Councilmember Will Jawando (Democrat, At-Large) continues to use misleading language in his proclamations about America’s Black History month.
As Clean Slate MoCo documented last month, the Councilmember made an obvious error in February 2022 in stating that “our ancestors” were brought “here in bondage” through the middle passage.
As we noted then: His [Jawando’s] mother is a “white Kansan” and his father, Olayinka Jawando, came to America voluntarily from Nigeria as an immigrant, fleeing civil war back home. If there are additional details as to CM Jawando’s ancestry and the middle passage slave route, he should share them. Otherwise he should be accurate and stop saying “brought our ancestors here in bondage”. That simply isn’t true based on the facts made public today. Maybe he is referring to something else with the word “our” but the common definition of the word “our” is ‘belonging to or associated with the speaker and one or more other people previously mentioned’.
Now, the Councilmember is pushing government communication via “The Jawando Report” that uses very misleading language seeming to conflate his personal history with that of Black Foundational Americans. See images below:
Note the use of “we fought back”. We. According to Oxford Dictionary pronoun defined as – “used by a speaker to refer to himself or herself and one or more other people considered together.”
CM Jawando did not, nor did his immediate familial ancestors, fight “back against slavery” nor is there direct evidence or prior reporting his father or mother “resisted segregation”. As noted before in prior reporting, his father came to America voluntarily and was escaping civil war in Nigeria in the early 1970s. His mother is an American, white, and noted in prior fawning stories about the Councilmember, as being from Kansas.
If the Councilmember has more evidence as to his ancestry, he should release it so that his use of the words “our” and “we” in his Black History Month proclamations will carry accuracy.
The fact that CM Jawando’s parents met and dated in this area of Maryland and started a family is a testament to love overcoming societal bigotry anyways, and something to be celebrated.
Related posts:
As Black History Month 2023 Draws to Close, Questionable Past Statements Made by Council Members Come Into Focus
The Montgomery Historical Society’s “The Immigrant Experience” Online Exhibit Reveals CM Jawando Has No Ancestral Ties to the Middle Passage
Flashback: Will Jawando’s Dubious Claim About His Student Activism and Why He Started an NAACP Chapter at Catholic University