Governance
5 Things to Know about Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the Superstar Diplomat Biden Nominated as UN Ambassador By Christopher Rhodes PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN ANNOUNCED several key choices for his foreign policy and national security team on Monday, November 22, 2020. While he has not yet nominated any of the individuals that Blavity (https://blavity.com) previously identified as potential Black cabinet picks, one nominee who stands out is Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The career diplomat and Louisiana native is Biden’s pick for United States Ambassador to the United Nations, a cabinet-level position that serves as one of the most important foreign policy positions in the U.S. government. Although she is not a household name, Thomas-Greenfield has had an incredible career trajectory and history. Here are five things to know about the Black woman who is likely to become America’s most prominent ambassador. 1. She endured going to college with David Duke, who'd go on to become a notorious KKK leader Thomas-Greenfield grew up in Louisiana in what she describes as a "town in which the KKK regularly would come on weekends and burn a cross in somebody's yard." After graduating in 1970 from a segregated high school, Thomas-Greenfield chose to attend Louisiana State University for college. Though integrated, LSU was not at the time a particularly welcoming atmosphere for Black students. This was especially true due to the presence of another undergraduate at the time – David Duke, the future Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (https://blavity. com/tags/Ku-Klux-Klan). Duke first gained national 48
November-December 2020
attention during his LSU days, as he paraded around campus in Nazi-like gear, made daily racist and anti-Semitic speeches, and founded the White Youth Alliance, a campus branch of a larger neoNazi organization, the National Socialist White People's Party. As Thomas-Greenfield later described Duke, “He was preaching the same hatred, antiSemitism, white supremacy that he preached in Charlottesville, VA," she said in reference to the violent 2018 Unite the Right rally. 2. She survived the 1994 Rwanda genocide After graduating from LSU and earning a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, where she also did doctoral work, and teaching at Bucknell University, Thomas-Greenfield entered into foreign affairs. According to her State Department bio, she served in a number of countries including Pakistan, Kenya, The Republic of Gambia, Nigeria and Jamaica over a career spanning more than three decades. Thomas-Greenfield narrowly escaped death in 1994 after arriving in Rwanda the day before the genocide began. Standing 6 feet tall with dark skin, she fit the stereotypical description of a woman from the Tutsi ethnic group, the main targets of the genocide killers, and was held at gunpoint by DAWN
www.africabusinessassociation.org
