Afrikan Resistance

MAULANA KARENGA'S HAUNTING GHOST by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2012-01-02T13:00:00.002-05:00

ACULT OF PERSONALITY AND HERO WORSHIPPING

ASOVERCOMPENSATION OF BLACK LEADERSHIP DEFICIET

ATTEMPTINGTO ESCAPE THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS OF HISTORY:

MAULANAKARENGA’S HAUNTING GHOST

www.photobucket.com (Karenga outside of court where he was sentenced)

ByMukasa Afrika Ma’at

www.mukasa.info

DEDICATED TO DR. JOHN HENRIKE CLARKE who said, “He hasnot atoned to the community for his attempt to destroy the Panther movement. Hehas not atoned for being a police informant. He has not atoned for the way hetreated Black women.”

DEDICATED TO MWALIMU WESLEY KABAILA who said, “I write the following inthe spirit of Maat, and the truth embodied in it. I also write it as a matterof corrective history, that has too long endured as lies.”

Introduction

Maulana Karenga is the “founder” of Kwanzaa.He also supposedly began the US organization and developed the theory ofKawaida. He is the author of a number of “culturally nationalist” books andother writings. He is considered an internationally renowned leader of Afrikanpeople. He was a speaker and one of the key organizers of the historic MillionMan March in 1995. He is one of the founders of ASCAC and has been an activistand academician for decades.

The hero worshippers of Maulana Karenga wouldbe more than happy if I simply detailed the above historic facts and ignoredthe ghost which has haunted the past of their leader. They would be more thanhappy if I, like them, ignored the facts of his dirty past. They would bepleased if I did not ask and address the essential questions which they sovainly attempt to delete from the pages of history.

A Karenga fan once asked if I'd ever changemy stance on his leader. I told him I already did – I was once a “fan” likehim. I never espoused Kawaida theory. I was never a member of the USorganization. However, I was once a participant of Kwanzaa celebrations. Ioften quoted the works of Maulana Karenga. I’d use his resources to prove apoint in some discourse or historical debate. That was a long time ago.Thankfully, I have never been afraid to question, critique, and grow. Somepeople are okay with the superficial and misguided while others, like myself,seek to always grow and stand on principles – even if that means speaking outagainst people we once admired. Whilesome of us will question a “leader,” others who do not stand on principles willfind all kinds of creative ways to excuse their “leaders” unacceptable andsometimes treacherous behavior against our people. I am not one of thosepeople.

My purpose is to inform the people so thatthey can make insightful decisions about whatever they choose to celebrate orworship, in regards to my research and discussions on religions. I will not besilenced because I expose truths that others wish to sweep under the rug. Wehave this bad habit of not addressing the shortcomings or horrendous behaviorof leaders because some feel we have a shortage of leaders. Well, we do have ashortage of leaders, but to not address the issues borders on treachery. Noleader, religion, or topic is unquestionable. The Afrikan-Conscious movementmust do a better job of informing our people on a number of issues and topicsif we indeed the bringers of Ma’at (Truth).

Cult of Personality and Hero Worship

A cult of personality and hero worshippinghas developed around Maulana Karenga. Let us define a cult of personality andhero worship as related to Karenga. A cult of personality is when a person or agroup develops unrealistic praise for an individual. They cease to honor theprinciples which someone and others might stand for and instead they begin tohonor and worship the person. The problem is that men are flawed and when acult of personality develops, the mind of the follower will find it verydifficult to accept normal Human faults. Additionally, when the leader hascommitted heinous crimes, the cult follower will not even hear such unspeakable“ideas” against their leader. This is when the cult of personality becomes heroworship, which is even more unrealistic, even more ridiculous, and even moredangerous. Hero worship develops when a cult of a person/leader elevates themto the status of demi-god – in some cases the leader may even become “God”.

Karenga has followers of varying degrees. Firstly,some are simply respectful of his intellectual work and they may or may notquestion his ghost and dirty past. Secondly, the next level up for Karenga arethose who are ardent followers of one or more of the concepts associated withhim such as Kwanzaa or Kawaida. This third set of followers may or may not bepartially engulfed in the next set of followers. The third group is made of thecult worshippers who not only live Karenga’s principles as part of their lives,but refuse to accept any questions of wrong doing against him. Anyone whoquestions their cult leader must be doing the work of the white man or defaminga great Black leader. By all means, Karenga is innocent of all charges againsthim. It was all a COINTELPRO conspiracy against him. He didn’t do it! Thisgroup is beyond the realistic and trying to reasonable convince them or debatewith them is a waste of time. The fourth or last group of followers areKarenga’s hero worshippers who simply consider him near divine or even divine.These hero worshippers are the ones who would bow, kneel to the ground and kisshis hand. Yes this was a practice of members in the US organization. I aminformed of this from people who actually witnessed his cult following heroworshippers kneeling, kissing his hand, and mumbling “Maulana, Maulana,Maulana.”

When I first posted this essay, I didn't look into the meaning of the name Maulana beyond what Karenga has always taught people - it means "Master Teacher" in Swahili. After reading the essay, Dr. Marimba Ani asked me if I knew the meaning of his name. Our discussion reminded me of a video I watched on a lecture given by John Henrik Clarke. Allow me to explain what was revealed. The name Maulana in Arabic means "Our Lord" or"Our Master". It is in fact a title for Islamic leaders, not a name. Additionally,many who speak Arabic and are devout Muslims believe the title should not be used by any people sinceit is a designation of their God/Allah. Karenga has taught people that the word"Maulana" is a name which means Master Teacher in Swahili, and thatis absolutely false. While in Senegal, Karengawas upset with John Henrik Clarke because the Senegalese had elected Dr. Clarkehead of a group of respected Afrikan Americans due to his work over the yearswith them. According to Dr. Clarke, Karenga approached him upset and said tohim, "You don't know the definition of my name. Maulana means God!"This further establishes the cultist rituals, practices, and leadership ofKarenga. When those US members where kneeling and kissing Karenga's hand, theywere in fact mumbling, "Our God, Our God, Our God."

A leader can have a cult of personalitywithout having an actual cult organization or cult of rituals. Karenga has all three. I have categorized the cult of personality around Karenga in the abovesection. There are several ways in which his cult of organization, US, andhis cult of rituals can be exhibited.

Was US a cult organization? Well, you decide. Consider the above scenes reported to meabout Karenga’s weird ritual of his members bowing, kneeling, and kissing hishand mumbling "Our God". Imagine the young impressionable brother in the late 60s kneeling downand kissing his hand, dressed like Karenga with dark shades on and head shaved,like Karenga.

Also, Karenga was and is as far as I know apolygamist. He would have his “first” wife sit down and tell prospective wivesabout the great deeds of “Maulana” to convince them to join in theirpolygamist marriage. This I have established directly from a woman whom thewife attempted to seduce into the arrangement. Karenga has been seen out andabout with his wives over the years. Besides the fact that polygamy is not acommon practice in America, while common in some Afrikan cultures, it isagainst the law. It is but further evidence of a cult leader.

I will discuss the cult rituals aroundKwanzaa later. These rituals around the made up holiday also provides moreevidence of the cult behavior built up around Karenga. Let us here address ifthere is evidence that Karenga was an FBI rat agent.

Karenga: FBI Agent with an Anti-Panther Mission?

Karenga was financed and provided with gunsand drugs by the FBI according to confessed agent provocateurs and infiltratorsEarl Anthony and Louis Tackwood, and suspected former agent provocateur andinfiltrator Elaine Brown. Elaine Brown, herself an agent, says that Karenga wasan agent in Taste of Power. She opensup about Karenga being an agent but does not come clean about herself. If youconsider her willful destructive behavior in the book, how she came into theparty and sexed her way to the top only to cause division, the allegation ofher being an infiltrator fits. Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt in an open letter before hisdeath informed the public that Brown was a former agent, but he was misinformedand thought Karenga was not. Both Brown and Karenga accuse anyone who callsthem an agent of supporting COINTELPRO strategies or J. Edgar Hoover typeactions against them. This is a deflection strategy common with agents andformer agents. Karenga and his supporters have had to use this tactic much morethan Brown. Both Brown and Karenga were agents. They have not confessed to theirwork against the movement like Earl Anthony and Louis Tackwood.

Agent provocateur Earl Anthony’s confessionsare valuable in this regard. He admits his own dirt and so has little reservewith also mentioning Karenga’s dirt. Anthony states that he was first informedof Karenga being an agent, being supplied with weapons, and given the missionto destroy the Black Panther Party in LA by FBI agents Robert O'Connor and RonKizenski. Furthermore, a lot of inconsistencies with criminal prosecution andbrutal treatment against the Black Panthers compared with that of Karenga’s USorganization speaks to him being an agent. The prime historical example of thisis after the murders of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, the police didn’t goafter Karenga’s US; they went after Black Panthers and conducted raids.Consider Anthony’s Spitting in the Windwhich many question outside of one fact, the book is an uncut confessional ofan agent provocateur. Anthony stands to gain nothing from his confessions ofhimself and Karenga, except he doesn’t take his own dirt to the grave.

Like Earl Anthony, another former agentprovocateur was Louis Tackwood, who came clean on his dirt and many others in1971. He also says that Karenga was an agent with an anti-Panther mission.Tackwood’s word can be found in his GlassHouse Tapes. Tackwood’s words are startling, but if any of it is true, heand Earl Anthony are correct in pointing out the COINTELPRO manipulation of ratKarenga. Like Anthony, he has nothing to gain except as near to a clean consciencefrom his confession that he can get. Consider this quote from Brother Sekhem inhis 2006 article, The IntelligenceOrigins of Kwanzaa:

Colton Westbrook,working with the LAPD's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and Division Five ofthe FBI, used certain newly "Africanized" and modified recruits toset up two primary synthetic terror groups known as the Us organization withpolice agent Ron N. Everett a.k.a. Ron Karenga; and the SLA, or SymbioneseLiberation Army with police informer and provocateur Donald DeFreeze. Accordingto CCS police snitch and provocateur Louis Tackwood, Ron Karenga and his Us(later known as the United Slaves) organization were funded by the FordFoundation, the LAPD and his good friend Mayor Sam Yorty through municipalfunds. Financing to the tune of over $50,000 per year, plus two offices andfive apartments, as indicated in the September 6, 1969 edition of the BlackPanther newspaper. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Karenga “Maintainedclose ties to the eastern Rockefeller family” and that “A few weeks after theassassination of Martin Luther King… Mr. Karenga slipped into Sacramento for aprivate chat with Governor Ronald Reagan, at the governor’s request. The blacknationalist also met clandestinely with Los Angeles Police Chief Thomas Reddinafter King had been killed.”

Louis E. Tackwood was the liaison man between Karenga and DeFreeze and LAPD'sCCS division. Aptly named, the Criminal Conspiracy Section's sole purpose andagenda was to target and destroy black militants and their organizations,through conspiracies involving informers, agent provocateurs, programmedassassins and set-up men. As well as "militant" synthetic terrorgroups to sabotage and discredit the Afrikan liberation movement in general. ThroughTackwood, Ron Karenga and his United Slaves (we should've known they were punksby their ******* name alone!) were given their assignments to "Work inopposition to other Black groups within the Black community, which attractedlarge numbers of Blacks." Karenga was directly ordered to “Curtail thePanther Party’s growth, no matter what the cost, and that no rang-a-tang (CCSslang for US members) —that’s what we called his people— would ever beconvicted of murder.” Tackwood also stated that he provided Karenga withassassination orders from the FBI to kill Panther leaders Elmore GeronimoPratt, and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter.

It is debate about whether US ever stood forUntied Slaves. That is not my debate. Karenga did meet with LA Police ChiefThomas Reddin and Governor Ronald Reagan in supposedly an effort to help withthe aftermath of the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination and todiscuss the imprisonment of US members. Karenga met with Police Chief Reddinand then with Reagan at Reagan’s request as reported by Scot Brown in Fighting for US. Brown also documented the torture of two Blackwomen by Karenga which I will detail later. Karenga was very displeased withBrown’s Fighting for US and had hiscolleague, Molefi Asante, write a very lofty and flattering biography of himentitled Karenga: An IntellectualPortrait. Among other errors, Asante claims that Karenga was mentor toJacob Hudson Carruthers on matters related to the study of KMT (Ancient Egypt).The opposite is true. While Karenga was in jail for kidnap and torture of twoBlack women, Carruthers was in Senegal meeting with Cheikh Anta Diop discussingthe need to teach the history, literature, and culture of KMT. Of course Asantedoesn’t mention this fact. Asante gloats about Karenga being a founder of ASCAC, but he doesn't address the fact that Karenga's ego got him voted out of ASCAC in 1988. He was also removed from the Republic of New Afrika in 1969. Members of the Black Radical Congress has long thought of him as an agent of the FBI. Asante did a biased, gloating, oftentimes false, and very poor job on the facts about Karenga. Equally, Asante leaves out some other very criticalhistory about Karenga which I will address.

Consider the following from The FBI's War on the Black Panther Party'sSouthern California Chapter:

What gives somecredence, though not proof, to the theory held by Brown and Anthony is thatwhile the more conservative theory holds that the FBI was using each groupagainst the other, the repression faced by the BPP was much more severe thanthat faced by the US organization. The pattern of killings described above is acase in point. Another is that the FBI opened a conspiracy investigation forPanther Geronimo Pratt for a bank robbery that the FBI knew had been committedby US members.(63)

Another example ofpolice favoritism towards US is the initial police response to the killings ofCarter and Huggins, which was not to go after the US organization or any othersuspects in the murder, but instead to deploy over 150 police officers to raida Panther apartment and arrest 75 Panthers, including the remaining Pantherleadership, on charges of intending to murder US members in retaliation!(64)Later, the police arrested US's Stiner brothers, Larry and George. The Stinerswere given life terms and sent to San Quentin, but, adding to suspicions thatUS members were deliberately given light treatment, they "walked away froma minimum security area on March 30, 1974."(65) Larry Stiner turnedhimself in on Feb. 5, 1994, while George Stiner remained a fugitive.(66)

Karenga met with Police Chief Reddin andGovernor Reagan at a time of false imprisonment, agent infiltrations, and evenassassinations of activists in California and America in general. Reagan calledthe home of Karenga for the meeting. Reagan would not call Karenga in 1968unless the FBI had already sniffed him out, profiled him, and/or put him onpayroll. This was at the height of COINTELPRO operations. Governors don’t meetwith so-called radicals at the height of COINTELPRO to have tea. The events ofthe time gives much credence to confessions by agent provocateurs andinfiltrators Earl Anthony and Louis Tackwood, and among others such as ElaineBrown, that Karenga had an anti-Panther mission, was given guns, money, anddrugs, and was an agent himself given a mission to destroy the Black PantherParty.

The Kwanzaa Cult and Jewish-RBG Candle Lighting

I am Afrikan Spiritual and practice Afrikanrituals myself. A ritual is not cultist if it is authentically grown out of thetradition of a people. Cultist rituals are not the expressions of a people.Cultist rituals are non-authentic expressions to bolster the personalityworship of particular individuals or groups.

While Kwanzaa events have helped raise someAfrikan consciousness due less to Karenga and more to local activists, many whoare not associated with Karenga at all, the holiday can promote a superficialand even pseudo consciousness of Afrikan lifestyle. Kwanzaa has been used topromote the personality worship of Karenga. Hollie West interviewed Karenga in 1978 for the Washington Post and wrote the following:

“Icreated Kwanzaa,” laughed Ron Karenga like a teenager who’s just divulged adeeply held, precious secret. “People think it’s African. But it’s not. Iwanted to give black people a holiday of their own. So I came up with Kwanzaa.I said it was African because you know black people in this country wouldn’tcelebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmasbecause I knew that’s when a lot of bloods (blacks) would be partying!”

The holiday is not authentically Afrikan, asKarenga said himself. The Jewish Hanukkah Festival of Lights begins on the 25^thof the Jewish calendar in Kislev and last eight days. It is roughly aroundChristmas on December 25^th. A candle is burned each day with theServant or Helper candle. This is strangely similar to the Kwanzaa lightingceremony where the Servant candle is replaced with the Black candle. Instead of8 candles and the 1 helper candle like the Jewish celebration, Kwanzaa usesseven candles with the colors red, black, and green. I call them Jewish rbg(red, black, and green) candles for this very fact to note an Afrikan surfacepainted over a Jewish ritual. Many elders who celebrate Kwanzaa do so withoutthe Jewish rbg candles. These elders instead pour libations, a time honored andunquestioned Afrikan tradition of thousands of years. We must be very seriousabout the rituals we pass down to generations. We must be very careful with whowe call leaders. I will discuss more of the questions around Karenga’sleadership in the next section.

The Kwanzaa lighting celebration with sevenprinciples over seven days, although performed out of sincerity by countlessBlacks, is a copy of the Jewish Festival of Lights of eight days. Due to thisvery reason, it is more cultist than it is Afrikan. We learned as much from Karenga laughing likea teenager in 1978. At the very minimum, this Jewish lighting ceremony shouldbe eliminated to gain some respectability among the holiday’s participants.

TheStance of Mwalimu Wesley Kabaila: Separating the Message from the Messenger.

AMiddle Ground or Middle of Nowhere?

Mwalimu Wesley Kabaila has been a member ofthe US organization from 1967 to 1985. He was Karenga’s body guard, a proponentof Kawaida since 1967, and a promoter of Kwanzaa virtually since the beginning.He was the Vice Chairman of the US organization and Chairman of the SimbaWachanga from 1979 to 1985. Kabaila was Karenga’s strong arm man and one of hismost loyal students and dedicated followers. He is not as well-known as MaulanaKarenga, but nonetheless Kabaila is truly an historic figure and played a majorrole in the development and promotion of the organization US, the philosophy ofKawaida, and the widespread acceptance of the holiday. Furthermore, I am awareof no allegations against him such as those heinous crimes committed byKarenga. Additionally, he seems to be a man of character for reasons I willaddress in this section. He has raised concerns which should be addressed onthe subject. Before addressing the matter, I’d like to further establish thehistoric significance of Mwalimu Kabaila. In my correspondence with him, hestated the following about some of the struggles he faced in the movement:

I have sent for my FBI file and know theywere following me and reporting. Also, after the Black Power Conference in1968, in Philly, I and two other Simbas went to Newark to help in organizingthe Committee for a Unified Newark with the BCD (Black Community Defense) whichwas based in Monclair and East Orange. During my stay there, I mostly stayed atAmiri Baraka's Spirit House. During that period the Italians in power in Newarkhad the Spirit House shot up. When Rahh retaliated, the Italians never messedwith us again. WE were protected by the god. After 3 months, I returned to LA. Thenext day my parents called me to say that the FBI had came to their house in NJand asked about my involvement in Us, saying we were for overthrow of thegovernment. What really scared my parents was that the agents brought up myparents involvement in the Paul Robeson movement back in 1946-47. I hadn't evenknown that, as my parents never talked about it before. The FBI also went to mywife's job, harassed her and tried to get her fired.

Kabaila’s voice must be part of the dialog onKarenga and the US organization. As of yet, he is not cited as much as shouldbe the case. Besides a few lines in a book or two, I was not very aware ofKabaila or his contributions until he released a brief but historically crucialopen letter admonishing Karenga on two key points and noting a lesson on leadershipon a third. These are the key points in his open letter:

1. He states that Karenga should be honest aboutthe fall of the US organization, not because members left him but due to hisimprisonment from criminal behavior with Deborah Jones and Gail Davis.

2. He admonishes Karenga to come forward, atone,and apologize for his treatment of women. Kabaila also mentions Karenga lockingup his first wife in a tiger cage and attempting to rape another woman. Headmonishes Karenga to atone for these wrongs against Black women.

3. Kabaila argues that there are lessons onleadership from this critical history that must be passed on to futuregenerations.

I fully agree with Mwalimu Kabaila on thethree above points which he notes in his open letter. Karenga should atone forhis wrongs and criminal behavior towards the sisters he has mistreated andespecially those he has assaulted. He should apologize to the community anddefinitely to those he victimized. I also agree with Kabaila regarding thematter being a lesson of leadership for future generations. It takes couragefor a person to speak out against someone whom they held in such high esteem.Kabaila was personally responsible for the safety of Karenga as his bodyguard foryears and would have given his life to save Karenga’s. I applaud him for comingforward in the name of Ma’at (Truth) to encourage Karenga to have a higherstandard for his own behavior and disclose what happened.

Of course I disagree with Kabaila about thesignificance of Kwanzaa to Afrikan people. He argues that it has a role in ourliberation struggle and points to the millions of people who celebrate theholiday. I argue it is a stepping stone at most and must be altered to take outthe Jewish influence or left entirely. My above section on the Kwanzaa ritualsexplains that reasoning in detail. Kabaila states that Kwanzaa was a collectivecreation of the US organization and not just Karenga’s. I have no argument withthat matter, but it would very well benefit the reputation of Kwanzaa if it wasless associated with Karenga and more associated with the US organization as acollective. Right now, it is not.

On the other hand, Kabaila stops short ofcalling Karenga a rat agent or rapist. As his bodyguard of 20 years, unless hepersonally witnessed certain things, I’m not surprised that Kabaila would notlike to believe certain things happened. While he says, “I concede he (Karenga)is a liar, a meglo-maniac, a torturer, and a sexist” who also has exhibited“diabolical behavior,” he does not say he was an agent or rapist. In fact, hestates unequivocally in his open letter that no one in the inner circle of theUS organization were agents. Kabaila is also of the opinion that Elaine Brownwas not an agent in spite of the convincing letter of Geronimo Ji Jaga Prattlaying out her actions as what he considers to be an agent. This is also inspite of her own damning autobiography, Tasteof Power. This is another point where I part ways with Kabaila, yet I mustsay I believe I understand his middle ground stance. I think because Kabailawas an eyewitness to a lot of the hurt from that era, he is very cautious withidentifying people as agents of COINTELPRO. Although the term itself seems toannoy him, he has acknowledged in my correspondence with him that he isconvinced that agents did operate on the periphery of US, not the inner-circle,and in the movement’s other organizations. My take is that he feels we shouldbe focused on the struggle ahead for our people instead of seeking out evidenceof agent activity from the past. While this is an admirable middle ground stance,agents did exist in the US organization, the Black Panther Party, and everyother organization worth any note in the 60s and 70s. That is why I agree withhim on his major points in his open letter. Disclosure of wrongs done may beginhealing some wounds that time has not. Agents need to disclose their activityas well, like Earl Anthony and Louis Tackwood who also disclosed informationabout Karenga. On Kabaila’s third point, regarding leadership lessons forfuture generations, equally I’d argue can only be enhanced with knowing whoworked as COINTELPRO agents and who did not. Although Kabaila was his personalbodyguard, Karenga had time for meetings with Tackwood or other agents outsideof Kabaila’s presence. The FBI would have considered Kabaila a threat if he wasuncompromising and couldn’t offer them anything new that they could already getfrom Karenga, a much more valuable risk. History has shown that Kabalia was notan agent. Of course, Ji Jaga was simply not around Karenga enough to establishthat he was or wasn’t an agent.

Kabaila takes his admirable middle ground ofreconciliation on these matters. While he admonishes Karenga to come forwardfor his wrongs, he also does not say that Karenga raped Davis and Jones notingthey didn’t testify about rape then or say anything of it since. That howeveris not sufficient evidence that the crime didn’t happen. Kabaila does say thatthe women were held for three weeks and not 2 days as is widely believed fromcourt testimony. However, the court transcripts have miraculously disappeared.My argument has been that the women were raped and threatened or persuaded toonly admit to torture and kidnap over two days instead of three weeks whichwould result in a shorter sentence for Karenga. How could he get away with ashort sentence for such heinous crimes? How could he not have rape chargesbrought against him and have what was a three week hostage/torture situationturn into 2 days? Karenga was found guilty on only two counts of felonious assaultand one count of false imprisonment. That would not have happened if the testimonyof 3 weeks kidnap and torture would have entered the court. How could he getaway with that unless he was an agent supported by the FBI’s COINTELPRO asreported by former agents? There are others questions as well which point toKarenga being a protected FBI agent. For instance, Kabaila’s letter establisheseven more so a pattern of sick and depraved behavior by Karenga. Anyone as sickas Karnega would have no problem with also being an agent against a movement inwhich he was supposedly a leader. Why would the court transcripts come upmissing? Why would the transcripts disappear like smoke into thin air? I smell arat! They have been deleted from the pages of history never to be seen again.How often do you hear of court documents coming up missing in which you havethe graphic statements of victims?

We dohave the transcripts of the sentencing hearing and they paint Karenga as a madman capable of anything. During his sentencing, a psychiatric report read thathe was delusional, paranoid and schizophrenic, experiencing hallucinations, andtalked to his blanket and imaginary people in his cell. After serving time inprison from 1971 to 1975, Karenga popped up again as the Chairman of the BlackStudies Department at California State University of Long Beach in 1979. Was hea reformed criminal? Was he still an agent? Many believe that his position at CaliforniaState University was a set up by the FBI for Karenga to further manipulate the BlackPower Movement away from radicalism. Many believe that the promotion of Kwanzaawas for the same reason. On December 24^th, 1971, after Karenga was sentto prison, the New York Times ran an article on Kwanzaa but didn’t mention Karenga’sbackground or that he was in prison while the ink was drying on the pages. Otherarticles would come out of the New York Times and because of the newspaper’s reputation;other papers would pick it up across the country. The New York Times has long beensuspected of promoting government propaganda to the masses of country. This 1971endorsement of Kwanzaa by the New York Times begs to differ with the idea of aninitial grassroots spread of the holiday. Questions are raised especially becauseKarenga was in prison at the time and no mention was made of that fact.

We have the confessions of former agents who statethat Karenga was an agent. Was he a man of horrible character? We have one of themost qualified people, his bodyguard of 20 years, to affirm that he was a man ofhorrible character and had many things for which to atone. Was the holiday a fraud?I say yes for all of the reasons cited above. It may be salvageable to have somerespect for its diehard participants if the Jewish influence is taken out. Was Karengaa rapist? I think all evidence points to that as I have cited. I will closewith a quote of Brandon Stewart’s articleThe Story of Ron Karenga: Kwanzaa’s Founder detailing some of the torturethe women endured. You be the judge:

It is not the creation ofKwanzaa, however, that is Karenga’s most controversial part of his history. In1971, Karenga was convicted of kidnapping and torturing two women from his USOrganization. He was sentenced to one to ten years in prison.

After obtaining theoriginal Los Angeles Timesarticles from this time period, the case appears no less bizarre. During thetrial, Deborah Jones described the “brutal physical abuse inflicted on her andanother 20-year old woman (Gail Davis) by Ron Karenga and three of hisfollowers because they were suspected of poisoning Karenga.” Jones testified ingraphic detail how she and Davis “were whipped with an electrical cord andbeaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes.” Shefurther testified that “a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouthand placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own large toes wastightened in a vice.” According to the article, “Karenga, head [and founder] ofthe US organization, and others also put detergent and running hoses in theirmouths.” That last bit was added by Karenga “who was upset because she [Jones]would not cry.” The reason behind the abuse was apparently because Karengafeared that the two women had placed “crystals” in his food that would killhim. According to damning testimony by his wife, Brenda Lorraine Karenga, “sheheard him tell the victims that he wanted them to reveal where they were hidingthe ‘poison’.” She further testified that she “heard screams and yells comingfrom the garage where the defendants were holding Deborah Jones and Gail Davisand noises which sounded like someone was being whipped.” The Times reportedthat during the trial that “scars from the cuts on [Jones’] back were shown tomembers of the jury” and that Jones testified that “Karenga finally let themgo, but only after threatening to shoot them in the hands.”

In a very bizarretestimony, Karenga attempted to defend himself by claiming that he last saw thewomen leave his Inglewood, CA home “to find other lodging” and that they“appeared healthy looking” when they left. Furthermore, he testified that “hedid not know why his wife testified against him” and that his wife and childrenhad not fled to Virginia to get away from him, but rather he had sent his wifeand children away for “rest and recuperation”. “If he had known there was anyviolence within US, such as the alleged beating of the two women, he would havestopped it,” wrote the Times reporter, “adding [the US Organization] wasagainst violence.”

