Karen Attiah is a Ghanaian-American freelance journalist currently residing in New York. She has written for Huffington Post, Columbia University’s Morningside Post, Sahara Reporters and America.gov among other sites. She has also done multimedia stories for Voice of America and America Abroad Media.
Karen writes frequently about West Africa, international political development, and the role of both new media and traditional journalism in developing countries. As the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, she also holds interests in examining the role of diaspora communities.
Karen has made appearances on MTV Base, WBAI 99.5 FM and Al Jazeera’s The Stream.
Karen holds a Master’s Degree of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she studied Human Rights and International Media. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Ghana in 2008. Karen graduated from Northwestern University with a Bachelor’s in Communication Studies. She is proud to call Dallas, Texas her hometown.
Karen can be contacted at karen.attiah@gmail.com. You can also find her on Twitter at @karenattiah
I read a piece you wrote about Africans in Diaspora and how your Dad felt about going back to Africa. I spent the later part of my teen years in the the States,college in Dallas and hanging out in the East Coast, New York Baltimore , D.C. The problem with White America is the fear of losing the Black population to Africa. To that effect, it supports bad governments and continues to potray Africa as a jungle. It has failed in assisting in the economic growth of Africa as China is doing right now and has supported fraudulent oil companies like Shell and Chevron, which has a long history of flaring gas into the environment. The available natural gas in Nigeria is enough to power the whole of Africa for the next 1,000 years. But the white world supports our fraudulent leaders by assisting them to stash their ill-gotten wealth in Western Banks. If they want to, they can trace every cent that has been stolen in Africa. The reason: A developed Africa means an exodus of not only the Africans in Diaspora, but also the average African American. This the White Americans cannot afford. Does it mean they love the African Americans? No. But who will support the prison business if Blacks are no more around? The media hype also helps to create fear in our poor black brothers. Africa is violent.Africa is a mass of ghettos.Most t.v broadcast highlights slums. There is a general rule to the press not to report favorably on Africa on T.V. To the average american, going to Africa is extreme high risk. Where i live in Nigeria, the cops makes their rounds maybe once every six hours. You might spend a week without sighting a police vehicle and yet i have never been mugged or robbed. Try that in Planet Brooklyn! America is more or less a police country. The cops have a record of every one and even follow its citizen around. The criminal justice system is a fraud. All the same, its a beautiful country especially places like Dallas, Atlanta,St Paul etc. Its nice to visit but i’ll rather pitch my tent in good old Africa.