessarily ready or stop it's something that you think extremely important and that is finding who you are what your your shrill what's your what's the history behind who you are what you the food you eat the people you meet from day to day your parents always come and visit your you want to visit them everything you can't get rid of it above all that there's al all because they are not doing what they are supposed to do what they should be doing in their own mind and that is i wish that everybody say's that i was training my own people in ethiopia we needed there are millions of be anything or be and if you're going to school my important advice to you is when you get to college i don't know if you're in college now when you get to college chose a profession  what they should be contributing to ethiopia and they were definitely going to go back now that's easier said than done because one of the people i interviewed in the book  he wasn't planning to go back but i talked to him within the last year he has a message he works for microsoft he has a master's degree and i think he's going to get a doctorate and he says he's you know i guess his children are  know a little bit he definitely is going to go back because he wants to contribute his skills i don't know if he will but he wants to contribute his knowledge and skills to you theo p a and several of the ethiopians that were interviewed felt like they were not doing anything important in america and they could be doing something important in ethiopia no i don't know if they can really up root and go back and then face the politics back there an economy back there and you know that's why i say it's easier said than done but at least there's that intention of taking their skills and and contributing to ethiopian fun better and i think a lot of folks have that vision and he said there is a sincere lack of satisfaction that so a lot of people have and there's a strong connection at least in the first generation the second third maybe not a ethnic groups of people and there were if europeans and the first question was would you be at some point would you be willing to go but going back is not going to be easy because of all the things you said the site is change the politics of the power the power structure is change and so forth they will not be received interviewed a lady she said in the book to when she would back and she was i think one of these people with computers and all this other stuff but the infrastructure for using computers that all this high tech stuff wasn't there wasn't there yet so you see every it's too bad that we have these dreams of being able to go back to we're where we came from and help people but the infrastructure to facilitate the two to use your skills knowledge is in performances different structure often it's not there or the politics you know you have to be connected maybe discovered to go back that everybody is interested in your skills yet you might be of the rug ethnic group or the r an african american in the cell area and how assimilation has gone over the years and what advice you two have given us to take away as the younger generation maybe and so we thank you for that and in march i was working on a special project  from here on then to preserving some of the historic history of the central area in particular as you know there's a lot of economic development coming to this area that is changing the face of what the central area looks like it has looked like in the past me the moment is one that i recall vividly it was a moment when i was you know museum in boston and i happened to see a photograph an african army defeating a european army black army defeating a white army would play out in this country in the united states at that very particular moment of the eight hundred ninety s which is when african american who'd been here for for some time and in fact in some ways it was a ridiculous portrait because there was nothing about him that will beat the opium but i knew that the photographer i had the sense that the photographer had something important to say with that photograph and by the time i walked from the museum back to my hotel i was thinking about the book and his thinking about how this story could be told first of all as the story of ethiopia and italy and especially if  successful defense of its independence its defense of its freedom but also the larger impact of agua in a way the global impact of on the world and especially the impact of us in the united states where this obviously had such a powerful effect so this was back in two thousand and one the story of god what has been my my obsession you could say think if you put it in the context of european expansion remember my earliest work is in european history if you put the battle of ottawa in the context of the expansion of europe it is the great exception because in in the nineteenth century the story of european expansion into africa is a story of european success and of african defeat inevitable and you can read african americans from this period long things i wanted to do and it was to understand both how african americans and how european americans responded to and so i look look for traces of what african americans were saying unfold on the african continent and is exactly where those those ideas begin to change i think so in terms of the the italian strategy and he resists the italian move up as russell lewis had done before him and when what happens is that the italians get some very easy victories early on other early sat backs too but i'm excel reading the story here a little bit southward and as he retreats the italians move in rapidly and occupy significant portions of tikrit and it looks like a devastating triumph i mean looks like  the impossible and in italy he goes back to italy in the summer of ninety five and he's treated as a hero that's true that's true and what he what he doesn't understand is quite clearly is that he doesn't have the forces to control that territory there what my gosh it has done is simply to move back out and away he knows he can't going to retreat it's a tactical retreat and unbarred t r e doesn't realize that in a way that he has been suckered he has been lured into smart he decides i'm not going to go i'm not going to play that game i'm not going to attack you in your strong position and he begins to march to the northwest and the movement that's going to threaten our trio and so he move there's many ethiopians and other african americans who come to america in the seattle area just you know the other is about thirty thousand ethiopians you know and many of them have this great writing but you know they either can't afford college or some other things you know and we would like you know to one day have some kind of connection with the university of washington it's create african american studies and international studies and we hope to work on it with time and the wonderful we it's  it's a field that as we were just discussing it's a field that's still young this huge amount of potential we the history department here is just in the last ten years has hired an african historian lynn thomas she's very good we have other africanus in other parts of the university in our history and have to apology and so i think we're beginning to see a momentum now in favor of getting african studies  going on the university of washington campus and getting the kind of representation and attention that that that we'd all like to see situations that happened during the time that was it really added to it so you could just basically write about the specific time why and why are you interested in ethiopia so i'm going to look at that too i'm reading what the kinds of messages that man was trying to get out but also how those messages were received especially by the pope in rome because the italians of course are catholic the pope is an important leader for many italians so i'm reading the italian press and even the vatican press to try to bring that story that part of the story out to so i mean what i'm trying to do is to write chapters that each touch on some of these other issues give you enough of the flavor of of these issues to to to make it interesting to the reader but not so much detail that it's that it's heavy and i'm readable yeah right do you have do you have so easily lose track of where they came from and my own i can tell you that my own family came to the states some of them came from england some came from germany  in the late nineteenth early twentieth century and they they obviously people they came here because they were unhappy where they were it was difficult and one natural reaction to that was that they wanted nothing to do with where they came from but a clo themselves off from their families back there and they built a new life here and one of the sad things of that is that they have no we now later generations have no connections with the old country you know connections with the culture the language and there's a good side to that in a way we're comfortable or happy on the other hand there's a sense that we're missing something that there are important family relationships that we've missed important cultural ties  think present generations of americans people who've come more recently are a lot better at staying in touch partly that's technology it's easier to you can fly you don't have to take a boat you have the internet and telephone to stay in touch and i think  that's all good and so i mean my advice would be to take advantage of that stay in touch if you can go back if you can those are important relationships to cultivate and to develop for you