Conclusionand Considerations

Iwish to state here that I don’t condemn anyone for whatever celebrations orreligions they practice which they feel are good for their families orthemselves. However, I believe as Afrikan people we desperately need to havemore serious consideration of the culture and cultural values we transmit toour children. I can have a sensible disagreement with anyone on any number oftopics. My argument, where I stand, is that people must be informed about theirbeliefs and practices. Often when people are informed, they may change theirminds – some may not. My purpose is to educate and give people information tomake insightful judgments and decisions. That should be a stance of theAfrikan-Conscious movement. Question everything and leave no stones unturned.We have to build a sound Afrikan worldview in the future and learn from thepast. We will not do this with being so politically correct that we ignore uglyfacts about our past and attempt to teach these inaccurate and sanitizedversions of historical events.

Maulana Karenga has haunting ghosts that willnot leave him, and shouldn’t leave him. He has committed some treacherous actsagainst his people, against women. He was an FBI COINTELPRO agent. He concocteda holiday that is not authentic and should have some critical analysis. He hasdone some research of value which is widely read and cited by many in theAfrikan-Centered movement. That is to his credit, however, for many his past isn’texcusable – especially without disclosure. To some it may be, to others not so.To attempt to hide that past and create a sanitized version of history becausesome believe we have a deficit of leadership is sadly wrong. It is equallywrong to avoid questioning the Jewish influence copied into Kwanzaa because itis awkward to acknowledge that we are copying a Jewish tradition. If peoplecelebrate the holiday or not, that is individual choice. Our responsibility isto inform and educate to raise consciousness and not avoid the ugly past or besilenced by those who are afraid of the exposure of an un-sanitized history.

During that cold time of the year when othersare breaking their bank accounts, and lighting daily candles, I myself fast,pray, and meditate with the winter solstice as I do with the turn of eachseason. I’m not saying that my practice is the only practice. However, no oneshould feel less than Afrikan/Black because they choose not to celebrateKwanzaa, especially with the documented information on Karenga. We celebratetraditions simply because of our geographical location regardless of thecultural meaning to our people. That means we are not owners of our culturalworldview.

We celebrate the European conquest,enslavement, and genocide of Natives and Afrikans on the Fourth of July,Thanksgiving Day, and Columbus Day. We celebrate ghosts of the dead inHalloween and send our children to the houses of strangers to get treats, buttell them the rest of the year don’t talk to strangers. We celebrate ourreligious enslavement with Christmas. We get drunk during the European NewYear.The New Year for the Romans, Celts, and other Europeans was around the wintersolstice - dead of winter, coldest time of year, most lifeless time of theyear. In KMT (Ancient Egypt) and along the Nile into Kush, the New Year (WpRnpt, another time of fasting, prayer, and meditation for me) was during theSummer Solstice with the rise of Spdt (Sirius) - the height of summer, warmesttime of the year, everything in full bloom.

The Afrikan world offers a number of authenticand praiseworthy celebrations throughout the year from various countries whichwe may consider. Zumbi Day of Brazil on November 20^th is a day tohonor our revolutionary ancestor and his warrior comrades who set up marooncamps called Quilombos and fought slavery. Haiti’s Revolutionary Independence Dayon January 1^stis a day to honor our revolutionary ancestors whodefeated Napoleon and set up a free nation in Haiti in 1804. Nanny Day inOctober honors the Queen Mother, maroon Obeah priestess who successfully foughtslavery in Jamaica and established Nanny Town. Marcus Garvey Day which shouldbe global on August 17^th honors the birth of one of the mostinspirational Pan-Afrikan leaders of the 19^th century. Independencecelebrations throughout Afrika which should remind us of the continued need tostruggle against modern neo-colonialism should be honored. These are all someexamples of authentic celebration we should be informed about as Afrikanpeople. I can even include Afrikan History Month in the mix. However, I think adeeper, more cultural and spiritual significance should be given to theoccasion. Likewise, I think we must definitely honor our history and cultureyear round. The New Yam festivals of Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, and other WestAfrikan nations are authentic Afrikan Spiritual and cultural celebrations thathonored our ancestors and deities before the coming of foreign traditions.There are various authentic, Afrikan annual festivals around the world. We have neither a shortage of leaders, nor ashortage of authentic holidays/holydays.

“Misgivings:” An Afrikan-centered, Indigenous-centered View by Marimba Ani

2011-11-24T08:54:00.001-05:00

“Misgivings:” An Afrikan-centered, Indigenous-centered View
By Mama Marimba
A group of European scavengers, many of whom had been imprisoned or homeless in England, arrived in New England in 1620. They first lived on Turtle Island. Half of them died within the first few months. Squanto, of the Pequot people, who had been enslaved by the Europeans and taken to England, spoke English and formed a “close” relationship with these “pitiful” migrants. He taught them how to grow corn and to fish, how to prepare certain foods, and other survival skills. The white people “saw Squanto as an instrument of their god to help his chosen people.” In other words, they used him. To them, he and his people were “heathens” and “savages”. The world view of the indigenous peoples, much like the Afrikan world view, taught them “to give freely to those who had nothing.” Squanto is said to have negotiated a false “treaty” between the nearby Wampanoag and the “pilgrims”. The leader of the Wampanoag Nation, Massasoit, donated food stores to the struggling colony of Europeans. In 1621, having survived a hard winter, due to the help of the Wampanoag, the Europeans celebrated, as was their custom to have “thanksgivings” to their god. No Wampanoag or members of any other indigenous nations were invited. And yet, they came and supplied most of the food. In return for helping them to survive, the “pilgrims” decimated the Wampanoag through disease, treachery and slaughter, in the years which followed. By 1637, as the Europeans were feeling successful, more powerful and in control of their newly conquered territory, an expedition was sent to Connecticut, near Groton. Over 700 Indigenous peoples (Pequot) were celebrating their yearly harvest (Annual Green Corn Festival), when they were taken by surprise by the white invaders. Their men were shot and clubbed to death, while their women and children were burned alive. Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, proclaimed a “day of thanksgiving,” saying that they should thank god for destroying the savages to make way for “a better growth.” (quoted in the work of Cotton Mather) What followed constitutes one of the most vicious records of continuing massacres of the indigenous people of this land now known as “america.” It became the custom of the whites to follow each massacre with a “thanksgiving.” Rewards would be given to those who returned with the skulls of indigenous peoples to encourage their slaughter. In 1863, it was decided to “celebrate” only one day of “thanksgiving,” proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. At a later period, the 4th Thursday of November was chosen by the capitalists, to maximize the shopping days until christmas.
In 1970, at the 350th anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims, a leader of Indigenous peoples prepared a speech in which he told the true history of Plymouth, and berated the white people for robbing the graves of the Wampanoag. The officials of Massachusetts did not allow him to make the speech. Every year since then, Indigenous people of this land have looked upon the 4th Thursday of November as a day of mourning. (See Russell Means, Susan Bates, and Jaqueline Keeler, for more information.)
We, Afrikan people in America, are victims of the same process that resulted in the murder of millions of Indigenous people and the decimation of their Nations.

“america was built by stolen labor on stolen land!”
That is the legacy of Europeans in this country.
Taking without thanks
Change is not easy. We are use to celebrating with our families on this day. It is always so good to come together and to share a meal with each other. But we do have alternatives. And we always need to be in the process of growth. Growth makes change necessary. We can change a little at a time, remembering that our goal is Sovereignty.
1. When you are with your family on Thursday, November 24, take a moment to remember and talk about the true meaning of this “holy day”
2. We don’t have to contribute to the profit-making mania organized by the large conglomerates, encouraging us to spend money that we don’t have during the weekend following that day. Don’t shop!
3. Make the sacrifice of fasting on that day. Yes, it will be a challenge, but you can still enjoy your family and at the same time identify with those who were exploited, murdered, and raped of their resources, as we have been. (This is not a cause for celebration.)
4. Let us choose a day on which the Pan-Afrikan World Nation gives thanks together for the gift of Afrikan Ancestry, and the sacrifices that have been made for us by our Ancestors! We can start small, with the Afrikans that we know.
It is a process. Let’s begin it now!
In Afrikan Victory and Sovereignty,

Mama Marimba Ani

Arab Slave Trade by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2011-08-10T12:19:00.000-04:00

Arab Slave Trade by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

European-Christian slavery is often written about, and often misunderstood. Arab-Islamic slavery is not even misunderstood, it is often simply denied. Arab Muslims have not only been aggressive in war and colonizing Afrikan land, they also have a long history of forcing Afrikans into slavery. The Arab is Afrika’s forgotten enslaver and colonizer. This is a very neglected part of history that must be exposed, if not for any other reason, because this plague still haunts Afrika today.

While there are many who say, “Afrikans enslaved each other,” a line must be drawn between cultural servitude and slavery. Slavery was based on dehumanizing people for capital gain, and was not absent of torture, and many other inhumane crimes. Afrikans did not commit atrocities of that kind against each other until they had contact with foreigners. If one studies the Dark Ages in Europe, that period is filled with inhumane atrocities, one after the other. Afrikans, however, held other Afrikans in cultural servitude because they were prisoners of war, owed unpaid debts, or committed crimes. These people in servitude had a level of humanity that was not common with the enslaved Afrikan in America. The servants could own land and even marry into the family of their owner. However, the slavery that exists in Afrika today is a result of foreign influence.

John Blassingame’s The Slave Community is one of the rare books which explores some aspects of Arab-Islamic slavery. Slavery in the Arab-Islamic world has not been very different from slavery in the Americas. Ironically, Blassingame notes, many Muslim captives were Europeans who were thoroughly acculturated into the Islamic worldview (49-50). These white slaves were treated with all the brutality that Afrikans suffered in the New World under slavery. Muslims enslaved upwards of a million Europeans in North and West Afrika, and many were traded throughout the Arab world. They were tortured, beaten, and starved to the point of fighting dogs and camels for food; eventually, many turned to cannibalism. Men were used for heavy labor and other work, and women were generally concubines. Blassingame outlines the very significant, but often ignored, history about Islamic slavery (49-65). Blassingame notes that there were battles with Muslims and Christians, after the Moorish occupation of Spain, which resulted in an extensive network of exchange in enslavement and ransoming between the Muslims and Europeans (49-50). This was an early stimulus to what spilled over in the New World as the Transatlantic slave trade. The history of slavery is often corrupted. European slavery is sugarcoated, Arab slavery is denied, and Afrikan servitude (which was not slavery at all) is falsified.

Interestingly, Ronald Segal, a white Jew, has done significant research in his book Islam’s Black Slaves. He provides an overview of the historical role of the Arab slave trade in Afrikan people. Beginning with the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the present, Arabs and their Black collaborators have been engaged in enslaving Afrikans over a period of 1,400 years. The Arab slave trade has been just as extensive, or more so, when compared to the European slave trade in both numbers and sheer brutality. From Egypt, the Red Sea, and east Afrika, countless millions were sold and dispersed throughout the Islamic world. Afrikans going faithfully on the pilgrimage to Mecca were sometimes tricked or outright captured and sold into slavery. Arab slavery was both systematic and cruel. Segal explains that Afrikans were used as concubines (sex slaves), eunuchs (castrated guards or soldiers), domestic workers, civil servants, and in other areas of forced labor. The Arab onslaught against Afrika was long and continuous.

Another eye-opening book on the subject, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, is by John Alembillah Azumah, an Afrikan Ghanaian. Azumah, while covering much of the same history that Segal does, focuses his research on Islam in West Afrika, Nigeria in particular. Azumah does a very impressive job at researching the racist and/or culturally bigoted philosophical arguments of Muslims against the humanity of Afrikans. The geographer Ibn Hawqal of the tenth century, Ibn Khaldun the historian of the 14th century, the Iranian philosopher Nasir Tusi of the 13th century, Ahmad Baba the famous Afrikan Muslim scholar of Timbuktu, are some of the Arabs and/or Muslims that Azumah quoted to prove that overtly racist and anti-Afrikan thought was/is common in Islam, contrary to popular belief. Azumah gives historical background to the jihad movements (or Holy Wars) in West Afrika in the eighteenth and nineteenth century that decimated Afrikan people and cultures. Some of the jihadist who declared wars on Afrikan Spirituality and culture were Imam Nasir al-Din, Uthman Dan Fodio, al-Hajj Umar Tal, and others. Equally, Azumah discusses the devastating results on Afrikans by the Islamic slave trade and the Shari’a which is the law of imposition of Arab and Islamic supremacy over non-Muslims. He does a great job at exposing the history of Islam in relation to Afrika which has been denied for so long by Muslims and Muslim apologists.

I do have one disagreement with Azumah. He is a cultural pluralist and believes that an inter-religious dialogue is key to the future cooperation of people in the various religions of the world, in particular in Afrika. He may not be totally wrong, but I believe that we Afrikan people must propagate and redeem our Spirituality, secure our lands and resources from foreign theft, and unite Afrikan nation with each Afrikan nation before we can engage in true inter-religious dialog with Muslims, Christians, or Jews. In other words, before we can have inter-religious dialogue, Afrikan people must redeem their Spirituality and worldview. Otherwise, Afrikan people will sit at the table of humanity and defend the worldviews of foreigners who invaded Afrika, enslaved the people, and imposed their worldviews.

John Henrik Clarke explained the following in Critical Lessons in Slavery and the Slave Trade:

The Arab slave trade in North and in East Africa had been a well-established institution long before the Arabs accepted Islam. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, they used this new religion as further justification for their involvement in the slave trade. Islam, like Christianity, declared war on all forms of African religion and culture and later denied that Africans had anything worthy of being called a religion or a culture (2).

In the Arab World by William R. Polk we learn that Sudan

...was particularly important for the [Arab Muslim] Egyptians as a hunting ground for slaves and, of course, as the conduit or source - no one knew which - of the Nile floods upon which the life of Egypt was wholly dependent (151).

Also, Polk states:

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Swiss traveler John Lewis Burckhardt estimated that Egypt [Arabs in Egypt] had approximately 40,000 slaves. ‘I have reason to believe, however’, he wrote, ‘ that the number exported from Soudan to Egypt and Arabia, bears only a small proportion of those kept by the Mussalmans of the southern countries themselves, or in other words to the whole number yearly derived by purchase, or by force, from the nations of the interior of Africa… (152)

Mohammed Ali controlled western Arabia and both Mecca and Medina from Egypt. He sent a military expedition on a slave hunt into the Sudan in 1820 to acquire a cheap source of slaves and gold for his empire. Ali was not the first to do so and would not be last. He was continuing an old Arab tradition of banditry, kidnapping, enslavement, and murder.

Sudan

A country to be discussed is Sudan. It is geographically the largest country in Afrika, nearly, 100,000 square miles, with a sizeable population almost equal to the entire number of Afrikan Americans. The Afrikans such as the Dinka, Nuer, Nuba, and other ethnic groups make up the majority. The country is split in half: the predominantly Arab north, and the free Afrikans in the south. The capital is Khartoum, which is the seat of the Islamic-Arab government, and one of many places of slave trading in the country. The Khartoum government is supported by various Arab governments, among those are Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In Khartoum, a human being may be sold for a few dollars. The Islamic government has been very direct in its policy of jihad (or holy war) against non-believers. Still today, the religion has been a justification, a means for the purpose of Arab supremacy and control over the lands of the south and into the rest of Afrika. Sheik Hassan El Turabi, once co-dictator of Sudan, was called “the real power and architect of Islamic Fundamentalism or Revivalism in North Sudan.” Journalist Samuel Cotton quotes him as saying:

Black Africa is Virgin land… fertile, ripe for the Islamic seed. In Africa, Islam’s roots will go deep and become sturdy quickly. There is much to tap and little to compete with. What is there in Africa but tribalism? We want to plant civilization in southern Sudan and beyond. They need one (Daily Challenge, “Blood, Shackles and the Koran,” 1995).

With the Arab conquest of Egypt, the campaign spread into Sudan, the country directly below and bordering Egypt. This began the systematic movement of these people from their homeland. Those not exiled were enslaved, the men were castrated or killed. The women were captured and divided among the Arab men. We must understand the role race plays here. Many of these so-called Arabs are a product of this forced mixed breeding, but they are in denial about their Afrikan ancestry and hostile towards the Afrikan people. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism (in Israel and Palestine), is misused as a tool of war, enslavement, and oppression.

Samuel Cotton’s book, Silent Terror, is a must read on the subject of Afrikan enslavement in the Arab world. In 1995, the journalist Samuel Cotton wrote a series of articles that ran in the Daily Challenge entitled “Blood, Shackles and the Koran: Slavery in Sudan Today.” A 1995 February issue of The City Sun in New York featured Cotton’s research on the front page with the title “Arab Masters, Black Slaves.” The City Sun ran several articles by Cotton on Afrikan enslavement in Mauritania. Cotton eyewitnessed this slavery in humans in the Sudan and Mauritania. Young girls were taken as sex slaves for “indolent rulers and rich men in North Africa, the Near East and Sudan.” The young boys were prized as castrated slaves (eunuchs) who would protect the houses where the female sex slaves were kept known as harems. Arabs and Europeans had historically enslaved their women. What would they care about Afrikan women?

Cotton describes the Sahara crossing like the Middle Passage. Millions died crossing the sands on the way to be sold as slaves in the Muslim world. It was a long journey of exhaustion, thirst, hunger, beatings, and torture. Due to high mortality rates, castrations, the large number of women enslaved in harems in North Afrika and the Middle East, there are fewer Afrikan descendants than in the western hemisphere where men were mostly enslaved.

“Thus, despite the fact that even more vast millions of slaves were taken from Africa to the Islamic Countries… over the centuries…” says Cotton, “there is no such Black population surviving in these Islamic nations today,” as in the Americas where slave breeding was a systematic program. A grim testament to the Arab slave trade in Afrikans was noted by a 1950s traveler who said if a stranger did not know his route out of the desert, all he had to do was follow the endless stream of the remains of human skeletons of those who died en route to become slaves.

Commenting on the tradition of draining Afrika of people to enslave, Samuel Cotton mentions:

Large harems were maintained at the court in Persia during the reign of the Safavids in the 17th century and Khadjars in the 19th century. Europeans who traveled to Persia in the 17th century noted there were as many as 3,000 eunuchs in the service of the court, an indication of how great were the harems. The Caliph al-Amin …it is said, collected them in large numbers…

An Arabic description of the court of the caliph in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th century speaks of 7,000 [Afrikan eunuchs]… This required an unending stream of desexed boys who walked or transported by boat or caravan from Africa.

With the increase in the number of harems the need for eunuchs grew. In Egypt, where eunuchs were kept by the ruling family of Mohammed Ali [of whom it is said he had 500 concubines] and rich Turks, they [the eunuchs] brought a great price in slave markets of Cairo and Alexandria. Eunuchs could be sold anywhere from twice to ten times the price of ordinary Black boys.

Another reason “an unending stream” of kidnapped and castrated boys were required to feed the demand was because the survival rate after castration was about 10%. This rate does not count suicide, murder, and those who went insane, as many did.

A point should be made about slavery today in Sudan. As with slavery anywhere, there is strong resistance to it. In particular, the Sudanese People Liberation Movement Army (SPLM/A), mostly of the Dinka people, but also other Afrikans in Sudan have led the resistance. The SPLM/A have fought Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF) who gets support from various Arab-Islamic governments. It is the NIF who wages war and makes raids on the lands of the people. The war in Sudan has cost the lives of several million Afrikans in recent decades, and if the SPLM/A was not in existence many more Afrikans of Southern Sudan would likely have been killed off or enslaved. The war is over resources, power, and religion. The Arab government wants shari’a to be instituted and the thorough Arabization or enslavement of the country, and the exploitation of all valuable resources, primarily oil in Southern Sudan. This is the motive behind the murder of John Garang de Mabior. This is the reason behind the assault on Darfur’s Afrikan population. The Afrikans of Sudan are resilient and steadfast in the fight to protect and preserve what is left of their land and culture. They are among the most courageous people in the world today. Southern Sudan, where they live, is predominately Afrikan Spiritual. There is a small percentage of Christians, but even many of them are dual religious. They are like many Afrikans in Afrika who practice and live Afrikan Spirituality and a blend of another religion. At the core they are Afrikan Spiritual, but such syncretism in Afrika or the Americas threatens the Afrikan worldview. The battle has many fronts.

Islam and Arabization in West Afrika

Again, I refer the reader to the works of Azumah and Segal. Although Islam appeared in western Afrika very early, it was not until the nineteenth century that the religion experienced a great expansion in the region. It was in this area of Afrika that for a long time the initial Islamic-Arab waves of conquest had only a mild effect. There were many traditional worshipers who incorporated some Islamic-Arab traditions into their cultural ways of life. Islam was spread by traders and was, therefore, originally a type of cultural-economic movement. For centuries the masses were not worshippers of Islam; the rulers of the empires and kingdoms were Muslims, or at least Muslims in name only.

Sunni Ali Ber, the founding emperor of Songhay, is a great example. He had an Islamic name, was superficially a Muslim, and openly ridiculed Islam. Sunni Ali was an Afrikan nationalist and warrior-king who built an empire. He believed in the Afrikan Spirituality of his mother and his ancestors. His death was a lost to Afrikan civilization building.

Islam, in the history of West Afrika, experienced two very important events: the Almoravid movements and the destruction of Songhay. The Arabized Berber ‘Abd Allah b. Yasin, noticed the Afrikan Muslims were not adhering to all the tenets of Islam. That is, they were still basically Afrikan Spiritual with a few Muslim religious traits and not thoroughly Arabized Afrikan Muslims. Also, Yasin noticed a land full of Afrikan Spiritual people, the ancient empire of Ghana. He began the Murabitun, or Almoravid movement, which waged jihad (or holy war) on parts of western Afrika (Azumah, 25). The Muslims, the Almohads following the Almoravids, then took control of the Afrikan gold trade and engaged in the slave trade connected to the Arab world (Segal, 85-86).

Beginning with the Almoravid movement and subsequent wars, Islam would gain a stronghold on West Afrika that peaked in the 19th century. The Islamic slave traders raced to capture more slaves as the European colonizers began to exercise control over the continent. They figured that once the whites were in control of Afrika, the supply of slaves would be cut off. They were not totally correct. The attitude of jihad against Afrikans and the European expansion into Afrika was the perpetual drive behind a renewal of Islamic interest to take land, trade routes, and the enslavement of humans. It was not until the nineteenth century that Islam spread into West Afrika with any significance, and it is absolutely certain that nearly all the Afrikans who were forced on slave ships and taken to the New World were not Muslims as some would wrongfully have us believe. The great majority of Afrikans who came to the New World were traditional worshippers of ancient Afrikan Spirituality.

In 1492, the last of the Afrikan Moors were expelled from Spain. They settled in North and West Afrika, but were a very small fraction of the general population. Askia Mohammed, a devout Muslim and emperor of Songhay, died in 1538, and the empire began to fall apart. The empire of Songhay was so enormous that much of Europe could have fit in it. A Moorish army led by Judar Pasha in 1591 captured two principle cities of Songhay, which were Gao and Timbuktu. This ended the possibility of Afrikan people regaining such broad stability in West Afrika. ‘From that moment on… everything changed. Danger took the place of security; poverty of wealth. Peace gave way to distress, disasters and violence’ (Jackson, 218).

Commenting on the erosion of Afrikan culture by Islam, Chinweizu says:

Arabisation caused the adoption or imposition of Arab dress, of the Arab language, of Arab names, of Arab administrative structures and titles, of Arab social norms, of the Arab religion of Islam. It imposed on princes and prominent families an obligation to construct fake genealogies claiming Arab ancestry for jet-black Africans. This long and slow cultural colonisation was primarily effected by Arabising African merchants, nomads, missionaries, soldiers and kings who saw it all as a purely religious matter of Islamisation (Decolonising The African Mind, 117).

Chinweizu’s words are true of many regions of the continent of Afrika. Arabization and Islam had wrecked Afrika and Afrikan culture, and now European missionaries and colonizers were on their way. Islam was used for cultural conquest in Afrika, like Christianity. In fact, when the Europeans began to colonize Afrika, they had to compete and/or cooperate with the Arab slave trade in many regions. Both religions were used as tools of Afrikan oppression and genocide.

A Broader Understanding of Maafa

The Swahili word “Maafa,” as it is usually defined by the Afrikan-Centered movement, is the enslavement and destruction of Afrikan people that has occurred during the European slave trade of over 400 years, beginning in 1441 with the Portuguese, and followed by all the other nations of Europe who participated. “Maafa” is preferable to the phrase “Black Holocaust,” taken from the Holocaust experienced by the Jews in Germany where they lost 6 million people. My position is that our concept of the Maafa must include the broader genocide suffered by Afrikans for at least the last 3,500 years. The destruction of Kemet, Carthage, Kush, Black India, and genocide of Afrikans of the Pacific Islands were all part of the Maafa. Also, the Maafa should include the general destruction of Afrikan culture by Arabization and Islam, the victims of which amounts to 100 million over a period of almost 1,400 years. The victims of the Arab slave trade equals the estimated number of victims in the European slave trade.

How can we discuss the Maafa and not consider the brutal oppression and extermination of Afrikans in Australia and Tasmania where whole populations were destroyed. As the world-traveled scholar Runoko Rashidi emphasizes, the one constant that he finds from all the countries he has visited is the need for Afrikan global liberation. Before striving for Afrikan global liberation, we must first have an Afrikan global identity.

The reader should be knowledgeable of the fact that Eurocentric scholars, whites and Blacks, grossly underestimate the number of Afrikans who where victims in the Maafa under the European slave trade. Countless millions died before they even got on the slave ships - which is where the Eurocentric scholars begin counting (mis-counting). Afrikans died inland from widespread wars fueled by European guns and rum, on the long and enduring walks to the coast, and in the dungeons on the coast. Many others, by the millions, would later die on the slave ships and in slavery.

The Maafa must also include the millions who died after slavery. Under colonialism and neo-colonialism millions of Afrikans died. Take for instance the Congo, at the end of the 19th century ten million Afrikans died under colonialism. Under the recent neo-colonial war in the Congo which began in 1998 several million have died. The neo-colonial wars over “blood diamonds,” other resources, and fomented conflict due to lack of Afrikan unity have cost the lives of many millions in very recent years. The resources that many of these wars produce are sold on the European world market. This is part of the Maafa. These neo-colonial wars, which occurred in recent years, were in the Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia, Ethiopia, and other countries.

Thousand of Black males (Afrikan males) are warring in the streets of America and dying over guns they do not manufacture. They are also dying over drugs they do not grow and ship into the country. AIDS is no longer a homosexual disease. The majority of people who have the disease in the world are people of Afrikan descent in Afrika, America, and other places. It becomes a challenge to see how AIDS is not a conspiracy of genocide when in many Afrikan countries a horrifying percentage of the people have AIDS. Few people have heard of the sterilization program in Brazil which has devastated millions and millions of Afrikan women. The Maafa of Afrikan people, which began 3,500 years ago, is still occurring today! It is the greatest genocide in human history, yet we Afrikans are still here. Before we stop the Maafa, Afrikan people must do three things:

1. Identification: We must realize that we are Afrikans. We cannot develop appropriate solutions to any of our problems unless we first know who “we” are.

2. Unification: We must unify and cooperate with each other based on our common global identity. Regardless of our differences, as long as they are not destructive to the cause, we must unify or at least have a woking unity as Afrikans for Afrikan survival.

3. Application: We must develop and apply educational, economic, and political solutions that are appropriate to the needs, culture, and reality of our people. The solutions and theories we develop must be applied through institutions to our existence if change is to occur.

Conclusion

We are at a critical point in time today with so many Afrikan people in the United States, Afrika, and elsewhere becoming Muslims due to dissatisfaction with Christianity and the European world. It should be understood that the Arab world has been just as oppressive, if not more so, as the European world. The power elite in European Christian nations (in cooperation with the Jews) and the Arab Islamic nations have agendas for world domination which only include Afrikans to advance their cause.

Many Afrikan leaders are open to Islamic support without accepting the fact that Arab leaders, with few or no exceptions, are Arab nationalists who will sacrifice Afrikan unity to benefit the Arab world. No nation has united itself depending on outsiders for direction and support. Afrika will not be united with Arabs in positions of leadership in the Afrikan Union. Neither did this happen with the Organization of Afrikan Unity. If Gadhafi, the President of Libya, or any other Arabs direct the future of Afrika, then Afrika will be under the control of the Arab world at worse or under indirect manipulation at best. Neither is acceptable to a people serious about liberation. Arab loyalty has never been undividedly given to Afrika, but has always been given to the Arab world. European loyalty has never been undividedly given to Afrika, but always to the European world. When liberation is achieved and maintained, the seat of leadership will come from the Afrikan world.

