Pelosi suffers backlash over African shawls
DEMOCRATIC politicians have faced a backlash after wearing colourful shawls made from a traditional African textile to mark the death of George Floyd.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the most senior Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate respectively, were among those wearing the items.
A group of a few dozen Democrats had put on the shawls made of Kente cloth, closely associated with Ghana, as they kneeled on Monday morning for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
The kneeling took place below the Capitol building in Washington DC. The time was how long a white police officer knelt on Mr Floyd’s neck before his death – the trigger for nationwide protests.
Modern Kente is known for its rich colours, which are woven into geometric designs.
Images of the congressmen, some of them white, wearing the garments prompted a backlash on social media, with the word “kente” trending on Twitter in America, according to the BBC. “My ancestors did not invent Kente cloth for them to be worn by publicity (obsessed) politicians as ‘activism’ in 2020,” wrote Jade Bentil, a Ghanaian-nigerian researcher at University of Oxford, according to CNN.
“Everyone was texting me these Kente cloth photos,” wrote the musician Questlove, drummer for the band The Roots, joking he thought the images were a prank.
Journalist Hanif Abdurraqib wrote in a widely-shared tweet: “I know we are in unexpected times and anything is possible but listen man I did not have ‘Pelosi in Kente cloth’ on the bingo card.” Jermaine Nkrumah, the head of a television network in Ghana’s capital, said: “I saw that and I was like, ‘Wow’. The optics look good, but what happens when the cameras go away?”
The shawls reportedly had been given out by the Congressional Black Caucus, a group within Congress dedicated to pursuing greater equality for black people.
Karen Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, had explained why the group was wearing the shawls.
“The significance of the Kente cloth is our African heritage and for those of you without that heritage who are acting in solidarity,” she told reporters. “That is the significance of the Kente cloth – our origins and respecting our past.”
At other times in recent years members of the Congressional Black Caucus have worn Kente cloth, including to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in 2018, which took place in the House of Representatives.
According to the African American Intellectual History Society, Kente is a west African cloth and its modern form of bright colours emerged during the 17th century.