09/15/2026
If I Refuse to Listen Because You Are Different, What Makes Me Different From a Bigot?
(Published elsewhere. Copied here)
Many people first learned about Prof. Uju Anya in 2022, when she drew international attention for her harsh comments about Queen Elizabeth II as she was dying. Anya linked her ruthless words against the dying Queen to Britain’s atrocious colonial history and its role in the Nigerian Civil War that decimated her family.
More recently, Anya has again become the subject of controversy over social-media posts, including a resurfaced 2021 response telling a White man to “Die first” while she dances, which Carnegie Mellon University has publicly described, along with other posts, as hostile and threatening.
It was against that background that I recently commented on a Facebook post about Prof. Uju Anya:
Me:
“I sided with Prof. Uju Anya in many ways in the past. But the problem is that she seemed not to know where the line was to be drawn.”
One P.E., who carries one of those titles associated with newer forms of Nigerian Christianity, responded to me:
“You mean you sided with a le***an?”
Me:
“I have read many of her books and articles: very intellectual. I don’t normally consider people’s personal lives before reading their books or articles. Otherwise, there might be nothing to read.”
P.E.:
“Hmm. You don’t sound Igbo. I can never listen or read about a gay in any way at all.”
That last statement got me thinking.
Yes, I am Igbo.
I am also a Black man living in America and a Christian.
And perhaps precisely because of those identities, I have experienced enough racial and tribal prejudice, as well as antagonism toward my religion, to have become very careful about dismissing another human being simply because of who that person is.
And there is an irony here: some of Uju Anya’s scholarship that I have found interesting deals with issues that should matter to Black people, Africans, and even Ndi Igbo.
I have her award-winning book, Racialized Identities in Second Language Learning: Speaking Blackness in Brazil, in my library. In it, she examines how Black students negotiate racial identity while learning another language and living in another cultural environment. The book received the American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award.
Another of her works I had in mind when responding to P.E. was African Americans in World Language Study: The Forged Path and Future Directions. There, Prof. Anya examines the history and experiences of African Americans in foreign-language education, including how race can affect Black students’ opportunities and experiences in language learning and study abroad.
I have lived or witnessed many of the problems this lady writes and fights against.
I have also found value in her work on anti-Blackness in education.
In Critical Race Pedagogy for More Effective and Inclusive World Language Teaching, she examines ways curricula and teaching practices can marginalize Black students and considers approaches intended to improve their inclusion, retention, and success.
Whether one agrees with every aspect of her theoretical framework or not, these are legitimate questions affecting Black students in American educational institutions.
Perhaps most interesting to me as an Igbo person is her more recent work on Black linguistic reparations. Drawing on her experience of coming from Nigeria to America speaking Igbo, an experience with which I can personally identify, Prof. Uju Anya discusses the loss of opportunities to use and formally study the language and calls attention to the limited availability of Igbo-language instruction in American universities.
So P.E.’s charge that I “don’t sound Igbo” made me think more deeply: What exactly should define an Igbo person?
Perhaps he would argue that homosexuality is contrary to traditional Igbo culture.
He is entitled to make that cultural argument.
But if we invoke “Igbo culture” as the test by which we determine who sounds sufficiently Igbo, then we should be prepared to apply that test consistently.
There are hardcore Igbo traditionalists who also regard Christianity and Islam as foreign religions fundamentally incongruent with traditional Igbo spirituality and culture. They argue that Christianity did not originate in Igboland. And that Islam did not originate from Africa.
By that reasoning, P.E.’s own Christianity, and indeed the big Christian title he carries, could equally be used by an Igbo traditionalist to tell him:
“Hmm. You don’t sound Igbo.”
But I would not make that argument against him.
Why?
Because being Igbo is not a competition over who has preserved every belief and practice of our ancestors.
Cultures evolve. People encounter new religions, ideas, political systems, technologies and ways of life. We can vigorously debate which changes are good or bad without stripping one another of our Igbo identity.
And that brings me right back to Prof. Uju Anya.
Here is an Igbo-born scholar drawing academic attention to the marginalization of our tribe, our language, studying the experiences of Black people in educational systems, examining how Black identity travels across cultures, and contributing scholarship on how Black students can succeed in spaces where they have historically been underrepresented.
Am I supposed to refuse to read any of that because she is le***an?
How would that advance the Igbo cause? How would it advance the Black cause? And what knowledge might I deny myself simply because I have decided beforehand that the identity of the messenger makes the message worthless?
I do not have to agree with Prof. Anya’s sexuality, atheism, politics, or everything she says. In fact, my original Facebook comment was precisely that I believe she sometimes fails to recognize where a line should be drawn.
But disagreement does not require intellectual blindness.
If, as an Igbo man, I say, “I can never listen to or read anything from a gay person,” where exactly would I draw that line?
Should I refuse to use an iPhone, iPad or MacBook because Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, is gay?
Should I refuse to use ChatGPT because OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, is gay?
Should I discard my many academic books and papers in mathematics and computing because modern computer science much of what they say comes from the enormous intellectual prowess of Alan Turing, who was gay?
Of course not.
Learning from someone’s intellect is not an endorsement of everything about that person’s life.
That principle protects P.E. as much as it protects Uju Anya.
I do not have to share P.E.’s particular expression of Christianity to listen to him. I do not have to share Prof. Anya’s sexuality, atheism, politics, or every opinion she expresses to read her scholarship.
If, as an Igbo man, I declare, “I can never listen to or read anything from a gay person,” what makes that fundamentally different in principle from someone saying, “I can never listen to an Igbo person”?
What makes it different from the racist who says, “I can’t have anything to do with a Black person”? The tribalist who dismisses me because I am Igbo? The antisemite who dismisses someone because he is Jewish? The Islamophobe who refuses to hear a Muslim? Or the anti-Christian bigot who assumes that because I am Christian, nothing worthwhile can come from me?
We cannot demand that other people look beyond our identities while proudly refusing to look beyond theirs.
Being Igbo does not require me to dismiss another person’s entire intellect because I disagree with an aspect of that person’s life. And being Christian does not require intellectual isolation from everyone who does not share my beliefs.
I can disagree. And I do.
I can criticize. And I do.
I can draw moral boundaries. I can even conclude that something Prof. Anya has said is terribly wrong. She has said terrible things—many times.
But there is a profound difference between saying:
“I believe you are wrong.”
and saying:
“Because of what you are, nothing you say is worth hearing.”
I have been on the receiving end of that kind of thinking—bigotry—as a Black person, an African, an Igbo man, an immigrant and a Christian.
I should know better than to reproduce it against somebody else.
Otherwise, I may have changed the target of the bigotry without changing the bigotry itself.
(Nwankama Nwankama, PhD)