The power elite of various nations are leading the world to the next world war, which seems to have religion and raw control at the core of conflict. All wars of this nature are fought for land, resources, and power. Religions are only the justification for the power elite. Individuals may belong to religions for practical and righteous reasons. However, the economic and political power elite manipulate the masses to propagate their dominance in world structures. This was occurring many hundreds of years ago, and it is the essential reason for conflict with the European Christian and Jewish world against the Arab Muslim world. In the middle of the conflict is the suffering and dying of millions of innocent people. The role of Afrikan people in this global conflict must be a moral voice. There is no reason for Afrikans to take sides with either worldview since both Christians and Muslims have damaged and attempted to destroy the Afrikan worldview. Afrikan people should take the moral ground and be a moral voice in today’s world conflict. If there is any hope of humanity in the world, it will come from Afrikan people.

Islamic Invasion of Afrika by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2011-08-10T12:13:00.000-04:00

Islamic Invasion of Afrika

by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
http://www.mukasa.info/
As I have stated elsewhere, this critique of religions is not directed at individuals who choose Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as faiths for personal reasons. Indeed, their religions may be very practical and enlightening for them. The Afrikan-Centered critique is concerned with the power structure of the religions, the power structure which shapes the worldview of the masses. Considering the present influence that Islam has on the Afrikan/Black world, and with many of our people believing that it is favorable to our plight, even the final solution to our problems, we must analyze some neglected history of this religion. Again, we see our people becoming passionate over a foreign set of beliefs that were created to suit foreigners. We have done so without becoming equally passionate over our own ancestral Afrikan Spirituality.

In his introduction to Alfred Butler’s book, The Arab Invasion of Egypt, John Henrik Clarke holds Arab nationalism, in Afrika, in suspicion when he states some basic facts: “At least 70 percent of all the Arabs in the world live in Africa.” Why do so many live in Afrika and not in or around the Arabian Peninsular? Dr. Clarke also notes:
There are more than 127 million Arabs in the world [at that time]. A statistic that few adherents of the faith have taken into consideration is that there are more Africans who are Moslems who are not Arab than there are Arabs in the world.
How and why did this set up occur? Afrika’s native population is somewhere close to a billion people (most estimates are lower). Afrika’s total Muslim population is estimated at over 200 million people, nearly all of whom belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. However, there are countless millions of Afrikans who claim to be Muslim, but are dual-religious in practice and still adhere strongly to forms of Afrikan Spirituality. Although Arabs are a minority in Islam, they comprise the power elite and control government, land, oil, and other resources in North Afrika. One historic resource of the Arab world, that we will discuss in detail, is the Afrikans who were enslaved. However, we must first overview the rise of Islam to fully understand the subject.

Before the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam, Arabs had contact with Afrika - Egypt and Ethiopia in particular. Arabs are shown in carvings as troublesome foreigners often chained or roped as prisoners. They were a nomadic people who came into ancient Egypt, some settling in the delta. There was a later contact between Afrikans and Arabs in which the Kushite-Afrikans extended their empire over a large part of Arabia.

A part of the ancient Afrikan and Arabian contact was the pre-Islamic slave trade in Afrikans. The city of Mecca, which became the Islamic holy city, was one of the centers for this trade. Slave trading has continued in Mecca to the present day. A Muslim who has traveled the world told me personally that he saw women being sold in the Islamic world and Black eunuchs in Mecca.

Ira Lapidus, in A History of Islamic Societies, has a chapter on “The Life of the Prophet.” Also, Islam’s Black Slaves by Ronald Segal discusses the life of Mohammed. The Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, was born around 570 ACE to the Quraysh people. His ancestors were once very prominent from their control of Mecca’s trade in the fifth century. His father died before his birth, and his mother died when he was about 6 years old, which resulted in him being raised by relatives. He was temporarily cared for by his paternal grandfather until he died. Mohammed would become a camel driver, and also a trader. It was through trade that he met his wife, Khadijah, a rich merchant who asked him to do some trade in Syria for her. At 25 years of age Mohammed married her, his first wife; she was 40 years of age and twice widowed.

This marriage brought Mohammed leisure time in which he used to think. He conceptualized the organized religion of Islam, and borrowed many concepts. Allah was the Moon-God whose symbol was the star and crescent, evidence of ancient nature worship. Mohammed obviously borrowed from Christians and Jews, who had earlier borrowed from Kemet. A comparison of the Pert-em-Heru and other Nile Valley text, the Bible, and the Koran would reveal the parallels. Lastly, Mohammed received advice and beliefs from a Hanif – which was believed to be an Arabian monotheist, a believer in one God though not a Jew or Christian. (Lapidus, 23)

The first of the “Revelations” that Muhammad received from Allah that would become the Koran was in 610 ACE. This may be considered the official beginning of Islam, though the Islamic calendar begins in 622 with the Hijra. In the first few years, only a few dozen people became Muslims. In 615 ACE, Mohammed gained more followers. However, because of their conflict with traditional Arab worship, he suggested that some of his followers go to live among the faultless Ethiopians for protection. They did. Ironically, in later centuries when Islam gained a stronghold in the world, Arab Muslims would trade in Ethiopian slaves and demoralize the Afrikans who had given them refuge from their own people (Lapidus, 533-534).

After escaping from the Quraysh attempt to assassinate him in 622, Mohammed arrived in Medina. In Medina the Muslim community began to grow and became influential. Early on, Mohammed considered himself sent to Jews, Christians, and so-called non-believers alike. This only lasted until his forces grew. Then using the Koran to justify his actions, he exiled or executed all the Jews of Medina, took their property, and had little tolerance for non-Muslims. With brutal force and coercion, “By winning over the Medinan pagans and destroying his opponents, including the Jewish clans, Muhammed made all of Medina a Muslim community under his rule” (Lapidus, 28). The three major religions were based on war and conquest, and this is central to the reason why there is still senseless bloodshed and lose of innocent human life today. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause in history. In the Koran, Surah 9:5 states:
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans [non-believers] wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every strategy (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and pay Zakat then open the way for them...
First, Afrikan people must come home to Afrikan Spirituality. However, for non-Afrikans, my position is not that they should give up their religions. Of course, that is their choice. The races of the world should, however, admit the wrongs of the past and seek the higher good in their faiths and cultures to improve humanity. This higher attainment of humanity on Earth is why we must acknowledge the non-pious history of religions. The only option is continued war and the possible extermination of whole groups by warlords, oppressors, and tyrants. This is why the past must be exposed and corrected.

Lapidus explains:

In 628 Muhammad and a large group of followers [1,500 soldiers] made the pilgrimage to the Ka’ba [in Mecca], where they proposed to adopt the ceremonies of pilgrimage, in modified form, as part of Islam. They did this to show that Islam was an Arabian religion and would preserve the pilgrimage rites in which Mecca had so great a stake (32).

The pilgrimage to Mecca was an Arabian, pre-Islamic practice based on trade in various commodities, including Afrikan slaves. The pilgrimage was also a way to pay homage to Arab sacred land, Arab ancestry, and Arab culture. Moreover, Islam is based on ancient Arabian deities that were worshipped at the Kaba in Mecca. How ironic it is for Afrikans to journey pass thier own ancestral lands to those of other people..

According to the Koran, Mohammed is considered the last of the prophets in the line of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and all the other prophets of the Torah and Bible. In fact, the prophets of the Torah and Bible are all considered to be Muslims and followers of Allah in the Koran. The Koran is considered the last of the three revealed scriptures, and it borrowed heavily from the Torah and Bible. What is not as commonly known is the fact that all three of these religions had their fundamental origins in Kemetic scripture which predates all of them by thousands of years.

In 632 ACE, Mohammed made his last pilgrimage to the Kaba with 120,000 men and women. He died of fever that same year. His legacy is as misunderstood as he is; Mohammed was a man of war. The Arab imperialist who followed only continued the legacy of the founder of their religion. The Arab interaction with Afrika, like that of the Europeans, has been to spread Arab culture and religion at the expense of Afrikan traditions. John A. Azumah explains that because of Mohammed’s military victories, the Islamic “norm” in interaction with non-Muslims was one of attempted conquest and control (The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, 206). I would add that because of the Roman Catholic wars, the Christian worldview, regardless of denomination, is also one of conquest and control. The world is dying because of lack of humanity. Afrikan people are outside of this world conflict, and I believe it is because we have a stubborn humanity. Afrikans did not fight wars and enslave people in the name of religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When Afrikans have engaged in these wars, as there are always exceptions, it was because they were outside or dislocated from their traditional setting. The Afrikan worldview is based on harmony, not aggression and fear. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement gave some iota of more humanity to America, I believe that Afrikan Spirituality and Afrikan people will give more humanity to the world.

Arab Conquest of North Afrika

In the pivotal book African Glory, The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations, the scholar J. C. de-Graft Johnson states:
In 623- that is a year after the Hegira: the flight from Mecca - Mohammed attracted attention by establishing himself at the Palm Oasis of Yathrib or Medina, not only as a leader of a raiding band of Arabs, but also as the leader of a new mystic religion (63).
Alfred Butler mentions that “By the death of Mohammed the cause of Islam was strengthened rather than weakened. For a moment it seemed to totter: but it was too firmly based to fall under any shock from within” (146). It is stated by Mohammed that “I, the last of the prophets, am sent with the sword. Let those who promulgate my faith enter into no argument or discussion, but slay all who refuse obedience to law. Whoever fights for the true faith, whether he fall or conquer, will assuredly receive a glorious reward” (Jackson, Introduction to African Civilization, 168). The Afterlife of Paradise is the ‘glorious reward’ mentioned here.

When Mohammed died, there occurred some internal turmoil in the religion, much of which was due to who had the right to be “Caliph” or “Successor.” Jackson explains:
This caused a split among the faithful, for there were many who thought that the office should have gone to Mohammed’s brother-in-law, Ali. The partisans of Abu Bekr justified their stand by claiming that the office should be filled by election; whereas the advocates of Ali argued that the succession was by rights of hereditary. The first group is known as the Sunnites, and is dominant in Arabia, Africa, Turkey, and Turkestan; the second sect, known as the Shiites, prevail in Persia and India. Despite their difference, the successors of Mohammed vigorously pursued a policy of conquest (168).
What is the introduction of Islam to Afrika? Egypt was invaded by an Arab army in 639-640, Tunisia was captured in 671, Tripolia was under Arabic-Islamic control by 643, Cartage was captured in 698, and Morocco was taken by 708. The conquest of North Afrika was sweeping, but it should not be taken for granted that Afrikans welcomed the Arabs with open arms. After 639 with the first invasion to 705 with the death of Kahina, this was a period of strong resistance to Islam. The only place the Arabs did not have to conquer was probably Egypt where the people saw them as friends who had come to save them from the European-Romans, but history proved they were wrong. The Arabs were just as oppressive as the Romans.

Oqbar-ben-Nafi founded the third holy city of the Arab world in 671, after the conquest of Tunisia. The city was Kairowan. Oqbar-ben-Nafi spread Islamic control to the Atlantic Ocean. Johnson notes that Oqbar-ben-Nafi was governor of the area where Tunis is today. Briefly, he was replaced while he continued the invasion, and when he got back, his second term was cut short. The Afrikans:
of North Africa, finding the rapacity and greed of the Arabs equal to those of the Romans, Greeks and Vandals, decided to rise up against Arab rule. The North Africans rallied under the banner of one Kuseila and defeated and killed Oqbar-ben-Nafi in 682. Kuseila ruled as King of Mauritania for five years, but in 688 he was defeated and killed by fresh Arab forces (Johnson, 66).
A relative of Kuseila was Dahia-al-Kahina who took the lead of stopping the Arab invasion. She was a very effective Afrikan warrior-queen who often drove the Arab-Islamic forces back. Her defenses stood between the Arab conquest. She was murdered in 705, and after her death the Arab control of North Afrika was all but finalized.

The Moors

Although the subject here is of the Arabic-Islamic invasion of Afrika some mention should be given to the Moors because of the significance of this era in Afrikan history and civilization. In 710, an Afrikan named Tarif led 500 men on a raiding expedition on the Andalusian coast. Jackson says, “The army landed at a place later renamed Tarifa in honor of Tarif. (It was at the port of Tarifa that the Moors later levied a certain tax, which taking its name from the town, became known as the tariff).” After the success of the raiding expedition, a year later, General Tarik (or Tarikh) led 12,000 Afrikans into Europe, this time as conquerors. Tarik’s forces landed at a place called Mons Calpe. It was “renamed Gebel Tarik-The Hill of Tarik,” also known as the Mountain or Rock of Gibraltar, or just Gibraltar. It is a symbol and a phrase of strength and durability to this day (170-171).

Mark Hyman states, “Under Tarik-bin-Zaid, they [the Afrikan Moors] rolled into Spain. The German Visigoths fell before them. Moving northward into France, the Christians were soundly defeated at the city of Tours. At the same time in eastern Europe, the African-Arab combine was overrunning Sicily and sacking the Vatican in Rome” (130). We cannot overemphasize that Afrikans conquered Spain and parts of Europe. The Arab allies came only after the initial conquests were complete. The Afrikan Moors of this period were conquerors who, instead of destroying civilizations, gave civilization to the Europeans who were in the Dark Ages at the time. They also brought academics and architecture with them that stands today.

In an excellent chapter on the subject Jackson has entitled “Africa and the Civilizing of Europe,” we will cite a few details. When the Afrikan Moors conquered Spain, they began to build a great civilization, greater than any at that time in Europe. Advances were made in textiles, agriculture, architecture, science, math, and other fields.
At night, one could walk for ten miles by the light of lamps [this was in Cordova, one of the cities of the Moors], flanked by an uninterrupted extent of buildings; and this was hundreds of years before there was a paved street in Paris or a street lamp in London (176).
Education was universal among the Moors while 99 percent of Europeans were illiterate, even the royalty. While the Moorish royalty lived in “sumptuous palaces,” adds Jackson, “monarchs of Germany, France, and England dwelt in big barns, with no windows and no chimneys, and with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke” (176). Three centuries after the Afrikan conquest, Europe had only one public library and two universities. The Moors, on the other hand, had 70 public libraries and 17 universities (182). The belief that Europeans are the owners of civilization is just a belief, not a fact. This is even more obvious when one considers that Europeans were first civilized by the people of Kemet when the Greeks went to the Nile to learn from the Afrikan priest.

The Afrikan Moors, and to a lesser extent the Arabs, played a major role in history in civilizing Europe, but their achievements should be put into focus. For instance, Muslims translated astronomical and scientific work into Arabic from the knowledge they had access to back in Egypt. The Moors and Arabs copied and often plagiarized knowledge, and Ptolemy, who the Moors copied, for this matter got his information from the deep fountains of knowledge of Nile Valley civilization.
Quite often, Coptic monasteries were raided for the valuable books kept in their libraries, and the famed Caliph, Harun Al-Rashid regularly paid scribes their weight in gold for each manuscript they translated (Browder, 174 - 175).
However, General ‘Amr who led in the capture of Alexandria, Egypt did not value knowledge as did the others, for he is historically quoted as saying, “If the library contains what is not in the Koran, it is false. If it contains what is already in the Koran, then it is superfluous. Burn it” (Browder, 174). The Arabs destroyed statues, temples and pyramids and used the stones and limestones to build mosques and palaces.

The Arab invasion of North Afrika caused the extermination, enslavement, amalgamation, and forced migrations of North Afrikans to where today there are very few of them in their native land. We should also keep in mind that Islamic-Arabs not only have forced many Afrikans into slavery and servitude, but they have done the same to their own Arab women. Although Arabic-Islamic slavery has been fully denied for different reasons, religious or political, the evidence is altogether to the contrary.

interview on combat and Female Self Defense

2011-07-19T01:47:00.000-04:00

I will be on Brother Charles Allen blogtalk radio program, Wednesday 20th from 9-11pm. The topic-Sisters Protect Yourselves. Tune in and listen http://tobtr.com/s/2110683 . Special guest Bro. Mukasa Afrika will be in the virtual studio to discuss Black female self defense, as well as physical, and weapons training. We will discuss his combat system called Ma’at-Sumu and the many elements that are a part of the system, including the mental, spiritual and physicals aspect of it. Our sisters need to protect themselves in a very wild world. And this show will promote that. Mukasa Afrika is the author, of The Redemption of Afrikan Spirituality, and he formulated the Miamba Tano or Five Pillars of Afrikan Spirituality.He is an true pan African Nationalist… an educator, author, and lecturer. Call-in Number: [B]1 (347) 994-2959[/B]

Barack Obama and the Failure of Black Leadership

2011-07-10T19:27:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama's presidency is a sign of confused times for the Afrikan world and the Afrikan American in particular. Emotions were over-the-top when Obama was elected. Democrats and Independents were drunk on slogans of "Hope and Change." Black swore that Obama was "The One" or even the "Messiah". His campaign strategy even incorporated this media deception. Since being in office, he has been worse than Bush on foreign and domestic affairs, on unjust wars and the corporate theft of tax dollars. The Black Leadership, secular and religious, university and laymen, radical and moderate, drunk on media hype as well, they all failed to lead and critically analyze Obama for what he was and remains today, a black Manchurian face on the white corporate power structure of America.

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? By Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852

2011-07-01T14:01:00.000-04:00

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852.

The following is an excerpt from an oration delivered at the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of the nation — the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience of liberty’s unfinished business.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
”By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, their will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST OBAMA'S ILLEGAL WAR. DENNIS KUCINICH FILES LAWSUIT ON OBAMA FOR ILLEGAL WAR

2011-06-28T15:09:00.001-04:00

KERRY PICKET: Anti-war left steps up against Obama

An important 2008 campaign coalition for the president is not happy with his actions in Libya and it could very well cost him politically in 2012.

(click title for source)

Former Georgia Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney blasted President Barack Obama on Saturday at an ANSWER coalition meeting in Washington, D.C. for engaging the United States in a war against Libya. After returning from Libya with a group of U.S. journalists, Ms. McKinney launched a U.S. speaking tour to talk about her trip.
"I took a rash step because I was so outraged that our president would launch yet another illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, war and so I also knew that my government was lying," she said to a group of 60 -70 anti-war Left attendees sitting in a Columbia Heights meeting room.
Ms. Mckinney told the gathering:
"Black America has been extremely supportive of our president, but not in this case. A line has been drawn in the sand with respect to our president bombing Africa and Libya in particular because of the history of support when the United States was supporting apartheid in the African continent, it was the people of Libya and the people of Muammar Qaddafi who were fighting to eradicate apartheid. And for those blacks and people of color inside this country who were fighting to eradicate American style apartheid, the people of libya and Muammar Qaddafi were supportive as well."
"Now I don’t know that history, but brother Akbar knows that history very well and that is part of the reason why black America has drawn this line in the sand because this is something that is a historical relationship that has context that brother Obama ...that President Obama...stepped across. He has crossed over the threshold."

The war in Libya continues to lose support and despite liberals on a site like The Dally Kos who tout reasons to support the war, leftists in the anti-war ANSWER coalition are dead set against it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, was part of a bi-partisan group of members on Capitol Hill who filed a lawsuit against the president two weeks ago for executing an illegal war.
Before the House voted to deny authorization to the Libyan war but fund the operation, Rep.Kucinich told reporters last week, "It’s a tradition that the president’s party on the congressional level tries to offer him support, but I think that we need to give better advice to the president that this mission is not possible. That it’s misguided. That he had advice from the Pentagon and from his Attorney General that would suggest."
Mr. Kucinich added, "He should not pursue this without going to Congress and that we serve the president best when we tell him what we really think not just to endorse the policies that he has indicated that he wants."
Rep. Kucinich later told me that we was asked to participate in an anti-war event in October, when I asked him why the anti-war groups like ANSWER have not been as visible on the streets now as they were during the Bush administration.
Ms. McKinney further attacked President Obama:
"I have been blessed to be able to travel all over the world. And as I have traveled, at one point I was extremely proud of the fact that black people in the United States and all over the world have a moral authority because everyone all over the world understands the plight that we have struggled against that we continue to have to struggle against, but unfortunately now, the policies of the Bush administration have been enunciated and implemented by black faces from Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and now we have a continuation of those polices through the office of President Obama."
"So I’m directly impacted negatively by the actions of these black people who have decided that they would cast their lot with warmongers, war criminals, and people who peddle in death and destruction. So I decided as a responsible and conscious black person that I wanted my voice heard against what these other people were enunciating and at the same time I also am just sick and tired of war. I want better for my country."

Randy Short of Black Agenda Report was also on Saturday's ANSWER speakers' panel and went after President Obama for "funding" what Mr. Short called "n****r hunting" in Africa.
"There was the other thing I was to look at and that was how these terrorist people who are killing, support the troops over in Iraq from Derna, from Benghazi...these same al Qaeda people that we're being taxed to fight are the ones we're funding who are raping with Viagara black and brown women--cutting their breasts off and letting them bleed to death--taking their body parts and spelling the word 'whore.' That's a humanitarian intervention people? They are going on African hunts or we would say, 'n****r hunting.' Our president is funding this. I have friends who are Somali who fled Libya and are now in Italy give me stories about how they have been robbed, how the have been beaten, and how people are being killed."

It is unlikely ANSWER will get the huge numbers of anti-war participants it saw during the Bush years. Without a Republican in office, the left has little in common to unite and hate over. However, an anti-war march is planned in Washington on July 9, nonetheless.
It seems that the left-wing is currently divided among three factions. One side is protecting the president from negative fallout during a campaign year from his own foreign policy actions. Another more pure pacifist crowd wants to retreat immediately from all foreign intervention regardless of consequences.
The third albeit smaller camp senses impending election doom and is looking for a face-saving way out of the intra-party dispute in the hopes of salvaging some endangered seats in Congress. Is it no wonder President Obama called to draw down troops from Afghanistan so he could focus on domestic policy?

http://www.mukasa.info/

LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others

2011-06-28T13:26:00.000-04:00

LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others

ADDIS ABABA — While much of the world’s attention is focusing on crude oil prices and the Libyan pipelines in the east of the country– human right groups say rebels are committing crimes against humanity.
In east Libya, African hunt began as towns and cities began fall under the control of Libyan rebels, mobs and gangs. They started to detain, insult, rape and even executing black immigrants, students and refugees.
In the past two weeks, more than 100 Africans from various Sub-Sahara states are believed to have been killed by Libyan rebels and their supporters.
According to Somali refugees in Libya, at least five Somalis from Somaliland and Somalia were executed in Tripoli and Benghazi by anti-Gaddafi mobs. Dozens of refugees and immigrants workers from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, Mali and Niger have been killed, some of them were led into the desert and stabbed to death. Black Libyan men receiving medical care in hospitals in Benghazi were reportedly abducted by armed rebels. They are part of more than 200 African immigrants held in secret locations by the rebels.
In many disputes involving Libyan residents and black Africans, the Libyans are turning in the Africans as mercenaries.
Thousands more Africans caught up in this mercenary hysteria are terrified. Some barricaded themselves in their homes, while others hid in the desert. Insulted, threatened, beaten, chased and robbed. Their only crime was being black and therefore treated as “mercenaries” of Gaddafi.
Rebels hold a young man at gunpoint between the towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)

While the airing of Gaddafi’s so called “black mercenaries” by Western media has ignited the issue, some say an xenophobic attitude towards these refugees and labourers has existed for years. They say the current attacks are racially motivated because the rebels have released many actual Libyan mercenaries and soldiers under a tribal agreement. They believe many Arabs felt their Libyan leader was abandoning them for black Africans ever since he became a “pan-Africanist”. Many immigrants were regularly victims of racism.
In many situations, Gaddafi and his inner circle preferred black Africans and Libyans from the south over Libyans from the east. Now the angry mobs using the revolutionary movement across Arabia and North Africa are hunting down black people.
Mohamed Abdillahi, Somaliland, 25, was sleeping at his home in Zouara, when the mobs arrived. “They knocked on the door around 1 o’clock in the morning. They said get out, we’ll kill you, you are blacks, foreigners, clear.”
The testimonials and are very similar among the thousands of Africans that saw the ugly side of Libya in the past weeks. “They have attacked us, they took everything from us,” said Ali Farah, Somali labourer 29 years.
“They wanted to kill civilians, they beat many of us. To me, they are animals,” says Jamal Hussein, 25 years Sudanese worker.
Many of the fleeing Africans are terrified to tell their stories. At the checkpoint, they do not mingle with others. When asked about their ordeal, they just freeze, “they stopped us many times and said not tell what has happened here, say there are no problems,” Elias Nour from Ethiopia said.
“For the past seven days, my whole family has been holed up at home without any food, running water or electricity, we appeal for urgent intervention,” Mohamed Abdi from Somaliland told local reporters by cellphone.
In the latest reports reaching Somalilandpress from Tripoli, forces loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi have reportedly began kidnapping African and Libyan youths from their homes and universities. They are said to be preparing them for a showdown against the rebels. The kidnapped youths include five teenagers from Somaliland.
Many Africans have virtually nothing after years in Libya, many have been looted, robbed, while others saw their living quarters and apartments go in flames. Now they are praying to God to send them home.
While the international leaders are busy drafting resolutions to dismantle Muammar Gaddafi, the African Union has not yet commented on the situation in Libya.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is said to have started a formal inquiry into possible crimes against humanity in Libya that will investigate the Libyan regime.
Somalilandpress
4 March 2011

FRAUD: FBI Domestic Spying Under Barack Obama

2011-06-22T15:24:00.000-04:00

Killing Democracy One File at a Time: Justice Department Loosens FBI Domestic Spy Guidelines

June 19, 2011
by Tom Burghardt

While the Justice Department is criminally inept, or worse, when it comes to prosecuting corporate thieves who looted, and continue to loot, trillions of dollars as capitalism’s economic crisis accelerates, they are extremely adept at waging war on dissent.

Last week, The New York Times disclosed that the FBI “is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.”

Under “constitutional scholar” Barack Obama’s regime, the Bureau will revise its “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.” The “new rules,” Charlie Savage writes, will give agents “more latitude” to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited “signs of criminal or terrorist activity.”

As the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) recently pointed out, “When presented with opportunities to protect constitutional rights, our federal government has consistently failed us, with Congress repeatedly rubber-stamping the executive authority to violate civil liberties long protected by the Constitution.”

While true as far it goes, it should be apparent by this late date that no branch of the federal government, certainly not Congress or the Judiciary, has any interest in limiting Executive Branch power to operate lawlessly, in secret, and without any oversight or accountability whatsoever.

Just last week, The New York Times revealed that the Bush White House used the CIA “to get” academic critic Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog was highly critical of U.S. imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The former CIA officer and counterterrorism official who blew the whistle and exposed the existence of a Bush White House “enemies list,”, Glenn L. Carle, told the Times, “I couldn’t believe this was happening. People were accepting it, like you had to be part of the team.”

Ironically enough, the journalist who broke that story, James Risen, is himself a target of an Obama administration witchhunt against whistleblowers. Last month, Risen was issued a grand jury subpoena that would force him to reveal the sources of his 2006 book, State of War.

These latest “revisions” will expand the already formidable investigative powers granted the Bureau by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

Three years ago, The Washington Post informed us that the FBI’s new “road map” permits agents “to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities” and can pursue “each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.”

Accordingly, FBI “assessments” (the precursor to a full-blown investigation) already lowered by the previous administration will, under Obama, be lowered still further in a bid to “keep us safe”–from our constitutional rights.

The Mukasey guidelines, which created the “assessment” fishing license handed agents the power to probe people and organizations “proactively” without a shred of evidence that an individual or group engaged in unlawful activity.

In fact, rather than relying on a reasonable suspicion or allegations that a person is engaged in criminal activity, racial, religious or political profiling based on who one is or on one’s views, are the basis for secretive “assessments.”

Needless to say, the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of a republican system of governance based on the rule of law, like the right to privacy, becomes one more “quaint” notion in a National Security State. In its infinite wisdom, the Executive Branch has cobbled together an investigative regime that transforms anyone, and everyone, into a suspect; a Kafkaesque system from which there is no hope of escape.

Under Bushist rules, snoops were required to open an inquiry “before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database,” the Times reported. In other words, somewhere in the dank, dark bowels of the surveillance bureaucracy a paper trail exists that just might allow you to find out your rights had been trampled.

But our “transparency” regime intends to set the bar even lower. Securocrats will now be allowed to rummage through commercial databases “without making a record about their decision.”

The ACLU’s Michael German, a former FBI whistleblower, told the Times that “claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse.”

Such abuses are already widespread. In 2009 for example, the ACLU pointed out that “Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.”

As I reported in 2009, citing a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Bureau’s massive Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), is a data-mining Frankenstein that contains more “searchable records” than the Library of Congress.

EFF researchers discovered that “In addition to storing vast quantities of data, the IDW provides a content management and data mining system that is designed to permit a wide range of FBI personnel (investigative, analytical, administrative, and intelligence) to access and analyze aggregated data from over fifty previously separate datasets included in the warehouse.”

Accordingly, “the FBI intends to increase its use of the IDW for ‘link analysis’ (looking for links between suspects and other people–i.e. the Kevin Bacon game) and to start ‘pattern analysis’ (defining a ‘predictive pattern of behavior’ and searching for that pattern in the IDW’s datasets before any criminal offence is committed–i.e. pre-crime).”

Once new FBI guidelines are in place, and congressional grifters have little stomach to challenge government snoops as last month’s disgraceful “debate” over renewing three repressive provisions of the USA Patriot Act attest, “low-level” inquiries will be all but impossible to track, let alone contest.

Despite a dearth of evidence that dissident groups or religious minorities, e.g., Muslim-Americans have organized violent attacks in the heimat, the new guidelines will permit the unlimited deployment of “surveillance squads” that “surreptitiously follow targets.”

In keeping with the Bureau’s long-standing history of employing paid informants and agents provocateurs such as Brandon Darby and a host of others, to infiltrate and disrupt organizations and foment violence, rules governing “‘undisclosed participation’ in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant” will also be loosened.

The Times reports that the revised manual “clarifies a description of what qualifies as a “sensitive investigative matter”–investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars.”

According to the Times, the manual “clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs.”

In other words, if you don’t have the deep pockets of a corporate media organization to defend you from a government attack, you’re low-hanging fruit and fair game, which of course, makes a mockery of guarantees provided by the First Amendment.

As I reported last month, with requests for “National Security Letters” and other opaque administrative tools on the rise, the Obama administration has greatly expanded already-repressive spy programs put in place by the previous government.

Will data extracted by the Bureau’s Investigative Data Warehouse or its new Data Integration and Visualization System retain a wealth of private information gleaned from commercial and government databases on politically “suspect” individuals for future reference? Without a paper trail linking a person to a specific inquiry you’d have no way of knowing.
Even should an individual file a Freedom of Information Act request demanding the government turn over information and records pertaining to suspected wrongdoing by federal agents, as Austin anarchist Scott Crow did, since the FBI will not retain a record of preliminary inquiries, FOIA will be hollowed-out and become, yet another, futile and meaningless exercise.
And with the FBI relying on secret legal memos issued by the White House Office of Legal Counsel justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during “national security” investigations, political and privacy rights are slowly being strangled.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor withCyrano’s Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

In Libya and Iran CYNTHIA MCKINNEY says OBAMA is about DEATH, DESTRUCTION, and WAR

2011-06-22T15:11:00.000-04:00

“I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war … are not what the people of the United States stand for and it’s not what African-Americans stand for,” she told state TV.

“Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more,” she said. “The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war.”

Former U.S. congresswoman McKinney speaks on state TV in Libya

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY

May 21, 2011
By the CNN Wire Staff

A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the "last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war."
The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.
"I think that it's very important that people understand what is happening here. And it's important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here ... to understand the truth," former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.

She said she was invited to Libya by the "nongovernmental organization for fact-finding," adding that she intends to bring more people to the country soon so that "they too can understand."
NATO warplanes have been pounding military targets since March after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution to protect civilians by any means necessary as Gadhafi's forces try to quash a nearly three-month revolt against the leader's roughly 42 years of rule.
Gadhafi's government has repeatedly urged the international community to send fact-finding teams to Libya to report what's happening on the ground.
At one point during the interview, state TV cut to what it said were live airstrikes, hitting Gadhafi's compound.
"Is that a bomb?" McKinney asked.
"I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war ... are not what the people of the United States stand for and it's not what African-Americans stand for," she told state TV.
The former Georgia representative also slammed the economic policies of U.S. President Barack Obama and said the government of the United States no longer represents the interests of the American people.
"Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more," she said. "The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war."
Separately, McKinney appeared on state-run Press TV this week in Iran. She was reported to be in Tehran attending the International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for a Just Peace.

Rites of Passage, Cultural War and Slavery

2011-06-15T07:49:00.000-04:00

Slavery destroyed the fabric of Afrikan society. Warriors and protectors, mothers and fathers, farmers and traders, artists and craftsmen, the very best of Afrikan nations were stolen away into the Maafa of slavery. We lost our language, names, our way of worship, our way of living. Rites of Passage is one of the ways we must recover what we lost to this tragic era of history. Ignoring the legacy of slavery won't make it go away. We must heal as a people and become whole again. We must first know who we were and who we are to become.

Dump Obama by Michael Phillips

2011-06-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

Dump Obama

We had such great expectations when we elected Obama. He filled us with the audacity of hope. He had not only the enthusiastic support of American people, but the whole world. Obama is very intelligent, eloquent and charismatic. What good is it for the president to be very intelligent, eloquent, charismatic and black like me, but act like George Bush? Obama has been stringing us along while carrying out Republican policies. According to the Bible, “ By their fruits ye shall know them”. Well that Democratic tree has been bearing Republican fruits.

But despite our hopes, he has proceeded to ignore true Democrats. Republicans should be ecstatic with him. For he has continued most of the notorious George Bush atrocities and followed Republican policies which would have done McCain proud, such as:

He has failed to end the Iraq war, with over US 50,000 troops still there and thousands of ‘private security contractors (mercenaries), whose numbers continue to increase.
He increased troops in Afghanistan completely ignoring thousands of petitions against that escalation from an array of groups who had worked tirelessly to elect him.
Instead of stopping wars, he has gone beyond the middle east to start war in Africa, by bombing Libya.
He continues to use drone aircraft to bomb civilians in much greater numbers than George Bush ever did in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and now Libya.
He was silent as Israel heaped terror on innocent men, women and children of Gaza, by bombing schools, hospitals, homes and trying to starve them out by blockade.
He continued George Bush’s tax breaks for the rich while the middle class faces economic meltdown
He is knee-deep in wall street millionaires
He intervened to keep Democratic traitor Joe Lieberman as senate chairman
He has not intervened to stop or influence the resignation of his loyal impressive supporter Anthony van Jones as as special adviser for green jobs for the Council on Environmental Quality
He promised to close Guantanamo but has officially abandoned that idea
He did not intervene to stop or influence the resignation of White House Counsel Greg Craig, described as the “hero of Guantanamo” for his pivotal role in urging the president to announce the closing of that hellhole.
Prisoners are still held illegally( including some who are known to be innocent) in Guantanamo without trial for more than 9 years.
Prisoners in Guantanamo will not face the justice of American courts, but will face the kangaroo courts of military tribunals.
As a candidate, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, but has stripped away their protection and has used ‘nationa security leaks’ as a pretext to ruthlessly intimidate, silence and prosecute whistle-blowers. He has been using the Espionage Act this way for such prosecutions more than all previous Administrations combined.
He did not intervene to stop the inhuman treatment of Wikileaks whistle- blower Bradley Manning, who has not been found guilty of any crime, but he has been kept in solitary confinement, often in the nude nightly and sleep deprived, for over a year.
He had State Department spokesman PJ Crowley fired for describing the inhuman conditions under which Bradley Manning was being held as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.”
He did not allow the UN to visit Bradley Manning in response to the inhumane confinement conditions report.
He blocks every attempt to try war criminals Bush, Cheney and others
He refused to ban extreme rendition
He is vague on torture or prosecuting for torture
He opposed the return of Haiti’s legitimate president Aristide from the US imposed exile in South Africa
He renewed the illegal embargo on Cuba
He has signed an agreement for American troops of intimidation to occupy Columbian army bases
He has announced that like George Bush he will not sign a treaty on global warming
He reneged on his support for single payer healthcare plan for some convoluted plan, which though an improvement, will be a financial bonanza for insurance companies, burden the public coffers and still leave millions uninsured.
He forgave illegal wiretapping of American citizens
He made no move to stop or influence the stripping of federal funds from Acorn without any real investigation of acts committed by a couple part time employees who were not representative of that great advocate of the poor.
Acorn was destroyed while Blackwater, charged with crimes ranging from murder, illegal arms smuggling, and child prostitution and also expelled by the Iraq government, continues to draw more than $174 million in "security services" alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in "aviation services".
He named no real progressives to his cabinet or as close advisors
He has avoided black leaders like the plague, even those like Cornel West, who campaigned 65 times for him in his successful presidential bid.
He has refused to sign the international treaty banning landmines.
His Supreme Court nominees voted for warrantless searches by police in recent Kentucky ruling.
He refused to send a US rep to the 2009 World Conference Against Racism held in Geneva, Switzerland.

He often quoted FDR ‘elect me president and make me do it’. We liberals thought he was referring to us. We did not realize that message was intended for Republicans because they made him do their bidding. On the other hand, we liberals instead get insulted by his cronies like his Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates by calling us ‘professional left’. Even worse, his former henchman Chief-of-Staff, Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, referred to us as f….king retards. Nope this did not come from some Tea Party zealot, but Rahm Emanuel! I feel so betrayed.

With four more years under Obama, more wars are inevitable and medicare, social security and more civil liberties will be in grave danger. He is in the pocket of Wall Street and Republicans. Obama has betrayed Democratic principles. He does not deserve to be the Democratic nominee for president for the next election. If George Bush had done the things Obama has done, we would be outraged. Let Obama run as the Republican he is. But let us seek and nominate a real Democrat to be the next president of the USA.Let us face it, we thought we were getting Thurgood Marshall but we got Clarence Thomas instead.

Michael Phillips,
Editor, Hot Calaloo
http://www.hotcalaloo.com/
Author, Boycott Money and Save Your Soul
- Launching The Goodwill Revolution".
http://www.goodwillie.org/

Ancestor Dr. Amos Wilson on Black on Black Violence

2011-05-21T12:25:00.000-04:00

Ancestor Dr. Amos Wilson on White Supremacy

2011-05-21T12:21:00.000-04:00

Neo-Colonial Theft of Afrikan Resources. Puppet Leaders and the Rape of Resources.

2011-05-16T17:00:00.000-04:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/200912040787.html

Africa: Conflict Minerals - Cover for Western Mining Interests?

________________________________________

As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western-based 'prescriptions' are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions.

The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach, which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo's challenges than to resolve them.

The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and other rebel groups, while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials).

Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda's mining sector output grew 20 per cent in 2008 from the year earlier, due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country's three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo's minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach US$200 million by 2010. Former assistant secretary of state for African affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes 'having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.' As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.

According to Global Witness's 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups, but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo's minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda's complicity in the fuelling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo's riches.

Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fuelling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, the Congolese Parliament, the Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo's wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.

The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty, which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo's mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately - and to the chagrin of the Congolese people - some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials, who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.

The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanisation of the Congo. Their focus on 'Eastern Congo' is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.

The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobiliation and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP's sponsor, Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West. This, however, should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good guy/badguy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the 'good guys' and everyone else as bad. The picture is far more grey than black and white.

A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:

1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilising presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.

2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals, whether with rebel groups or neighbouring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.

3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the world since the Second World War.

4. Reject the militarisation of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population: The strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda's Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda's Kagame (won the 2003 'elections' with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.

5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path, with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.

To learn more about the current crisis in the Congo, visit www.friendsofthecongo.org and join the global movement in support of the people of the Congo. Kambale Musavuli is spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo.

BLACKS HAVE CELEBRATED OBAMA WHEN WE SHOULD BE PISSED AND PROTESTING By Mukasa Afrika Ma’at

2011-05-01T21:22:00.000-04:00

BLACKS HAVE CELEBRATED OBAMA WHEN WE SHOULD BE PISSED AND PROTESTING
By Mukasa Afrika Ma’at

In the Civil Rights and Black Power Era of the 50s and 60s, Blacks had a moral high ground in our fight for equal and civil rights, Human rights, and Black Power. We had high moral ground in our fight against segregation, racism, and white supremacy. In effect, we were better than our oppressors as far as our moral fight against oppression and evil was concerned. The Civil Rights Movement was based out of the Black church with Martin Luther King as the face of that struggle. Malcolm X was the father of the 60s Black Power movement, and he was the face of the Nation of Islam. Thus the movements had a strong sense of a religious obligation towards social activism and change. We wanted our young and future generations to know we would not accept evil and racism on the planet in any shape or form. We even reached out to support other revolutionary struggles around the world by Afrikans in places like the Congo, Kenya, and South Afrika. We supported revolutions in Cuba and Latin America. We had a moral and righteous high ground against our enemies which we have lost today under American imperialism and the white supremacy of the Obama administration.
Black people have shed crocodile tears over Obama’s election. We voted for him like cattle. No politician should ever get nearly 100% of our vote unless they are 100% in our interests. If we vote like cattle we will be treated like cattle. Our bankrupt Black leadership sold us down the river when they should have been critical of Obama and the American presidency. The grassroots are now catching on to what Obama represents, and now our fraud leadership are all back pedaling after they supported the Negro Manchurian when he ran for office. Since he has been in office, politically uninformed Blacks have shouted to defend him at all costs thinking they were protecting the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement when they were defending white supremacy. Those who selected Obama to be president understood this well. The Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, the Bohemian Grove, the bankers, the military industrial complex, and other multi-nationals who run the country selected Obama because they thought he would change the image of America while they committed crimes against Humanity and thievery on a historic scale.
Obama’s Stimulus Plan was the theft of the people’s wealth. Permanent war has become more wide spread than under Bush. American imperialism reaches into Afrika and more countries than ever before. The only problem is that the world still hates America. Obama’s image has failed as far as this is concerned. However, Blacks are celebrating and defending the Obama administration when we should be pissed off and protesting in the streets. Obama is no different than slave holding presidents who spoke of freedom from England and the rights of all men while enslaving Afrikans on their plantations. The Obama administration is killing children and women with drone bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The military seeks to expand drone activity in other countries. America’s secret prisons and invasive military bases are all over the planet. Under Obama, we Blacks have lost our moral high ground as we have voted and continue to defend evil simply because it is now in black face. As I said, we should be pissed and protesting in the streets in solidarity with the oppressed people of the world. We once fought against evil, now we defend it because it is in black face. Hopefully we will wake up, or we will be judged by the future for having failed at a critical time in history.

The Assassination Of Malcolm X

2011-04-17T10:12:00.000-04:00

THERE ARE THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO FORGET, PRETEND AS IF IT NEVER HAPPENED.

The Assassination Of Malcolm X

Editorial, The Militant

A broad array of forces in the Black community attended the May 6 meeting at the Apollo Theater in Harlem that featured Louis Farrakhan and Betty Shabazz. Organized in response to government indictments against Qubilah Shabazz, in the background of this meeting stood the legacy of Malcolm X and the political repercussions of his assassination.
The only major voice of a current in the Black struggle not heard was that representing Malcolm X. The revolutionary struggle that he dedicated his life to and its lessons for today were absent at this gathering.
Farrakhan publicly acknowledged for the first time that members of the Nation of Islam were involved in the assassination of Malcolm X. He then tried to explain away this admission by declaring the government to be the real culprit who manipulated the zeal and ignorance inside the ranks of the Nation of Islam and among the followers of Brother Malcolm X that created the climate that allowed him to be assassinated.
Farrakhan’s efforts to put in the past and minimize the responsibility of the Nation of Islam in the assassination of Malcolm X should be rejected by all supporters of the fight for Black liberation and the struggle for social justice and equality.
It is not true that Malcolm and others who left the Nation of Islam and formed the Organization of African Unity and Muslim Mosque Inc. fell into a government trap that ended in the assassination of Malcolm X.
In his speeches, interviews, and writings, Malcolm explains the moral and political factors that lay behind his parting of the ways with the Nation. He openly pointed to and helped educate fighters on the role of government police agencies in attempts to undermine the Black struggle.
Any serious fighter against racism and other evils produced by capitalism knows the government will use spies, provocateurs, dirty tricks, and assassination to try to disrupt and derail the struggle. That’s a given.
Organizations that claim to advance the struggle of the oppressed and exploited are not helpless in the face of government disruption efforts. The leadership of every such organization that claims to fight for the oppressed has the responsibility to conduct itself in a manner that will make the movement, its organizations, and members as impervious as possible to the stock-and-trade of secret police operations: agent-baiting, poison pen letters, and the resolution of political differences by acts of thuggery, murder, and so on.
Ten weeks before Malcolm’s assassination, Farrakhan wrote in the Nation of Islam’s newspaper at the time, Muhammad Speaks, Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will follow Malcolm. At that time, Farrakhan and nearly every minister in the Nation of Islam was making incendiary speeches about Malcolm, explained one of those convicted in the killing of Malcolm.
Before Malcolm’s death, several former members of the Nation who had broken from it were physically attacked and some of them murdered by Nation of Islam members.
When Malcolm was murdered, Elijah Muhammad called him a hypocrite and said that Malcolm X got just what he preached. Malcolm separated from the Nation of Islam after learning about the corrupt personal behavior and hypocrisy of Muhammad, who had engaged in sexual relations with a number of teenage women in the organization. Elijah Muhammad then organized humiliating internal trials and suspended the women from membership, after several had become pregnant.
As recently as 1993, Farrakhan sought to justify Malcolm’s assassination when he said in a speech, Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with [Malcolm] like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours?-A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats.
The May 6 meeting at the Apollo was Farrakhan’s attempt to win credibility among Blacks who associate the Nation with the assassination. Malcolm’s growing popularity among youth keeps this albatross around his neck.
But far from dimming the Nation’s role in Malcolm’s murder, Farrakhan’s statements at the Apollo underline the politically destructive character of those who use the methods practiced by the Nation’then, now, or in the future.
While a leading minister of the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s, Malcolm’s revolutionary political views broadened under the impact of the struggles by Blacks and other oppressed peoples in the United States and around the world. This course diverged from that of the Nation, which abstained from any political activity.
During the last year of his life, Malcolm sought to effectively fight against racist injustice and for the human rights of Blacks and all the oppressed and exploited. His identification with revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggles in Vietnam, the Congo, Cuba, and Algeria ran counter to the politics and actions of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm sought to explain, educate, and convince the oppressed of their self-worth, and capacity to think, act, and change the world and themselves. You’re living at a time of- revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change, Malcolm told students at Oxford University in Britain at a nationally televised talk in 1964. I for one will join with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.
A fitting response to Farrakhan’s admission of the Nation of Islam’s involvement in the assassination of Malcolm X would be to grab hold of Malcolm’s living legacy found in his speeches, writings, and interviews, to better understand and join in the struggle for the type of just and humane world he fought for.

Cynthia McKinney Speaks Out On Obama's War on Libya and Neglect of Blacks Everywhere

2011-04-08T17:16:00.000-04:00

Cynthia McKinney Speaks Out On Obama's War on Libya and Neglect of Blacks Everywhere

Sunday, Apr 3, 2011

From Cynthia McKinney: Cynthia's Remarks at the Newseum - 31 March 2011
de Cynthia McKinney, el jueves, 31 de marzo de 2011 a las 16:29
Statement of Cynthia McKinney

Newseum Press Conference on Libya
Thursday, 31 March 2011

I am pleased to stand with my colleagues today who are outraged at Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama’s decision to wage war on Africa in Libya. At the outset, let me state that Libya is home to tens of thousands or more of foreign students and guest workers. The students come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. The messages I have received from concerned Africans state that these young innocent people, inaccurately labeled by the U.S. press as “black mercenaries,” have been trapped in hostile territory and are hated by the U.S.-allied Al Qaeda insurgents. The press forgot that Libya is in Africa and that Libyans are Black!
I would also like to acknowledge the outrage of the Women International Democratic Federation of Brazil that repudiates the invasion of Libya. They point specifically to the depressed state of women in pre-Qaddafi Libya and how women now have positions that had once been denied to them. They note in their communiqué that the National Front of the Salvation of Libya has been financed by the C.I.A. since 1981 and that its headquarters is in Washington, D.C.
In fact, I have received messages and phone calls from people literally all over the world who are outraged at this action. And because the media cannot be relied upon to tell the truth, I repeat the call that I received directly from Libya yesterday for international observers to go to Libya to tell the world the truth. I would go.
Sadly, President Obama’s justification for war provides answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, and conclusions that don’t conclude. Reports continue to emerge of the US ties to the so-called rebel leaders: the latest being that Khalifa Hifter, latest leader of the rebel army, spent much of the past 20 years in Langley, Virginia. He didn’t even move to Baltimore to disguise the relationship! Moreover, General Wesley Clarke told us that Libya was on the U.W. hitlist ten years ago!
This is nothing new. This operation smells very much like so many other Africa operations fueled by U.S.-supported individuals who become a rebel force able to threaten an inconvenient leader who stands up to the U.S. This particular play has been repeated in Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, and Angola and Mozambique before them. We are not blind; we recognize this play. And the use of depleted uranium will cause health effects for generations to come.
Pentagon Secretary Gates said “Libya is not part of our vital interest.” Then why are we there? Herein lies the conundrum. President Obama has authorized secret support for its rebels in Libya, just like Miami’s Cuban community has received for decades.
Sadly, our President has chosen to spend $600 million per week in addition to other war costs at a time when the Black community is melting. As of the most recent Economic Policy Institute study, average Black family wealth was $2,000 while that of Whites was $94,600. President Obama has done nothing to address the disparities that have existed in this country since slavery. Clearly, our President should focus on home and improving the lot of the people of this country before launching another war.
Finally, I must say something about the ugly hate language that is emanating more and more from Black political voices. Any politician seeking votes by exacerbating divisions in our country does not deserve our votes. I’m speaking specifically about the unfortunate remarks of Herman Cain who should know better.
I stand with those who support the right of self-determination of the Libyan people, including their right to resolve differences without interference from outsiders.

Neo-Colonialism, a topic avoided

2011-03-16T16:31:00.000-04:00

Neocolonialists Should Be Dealt With for the Benefit of the Continent

Click title for Allafrica.com soure

14 March 2011

________________________________________

OPINION

Africa breezed into the post-independence era with a swagger optimistic of emancipating the masses from the clutches of poverty, brutality, political and social marginalization.

These hopes and visions were encapsulated in the rhetoric of the post-immediate independent African leadership such as Nkrumah's "Ghana is free for ever" and Sekou Toure's "Freedom in poverty over wealth in slavery." The people swore that "never again" would they return to the detestable experiences of colonialism. Little did they know that this was an illusion.

Africa today is under the siege of foreign and "home-brewed African" neocolonialists.

Nkrumah in his book Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965 articulates how the machinations of foreign capitalists' monopoly perpetuate the paradox of Africa - poverty in the midst of plenty. It examines the exploitative relationship between these major powers and Africa, especially the masses, increasing the poverty gap between the rich and poor states.

It is understood that home-brewed "African neocolonialists" are corrupt political despots and public servants that economically rape, exploit, and deny the majority of the African populace their basic human rights. Their privileged positions are sustained by the blood and toil of the majority poor they exploit.

Almost all of them are self-proclaimed lifetime indispensable presidents with messianic missions to redeem their people. Liberation, in their own parochialism, hinges on centralised dictatorial power at the expense of the legitimate will and rights of their people.

The political system is virtually ossified in almost African states: dissent is stifled, freedom of political expression suppressed and human rights denied. This negates the possibilities of peaceful democratic change of governments.

As the rule of law fades with judicial corruption and official intrusion, people, especially the opposition, are denied their legitimate rights to due process of law and political participation. In the absence of rule of law coupled with draconian measures to suppress opposition, the agonized African populace is seized with fear, dismay and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness for the future.

Pervasive corruption and nepotism at all levels of government breeds cronyism that overrides meritocracy in awarding official positions and contracts. This adversely affects professional efficiency in our institutions. Public confidence in government is at its lowest ebb. African political history is awash with leadership corruption.

Boigny's wealth was estimated between $7-11 billion and Mobutu's estimated wealth was $5 billion. Bernard Kouchner, a minister in the government of former France President Francois Mitterrand, referred to Mobutu as "a walking bank vault with a leopard-skin cap."

On Nigeria's Sani Abacha, Raymond Baker in a paper- Money Laundering and Flight Capital: The Impact on Private Banking, wrote "the biggest single thief in the world in the 1990s was almost certainly the late military dictator, Abacha, with $12-16 billion passing out of Nigeria in corrupt and tax evading money during his murderous five year regime." Idi Amin's eight-year reign of terror in Uganda encompassed widespread killing, torture of farmers, students, clerks and shopkeepers by the dreaded Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau.

The coronation of Bokassa as emperor of the Central African Republic allegedly cost $22 million in a country where the average annual wage was $122. The extravagant ceremony included a two-tonne throne and a $750,000 crown encrusted with 2,000 diamonds, and 450 pounds of rose petals to be strewn before the emperor and his empress.

The Mubarak family is said to have about $70 billion deposited in secret banks accounts in British and Swiss banks, Corruption has eaten deep into the fabric of the African societies. In Ghana, almost all institutions are corrupted. This mocks and raises doubt about our over-trumpeted democracy.

The Egyptian revolution is a clarion call to Africas to wake up from their slumber to hound out leaders who toy with their destinies.

The corrupt elite must be made to understand that the tenets of the "old order" are no longer tenable and an historic epoch has been reached in African politics symbolised by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions where the will and dignity of the ordinary people supersede the parochial desires of the corrupt officials and authoritarian leadership.This historic opportunity must be seized perpetually and diligently fuelled to institutionalize incorrigible social,economic and political institutions, freedom and justice, respect for human rights, probity and accountability and equal opportunities for all irrespective of our tribal, religious, gender and social differences. Truly the voice of the people rings louder than the forces of destruction and ours must be heard.

We cannot afford the luxury of bequeathing to the next generation and those unborn the legacy of exploitation, second class citizenry, corruption,violation of human rights and injustices, nepotism, politics of marginalization and divisions along ethnic fault lines that are recipes for African civil wars.

But if we fail and let this historic window of opportunity slip by without any conscientious efforts to restore our dignity, we shall surely be condemned deeper into the doldrums of poverty, injustices, political brutalities, human rights violations and the generations unborn will condemn us.

The writer filed this analysis for The African Executive from Ohio in the US

RISE OF THE ELITE: THE FAILURE OF OBAMA HYPE

2011-02-28T16:46:00.000-05:00

RISE OF THE ELITE: THE FAILURE OF OBAMA HYPE

In 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency of the United States, expectations of what he could do to change the country were nauseatingly high. One of his campaign strategies was to bill himself as everything for everybody. He campaigned as a savior, although many would like to forget that now. Many would like to forget the tears of joy they cried. Many would like to forget how they prayed and thanked their God for giving them Obama. Obama is what he was before he ran for office. Obama is a politician all the same, a very slick politician. The political system in America was and is controlled by an elite so disconnected from the common people that most know little of their existence. The presidency serves one basic role in the United States and that is the promotion of the interests of the power elite, at the expense of all others. Obama has done well in his promotion of the elites and white supremacy. This was all done while the needy hoped and prayed for change while getting nothing except hype. Obama has enriched the elite bankers, Wall Street, and the military industrial complex. Drones have rain down on innocent people in at least Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Secret US prisons are in full operations around the world. They serve up torture for dinner. Many wondered why I wouldn't vote for Obama simply because he is Black, or half-Black. I wonder if things are clearer for the Obama-maniacs?

The Black leadership establishment was a completer failure, a complete blunder. The Black leadership establishment sold the masses wholesale down the river during the campaigns. You name them, Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson Sr. and Jr., Dyson, Cornel West, local leaders, religious leaders, all of them were simply pathetic. They helped promote the corporate savior image of Obama. For a people waiting on Jesus anyway, Obama was an easy ticket to sell. Worst of all were the radicals who were hyped into supporting Obama. Many Pan-Afrikan nationalists all of a sudden saw "hope and change" in the system of white supremacy and elite power structure in America. The end result was a corporate created Obama receiving nearly 100% of the Black vote. No politician should receive a cattle vote from our people. We should vote our interests, but first we must know our interests.

Obama has helped secure the elite power structure in the world. That was his purpose and he has done it well. He was never any type of radical or wealth redistributionist. Obama's rise came with the rise of the Republicans, the rise of the bankers, and the rise of the elites. Anyone who thinks this was all chance don't understand the workings of the American political system. The alarm is sounding and we refuse to wake up.

OBAMA and HIS SECRET CIA BACKGROUND

2011-01-15T10:46:00.000-05:00

Obama’s Deep CIA Connections Revealed
Wayne Madsen Report

WMR has discovered CIA files that document the agency’s connections to institutions and individuals figuring prominently in the lives of Barack Obama and his mother, father, grandmother, and stepfather.
President Obama’s own work in 1983 for Business International Corporation, a CIA front that conducted seminars with the world’s most powerful leaders and used journalists as agents abroad, dovetails with CIA espionage activities conducted by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960s post-coup Indonesia on behalf of a number of CIA front operations, including the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Ford Foundation. Dunham met and married Lolo Soetoro, Obama’s stepfather, at the East-West Center in 1965. Soetoro was recalled to Indonesia in 1965 to serve as a senior army officer and assist General Suharto and the CIA in the bloody overthrow of President Sukarno.
Barack Obama, Sr., who met Dunham in 1959 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, had been part of what was described as an airlift of 280 East African students to the United States to attend various colleges — merely “aided” by a grant from the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, according to a September 12, 1960, Reuters report from London. The airlift was a CIA operation to train and indoctrinate future agents of influence in Africa, which was becoming a battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union and China for influence among newly-independent and soon-to-be independent countries on the continent.
The airlift was condemned by the deputy leader of the opposition Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) as favoring certain tribes — the majority Kikuyus and minority Luos — over other tribes to favor the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), whose leader was Tom Mboya, the Kenyan nationalist and labor leader who selected Obama, Sr. for a scholarship at the University of Hawaii. Obama, Sr., who was already married with an infant son and pregnant wife in Kenya, married Dunham on Maui on February 2, 1961 and was also the university’s first African student. Dunham was three month’s pregnant with Barack Obama, Jr. at the time of her marriage to Obama, Sr.
KADU deputy leader Masinda Muliro, according to Reuters, said KADU would send a delegation to the United States to investigate Kenyan students who received “gifts” from the Americans and “ensure that further gifts to Kenyan students are administered by people genuinely interested in Kenya’s development.’”
Mboya received a $100,000 grant for the airlift from the Kennedy Foundation after he turned down the same offer from the U.S. State Department, obviously concerned that direct U.S. assistance would look suspicious to pro-Communist Kenyan politicians who suspected Mboya of having CIA ties. The Airlift Africa project was underwritten by the Kennedy Foundation and the African-American Students Foundation. Obama, Sr. was not on the first airlift but a subsequent one. The airlift, organized by Mboya in 1959, included students from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland.
Reuters also reported that Muliro charged that Africans were “disturbed and embittered” by the airlift of the selected students. Muliro “stated that “preferences were shown to two major tribes [Kikuyu and Luo] and many U.S.-bound students had failed preliminary and common entrance examinations, while some of those left behind held first-class certificates.”
Obama, Sr. was a friend of Mboya and a fellow Luo. After Mboya was assassinated in 1969, Obama, Sr. testified at the trial of his alleged assassin. Obama, Sr. claimed he was the target of a hit-and-run assassination attempt after his testimony.
Original CIA Staff Notes
Obama, Sr., who left Hawaii for Harvard in 1962, divorced Dunham in 1964. Obama, Sr. married a fellow Harvard student, Ruth Niedesand, a Jewish-American woman, who moved with him to Kenya and had two sons. They were later divorced. Obama, Sr. worked for the Kenyan Finance and Transport ministries as well as an oil firm. Obama, Sr. died in a 1982 car crash and his funeral was attended by leading Kenyan politicians, including future Foreign Minister Robert Ouko, who was murdered in 1990.

CIA files indicate that Mboya was an important agent-of-influence for the CIA, not only in Kenya but in all of Africa. A formerly Secret CIA “Current Intelligence Weekly Summary,” dated November 19, 1959, states that Mboya served as a check on extremists at the second All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) in Tunis. The report states that “serious friction developed between Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame NNkrumah and Kenyan nationalist Tom Mboya who cooperated effectively [emphasis added] last December to check extremists at the AAPC’s first meeting in Accra.” The term “cooperated effectively” appears to indicate that Mboya was cooperating with the CIA, which filed the report from field operatives in Accra and Tunis. While “cooperating” with the CIA in Accra and Tunis, Mboya selected the father of the president of the United States to receive a scholarship and be airlifted to the University of Hawaii where he met and married President Obama’s mother.
An earlier CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, Secret, and dated April 3, 1958, states that Mboya “still appears to be the most promising of the African leaders.” Another CIA weekly summary, Secret and dated December 18, 1958, calls Mboya the Kenyan nationalist an “able and dynamic young chairman” of the People’s Convention party who was viewed as an opponent of “extremists” like Nkrumah, supported by “Sino-Soviet representatives.”
In a formerly Secret CIA report on the All-Africa Peoples Conference in 1961, dated November 1, 1961, Mboya’s conservatism, along with that of Taleb Slim of Tunisia, are contrasted to the leftist policies of Nkrumah and others. Pro-communists who were elected to the AAPC’s steering committee at the March 1961 Cairo conference, attended by Mboya, are identified in the report as Abdoulaye Diallo, AAPC Secretary General, of Senegal; Ahmed Bourmendjel of Algeria; Mario de Andrade of Angola; Ntau Mokhele of Basutoland; Kingue Abel of Cameroun; Antoine Kiwewa of Congo (Leopoldville); Kojo Botsio of Ghana; Ismail Toure of Guinea; T. O. Dosomu Johnson of Liberia; Modibo Diallo of Mali; Mahjoub Ben Seddik of Morocco; Djibo Bakari of Niger; Tunji Otegbeya of Nigeria; Kanyama Chiume of Nyasaland; Ali Abdullahi of Somalia; Tennyson Makiwane of South Africa, and Mohamed Fouad Galal of the United Arab Republic.
The only attendees in Cairo who were given a clean bill of health by the CIA were Mboya, who appears to have been a snitch for the agency, and Joshua Nkomo of Southern Rhodesia, B. Munanka of Tanganyika, Abdel Magid Shaker of Tunisia, and John Kakonge of Uganda.
Nkrumah would eventually be overthrown in a 1966 CIA-backed coup while he was on a state visit to China and North Vietnam. The CIA overthrow of Nkrumah followed by one year the agency’s overthrow of Sukarno, another coup that was connected to President Obama’s family on his mother’s side. There are suspicions that Mboya was assassinated in 1969 by Chinese agents working with anti-Mboya factions in the government of Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta in order to eliminate a pro-U.S. leading political leader in Africa. Upon Mboya’s death, every embassy in Nairobi flew its flag at half-mast except for one, the embassy of the People’s Republic of China.
Mboya’s influence in the Kenyatta government would continue long after his death and while Obama, Sr. was still alive. In 1975, after the assassination of KANU politician Josiah Kariuki, a socialist who helped start KANU, along with Mboya and Obama, Sr., Kenyatta dismissed three rebellious cabinet ministers who “all had personal ties to either Kariuki or Tom Mboya.” This information is contained in CIA Staff Notes on the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, formerly Top Secret Umbra, Handle via COMINT Channels, dated June 24, 1975. The intelligence in the report, based on its classification, indicate the information was derived from National Security Agency intercepts in Kenya. No one was ever charged in the assassination of Kariuki.
The intecepts of Mboya’s and Kariuki’s associates are an indication that the NSA and CIA also maintain intercepts on Barack Obama, Sr., who, as a non-U.S. person, would have been lawfully subject at the time to intercepts carried out by NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
Special Report. The Story of Obama: All in The Company – Part II
By Wayne Madsen
In Part I of this WMR special report, we revealed the connections between Barack Obama, Sr. and the CIA-affiliated Airlift Africa project to provide college degrees to and gain influence over a group of 280 eastern and southern African students from soon-to-be independent African nations to counter similar programs established by the Soviet Union and China. Barack Obama Sr. was the first African student to attend the University of Hawaii. Obama Sr. and Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham met in a Russian language class in 1959 and they married in 1961.
The African airlift program was administered by Kenyan nationalist leader Tom Mboya, a fellow Luo tribe mentor and friend of the senior Obama. According to CIA documents described in Part I, Mboya also served the CIA in ensuring that pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese African nationalists were stymied in their attempt to dominate pan-African nationalist political, student, and labor movements.
One of Mboya’s chief opponents was Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, who was ousted in a CIA-inspired coup in 1966, one year before to Obama Sr’s son, Barack Obama, Jr. and his mother joined Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian who Obama’s mother met at the University of Hawaii in 1965, when President Obama was four years old.
In 1967, Obama and his mother joined her husband in Jakarta. In 1965, Lolo Soetoro had been called back from Hawaii by General Suharto to serve as an officer in the Indonesian military to help launch a bloody CIA-backed genocide of Indonesian Communists and Indonesian Chinese throughout the expansive country. Suharto consolidated his power in 1966, the same year that Barack Obama, Sr.’s friend, Mboya, had helped to rally pro-U.S. pan-African support for the CIA’s overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966.
East-West Center, University of Hawaii, and CIA coup against Sukarno
CIA Links
Ann Dunham met Soetoro at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. The center had long been affiliated with CIA activities in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1965, the year that Dunham met and married Soetoro, the center saw a new chancellor take over. He was Howard P. Jones who served a record seven years, from 1958 to 1965, as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. Jones was present in Jakarta as Suharto and his CIA-backed military officers planned the 1965 overthrow of Sukarno, who was seen, along with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), as allies of China.
When Jones was chancellor of the East-West Center, he wrote an article for the Washington Post, dated October 10, 1965, in which he defended Suharto’s overthrow of Sukarno. Jones was “invited” by the Post to comment on the Suharto coup, described as a “counter-coup” against the Communists. Jones charged that Suharto was merely responding to an earlier attempted Communist-led coup against Sukarno launched by Lt. Col. Untung, “a relatively unknown battalion commander in the palace guard.”
Jones’s article, which mirrored CIA situation reports from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, continued by stating that the alleged leftist coup on September 30 ”came within an inch of succeeding through the assassination of six of the top military command. It might well have succeeded had not Defense Minister Nasution and a number of other senior generals also maked for assassination acted fast in a dramatic counter-coup.” Of course, what Jones did not inform the Post’s readers was that the Suharto “counter-coup” had been assisted with the strong help of the CIA.
Sukarno never blamed the Communists for the assassination of the army generals nor did the Indonesian Cabinet, where the second= and third-ranking leaders of the PKI were present. The possibility that the assassination of the generals was a CIA/Suharto “false flag” operation to affix blame on the PKI cannot be ruled out. Two days after Suharto’s coup, a CIA “rent-a-mob” burned down the PKI headquarters in Jakarta. As they marched past the U.S. Embassy, which was also the site of the CIA station, they yelled out, “Long live America!”
Untung later said that when he became aware that Suharto and the CIA were planning a coup on October 5, 1965 – Indonesian Armed Forces Day – forces loyal to him and Sukarno moved first. Jones described this as “typical Communist propaganda.” Suharto moved against Sukarno on October 1. Jones iterated that “there was not an iota of truth . . . in the accusation that the CIA was working against Sukarno.” History has proven otherwise. Jones accused the Communists of taking advantage of Sukarno’s failing health to beat out the other candidates to succeed him. The goal, according to Jones, was to have PKI boss D.N. Aidit succeed Sukarno. Sukarno did not die until 1970, while under house arrest.
A CIA paper, formerly classified Secret and undated, states “Sukarno would like to return to the status quo ante-coup. He has refused to condemn the PKI or the 30th September Movement [of Lt. Col. Untung]; instead, he calls for unity of Indonesia and asks that no vengeance be taken by one group against the other. But, he has not succeeded in forcing the Army to abandon its anti-PKI activities and, on the other hand, he has bowed to their demand by appointing its single candidate General Suharto as head of the Army.” Suharto and Barry Obama Soetoro’s step-father Lolo Soetoro would ignore Sukarno’s call for no vengeance, as hundreds of thousands of Indonesians would soon discover.
The mass murder by Suharto of Indonesian Chinese is seen in the CIA paper’s description of the Baperki Party: “the leftist Baperki Party, with its major strength in rural areas, is largely Chinese-Indonesian in membership.” A CIA Intelligence Memorandum, dated October 6, 1966 and formerly classified Secret, shows the extent of the CIA’s monitoring of the anti-Sukarno coup from various CIA agents assigned as liaisons to Suharto’s army units surrounding the Presidential Palace in Bogor and at various diplomatic posts around the country, including the U.S. Consulate in Medan, which was keeping track of leftists in that Sumatran city and, which, in an October 2, 1965, Intelligence Memo, reported to the CIA that the “Soviet consul-general in Medan has a plane standing by that could be used for evacuation of Soviet citizens from Sumatra.” The October 6 memo also warns against allowing Untung from developing a following in Central Java.
A CIA formerly Secret “Weekly Summary Special Report” on Indonesia, dated August 11, 1967, and titled “The New Order in Indonesia,” reports that in 1966, Indonesia re-aligned its economy in order to receive International Monetary Fund (IMF) assistance. The CIA reports its is happy with the new triumvirate ruling Indonesia in 1967: Suharto, Foreign Minister Adam Malik, and the Sultan of Jogjakarta, who served as minister for economics and finance. The report also rejoices in the outlawing of the PKI, but states it “retains a significant following in East and Central Java,” where Ann Dunham Soetoro would largely concentrate her later efforts on behalf of USAID, the World Bank, and the Ford Foundation, all front activities for the CIA to “win the hearts and minds” of the Javanese farmers and artisans.
A CIA Intelligence Memorandum, formerly Secret and dated July 23, 1966, clearly sees the Muslim Nahdatul Ulama party {NU), the largest party in Indonesia and Muslim, as a natural ally of the United States and the Suharto regime. The report states that helped Suharto put down the Communists in the post-coup time frame, especially where the NU was strongest: East Java, where Obama’s mother would concentrate her activities, and North Sumatra and parts of Borneo. An April 29, 1966, formerly Secret CIA Intelligence Memorandum on the PKI states: “Moslem extremists in many instances outdid the army in hunting down and murdering members of the party [PKI] and its front groups.”
Dunham and Barry Soetoro in Jakarta and USAID front activities
Dunham dropped out of the University of Hawaii in 1960 while pregnant with Barack Obama. Barack Obama Sr. left Hawaii in 1962 to study at Harvard. Dunham and Obama divorced in 1964. In the fall of 1961, Dunham enrolled at the University of Washington while caring for her infant son. Dunham was re-enrolled at the University of Hawaii from 1963 to 1966. Lolo Soetoro, who Dunham married in March 1965, departed Hawaii for Indonesia on July 20, 1965, some three months prior to the CIA’s coup against Sukarno. Soetoro, who served Suharto as an Army colonel, was clearly called back from the CIA-connected East-West Center to assist in the coup against Sukarno, one that would eventually cost the lives of some one million Indonesian citizens. It is a history that President Obama would like the press to ignore, which it certainly did during the 2008 primary and general election.
In 1967, after arriving in Indonesia with Obama, Jr., Dunham began teaching English at the American embassy in Jakarta, which also housed one of the largest CIA stations in Asia and had significant satellite stations in Surabaya in eastern Java and Medan on Sumatra. Jones left as East-West Center chancellor in 1968.
In fact, Obama’s mother was teaching English for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was a major cover for CIA activities in Indonesia and throughout Southeast Asia, especially in Laos, South Vietnam, and Thailand. The USAID program was known as Lembaga Pendidikan Pembinaan Manajemen. Obama’s mother, painted as a free spirit and a “sixties child” by President Obama and people who claimed they knew her in Hawaii and Indonesia, had a curriculum vitae in Indonesia that contradicts the perception that Ann Dunham Soetoro was a “hippy.”
Dunham Soetoro’s Russian language training at the University of Hawaii may have been useful to the CIA in Indonesia. An August 2, 1966, formerly Secret memorandum from the National Security Council’s Executive Secretary Bromley Smith states that, in addition to Japan, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the Suharto coup was welcomed by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies because its created a non-aligned Indonesia that “represents an Asian counterweight to Communist China.” Records indicate that a number of CIA agents posted in Jakarta before and after the 1965 coup were, like Dunham Soetoro, conversant in Russian.
Dunham Soetoro worked for the elitist Ford Foundation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Bank Rakyat (the majority government-owned People’s Bank of Indonesia), and the CIA-linked USAID while she lived in Indonesia and later, Pakistan.
USAID was involved in a number of CIA covert operations in Southeast Asia. The February 9, 1971, Washington Star reported that USAID officials in Laos were aware that rice supplied to the Laotian Army by USAID was being re-sold to North Vietnamese army divisions in the country. The report stated that the U.S. tolerated the USAID rice sales to the North Vietnamese since the Laotian Army units that sold the rice found themselves protected from Communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese attack. USAID and the CIA also used the supply of rice to force Laotian Meo tribesmen to support the United States in the war against the Communists. USAID funds programmed for civilians injured in the war in Laos and public health care were actually diverted for military purposes.
In 1971, the USAID-funded Center for Vietnamese Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale was accused of being a CIA front. USAID-funded projects through the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities (MUCIA) — comprising the Universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Michigan State — were accused of being CIA front projects, including those for “agricultural education” in Indonesia, as well as other “projects” in Afghanistan, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria, Thailand, and South Vietnam. The charge was made in 1971, the same year that Ann Dunham was working for USAID in the country.
In a July 10, 1971, New York Times report, USAID and the CIA were accused of “losing” $1.7 billion appropriated for the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program in South Vietnam. CORDS was part of the CIA’s Operation Phoenix program, which involved CIA assassination and torture of South Vietnamese village elders and Buddhist clerics. USAID money was also directed to the CIA’s proprietary airline in Southeast Asia, Air America. In Thailand, USAID funds for the Accelerated Rural Development Program in Thailand were actually masking a CIA anti-Communist counter-insurgency operation. USAID funds programmed for public works projects in East Pakistan in 1971 were used for East Pakistan’s military fortifications on its border with India, in the months before the outbreak of war with India, in contravention of U.S. law that prohibited USAID money for military purposes.

In 1972, USAID administrator Dr. John Hannah admitted to Metromedia News that USAID was being used as a cover for CIA covert operations in Laos. Hannah only admitted to Laos as a USAID cover for the CIA. However, it was also reported that USAID was being used by the CIA in Indonesia, Philippines, South Vietnam, Thailand, and South Korea. USAID projects in Southeast Asia had to be approved by the Southeast Asian Development Advisory Group (SEADAG), an Asia Society group that was, in fact, answerable to the CIA.
The U.S. Food for Peace program, jointly administered by USAID and the Department of Agriculture, was found in 1972 to be used for military purposes in Cambodia, South Korea, Turkey, South Vietnam, Spain, Taiwan, and Greece. In 1972, USAID funneled aid money only to the southern part of North Yemen, in order to aid North Yemeni forces against the government of South Yemen, then ruled by a socialist government opposed to U.S. hegemony in the region.

One of the entities affiliated with the USAID work in Indonesia was the Asia Foundation, a 1950s creation formed with the help of the CIA to oppose the expansion of communism in Asia. The East-West Center guest house in Hawaii was funded by the Asia Foundation. The guest house is also where Barack Obama Sr. first stayed after his airlift from Kenya to Hawaii, arranged by the one of the CIA’s major agents of influence in Africa, Mboya.
Dunham would also travel to Ghana, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand working on micro-financing projects. In 1965, Barack Obama Sr. returned to Kenya from Harvard, with another American wife. The senior Obama linked up with his old friend and the CIA’s “golden boy” Mboya and other fellow Luo politicians. The CIA station chief in Nairobi from 1964 to 1967 was Philip Cherry. In 1975, Cherry was the CIA station chief in Dacca, Bangladesh. Cherry was linked by the then-U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, Eugene Booster, to the 1975 assassination of Bangladesh’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and members of his family.
The hit on “Sheikh Mujib” and his family was reportedly ordered by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Bangladesh was also on the micro- and macro-financing travel itinerary of CIA-linked Ann Dunham.
CIA banking and Hawaii
Meanwhile, Dunham Soetoro’s mother, Madelyn Dunham, who raised young Obama when he returned to Hawaii in 1971 while his mother stayed in Indonesia, was the first female vice president at the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu. Various CIA front entities used the bank. Madelyn Dunham handled escrow accounts used to make CIA payments to U.S.-supported Asian dictators like Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu, and President Suharto in Indonesia. In effect, the bank was engaged in money laundering for the CIA to covertly prop up its favored leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
One of the CIA’s major money laundering fronts in Honolulu was the firm of Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham & Wong (BBRDW). After the CIA allowed the firm to collapse in 1983 amid charges that BBRDW was merely a Ponzi scheme, Senator Daniel Inouye of the US Senate Intelligence Committee said the CIA’s role in the firm “wasn’t significant.” It would later be revealed that Inouye, who was one of the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’s best friends in the Senate, was lying. In fact, BBRDW was involved heavily in funding covert CIA programs throughout Asia, including economic espionage against Japan, providing arms for Afghan mujaheddin guerrillas in their war against the Soviets and covertly supplying weapons to Taiwan. One of BBRDW’s principals was John C. “Jack” Kindschi, who, before he retired in 1981, was the CIA station chief in Honolulu. BBRDW’s chairman Ron Rewald had a counterfeit college degree certificate provided for the wall of his office by the CIA’s forgery experts and his name was inserted in university records as an alumnus.
A false history for BBRDW was concocted by the CIA claiming the firm had operated in Hawaii since it was a territory. President Obama is currently plagued by allegations that he has fake college and university transcripts, a phony social security number issued in Connecticut, and other padded resume items. Did Hawaii’s fake BBRDW documents portend today’s questions about Obama’s past?
BBRDW conducted its business in the heart of Honolulu’s business district, where the Bank of Hawaii was located and where Obama grandmother Madelyn Dunham ran the escrow accounts. The bank would handle much of BBRDW’s covert financial transactions.
Manchurian Candidate?
Obama/Soetoro and the “years of living dangerously” in Jakarta
It is clear that Dunham Soetoro and her Indonesian husband, President Obama’s step-father, were closely involved in the CIA’s operations to steer Indonesia away from the Sino-Soviet orbit during the “years of living dangerously” after the overthrow of Sukarno. WMR has discovered that some of the CIA’s top case officers were assigned to various official and non-official cover assignments in Indonesia during this time frame, including under the cover of USAID, the Peace Corps, and the U.S. Information Agency (USIA).
One of the closest CIA contacts for Suharto was former CIA Jakarta embassy officer Kent B. Crane. Crane was so close to Suharto after “retiring” from the CIA, he was reportedly one of the only “private” businessmen given an Indonesian diplomatic passport by Suharto’s government. Crane’s company, the Crane Group, was involved in supplying small arms to the military forces of the United States, Indonesia, and other nations. A foreign policy adviser to Vice President Spiro Agnew, Crane was later nominated as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia by President Ronald Reagan but the nomination was dead-on-arrival because of Crane’s dubious links to Suharto. The ambassadorship would instead go to John Holdridge, a close colleague of Kissinger. Holdridge was succeeded in Jakarta by Paul Wolfowitz.
Suharto’s cronies, who included Mochtar and James Riady of the Lippo Group, would later stand accused of funneling over $1 million of illegal foreign contributions to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.
President Obama has twice postponed official state visits to Indonesia, perhaps fearful of the attention such a trip would bring to the CIA connections of his mother and Indonesian step-father.
In the 1970s and 80s, Dunham was active in micro-loan projects for the Ford Foundation, the CIA-linked East-West Center, and USAID in Indonesia. One of the individuals assigned to the U.S. embassy and helped barricade the compound during a violent anti-U.S. student demonstration during the 1965 Suharto coup against Sukarno was Dr. Gordon Donald, Jr. Assigned to the embassy’s Economic Section, Donald was responsible for USAID micro-financing for Indonesian farmers, the same project that Dunham Soetoro would work on for USAID in the 1970s, after her USAID job of teaching English in Indonesia. In a 1968 book, “Who’s Who in the CIA,” published in West Berlin, Donald is identified as a CIA officer who was also assigned to Lahore, Pakistan, where Dunham would eventually live for five years in the Hilton International Hotel while working on microfinancing for the Asian Development Bank.
Another “Who’s Who in the CIA” Jakarta alumnus is Robert F. Grealy, who later became the director for international relations for the Asia-Pacific for J P Morgan Chase and a director for the American-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. J P Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon is being mentioned as a potential replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose father, Peter Geithner, was the Ford Foundation’s Asia grant-selector who funneled the money to Ann Dunham’s Indonesian projects.
CIA Black Projects and Hawaii
While in Pakistan, Dunham’s son Barack visited her in 1980 and 1981. Obama visited Karachi, Lahore, and Hyderabad, India during his south Asia visits. It was during the time period that the CIA was beefing up its anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan from Pakistan.
A January 31, 1958, heavily-redacted formerly Secret NOFORN [no foreign dissemination] memorandum for CIA Director Allen Dulles from the Deputy Assistant Director of the CIA for Research and Reports [name redacted] reports on a fact-finding mission to the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East from November 17 through December 21, 1957.
The CIA Office of Research and Reports (ORR) chief reports a meeting with the staff of retired Army General Jesmond Balmer, a senior CIA official in Hawaii, about requests by the Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) for “a number of detailed, time-consuming research studies.” The ORR chief then reports about a CIA “survey of students at the University of Hawaii who have both Chinese language and research ability.” The ORR chief also reports that at a South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Counter Subversion Seminar at Baguio, Philippines held from November 26-29, 1957, the Economic Subcommittee discussed an “economic development fund” to combat “Sino-Soviet Bloc subversive activities in the area and a consideration of possible counter-measures which might be employed.”
The Thailand and Philippines delegations were pushing hard for U.S. funding for an economic development fund, which may have provided the impetus for later USAID projects in the region, including those with which Peter Geithner and Obama’s mother were intimately involved.
Although CIA geo-political covert operations at the University of Hawaii are well-documented, the agency’s darker side of research and MK-UKTRA type operations has not generally been associated with the University of Hawaii.
A series of formerly Confidential CIA memoranda, dated May 15, 1972, points to the involvement of both the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the CIA, and the University of Hawaii in the CIA’s behavioral science program. The memos are signed by then-Deputy Director of the CIA Bronson Tweedy, the chief of the Intelligence Community’s Program Review Group (PRG) [name redacted], and CIA Director Richard Helms. The subject of the memos is “ARPA Supported Research Relating to Intelligence Product,” The memo from the PRG chief discusses a conference held on May 11, 1972, attended by Lt. Col. Austin Kibler, ARPA’s Director of Behavioral Research. Kibler was the chief for ARPA research into behavior modification and remote viewing. Others mentioned in the PRG chief’s memo include CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Edward Proctor, the CIA Deputy Director for Science and Technology Carl Duckett, and Director of the Office of National Estimates John Huizenga.
In 1973, after CIA Director James Schlesinger ordered a review of all CIA programs, the CIA developed a set of documents on various CIA programs collectively called the “Family Jewels.” Most of these documents were released in 2007 but it was also revealed that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA’s director of MKULTRA, the agency’s behavior modification, brainwashing, and drug testing component, had been ordered by Helms, before he resigned as CIA director, to be destroyed. Duckett, in one memo from Ben Evans of the CIA to CIA Director William Colby, dated May 8, 1973, conveys that he “thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program,” meaning Gottlieb’s drug testing program under MKULKTRA.
Senior Gerald Ford administration officials, including Chief of Staff Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, ensured that after the production of the “Family Jewels” documents, no CIA revelations were made about CIA psychological behavior-altering programs, including MKULTRA and Project ARTICHOKE.
The May 15, 1972, set of memos appears to be related to the CIA’s initial research, code named SCANATE, in 1972 into psychic warfare, including the use of psychics for purposes of remote viewing espionage and mind control. The memo discussed Kibler from ARPA and “his contractor,” which was later discovered to be Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.
In a memo from CIA Director Helms to, among others, Duckett, Huizenga, Proctor, and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which later inherited reote viewing from the CIA under the code name GRILL FLAME, Helms insists that ARPA had been supporting research into behavioral science and its potential for intelligence production ”for a number of years” at “M.I.T., Yale, the University of Michigan, U.C.L.A., and University of Hawaii and other institutions as well as in corporate research facilities.”
The role of the University of Hawaii in CIA psych-war operations continues to this day. The chief of research for DIA’s Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC) Behavioral Sciences Program, Dr. Susan Brandon, who was reportedly involved in a covert program run by the American Psychological Association (APA), Rand Corporation, and the CIA to employ “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including sleep and sensory deprivation, intense pain, and extreme isolation on prisoners held at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and other “black prisons,” received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Hawaii. Brandon also served as assistant director of Social, Behavioral, and Educational Sciences for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the George W. Bush White House.
The CIA’s close connections to the University of Hawaii continued to the late 1970s, when the former President of the University of Hawaii from 1969 to 1974, Harlan Cleveland, was a special invited speaker at CIA headquarters on May 10, 1977. Cleveland served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1961 to 1965 and Lyndon Johnson’s ambassador to NATO from 1965 to 1969 before taking up his position at the University of Hawaii.
A CIA Director of Training memo dated May 21, 1971, reports on the active recruitment of a U.S. Marine officer who was entering graduate school at the University of Hawaii.
The Family of Obama and the CIA
There are volumes of written material on the CIA backgrounds of George H. W. Bush and CIA-related activities by his father and children, including former President George W. Bush. Barack Obama, on the other hand, cleverly masked his own CIA connections as well as those of his mother, father, step-father, and grandmother (there is very little known about Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, who was supposedly in the furniture business in Hawaii after serving in Europe during World War II). Presidents and vice presidents do not require security background checks, unlike other members of the federal government, to hold office. That job is left up to the press. In 2008, the press failed miserably in its duty to vet the man who would win the White House. With the ties of Obama’s parents to the University of Hawaii and its links to MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE, a nagging question remains: Is Barack Obama a real-life “Manchurian Candidate?”
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs.
Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows. He has been invited to testifty as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government.

As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation

Event canceled

2010-11-18T02:47:00.001-05:00

In 5 years I've never cancelled an Ashra Kwesi event. Due to a family emergency, I must reschedule this event to a later date. Everyone please inform the community. Baba is okay with this and actually recommended this before I did. That's much more than what I can say for some other elder brothers.

The Intergenerational Afrikan Worldview: An Afrikan-Centered Critique DEBUNKING “Afrocentricity” (the Propaganda-Myth) Part One by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2010-08-22T13:19:00.004-04:00

The Intergenerational Afrikan Worldview:
An Afrikan-Centered Critique
DEBUNKING “Afrocentricity” (the Propaganda-Myth)

Part One

Mukasa Afrika Ma’at

http://www.mukasa.info/

Contents of Essay

---Part One---
Introduction
What is the Purpose?
Afrikan Spirituality and “Afrocentricity”
Molefi Asante’s “Afrocentricity”
“Will the Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand Up!”
The Afrikan View of History and Culture
Nile Valley Spirituality: Mother Cradle of the Afrikan Worldview
Historical Development of the Afrikan Worldview
Haitian Revolution and Afrikan Worldview

---Part Two---
David Walker and the Intergenerational Commune
The Aruthur Schomburg Generation
Afrikan Worldview in Afrika
Olaudah Equiano
Facing Mt. Kenya
Amilcar Cabral
Marcus Garvey,
The Harlem Renaissance and Negritude Movements
The Black Shining Prince
The Unfinished Revolution
Notes to the Present Generation
Last Thoughts

“I do not have a fight with Molefi Asante. I have a fight with his generation. His generation has failed to see the latitude and the longitude of the subject that was already old when Professor Asante’s parents were born…
My argument is about latitude and longitude. We haven’t kicked what we call ‘Afrocentricity’ back far enough. We haven’t dealt with its historical roots.”
John Henrik Clarke. Who Betrayed The African World Revolution and
Other Speeches. “The Historical Basis of Africancentricity,” Speech given
April 3, 1992.

“…I wish to seize this opportunity that has been given me to direct your attention to the gravity of the responsibility which has been entrusted to you – that of the transmission of knowledge to young generations of our community. Looking over history we are quickly drawn to the fact that our nations have declined, and, as a result, our communities. This is intimately tied to national sovereignty and especially to the loss of control of our educational systems which assure the transmission of understanding from generation to generation… It is also the classical technique of domination, of colonization, throughout history, to destroy
and to weaken the historical consciousness of a people who become dominated.
All the factors which reinforce that consciousness are taken away, taken out of the instruction so that progressively the dominated nation becomes amnesiac.”
Cheikh Anta Diop made these statements about the intergenerational
Afrikan worldview in a speech given at Moorehouse in 1983. It is
recorded in Great Afrikan Thinker edited by Ivan Van Sertima (319).

Abstract from Essay

Molefi Asante has been wrongly called “the father of Afrocentricity” by his followers and others who are naïve enough. He has not discouraged the ridiculous claim, and has promoted it. Others mistakenly believe that he coined the term or defined the concept before anyone else. It is the fault of our present generation of “scholars and leaders” for not directly addressing this propaganda-myth at the heart of our worldview. What is called “Afrocentricity” today has no father, and really no innovators, especially from this modern era of history. Additionally, in the Afrikan worldview, nothing has a father without a mother. The idea of a fatherhood for a then modern idea with ancient roots is a form of plagiarism of the older idea. The Greeks were labeled “fathers” of Nile Valley concepts they learned in Afrika. Our scholars and leaders continuously address the Greek plagiarisms of Afrikan ideas, but for political reasons, handshakes, and pats on the back, very few of our “leaders and scholars” will address the modern plagiarism of the cultural worldview improperly defined as “Afrocentricity.” Thus, in not addressing this propaganda-myth, and for some who even support it, the intellectual chaos has become an endless wire of confusion and mis-concepts in our movement. There are no modern day innovators of the Afrikan worldview because this generation’s knowledge has been passed down from our ancestors. The Afrikan worldview is a product of generations, a product of the history and culture of a people, not an individual.

Introduction

It is very fitting to begin this essay in the proper manner, by giving tribute to the lineage of great Afrikans who took up the cause to battle for the minds of Afrikan people. Tribute is given to David Walker, Anna Julia Cooper, Martin Delany, WEB Du Bois, Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey, John Edward Bruce, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, JB Danquah, Carter G. Woodson, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Cheikh Anta Diop, Queen Mother Moore, John Jackson, and so many others. Tribute is given two champions who addressed the very same issue in this essay in their writings and speeches – John Henrik Clarke and Jacob Hudson Carruthers. Tribute is given to those Afrikans named and unnamed who took up the battle for Afrikan mental liberation long before our times. These Afrikan ancestors are among the many who passed down the Afrikan worldview through the generations. Mental liberation is the groundwork or foundation for a greater cause in our future. I would further like to acknowledge Kamau Rashid and Hannibal Casanova for lively dialogue about this topic and various issues that helped heightened my own understanding of the Afrikan worldview.

In the great tradition of our Nile Valley ancestors of at least 5,000 years ago, the practice of vindicating Mdw Nfr (Good Speech) is brought forth in the words of Khun-Inpu throughout his petitions, but specifically when he stated:

As for falsehood, its deeds may flourish,
But Ma’at will turn herself to balance it.
Ma’at is the final end of falsehood...
(Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 42-43)

The Afrikan Spirituality of what Khun-Inpu was saying is that society, as much as the universe, is meant to be balanced. As much as the sun rises and falls, as much as Heru will always defeat Set, so it is that truth will always endure over falsehood in the end. In fact, the ultimate end of falsehood is truth, and there can be no other way. The universe is built on waves and circles of a harmonious rhythm. That being the structure of the universe means that we as people have harmony at our inner-being. It is from the divinity in us spoken to by Khun-Inpu that we correct falsehood where and when we can.

This essay began as what was originally thought to be a much smaller research exercise. My simple objectives were to historically prove and lay out examples of why there is no “Father” of Afrocentricity, the etymological / historical development of the word “Afrocentricity,” and to properly honor our Afrikan ancestors as creators of the Afrikan worldview. In the process of writing the essay, the intergenerational development of the Afrikan worldview took precedence in my research. After all, it is the more significant of the issues, yet inseparable from the need to correct myths and propaganda-myths that have left imprints on the Afrikan worldview. The essay has been structured into a two parts. Although not exclusive, Part One deals more with the ancient development of the Afrikan worldview, and Part Two deals more with the recent historical development.

What is the Purpose?

Many, I’m sure, will wonder why I have chosen to address this issue. My response to them is that as is the case with whatever I write or speak about, I find it to be very pressing to the worldview of Afrikan people. If I did not, or if I could ignore this issue, if it were trivial enough, I would. If the issues were not so critical to the developmental worldview of Afrikan people at a time where anti-Afrikan concepts dominate our minds, I would not consider these writings. If more of our “scholars” and “leaders” addressed these fundamental flaws in what is becoming part of the Afrikan mindset, I would only reference their works and let the issue be as it may. To the contrary, the issue is very pressing and has been ignored by far too many, for far too long.

Many have chosen to ignore this issue, and often people who should especially address the topic are the ones who ignore it. The topic is ignored for many reasons. Molefi Asante has been wrongly called “the father of Afrocentricity.” He has built a cheering section in the stadium that we call today’s “Movement,” and many scholars who should address this issue fear being booed by Asante’s cheering section. Individuals in Asante’s cheering section are there for several reasons, and I know this because I have spoken with many of them. Some are cheering the propaganda-myth of “Afrocentricity” in seeking some position at a university or tenure, of which he has been an assistance to many. Others are cheering this propaganda-myth because they believe it is an honest “paradigm” or “theory,” and it is neither. Others who ignore any attempt at correcting the propaganda-myth do so because it will take a great deal of time and energy. Countless brothers and sisters across the world have been misled, so for those who are more than capable of addressing the propaganda-myth, consider it too costly to their community and/or academic reputations. Further, scholar-leaders of Afrikan descent fear being placed in the white schools of thought created by Mary Lefkowits, Arthur Schlesinger, Steven Howe, and the like. There is another school of thought along the waves of Henry Louis Gates, and many chose not to be even remotely or accidentally aligned with this camp by addressing the propaganda-myth. Consequently, because the issue is not addressed, many have become defensive about “Afrocentricity” in thinking that they are defending something Afrikan against anti-Afrikan propaganda. Some individuals never took the movement serious in the first place, so they see nothing wrong with regurgitating an unsound theory. Others are cheering the propaganda-myth of “Afrocentricity” simply because they are not well read, and have become experts at sounding like they know what they are talking about when they don’t. Still others unwittingly promote the propaganda-myth because they have heard it over the years, have been taught it, read it in books, and think it is true. It’s like when a small number of people tell a lie consistently, and then honest people begin to believe it is true.

For these reasons above, and others, many have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated into what they think is Afrocentricity. There is one very core reason for my addressing this issue. A propaganda-myth of “Afrocentricity” has been allowed to run-amuck for over two decades; it has become imbedded in the minds of all too many; a mass of confusion has been created; and very few have had the courage and/or insight to deal with this mess.

Some notes on definition would prove useful. What is meant by intergenerational worldview? All cultures have worldviews, and all cultures are intergenerational; indeed a culture cannot exist otherwise. All functional people seek to educate and socialize their new generations into the wisdom of their elders and ancestors. All people seek to further their existence in this diverse world. Some develop ideologies of harmony, or domination, or liberation, or compromise, or confrontation, etc., etc. However, a worldview is in part the cultural frame of reference of a people, and the frame of reference is always passed on over time. For cultures that are spiritually or religiously based, their worldviews are also transcendent in some way beyond the physical world. Afrikan cultures, uncorrupted by foreign influence, are such examples of cultures with a worldview that is spiritually based. The intergenerational character, or worldview, of a culture depends on several factors: such as environment, the general mind-set of the people, their socio-economic condition, their identity, political and religious loyalty, but above all their historical past or how they came to see their meaning and purpose of existence. In spite of the great turmoil of the past endured by our ancestors, Afrikan people have always had a cultural reference or intergenerational worldview. This is the heart of the topic.

For this essay, I had to develop a specific term that captures the character of “Afrocentricity.” First, propaganda in itself is not bad. It only means the spreading of information, knowledge, ideas, etc. However, when I refer to “Afrocentricity” as “propaganda,” I am referring to the spreading of non-factual and non-historical based propaganda. Still, the falsifications run deeper. I compounded “propaganda” with “myth” due to the inaccurate ideas surrounding the origin and development of “Afrocentricity.” A myth is an idea or concept used as an explanation, but one that is not based on historical facts. The term propaganda-myth best captures the character of “Afrocentricity,” as it is believed by some, promoted by others, and not properly addressed by all too many. I often place “Afrocentricity” in quotation marks because there is a historic lineage of Afrocentricity that developed free of the propaganda-myth, and it is authentic. That authentic Afrikan lineage from the Nile Valley to the present is the more important part of this essay. In fact, I don’t consider it to be very difficult to deconstruct the propaganda-myth of “Afrocentricity.” Most often, where “Afrocentricity”is in quotation, I am referring to the propaganda-myth. Where it is not in quotation, I am most often referring to the authentic development of the Afrikan worldview or intergenerational lineage.

In the title of this essay, “Debunking Afrocentricity,” may seem a bit harsh for some to stomach, and to that, I say great! To debunk something does not mean to destroy it. The root word of de-bunk is bunk. Something that is bunk is unconscious, or partially conscious. Something that is bunk is false, out of context. Something bunk is weak, absurd, nonsensical, or ridiculous of what it supposedly means and represents. Something that is bunk is asleep. We’ve all seen people debunked from their sleep. Resting at an hour or time when they should be least asleep, and along comes someone to snatch the covers away, yank the sheets from under them, and send them rolling onto the floor. A good yelling in the ear at that point, or a bucket of cold water, would do well to debunk the sleeper. That’s what “Afrocentricity” needs, as it is understood today. A good debunking would do the minds, the historical consciousness, and the cultural development of our people very well.

I will examine what I call “The Major Propaganda-Myths of Afrocentricity” throughout the essay. A core set of propaganda-myths can be defined that are intrinsic if not always openly stated in the writings and speeches of self-proclaimed Afrocentrists and their teachings. Although I have placed them in a set, the propaganda-myths abound in so many ways throughout the writing and teachings of the Afrocentrist, and by “Afrocentrists,” I mean those who are all too uncritical and those who blindly follow the unsound theory of Molefi Asante, former Chairperson and current professor of Temple University’s Black Studies Department in Philadelphia. These are some of the core myths of “Afrocentricity.”

The Major Propaganda-Myths of “Afrocentricity”

1. Molefi Asante is the “Father of Afrocentricity”
2. “Afrocentricity” was created with the 1980 publication of Asante’s book
3. Asante coined the term “Afrocentricity”
4. Asante was first to “operationalize” or defined the meaning of “Afrocentricity”
5. The recruits and followers of “Afrocentricity” believe they are basing their research on a sound theory that is a vindication of Afrikan people
6. White people and non-Afrikans can be “Afrocentric”
7. “Afrocentricity” is a theory, idea, or paradigm.

Throughout this essay, I will deal with each of the above propaganda-myths. This essay will brief the Afrikan conscious movement. In so addressing the historic movement, we begin to dispel certain falsifications of the propaganda-myth. The intergenerational lineage of the Afrikan worldview is both ancient and modern, as will be displayed. Throughout this essay, reference will be made to some of those who have addressed the propaganda-myth. In this essay, I will do my best to address what John Henrik Clarke called the “latitude and longitude,” or past and present, of Afrikan consciousness. In this essay, I will “kick back” Afrikan-Centered thought to at least 4,500 years along the Nile Valley, and bring it up through some of the cultures, movements, and nations of Afrikan people. Finally, I will look at the threads of Afrikan consciousness in the Afrikan world as it related to the historic struggles against oppression. The Afrikan worldview is / was present among all Afrikan people at various times in history, and it was “founded” by no individuals. Jedi Jehewty called this the intergenerational conversation of the Afrikan worldview among our people, a conversation which stretched back to the antiquity of our ancestors to the present. All people have a worldview and intergenerational dialog that addresses the task of teaching its’ future generations the knowledge, wisdom, and lessons of their ancestors. The Afrikan worldview is especially critical because of the oppression we have faced in the world. The intergenerational dialog will continue into the future as Afrikan people face new challenges and triumphs in our existence.

Molefi Asante’s “Afrocentricity”

We must recognize that all cultures and all people have worldviews, and there are no individual founders for any of them. A worldview is how a specific people or race understands the totality of its’ own existence and based on that understanding how they live and interact in the world. When we consider how “Afrocentricity” has been defined, it is clear the “Afrocentrists” are really talking about the Afrikan worldview. There was always an Afrikan worldview since Afrikans have been in the world; just as much as a European worldview, Arab worldview, Chinese worldview, etc. have always existed with those people. If Molefi Asante is the father of “Afrocentricity,” I would only ask who is the father of Eurocentricity? Who is the father of Arab-centricity? Europeans and Arabs have always had ways they have interacted in the world with other people. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to say that someone fathered the European worldview when it is a development of their culture, history, and existence? Certain whites have influenced the European worldview such as Alexander the Greek, Constantine, Columbus, Washington, etc. Yet still, none of them were fathers of the European worldview as it developed from the historical-cultural background of the total people. Likewise, the Afrikan worldview developed from the total historical-cultural background of Afrikan people.

Molefi Asante defines “Afrocentricity” as “a mode of thought and action in which the centrality of African interest, values, and perspectives predominate” (Afrocentricity, 2). I have no problem with that definition as long as it is acknowledged that it has been part of the Afrikan worldview since beyond antiquity. The worldview of any people would place their “interest, values, and perspectives” first. No genius would have to figure that out. It’s called self-interest or collective consciousness. The self-interest and/or collective consciousness of Afrikan people were not waiting in the darkness for the 1980 publication of a book. The Afrikan worldview has been wrongly termed “Afrocentricity,” and it has been misunderstood as such. The Afrikan worldview is a development of Afrikan history, culture, and existence. I will further address this later in the essay. Here I would like to deal directly with a few selected quotes from what is thought to be Molefi Asante’s foundational work, Afrocentricity, first published in 1980. Many consider this to be the foundation text of the “Afrocentric movement.”

In my opinion, what is one of the most glaring inaccuracies in the book deals with the mistreatment of WEB Du Bois and the “scholars of his era.” Asante says:

Despite his intense love for African people, Du Bois was not Afrocentric (Du Bois, 1961: 142). He studied African people not from an African perspective but from a European one which employed Eurocentric methods to analyze and study black people. Few African scholars of his era, if any, could break out of the tightness of European thought. Indeed, only Afrocentric scholars have been able to achieve that victory. Although he demonstrated admirably that the African could excel at European scholarship, this apologetic posture was necessary in his mind to establish our respectability worldwide (23).

Would it be too unscholarly of me to say: Are you kidding me! Let me restrain from commenting on this quote and lay out some others so that I may comment all at once. He further states:

Du Bois prepared the world for Afrocentricity; the protector of an idea who did not fully recognize its power but who would have shouted to see it come. Afrocentricity was the most logical end of his own brilliant growth pattern (23).

Asante continues with useless compliments and groundless claims about Du Bois:

Always the seer, Du Bois advanced integration as the key to human
progress in America. Working from a Eurocentric vision, he participated in the philosophical currents of Western Europe, and therefore reflected the same mental flow as Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudianism… Du Bois wrestled with the contradictions of this Eurocentric view… (24)

Unfortunately, Asante did not make a case for anyone his comments about Du Bois. They do, however, show a serious miscalculation of the life’s works of Du Bois. As I estimate, this could have something to do with the fact that the Du Bois we speak of is the same person who used the term “Afro-centric” to define his Africana project in the early 1960s, that is 20 years before Asante’s book Afrocentricity. Asante does not explain this in the book, and it is equally ignored by other Afrocentrists. Nor does he explain that the man he calls an integrationist was one of the leading proponents of Pan-Afrikanism for nearly half a century, through the five congresses he held and participated in between 1919 and 1945. Du Bois helped led an entire generation in the direction of the anticolonial movement. Integrationist? Eurocentric? Hardly.

Du Bois had his contradictions, like the unnecessary feud between him and Marcus Garvey. Du Bois did utilize Socialist analysis in much of his materials, but to say he was Eurocentric is more than a stretch. While Du Bois was Socialist in some of his analysis of politics and history, that did not make him Eurocentric as Asante claims. His idea of the “Talented Tenth” was elitist in some ways. However, let us not miss the contributions of WEB Du Bois to the Afrikan conscious movement. In reading Du Bois’ 1897 “Conservation of Races,” it is clear that he was a strong nationalists. Du Bois set the tone for Afrikan-Centered research in his Suppression of the African Slave Trade in 1896. Who would dare claim that Du Bois’ 1947 text The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the part which Africa has played in World History is not Afrikan-Centered. His writing 1955 entitled “Pan-Africa: A Mission in My Life” speaks volumes to the half century of work Du Bois dedicated his life. Through his annual Atlanta Conferences, Du Bois laid out not only a nationalist business plan for Blacks, but also a method of study relevant to our people. What is meant by calling Du Bois’ posture “apologetic?” The man took unpopular stance after unpopular stance throughout his life. The Crisis was outspoken against lynching, a dangerous topic. Du Bois was not afraid to be called unpatriotic if it meant speaking out against US oppression at home and abroad. Let us not forget that Du Bois eventually gave up his US citizenship and expatriated to Ghana in 1961. Who is this Eurocentric Du Bois that Asante speaks about as if it is such a foregone conclusion? There is no need to deal with this idea of Du Bois’ generation not being able to “break out of the tightness of European thought.” That issue will form a greater part of this essay. For clear insight into the significance of the life of WEB Du Bois, I strongly recommend Manning Marable’s Black Radical Democrat.

“Du Bois was not Afrocentric?” Really! WEB Du Bois finished his final autobiography in the last years of his life in Ghana. Although he was Socialist in certain analysis, Du Bois was a Pan-Afrikanist above anything. In his autobiography, Du Bois noted George Padmore’s 1956 work Pan-Africanism or Communism: The Coming Struggle for Africa. Padmore himself had split from the Communist party because of ideological differences rooted in racism and colonialism on the part of white Communist. Padmore would become chief advisor to Nkrumah. In the letter to Kwame Nkrumah, Du Bois explained that Afrika must not be a tool of the capitalist Western nations or the Communist Eastern nations (Autobiography of WEB Du Bois, 400). Pan-Afrika “should build a socialism founded on old African communal life…” He then explained:

Pan-Africa will seek to preserve its own past history, and write the
present account, erasing from literature the lies and distortions about black folks which have disgraced the last centuries of European and American literature… (400)

Du Bois was not a socialist in the European sense, definitely not later in life. The same simplistic blanketed observation is made of Nyerere, Lumumba, Cabral, Machel, and the entire generation of anti-colonial, freedom fighters. Afrikan communalism is what many of them stood for, not white Socialism or Communism. Asante makes this mistake with Du Bois in referring to him as Marxist in thought (Afrocentricity, 25).

In a number of places in his book, Asante refers to “Afrocentricity” as an “ideology” and discusses it alongside ideologies and religions (8, 12, 56, 102). As trivial as this may seem to some, to the contrary, it is a grave issue. “Afrocentricity” is not a religion or an ideology. Few people would be willing to argue that in public, I would suspect. It is because Molefi Asante equates “Afrocentricity” to a religion or an ideology that so much confusion has been stirred up. The Eurocentric critics such as Lefkowits-n11 company believe that “Afrocentricity” is an ideology. “Afrocentricity” is a misnomer for the Afrikan worldview. Religions and ideologies have founders. On the other hand, worldviews have no founders because they develop out of a group’s cultural framework and outlook. One may compare or contrast Pan-Afrikanism to Communism or Nile Valley Spirituality to another religion, but it makes little sense to contrast or compare a worldview to an ideology, that is unless one attempts to box a total worldview into being an ideology or religion. You cannot convert someone to their worldview, as Asante speaks of in his book (11). You convert people to ideologies and religions. On this note, an interesting deletion was made between the 1988 and 2003 editions of Afrocentricity. In 1988, Asante proclaimed:

Putting these questions already causes you to contemplate the extent of the deification of the history. Islam, as an organized religion, had its origin in the Arabian desert, somewhere in the vicinity of Mecca and Medina, depending upon where one wants to place the emphasis of Muhammad’s life. Without begging the question by asserting that Islam is older than Muhammad, consider that such a posture has been taken by all religions when assailed for having a place and time or origin. Buddhists will say that Buddhism existed before Gotama; Christians will says [sic] that Christianity existed before Jesus; and Jews will say that Judaism existed before Moses. This is all true because the elements which are necessary for effective human living and collective group consciousness existed before any of these individual people. By the same token, Afrocentrists will say that Nija existed before Asante’s Afrocentricity or Welsh’s Mfundalai. They will be correct to assert such a position. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is that the statement of the position must begin somewhere, in someplace with someone. Islam had such a beginning; in fact, as we know it, Islam began with Muhammad. Consequently, the initial responsibility and direction of Islam belonged to Muhammad much as the initial responsibility of Nija belongs to its
originators (3).

The heart of the issue is not with “Nija.” I don’t know of anyone who has an issue of the origin of “Nija.” Looking beyond the lack of clarity, it is obvious that Asante equates “Afrocentricity” with religions or as if it were an ideology. In the later edition of the book, the following sentence was taken out: “By the same token, Afrocentrists will say that Nija existed before Asante’s Afrocentricity or Welsh’s Mfundalai.” It alters the implications and inferences of the meaning. What remained in the 2003 edition, as Asante promoted his idea of “Afrocentricity” is the following:

Afrocentricity can stand its ground among any ideology or religion:
Marxism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or Judaism. Your Afrocentricity will emerge in the presence of these other ideologies because it is from you (56).

Again, it is a far off miscalculation to reduce the worldview of a people, any people, to an ideology or a religion. The Afrikan worldview is fundamental to the existence of all conscious Afrikan people, anywhere in the world, past or present. Our worldview emanates from our culture and history. The Afrikan worldview is fundamental to Afrikans who are not conscious, although they may be unaware. Our understanding of our worldview may determine the ideologies and religions we belong to, but the worldview is not an ideology or religion itself. Consequently, there is no founder for an entire people’s worldview. I have spoken to many people of Afrikan descent who will declare, “I am not Afrocentric!” This confusion comes from the idea that “Afrocentricity” is believed to be an ideology or a religion of some kind, one where you can “convert” someone to it. Asante stated, “Afrocentricity does not convert you by appealing to hatred…” (11) The writers who used “Afrocentricity” before Asante’s 1980 publication did not intend or define the term as such, but as a worldview. People of Afrikan descent may become more conscious of the worldview of their culture, but this is not an issue of conversion. No one is a dues paying, card-holding member of “Afrocentricity” that I know. Later, the historical origin of the word, or its’ etymology, will be addressed in further detail.

My point is that no one is converted to the worldview of their ancestors the way one is converted to a religion or ideology. It is because of this idea of conversion that Asante and others have argued that whites, Chinese, and anybody else can become “Afrocentric.” “Afrocentricity” has become a misnomer for the Afrikan worldview, Afrikan consciousness, or Afrikan-Centeredness. You don’t convert to the Afrikan worldview in that sense. There must be something in this world that belongs to Afrikan people. One must be Afrikan to be Afrikan. Meaning: you can’t simply understand or read up on the Afrikan worldview, write a book on it, and then one way or another you will be “Afrocentric,” regardless of your race. Only Afrikans can be Afrikan-Centered. People of other races can be understanding at best. This sad misunderstanding about whites being able to be “Afrocentric” is a position some “Afrocentrist” and their students have taken because they have found a need to compromise in the face of the university policies of this country. In fact, many of our “scholars and leaders” have not been able to see the challenges of our people beyond the university.

Afrikan Spirituality and “Afrocentricity”

Before discussing Afrikan Spirituality, we must first recognize the colonization and enslavement of Afrikan people, and as Chenwezu said, the colonization and enslavement of the Afrikan mind. Afrika has been under siege, under attack, and in a state of war at one time or another, in one place or another, for the last 3,500 years. Foreigners have made it part of their religions and religious beliefs to wage wars and propaganda campaigns against Afrikan people in their ultimate interest of robbing the richest continent in world history. Afrika’s wealth has been a curse because the land mass is situated in an area where other people have been poor, hungry, greedy, thieving, or all of those combined. European Christians and Arab Muslims have waged the most protracted and devastating wars of enslavement and colonization against Afrikan people in modern history. The Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, have contributed to the destabilization of ancient Afrikan civilization. Two of the best and classic works on this history are J. C. DeGraft-Johnson’s African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations from 1954 and Chancellor Williams’ The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 1971. Both works pre-date Molefi’s Afrocentricity, and both works are nationalist and Afrikan-Centered by anyone’s standards. Both works are as significant as they are historically accurate. Both works give direction in the task of research recovery of the Afrikan past. DeGraft-Johnson was from Ghana and Williams’ father was enslaved; both writers labored to transmit the Afrikan worldview to the next of their generations.

Arab Muslims invade Afrika in 639 BCE, about 1,400 years ago, and they never left. North Afrika has been completely colonized, militarily and culturally. Islam has culturally eroded the sacred systems of many communities in Afrika, past and present. The enslavement of countless millions over the last millennium and a half have come with the colonization of a large part of Afrika. Few have researched this forgotten colonization and enslavement of Afrika the way Samuel Cotton has done in Silent Terror and his various essays and articles on the issue.

Europeans first entered Afrika militarily with the decline of three thousand years of Nile Valley civilization. They were first in Afrika as students who sat at the feet of the great Afrikan teachers of the ancient world. The Greeks learned a great deal of knowledge and science that they took back to Europe. The Hebrews also learned a great deal from the Afrikan teachers of the Nile Valley, and they placed much of this information, although half understood, in the writings we know of today as the Bible. The Europeans would re-invade Afrika in the 1440s with the rise of a worldwide slave trade we call the Maafa. It is important that we understand that the European enslavers were learning lessons from the Arab enslavers. Although they fought each other at times, in other cases they cooperated.

Slavery by Arabs or by Europeans systematically attempted to de-Afrikanize the Afrikan. Christianity and Islam both sought to take the Afrikan worldview and Spiritual systems away from the Afrikan and implant a colonization of the mind and soul based on foreign beliefs, names, language, and culture. As a people, we have not recovered psychologically or spiritually from the enslavement era. The enslavement of the mind was so entrenched that many Afrikans in Afrika and throughout the Afrikan world remain fascinated by foreign cultures and religions today. Some will leave one foreign religion for another. Seldom do we honor the Spirituality of those souls who fought and died for us. Seldom do we honor the souls of our ancestors who struggled and fought wars against those who dared to enslave people and colonize our lands and our minds.

What I am noting is that Afrikan people and Afrikan culture have been under attack, not only in the last 500 years, but also in the last 3,500 years. The assault has been against Afrikan people, Afrikan land, and Afrikan culture. Nearly a quarter of a billion lives have been lost in war, colonization, forced migration, and enslavement by Arab and European enslavers in the last centuries. This constitutes the most massive genocide in human history. The continuing tragedy is that neither campaign against Afrika have completely stopped or been prevented. Both the European and the Arab have found it necessary to attack that which has been most sacred to Afrika, our women, our children, and our Spirituality. Over the centuries, armies have met on the field, blood has soaked the soil and the shores of Afrika, lives have been given as a sacrifice to Afrikan liberation; yet the battles are not over and the war is not yet won. Afrika is still under attack today. Take the two most recent brutal wars not only in Afrika but in the world. In Darfur and Southern Sudan, innocent children and women are dragged off to be enslaved, raped, or killed by Muslims. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we have seen the worse human loss from neo-colonialism than in any other country where nearly five million Afrikans have died in this unending resource war over diamonds, coltane, and other minerals. As tragic as Rwanda was in 1994, it was the testing ground for a greater tragedy in DRC.

Afrikan Spirituality is the sacred ancestral and traditional belief systems of Afrikan people. Afrikan Spirituality stretches beyond time and space. The first Humans in the world were Afrikans, and the first sacred system in the world was Afrikan Spirituality. Our ancestors were first to built an intergenerational commune of spirituality. The honoring of our ancestors in ritual and tradition is central. The honoring of our ancestors in our life’s work is paramount. Through our daily actions, the way we treat others, the way we live, our goals, our desires, the deep recesses of our inner-selves, all speak to the spirituality imbued in us by our ancestors. A great sense of humility is prerequisite before we can properly honor our ancestors and live our Afrikan faith.

The Afrikan Creator is the first ancestor in our understanding of Afrikan Spirituality. It was the First Ancestor who gave life and breath to the spirit forces of the universe and nature: matter, stars, sun, fire, land, air, and water. These elements have combined to create creation. They are the essential makeup of the universe. Man and Woman must seek harmony with the universe and nature. Our ancestors in the Nile Valley understood this to be Maat. When we live Maat, we seek harmony with the world around us and the universe beyond.

What slavery and colonization over the last 3,500 years have failed to destroy, we have not ourselves seriously considered. Afrikan Spirituality has survived the fire of every evil that foreigners could bring against her people. Although the secrets of how to translate the Mdw Ntr of Tawi (Kemet), the channel to Nile Valley Spirituality, were lost for generations; the traditional Spiritual systems throughout Afrika among the Yoruba, Akan, Zulu, Dinka, Bakongo, and so many others are still intact. The transplanted Afrikans in the New World would maintain the faiths of our ancestors through resistance and war. Surrounded by oppression, these Afrikans in such places as Brazil, Surinam, Jamaica, Haiti, and Florida would create an intergenerational worldview of resistance. These Afrikans, and many others, would fight protracted wars against slavery that lasted for decades.

Some believe that Afrikans in Latin America are just becoming race conscious. This is not the complete case. Many of the Afrikans in Latin speaking countries who had not recognized themselves by race are beginning to do so today. It was and still is common for a person of Afrikan descent from Brazil, Colombia, or another Caribbean or South American country to define themselves by their nations of birth and not by race. Well, since many non-whites in Latin speaking countries are becoming more politically conscious and gaining some access to education, they are beginning to develop awareness of the historic oppression in their countries. They are also raising questions about the hierarchical racial structure of power in their nations.

However, let us be slow to say these countries have shown little Afrikan consciousness, or little “Afrocentricity” as some might argue. Let us not forget the historic resistance campaigns fought in Latin-speaking America. Additionally, Afrikan Spirituality has survived in few places the way it has among Afrikans in these Latin countries. Racial and political consciousness are two forms of awareness that have not been in the main among Afrikans in Latin speaking countries in the Americas. Yet, in the United States, Afrikan Spiritual consciousness has not survived the way it has in many Latin speaking countries. Latin speaking Afrikans have been the primary bearers of forms of Afrikan Spirituality in the New World. While the Afrikans in the United States have led an activist movement for social and political rights, the Afrikans of Latin countries have been heir to strong Afrikan Spiritual survivals in the Americas. In all of these nations, the Afrikan worldview has survived one way or another, though fragmented because of the history of slavery. Our task to the future, is Pan-Afrikan, that is to unite and build the fragments of the Afrikan worldview throughout the Americas, indeed throughout the world.

The Afrikan worldview must be united across time. That is, the present generations must always reach back into time to renew their faith in the ancestral struggle for Afrikan people. Afrikan Spirituality is essential in this process. The Afrikan worldview must be united across space, that is Afrikans must see themselves as a global people and know that the struggle is global. In the process of uniting the Afrikan worldview across time and across national boundaries, we must understand that the Afrikan worldview is not stagnant, rather it adapts to the changes of struggles met in every generation. What is constant in the Afrikan worldview is the honoring of ancestors. Also, constant in the Afrikan worldview is struggle, that is the campaign to always change the world for the better. The worldview of a people is multidimensional and has many forms of consciousness (or awareness) that relates to the groups existence and cultural framework. The worldview of a people stems from their cultural history and current world challenges.

The fact that far too many in the current generation are misdirected by the concept of “Afrocentricity,” is the lesser issue in this essay. The larger issue here deals with the need to reach beyond our limited view of the current “Afrocentric” movement and understand that our Spirituality transcends time and space. Afrikan Spirituality, an essential part of the Afrikan worldview, is not limited to one corner of the world or another, it is present throughout the world. Afrikan Spirituality is not limited to just the past or the present, but is timeless and stretches from the beginning of Human history to the present. We have to connect with the space and time defying nature of our ancestral faith. We have to connect with the enslavement and colonization resistance of our ancestral faith. We have to connect with the ancestral strength and the Afrikan power of our faith. In limiting our view to the ridiculous belief that “Afrocentricity” is a modern phenomenon, we have become lions without teeth and claws. We may wear the Afrikan garb but have no substance. Our strength and global outlook are from our culture, history, ancestors, and Creator. That’s not an ideology or religion; it’s a worldview.

“Afrocentricity” has become a name of an academic exercise, and the major proponents of the propaganda-myth are for the most part all university trained and beholden to positions that curb their academic freedoms and thoughts. The university is the intellectual center of mainstream America. Where “Afrocentricity” exists in the university is only on the fringes of the core curriculum of American education. A nation’s educational system serves the purpose of promoting that nation’s worldview, ethos / cultural constructs, and values. What’s more, an educational system exists to maintain or advance a nation’s status quo. It is a contradiction in itself to have something called “Afrocentricity” being rooted in American universities. Until we build our own university systems, “far beyond the reach of the influence of the Coast” as Ekra Agyiman (J. E. Casely Hayford) said a century ago, we will never be completely free in any academic arena. The only academic arena that we will be completely free in is the one that we build from the ground up. It is only in a university system founded in the total interest of Afrikan people and Afrikan nations that our greatest intellectual and spiritual potential will flower.

The intellectual pursuits of Afrikan interest must be married with the Spirituality of our ancestors, not the American or any other university. Such a marriage can only take place where our intellectual and spiritual centers are linked to the genuine interest of our people. The struggle can begin in the university, but it must not end in it. Paternalist, colonizers, and enslavers cannot build Afrikan institutions for our needs because these Afrikan institutions would be against their own interest. American institutions may tolerate Black Studies course and courses with some level of Afrikan content, but the core values of the institutions remain unchanged, and that is a promotion of the oppressive status quo in society. White think tanks and policy centers that directly influence universities have an ideological, economic, and political orientation that is not concerned about the interest of Afrikan people. Further, there will always be a David Horowitz and some kind of “Academic Bill of Rights” to remind us that the American university is not our house. Now, I argue we should use the university for what it’s worth, but we should also take that reminder and build our own house. If we built a network of Afrikan universities, by definition and nature, they would include the study and promotion of Afrikan Spirituality and Pan-Afrikanism as essential cores of the Afrikan worldview. What nation builds universities that do not promote their faith(s), concepts of nationhood, and ultimately their worldview?

The current “Afrocentric” intellectual enterprise has not sufficiently given direction on the spiritual relationship of our ancestors to our current struggle. One primary reason is that the movement is university based in institutions that are not ours. Instead of being truly Afrocentric, this movement has become limited in its historic approach in some cases and egocentric in others. The “Afrocentric” intellectual and academic movement has not sufficiently addressed the Afrikan worldview’s intergenerational tradition and the Afrikan global struggle for nationhood. “Afrocentricity” in itself cannot represent the Afrikan worldview. To the contrary, “Afrocentricity” is at worst a deviant in the intergenerational commune of Afrikan thought. At best, “Afrocentricity” represents a current fad that will develop into a more serious direction where the proponents will themselves mature into a fuller and more accurate understanding of the Afrikan worldview. If this is done, the “Afrocentrists” will begin to realize the true historic development of the movement.

I have to be fair. Part of the problem with the “Afrocentric” movement is the problem of Black “leadership.” The crises of Black leadership are many. We have leaders who lack loyalty and insight into the Afrikan worldview and thus are not even sure in the direction they intend to lead. We have ivory tower leaders who concoct European solutions for the Afrikan world. We have leaders who concoct other foreign solutions for the Afrikan world. We have leaders who are opportunist, and these will sell all of us for pieces of gold or silver. We have leaders who lack discipline and are thus poor moral examples. We have leaders who are semi-celebrities and are thoroughly egotistical. We have leaders who are very selective in picking issues to battle that will gain them some popularity or favor. These problems of what we call “leadership are many, and they are compounded. The solution is the same. The crisis of leadership will only be answered when we allow our children to develop their natural gifts of genius in Afrikan institutions built in the framework of our worldview.

“Will the Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand Up!”

The Nigerian Tunde Adeleke of Loyola University in New Orleans wrote the interesting essay “Will The Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand Up” in the Western Journal of Black Studies in 2001. The essay in itself is a basic historical exercise of the intellectual movement that proves why Molefi Asante should not be called “father of Afrocentricity.” Adeleke discusses the 19th and 20th century development of the Afrikan intellectual movement. Historians of the past such as James W. C. Pennington who published A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People in 1841, Robert Benjamin Lewis who published Light and Truth in 1844, James Theodore Holly who authored A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government, and Civilized Progress published in 1857. Holly’s argument was based on the Haitian Revolution. He was a nationalist and emigrationist. Adeleke notes Edward Blyden, Bruce
“Grit,” Arthur Schomburg, Woodson, Du Bois, and others.

Adeleke is a case in point. As honorable as it is for him to address an unpopular topic, obviously doing some necessary historical research, he missed the mark. In fact, Adeleke has missed the mark in several other publications. One of his very off-base works is Without Regard to Race: The Other Martin Robinson Delany in which he attempts to prove how un-Afrikan, pseudo-nationalist he felt Delany was as opposed to what nationalist historians have made him out. What Adeleke did in misunderstanding Delany, he also did in misunderstanding the movement before, after, and during the life of Delany in his work Unafrican Americans: Nineteenth Century Black Nationalist and the Civilizing Mission. His misunderstanding of the historical significance of Delany is extended to Alexander Crummell, Henry McNeal Turner, and others. He clearly misunderstands the influence of the American Colonization Society and their founding of the Liberia project. Like many mainstream historians, he wrongly thinks that Afrikans from America colonized Liberia. He sadly misunderstands the lineage of the Afrikan worldview, which he thinks is “Afrocentricity.” Adeleke is correct in asserting that the Afrikan worldview, what he calls “Afrocentricity,” did not begin with Molefi Asante. However, Adeleke sadly does not understand that the Afrikan worldview existed with the first Afrikans in the world and reached a classical stage in Tawi (ancient dynastic Egypt of the great Afrikan Pharaohs). Adeleke believes that “Afrocentricity” began in slavery as a response to European cultural hegemony. He is right in that the Afrikan worldview in the Americas had to adjust to develop a heighten sense of resistance in the midst of slavery. Yet, Adeleke is wrong because he does not understand that the Afrikan worldview went in the hearts and minds of Afrikans to the Americas who were held in bondage. Does he know that the Afrikan worldview in Afrika had to respond to foreign aggression? The Afrikan worldview is ancient and modern, and it is also a message to posterity. Throughout time and in different places, the worldview will adjust to the challenges of new realities, but Afrikan-ness was and will always be with us. Adeleke only did half of what he set out to do when he decided to write his article “Will the Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand.” He didn’t go back far enough. He also misunderstood what he has called the “Unafrican Americans.” Instead, he should have first understood that we are Afrikans in America and used that as the basis of his research.

Adeleke is an excellent example of the crisis in the intellectual movement today. He has much in common in this sense with Molefi Asante. They both have cut the historical lineage of the Afrikan worldview off from its ancestral bloodline. Another problem is that Adeleke has the trained university mentality of beginning Afrikan history in America with slavery. The Afrikan in Afrika developed a worldview of resistance to colonization the same way the Afrikan in America developed a worldview of resistance to slavery. Both Afrikans were oppressed, and both reacted to their oppression. The 19th and early 20th century movements had its contradictions, but the Afrikan lineage was being developed and passed down in generations after the devastation of centuries of slavery. The fragments were being put back together, and they still are today. It’s the thread of the Afrikan worldview that we trace to our present understanding of nationbuilding.

This historical lineage of the Afrikan worldview, the intergenerational communication, has been distorted in the writings of Asante who claims he founded “Afrocentricity,” but it has also escaped the writings of Adeleke who feels that Afrikans taken from Afrika lost their total worldview. What slavery did to the mind and soul of the Afrikan in America, colonization also did to the mind and soul of the Afrikan in Afrika. Still, neither group was completely divorced of the Afrikan worldview. It is that worldview which fired the spirits of Afrikans to resistance. Adeleke’s is an intrigue, to say the least. His article, “Will The Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand Up,” is worth the read, but in general he has presented some tremendous ideological and historical flaws in his research. He is an extreme case of what is very common among many who write to critique or support what they believe is Afrocentricity. A much more accurate assessment is presented in ASCAC’s The Preliminary Challenge, edited by Carruthers.

Greg Kimathi Carr authored the entry in Preliminary Challenge entitled “African- Centered Philosophy of History.” Carr opens with the following:

The essay seeks to place before Pan-African nationalist researchers the challenge of fleshing out the intellectual and ideological genealogy upon which we have constituted our contemporary organizational struggle (285).

From the outset, the essay places itself in the dialogue of intergenerational struggle. Carr himself, along with his colleagues, Mario Beatty and Valethia Watkins are all students of Jacob Carruthers and John Henrik Clarke, now ancestors. The students represent the continuing of Afrikan intellectual thought into the next generation. As a footnote, however, of great significance to his overall essay, Carr made the following statement:

There is for me a clear ideological distinction to be made between
African-centered and Afrocentric knowledge production, stemming, inter alia, from the relationship of the latter concept to the epistemological premises of European knowledge production and the institutional constraints of Western academia that have served to infuse much of Afrocentric discourse with a liberal humanism akin to multiculturalism. This posture has served to instill a marginality and socialization to mediocrity in the work of many academic Afrocentrists, most of whom have a difficult or impossible time explaining what Afrocentricity is. The difficulty stems, I contend, from the hopeless selfreferentiality of what has come to be known in some quarters as the discourse on location and dislocation (286).

Allow me to give an overview of this essay by Kimathi Carr. The core section of Carr’s essay is entitled “A Working Genealogy of Foundationalist Historical Thought: A View From the Bridge.” He traces Afrikan intellectual thought from the 19th century to the present era, noting the works of scholars that spanned a century and a half. Note is made of works similar to Adeleke’s essay. Carr notes PV Vastey’s 1823 An Essay on the Causes of the Revolution and Civil Wars of Hayti, JWC Pennington’s 1841 A Text Book of the Origin and History of the Colored People, and James Theodore Holly’s 1857 A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government. Carr’s research is of a different brand than Adeleke, for one reason, Carr explains that among these 19th century works, an Afrikan consciousness was actively being germinated or produced and reproduced. Of course, the speeches and gatherings of this period were just as central to the development of Afrikan consciousness through the Negro Convention Movement and the lectures of leaders such as Henry Highland Garnet, Martin Delany, Henry McNeal Turner and others. While the leaders of the 19th century were Christians, and many had the idea of “civilizing” Afrika as Adeleke emphasizes, it is these leaders who carried the tradition of struggle into the 20th century. These leaders would lay the groundwork for Pan-Afrikan movement that would lay groundwork for the anti-colonial struggle.

In the essay by Carr, historian George Washington Williams and the American Negro Academy’s Alexander Crummell are placed in their proper historic places. Along with others, it is they who helped transmit the struggle into the 20th century. Before the rise of the Marcus Garvey era, leaders of the American Negro Academy, the Negro Society for Historical Research, and various other organizations were actively engaged in the promotion of Afrikan-Centered thought in the first two decades of the 1900s. In addition to WEB Du Bois, Arthur Schomburg, and John Edward Bruce, particular note is made of Hubert Harrison in Kimathi Carr’s essay. Harrison was a radical activist, and longtime Marcus Garvey supporter. In fact, Harrison and Garvey were close associates in the struggle for which they dedicated their lives. Harrison shifted from a “Class First” philosophy to a “Race First” philosophy because of the influence of Garvey, yet they held each other in great respect. A recommended source is the Harrison Reader, edited by Jeffery Perry.

Adeptly, Carr explains that it was the stirring of the 1920s that led to the formation of the Edward Wilmot Blyden Society which had such members as Willis N. Huggins, John G. Jackson, and John Henrik Clarke. It was the works of John G. Jackson and John Henrik Clarke that laid the foundation for our present era. Jackson, Clarke, and their colleagues such as Chancellor Williams and Yosef ben-Jochannon brought the Afrikan intellectual thought into the latter part of the 20th century. They all had labored decades before anyone began misusing the term “Afrocentricity.” Carr gives important space to the significance of Cheikh Anta Diop, of whom detail will be given later in this essay.

This idea of “Afrocentricity” being a recent development is ridiculous. The Afrikan worldview has come to this generation from past generation. Even in this generation, the worldview is a development of an intergenerational links various intellectual warriors who dedicated their lives to the recovery of our worldview. No small group of people labored on this current development of Afrikan thought. I’ll only review the more significant of the intellectual warriors. John Henrik Clarke, in 1969 had edited Malcolm X: The Man and His Times; and in 1974 Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. Both works are masterpieces on the lives of two of our greatest leaders in the 20th century. Still, by the 1960s Clarke had amassed an impressive number of articles and journal entries on Afrikan history. Chancellor Williams’ classic work, Destruction of Black Civilization, was published in 1971. In the 50s and 60s, Williams authored important essays on an Afrikan-Centered approach to history. In 1972, Williams wrote a tribute to his teacher William Leo Hansberry after his passing into ancestor-hood. Yosef ben-Jochannon’s African Origin of Major “World Religions” was published in 1970, and Black Man of the Nile and His Family was in 1972. John Glover Jackson was authoring works back in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1939 he wrote Ethiopia and the Origin of Civilization, in 1941 he wrote the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth, and with Willis N. Huggins he co-authored in 1934 A Guide to the Study of African History and in 1937 An Introduction to African Civilization. With just mention of some selected works from these authors, it should be obvious that Afrikan consciousness or “Afrocentricity” was not born in the current era. Something that Clarke, Williams, Jackson, and ben-Jochannon all had in common is that they had no problem with speaking about their intellectual predecessors such as William Leo Hansberry, Arthur Schomburg, Hubert Harrison, and others. Out of his admiration for Harrison, Jackson wrote The Black Socrates. Clarke often said Schomburg taught him the relationship of Afrikan history to world history, Huggins taught him the political-meaning of history, and Hansberry taught him the philosophical meaning of history. Chancellor Williams explained in Destruction of Black Civilization, “Standing alone and isolated in the field for over thirty-five years, William Leo Hansberry was the teacher who introduced me to the systematic study of African history …” (361). I must include among the great master-teachers Jacob Carruthers (Jedi Shemsu Jehety). Two men who impacted the life of Carruthers were John Henrik Clarke and Cheikh Anta Diop. In 1972, Carruthers wrote Science and Oppression. It was in 1975 that Carruthers went to Senegal and met Diop, and the inspiration was immediate. Carruthers would explain that Diop commissioned him to study the Mdw Ntr (Divine Speech), ancient language of Kemet called hieroglyphs. By the 1970s, Carruthers was already mastering the ability to translate and teach Mdw Ntr. In 1979, Carruthers would write two essays on the works of Diop, subtitled “The Man Who Refuses to be Forgotten.” It was Carruthers, more so than is generally realized, who taught the present generation of Afrikan-Centered researchers the need to understand Nile Valley civilization and Mdw Ntr. After being commissioned by Diop, Carruthers opened this door, and we all stepped in. These are excellent examples of the intergenerational commune of Afrikan consciousness that spanned the full range of the 20th century. While none of them, from Schomburg to ben-Jochannon claimed any Fatherhood titles on Afrikan consciousness, they all gave credit to their intellectual predecessors and recognized they were continuing a tradition older than they were. “Afrocentrists” and “Afrocentric” supporters are not very aware of this recent intergenerational “passing on of the Elder’s Staff” as Carruthers often quoted from the Sabyt of Ptahhotep.

“Afrocentricity” is not new. What is the etymology of the term “Afrocentricity,” so often used and so often misunderstood? In 1996, Raymond Winbush of Fisk University authored an article for the Ghana International Review, available online, entitled “A Brief History – Encyclopedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography.” He presented an honest history, in brief, of the origins of the term “Afro-centric,” used in 1963 by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.

In the final years of his life, Du Bois followed the advice of the President Kwame Nkrumah who asked him to come to Ghana to “pass the evening of his life” and work with the Encyclopedia Africana. In 1961, Du Bois went to his ancestral homeland where he would spend the last two years of his life. The massive encyclopedia project was never completed. However, Du Bois held meetings and wrote over 100 letters to scholars around the world, Winbush explains. Du Bois wanted the project to be the work of Afrikan writers and to have an “Afro-centric view.” A term was introduced, but Du Bois had been doing primarily Afrikan-Centered research back in the 1890s and throughout his life as I have already explained. Although he made a monumental contribution to Afrikan history through his life’s work, Du Bois is not “the father of Afrocentricity,” and I’m sure he would have made no claims. I’m also sure Du Bois would understood how ridiculous such a claim would be when the Afrikan worldview is a timeless core imbedded in Afrikan people and cultures.

In 1980, Jacob Carruthers wrote an essay for Black Books Bulletin entitled “Reflections on the History of the Afrocentric Worldview.” Later, he wrote an essay, “Reflections on the Revision of the African Centered Paradigm” building on the 1980 work. This 1980 essay was published the same year that Molefi Asante’s Afrocentricity was published. Both of Carruthers’ essays had some truth-telling facts about the origins of the terms “Afrocentric” and “Afrocentricity.” In honoring the ancestors, Carruthers begins “Reflections on the Revision of the African Centered Paradigm” by quoting from the lineage of the Afrikan-Centered worldview genealogy. Carruthers opened the essay with the words of Ptahhotep and then a quote from David Walker’s Appeal.

Then command the servant, thusly: Make an Elder's staff causing my son to stand in my place I will instruct him through the speech of the listeners and the counsels of the first of the ancients who listened to the divinities. In so doing troubles will be removed from the people. - Ptahhotep, 4500 years ago

Let us not underestimate the significance of Carruther’s (Baba Jedi’s) decision to open his essay with these words of our ancestor Ptahhotep. The statement speaks to the fact that within the Afrikan worldview 4,500 years ago, Afrikans were already then looking to their ancestors for traditions, wisdom, and guidance to deal with the challenges and struggles they faced. Our ancestors in the Nile Valley called this sabyt (instruction), and today we call it, among other names, Afrikan consciousness or thought. The statement is all the more significant since a man, Ptahhotep, who was 110 years old when he lived, is making it. The next words in the essay comes from David Walker.

It is expected that all coloured men, women, and children, of every Nation, language and tongue under heaven,...(Who are not too deceitful, abject, and servile to resist the cruelties and murders inflicted upon us by the white slave holders, our enemies by nature) ... will try to procure a copy of this appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them, for it is designed more particularly for them. - David Walker, 1829 C.E.

Although David Walker was a Christian and went on to make Biblical parallels with Afrikan history, he was committed, uncompromisingly so, to the liberation of Afrikan people. That his Appeal is Afrikan-Centered for its’ time is revealed in the fact that his subject was liberation and his audience was Afrikan people the world over. Walker’s writings in fact carried the Afrikan worldview to the next generation, as will be noted later in this essay.

With obvious reference to Molefi Asante, Carruthers explained in this essay that:

We must first recognize that the African Centered perspective emerges from African life. Its existence, is found in the intergenerational transmissions among various African peoples. Obviously no one can "create" or "father" African Centeredness in such a context.

Carruthers explains that he and the “Chicago Group,” nationalists who were working on the Afrocentric World Review that began publication in 1973, were influenced by John Henrik Clarke and the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) who said in 1968 that their work would be along “Afrocentric lines.” Yosef ben- Jochannon’s work had a primary influence on this era as well. AHSA was formed when John Henrik Clarke led a group of Black historians from the Montreal meeting of a group of paternalistic white historians. After making the call for studying along “Afrocentric lines,” Clarke and AHSA would inspire the Afrocentric World Review. Clarke would even become one of the writers for the Afrocentric World Review. This all happened prior to Molefi Asante’s publication of Afrocentricity. Finally, Carruthers clears the fog like the rising sun when he quotes the 1973 words of Anderson Thompson:

Putting Black interests first, the view of Afrocentricity, is the plateau from which we launch our dialogues with those who are dedicated to the establishment of power among African peoples. Afrocentrism strives for reinforcing the New African Frame of Reference being forged by Black brothers all over the world. It seeks for a collective identity founded on Black ideas, rather than the ideas of non-Blacks.

Near the end of the essay, quoting from the 1974 publication of the Afrocentric World Review, Carruthers then notes:

... we assert that all foreign isms, doctrines, ideologies, and systems of thought are not only inadequate but must be avoided. In taking this stand we are not so much anti anything, we are merely pro Afrikan, or in other words, Afrikan Centered.

It is clear from the record that Afrocentricity was early used by WEB Du Bois in the remaining years of his life in Ghana while working on the Africana project. Du Bois would inspire and influence John Henrik Clarke and the formation of the African Heritage Studies Association. AHSA would use the term “Afrocentric,” and the use ended up as the title of the Afrocentric World Review in 1973 where Anderson Thompson would continue to define it as a worldview as Du Bois, Clarke, and so many others had done before him. Eventually, in 1980, Molefi Asante would publish a book with the title, but in no way did he create Afrocentricity, define it before others, “father” the worldview, coin the term, popularize it on his own, or any of the other propaganda-myths associated with him around it. As Carruthers has stated in his books and essays, the worldview emerges from the intergenerational commune of Afrikan people throughout the world and throughout time. The worldview emerges from Afrikan traditions and struggle. The Afrikan worldview depends on the existence of our people, yet it is independent of time and space.

The Afrikan View of History and Culture

Before being taken in chains to the Americas, before colonization, before foreigners corrupted the intergenerational Afrikan mind, Afrikans had a worldview and culture that was fundamentally spiritual. I have always said that the current cultural movement is overly secularized. The so-called “Afrocentric” movement is one example of the secularization of the Afrikan worldview, and the Nguzo Saba (Seven Priniciples of Kwanzaa) is another. Both, Molefi Asante’s version of “Afrocentricity” and Maulana Karenga’s conception of Kwanzaa are supposedly leading ideas in the cultural movement, and they are both highly secular and place little or no emphasis on our ancestral Spirituality. Both Kwanzaa and Asante’s “Afrocentricity” can have a merit of greater significance among Afrikan people if they were properly placed in the Spirituality of the Afrikan worldview.. The same is true of the overly secularized Black History Month idea of February. Afrikan celebrations and holidays must be Afrikan Spiritual if they intend to have a sacred Afrikan core. It is precisely because of our history being told in this secular society dominated by a European form of government and culture, a society which outlawed everything that made us Afrikan, that we now look at the world through the eyes of our oppressors instead of our own Afrikan worldview. Yet, the holidays and celebrations of Christians, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims hold a special place for them; that is their holidays and celebrations are religious based and sacred. Can you imagine a secular holiday for Catholics or Muslims? Must everything we celebrate be absent of the Spirituality of our ancestors. Is Kwanzaa really an Afrikan cultural celebration if it is not properly founded in Afrikan Spirituality, “non-religious” as Karenga says? Is “Afrocentricity” from the Afrikan worldview if it does not hold our ancestors lineage as a sacred tradition? Is Black History Month a celebration of our traditions if it does not rest on the pillars of our sacred worldview?

In the righteous redemption of our culture and traditions, we cannot stop at where we are comfortable in the process of re-Afrikanization if that means neglecting Afrikan Spirituality or marginalizing our culture to some academic exercise or yearly holiday. Afrikan Spirituality is a 3651/4 yearlong lifestyle, and we must honor everyday. We live to become ancestors and so we give honor beyond the grave. We must rear our children on the fountains of Afrikan Spirituality, so we honor our worldview at birth and even before birth. Our Spirituality must become a total part of our lifestyle and worldview before birth, in life, and beyond the grave. For this great project of re-Afrikanization to reach maturity, we cannot escape the necessity of institution-building, Afrikan-Centered institutions, not simply institutions owned by Black people. There is a world of difference between the two.

Where is the world Afrikan Spiritual center, city, or nation governed by our people? Where are the Afrikan Spiritual institutions of the world that function as preservers of our traditions and culture? Where are our intellectual centers that are guided by the Afrikan worldview? It is because we are caged intellectually, spiritually, and physically in the institutions of our oppressors that we cannot even imagine a world network of Afrikan Spiritual institutions, universities, schools, and governments based in the Afrikan worldview. Yet, if you look at America, England, Poland, the Vatican, Mecca, Israel, China, India, and other nations, you see nations set up on the traditions, political and/or religious, of their ancestors. Afrikan people must do the same. As Baba Jake said, “Restoration of African civilization is not possible without a return to African spirituality” (Intellectual Warfare, 1999). As he taught, our ancestors of the Nile Valley called this restoration the Whmy Msu, Renaissance or Repetition of the Birth. The role of history, culture, and Afrikan Spirituality are central to this historic project of rebirth.

Nile Valley Spirituality: Mother Cradle of the Afrikan Worldview

It was my teacher, Baba Jedi Jehewty, who labored for years to teach Afrikan people the significance of the ancient text of our ancestors. It is from his inspiration that I have dealt with text of Nile Valley Spirituality. The writings of Afrikan ancestors predate and are more abundant than the Holy Books of all other cultures. It is time we take our sacred, classical text as serious, if not more so, than others take the writings they say are their Holy Books. The land of Tawi, also known as Kemet, called Egypt by the Greeks, is the classical development of the Afrikan worldview. Yet, the Afrikan worldview did not begin in Kemet. The Afrikan worldview began with the first Afrikans in existence. To Kemet (Tawi), we owe a major historical advancement of the Afrikan worldview in classical literature. In this section of the essay, note will be made of the sacred text of the Nile Valley. We have allowed the secularization of our history, and now it is time to look at the past with Afrikan eyes.

The Afrikan / Black historian and educator today runs into so many problems. First, the mainstream view of history and education neglects the history and contribution of Afrikan people, and the mere fact one may bring it up is considered radical. Second, we have fallen for an idea of history that is a conception of the European mold. Even the way we define a historian is not in the Afrikan framework. Third, Afrikan history has been separated from Afrikan Spirituality. From the Nile Valley, throughout the rest of Afrika, the keeper of the past had a spiritual function to the society. The historian in the Afrikan worldview was much more than an academician. The concept of the academic historian is from the European worldview. Today, any “historian” of Afrikan descent who does not understand his or her role to the preservation of the Afrikan worldview will definitely neglect the spiritual role of the historian. The true Afrikan historian understands that our history is sacred, indeed our culture is sacred. He or she is both a keeper of the past and a promoter of the Afrikan future.

Consider the words of Ptahhotep of at least 4,000 years ago. The Teachings of Ptahhotep or The Sbayt of Ptahhotep is a classic of classic instructions from the Nile Valley. After complaining about the aches and pains of having lived over 110 years of age, he allows one to ponder the question of what good is old age? Then Ptahhotep states:

Permit your humble servant to appoint a staff of old age.
Let my son be allowed to succeed to my position.
To that end I will instruct him in the decisions of the judges,
The wisdom of those who have lived in earlier ages,
Those who hearken to the gods.
So may the same be done for you;
May discord be banished from the people,
And may the Two Banks serve you (Simpson, Literature of Ancient Egypt, 131).

In the sacred words of our ancestor, we have the Afrikan worldview displayed over 4,000 years ago, long before our present time. Ptahhotep is speaking about the need to continue the intergenerational tradition of passing down knowledge from his ancestors to the proceeding generation. The text, the Sbayt of Ptahhotep, instructs us on the role of teaching to the nation, that the purpose of instruction is nation maintenance. Education was not then and is not now only for the sake of education. Instruction, as Ptahhotep explains is for the nation. The theme in the text is timeless for the Afrikan worldview.

The Sbayt of Khety for Merikare is over 4,000 years old. This is the instruction from one Pharaoh to his son before he takes over the throne of the nation. The sbayt or instruction is given from the years of experience in how to properly govern and defend the nation. Though over 4,000 years old, we can clearly see the Afrikan worldview. Because this was in the Intermediate period, chaos and rebellion had become widespread. Khety warns his son to be very mindful of the potential for rebellion in the country. Then he says, aside from military defense, another way to defend the nation is through Good Speech or speech with the foundation of Maat:

Be proficient in speech, so that you may be strong,
For the strength of a king is his tongue.
Words are mightier than any struggle,
And no one can outsmart him who is skilled of heart,
[But you will sit secure] upon the throne.
The wise man is a bulwark (even) for officials,
And those who are aware of his knowledge dare not assail him.
No evil happens in his presence,
But Ma’at comes to him refined,
Like the counsels of what was said by (our) ancestors (155).

We have heard the saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It may have likely come from the banks of the Nile where our ancestors said, “Words are mightier than any struggle.” Maat was the way a nation must be governed. It is through righteousness that the nation’s stability must be maintained. Maat was the throne on which our individual and family lives were to rest. This is the same theme echoed in The Eloquent Peasant or The Mdw Nfr of Khun-Inpu. In this text, the commoner speaks to the nation about the blessings of following Maat. This is directly opposite the European worldview based in the Nicolo Machiavelli tradition of deceit, dictatorship, thievery, and the lust for power displayed in the writings from 16th century Europe known as The Prince. The Afrikans were very clear about the need for military strength, so important for the defense of any nation. This was a concept which the Organization of Afrikan Unity did not understand, and the Afrikan Union does not understand today. The Pharaoh Khety explained:

But as concerns the foreigners, let this be said:
The vile Asiatic is miserable because of the place wherein he is,
Shortage of water, lack of many trees,
And the path thereof difficult because of the mountains.
He has never settled in one place,
But plagued by want, he wanders the deserts on foot.
He has been fighting ever since the time of Horus.
He neither conquers nor can be conquered.
He does not announce the day of fighting,
But is like a thief whom society has expelled (161).

The Pharaoh is giving instruction on the military defense of the nation. The Asiatic in question is the nomadic Arab, related to the Hyksos who would later overrun the entire nation in the 15th and 16th dynasties. Khety said that these nomads were “fighting ever since the time of Horus,” that is they were fighting ever since the beginning of time. There was no need to compromise with people who had nothing to offer your nation and civilization except chaos, colonization, and slavery. Military defense of the Afrikan nation was stressed by Khety. How significant are these words today as we witness genocides from slavery and neo-colonial, instigated wars throughout the continent?

Another great Sabyt is that of Amenemhet I, given to his son Senwosret. The Sabyt of Amenemhet is particularly interesting because it is clear that Amenemhet is teaching his son the lessons of ruling and the lessons of life from his grave. Amenemhet I was the great founder of the 12th Dynasty, and as is told in the Prophecies of Nefeti, he was considered a savior or restorer of the Wmy Msu (the Afrikan worldview). Amenemhet would come from the South, Nubia, to bring order out of chaos in the world.

This Pharoah was a savior of his people 2,000 years before Jesus, except his message was the Wmy Msu or restoration of Maat in the Afrikan worldview. This great Pharaoh was one of the kings of Kemet’s (Tawi’s) Second Golden Age or second Whmy Msu. He was assassinated while ruling the throne, and since the Pharaoh had not prepared his son to rule, he gave him lessons from the grave. The assassination of Amenemhet I is told in the Tale of Sinhue. The Sbayt texts are all classic examples of intergenerational transmission of the Afrikan worldview.

This misguided idea of “Afrocentricity” or the Afrikan worldview being something new from this era of history seems absolutely ridiculous when we sit it along side the Tale of Sinhue. The name “Sinhue” seems to have been one that was very patriotic to the nation of Kemet, for it means “Son of the Sycamore.” The sycamore was a very common tree to Egypt, and it was a sacred tree. The name “Sinhue” speaks to the Afrikan roots that the person had with the nation of Tawi (Kemet, Egypt). Although Sinhue would leave his ancestral land to wonder from country to country, he returned as an elder to his beloved home. The Pharaoh informed Sinhue that he was not to be buried in a foreign land, but that his burial should be done properly in the land of his ancestors. He was given the blessings of the Pharaoh to return home and kiss the ground of his ancestors.

On returning, it was said, “Look, Sinhue has returned as an Asiatic, an offspring of the Syrians!” (Parkinson 40-41). At the moment of noticing that this once proud Afrikan had adopted the culture and ways of foreigners, the Queen and royal children began to grieve. The grieving continued until the Pharaoh himself prayed for Sinhue. Eventually, Sinhue was re-Afrikanized in the story. He washed and shaved, and was given the fine clothes appropriate for an Afrikan in Kemet, along with fine oils, and other cultural gifts to signify his return home. Sinhue said, “A load was given back to the foreign country…” (42). The Son of the Sycamore lived the rest of his life as a re- Afrikanized and happy patriot of Kemet. On his transmission into ancestorhood, he received a royal Afrikan burial. The Tale of Sinhue is especially significant for us, not only because it is so steeped in the Afrikan worlview, but because this ancient text speaks to our current crisis of identity in the world as Afrikan people with foreign mindsets. The story also shows the great antiquity of the Afrikan worldview. We have to go back to Afrika (physically if possible, but definitely Spiritually) and kiss the ground of our ancestors as Sinhue did 4,000 years ago. Finally, as Sinhue did, we must be re-Afrikanized.

The total culture of Tawi (Kemet) is a display of our ancient worldview and Spirituality. Take for instance the pyramids, a key structure on the horizon of the ancient Afrikans. The pyramids were spiritual structures, themselves built over generations, believed to be massive tombs to the Pharaohs and others of nobility. Temples and nonpyramid tombs structures were no less impressive. The structures of Tawi (Kemet) were not built because of arrogance or any great obsession with death, as so many have claimed. The architecture of the Nile was a physical display of the culture’s Spirituality. Proud and honored citizens built these structures, not slaves. Look at the ancient paintings of the Nile cultures and witness offering scenes after offering scenes of food, drink, oils, gifts, and libations being given to parents by children, to Pharaohs by citizens, and to the ancestors or spirits by people. The act of giving an offering or libation is a spiritual act in the Afrikan worldview. The living honor the ancestors, live righteous, and will then be honored themselves by the young and the unborn. The Nile Valley gives us examples of the intergenerational worldview with a very spiritual link. The Afrikans of Tawi believed that it was a great and humble gesture to honor the ancestors, spirits, and the Creator. Thus, children and young people were taught to carry on this tradition. This gesture of honoring and giving reverence was repeated over thousands and thousands of years. Still today, throughout Afrika, and places in the New World where Afrikan survivals are alive, ancestors and the spirit-forces of the universe continue to be honored.

When the Afrikans of Kemet looked back at their history, they knew the sacred value of a culture’s past. History was not simply an academic exercise as it has become in this modern society where we have lost of ancestor’s view of history. We must see the spiritual value of the past. We must not study lives of those who have gone before us simply as an academic discipline. For the Afrikan-Centered view of history, we must study the past for our ancestral lifeblood and connection.

Historical Development of the Afrikan Worldview

What is the Afrikan worldview? It is essential to give a clear understanding of the Afrikan worldview and what is meant when we are discussing it. The Afrikan worldview must include at some levels, among the following:
1. A racial and cultural identity of Afrikan-ness is the very basic foundation of the Afrikan worldview. If we do not know who we are, we can’t be conscious of anything else about ourselves.
2. An historical Afrikan consciousness is what the study of history offers to our generation. As is often said, one must know the past to understand the present and the future.
3. We must devout loyalty to the present struggles of Afrikan people. One can be versed in the dates and names of the past, and of course that is of great significance, but one must also be committed to some action today.
What are we doing in the here and now to correct the wrongs of yesterday
to better the future?
4. Ultimately, we must have an undying commitment to the future liberation of our people. All Human interests are first concerned about the righteous preservation and livelihood of their people first.
5. We must have a knowledge of and responsibility to our community, national, and / or global struggles as Afrikan people. We must be informed about the events of the world that affect our people, and in some way, we should be involved in some way to correct injustice.
6. Last, as Afrikans, a belief and practice of Afrikan Spirituality is central
to the divine guidance we must receive from our ancestors and the Afrikan Creator.

As I adamantly state, “Afrocentricity” is not the brainchild of anyone in our generation. Neither is this the brainchild of anyone in the past. “Afrocentricity,” I argue, has developed into a misnomer itself. The use of the word itself dates to at least the early 1960s with WEB Du Bois, and so the word was not coined in this generation. For now, my point is that the Afrikan worldview or even Afrikan consciousness is much more encompassing than “Afrocentricity” as self-proclaimed “Afrocentrist” has defined it in this generation. I would debate that what we call “Afrocentricity” has become an overly academic exercise of overt Blackness which escapes the responsibility of today’s struggle and the proper acknowledgement of our ancestral struggle. In other words, what we call “Afrocentricity” is becoming more and more a show piece of superficial consciousness. People claim to be “Afrocentric” simply because of their names and dress, or their study of a few courses and books. If that is all the “Afrocentrists” bring to the table, with a misunderstanding of the origins of “Afrocentricity,” then that is indeed a serious missing the mark of the Afrikan worldview. .

In the African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, Cheikh Anta Diop has a chapter entitled “Peopling of Africa from the Nile Valley.” The chapter deals with cultural and linguistic similarities that note the Nile Valley and Eastern Afrikan origins of Afrikan people. His findings are supported by an abundance of archeological records. Not only are the oldest civilizations in the Nile Valley and Eastern Afrika, but the oldest Afrikan Human remains are in the same area. The Nile Valley complex and the surrounding areas are the physical, cultural, and spiritual cradle of Afrika and Afrikan people. Herein is the foundation of the Afrikan worldview. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Afrikans began to develop ways to build societies and live in the world. This development would lead to the building of the world’s first civilizations where the worldview would reach maturation due to the Afrikan invention of writing in an advanced society. In the Nile Valley, the scribes were able to pass down the Afrikan worldview through literature over the course of centuries and thousands of years.

The Afrikan worldview has existed since Afrikan people existed, that is since the beginning of Human history among our ancestors. Unlike some Afrocentrist who believe our generation has enlightened history, the understanding that our history, or properly our ancestors have enlightened our times drives Afrikan Spirituality. The Afrikan worldview is of the past, present, and future. While it will be developed by those who are loyal to our struggle, it is not new in the least. We have discussed the ancient development of the Afrikan worldview, and now some detail will be given to the transition of the Afrikan worldview in a new era dominated by resistance to the New World enslavement of Afrikans.

Without writing any documentaries, Afrikans led massive wars and battles that lasted for years and sometimes decades throughout the Americas. In parts of South America, the islands of the Caribbean, and the United States, Afrikans made a statement about our worldview in the wars, battles, and revolts fought against slavery. The wars of Palmares, the Guyanas and Surinam, Mexico, the Maroon wars of Jamaica and Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the battlefields of Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, the wars of Florida, the revolts of Virginia and the Carolinas, Afrikans have always fought slavery to gain freedom or sacrifice their lives in the struggle. In the process, a worldview of resistance was passed down. In many of the locations of battle, the Afrikan worldview and Afrikan Spirituality still survive today. In Brazil for instance, the memory of Palmares, libations to Ganga Zumbi, and the Spirituality of Candomble continue to inspire the hearts of millions of Afrikans.

Haitian Revolution and Afrikan Worldview

One of the most significant wars against slavery happened in the island-nation of Haiti from 1791 to 1804. As an introduction to the Haitian Revolutionary War, I think every reader and student should begin with the classic research entitled Irritated Genie by Jacob Carruthers. Where the Afrikan worldview is concerned, we learn several lessons from the study of the war and the words of our ancestors transmitted down to us over time in this great resistance war. In a statement that is not only historic, but a foundation of the transmission of the Afrikan worldview from our Motherland to the New World was a prayer by a Vodun priest named Bookman on August 14, 1791. The prayer initiated the long Haitian Revolutionary War that would last over a decade. The Haitian Revolution defeated the greatest military power of Europe at the time, Napoleon’s France. This war was consecrated in the Afrikan worldview, with Afrikan Spirituality, two centuries ago with a prayer in the name of Ogun, the spirit of iron, war, and independence. The Vodun priest stated:

Good God [Ogun] who created the Sun which shines on us from above, who rouses the sea and makes the thunder rumble; Listen! God [Ogun] though hidden in a cloud watches over us. The god of the white man calls forth crimes but our[Ogun] wills good works. Our [Ogun] who is good commands us to vengeance. He will direct our arms and help us. Throw away the likeness of the white man’s god who has so often brought us to tears and listen to liberty which speaks in all our hearts (Carruthers, Irritated Genie, 22).

This Afrikan prayer was given over 200 years ago from today. Is this prayer “Afrocentric” or Afrikan-Centered? Only a miseducated person or myth-maker would doubt it. Bookman called forth a spirit from the bosom of Afrika to assist in a liberation struggle that would last nearly 14 years and cost the sacrifice of much bloodshed. What’s more, Bookman was very clear about not only the current uphill liberation struggle, he was clear about the need for ancestral power and the Afrikan worldview. “Throw away the likeness of the white man’s god…” he said. Bookman understood that it was a military war as much as it was a cultural and spiritual war.

At the end of the war, the spirit of Ogun was still riding high in the souls of the Afrikan revolutionaries. This is obvious because of the words that were shared by Jean Jacques Dessalines, the Governor-General of the island-nation who had brought the people over the threshold of independence after the long war. Like Bookman, Dessalines was clear that the war was physical as well as spiritual. Like Bookman, Dessalines was committed to the Afrikan worldview. Like Bookman, Dessalines words were an historic mandate of the Afrikan worldview for a new era in our history symbolized by eternal resistance to oppression and an undying love for freedom and independence. Allow me to quote generously from Carruthers’ very important work, The Irritated Genie, where there is an appendix of two proclamations by Jean Jacques Dessalines. Consider the following historic words of the Governor-General on the day of Haitian Independence, January 1, 1804:

It is not enough to have expelled from your country the barbarians who have for ages stained it with blood – it is not enough to have curbed the factions which, succeeding each other by turns, sported with a phantom of liberty which France exposed to their eyes. It is become necessary, by a last act of national authority, to ensure forever the empire of liberty in the country which has given us birth. It is necessary to deprive an inhuman government , which has hitherto held our minds in a state of the most humiliating turpitude, of every hope of being enabled again to enslave us. Finally, it is necessary to live independent, or die. Independence or Death! Let these sacred words serve to rally us, let them be signals of battle, and of our reunion.
Citizens – Countrymen: I have assembled on this solemn day those
courages chiefs, who, on the eve of receiving the last breath of expiring liberty, have lavished their blood to preserve it. These generals, who have conducted your struggles against tyranny, have not yet done. The French name still darkens our plains; everything recalls the remembrance of the cruelties of that barbarous people. Our laws, our customs, our cities, everything bears the characteristics of the French – Hearken to what I say! The French still have footing in our island… (Irritated Genie, 123).

After this decree, the sword was turned on the invaders and the former enslavers again. Dessalines words exemplify the Afrikan worldview for his time where he explains the dimensions of the long war that led down the road to independence when he states, “Our laws, our customs, our cities, everything bears the characteristics of the French…” In this proclamation, Dessalines also stated, “And what a dishonorable absurdity, to conquer to be slaves!” By that he meant that the blood of revolutionaries was not spilled in the name of being half-free. He and the Haitian revolutionaries believed that freedom was sacred. We should try believing that freedom is sacred today.

And on the note of Afrikan Spirituality, Dessalines stated, “Natives of Haiti – my happy destiny reserves me to be one day the sentinel who is to guard the idol we now sacrifice to.” The Vodun Spirituality of Haiti, guided by the spirit of Ogun, is what led to the independence of the nation. Dessalines did not abandon the ancestral Spirituality and because of his campaign for liberation, he was eventually given offerings of libation in the island when he became an ancestor.

Dessalines showed that he understood the past, present, and future of the Afrikan worldview. Not only did he honor the brave veterans who died in the war, in an April 28, 1804 proclamation, he also gave homage to Louis Delgres who was born in Martinique, and he gave his life to the cause of freedom in Guadeloupe in 1802. Dessalines said of him:

…the brave and immortal Delgresse, blown into the air with the fort he
defended, rather than accept their offered chains. Magnanimous warrior! That noble death, far from enfeebling our courage, serves only to rouse within us the determination of avenging or of following thee.

He was committed at every moment to the present struggle, and he spoke to the future of Afrikan struggle by saying, “Never again shall a colonist, or a European, set foot upon this territory with the title of master or proprietor.” News of the Haitian Revolution inspired Afrikans throughout the Americas. Dessalines words were a consecration of the Afrikan worldview that spoke to the eternal obligation to struggle against evil. From my analyses, Bookman and Dessalines laid an historic mandate, a spiritual mission, for Afrikan people throughout the world. The revolutionaries in the war were committed to this oath. They gave everything they had to give the struggle to posterity. Today, we have not committed ourselves to the oaths of our ancestors who fought and died in this great war of liberation and other great campaigns of resistance. Our children must learn the glories of their past, and they must learn the great resistance campaigns fought by their ancestors. Our historic mandate or task, those of us in the present, is to pass the great legacy of our ancestors to our children and unborn children of the future. It is at the core of the intergenerational worldview to teach our children that they have not only inherited a great legacy, but that they are the living manifestation of that legacy. The struggles of the Haitian Revolution must be included in the education of every Afrikan child, and it must stay alive in the Afrikan worldview through the generations.

The Intergenerational Afrikan Worldview: An Afrikan-Centered Critique DEBUNKING “Afrocentricity” (the Propaganda-Myth) Part Two by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

2010-08-21T20:59:00.001-04:00

The Intergenerational Afrikan Worldview:
An Afrikan-Centered Critique
DEBUNKING “Afrocentricity” (the Propaganda-Myth)

Part Two

Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

http://www.mukasa.info

Contents of Essay

---Part One--Introduction
What is the Purpose?
Afrikan Spirituality and “Afrocentricity”
Molefi Asante’s “Afrocentricity”
“Will the Real Father of Afrocentricity Please Stand Up!”
The Afrikan View of History and Culture
Nile Valley Spirituality: Mother Cradle of the Afrikan Worldview
Historical Development of the Afrikan Worldview
Haitian Revolution and Afrikan Worldview

---Part Two--

David Walker and the Intergenerational Commune
The Aruthur Schomburg Generation
Afrikan Worldview in Afrika
Olaudah Equiano
Facing Mt. Kenya
Amilcar Cabral
Marcus Garvey,
The Harlem Renaissance and Negritude Movements
The Black Shining Prince
The Unfinished Revolution
Notes to the Present Generation
Last Thoughts

David Walker and the Intergenerational Commune

David Walker, originally from the South, was a Boston business owner who
secretly opened the doors of his home to escaping Afrikans from slavery. Likewise, he provided financial assistance for this struggle. He could have lived a comfortable middle class life, but Walker felt his freedom meant nothing while his people were enslaved. In 1829, David Walker published his fiery, outspoken Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of
the World. In a short time, it was being circulated throughout the South at risk of the safety of those with it in their possession and with a price for the decapitated head of Walker or his body dead or alive. Although he was a Christian and did not advocate emigration from the America, Walker’s Appeal was historic in continuing the intergenerational struggle for liberation. It is proper to begin Part Two of this essay with
the contribution and sacrifice of David Walker to the intergenerational Afrikan worldview.

In my opinion, I believe that Walker spoke more to the present and future whereas Dessalines spoke to the past, present, and future. Nonetheless, Walker’s Appeal was especially landmark for the nature of its uncompromising tone for liberation, and it is firmly placed in the Afrikan worldview. Some of us will fight for freedom as long as we are comfortable. However, in the tradition of Queen Nzingha, Dessalines, Nat Turner, David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, and Malcolm X; others of us will sacrifice all for the sacred and righteous cause of giving an honorable struggle of independence to the future. Proclaiming that he was one of the “sons of Africa” willing to offer his life as a sacrifice to freedom, David Walker laid an historic oath that so many of us have lost. Indeed, that the sacrifice of life in pursuit of freedom honored above and beyond the cowardice of luxury and enslavement is what Walker believed. Although some believe he died from a disease, others believe his death was an assassination. In this offering of his life for the struggle, David Walker echoed the words of Dessalines over two decades later.

David Walker would impact his generation in such a way that his influence would be passed down in time. It is believed that the Prophet Nat Turner read the writing of David Walker for several reasons. First, Nat Turner was able to read. Second, he had liberty to travel some distance to preach to other enslaved Afrikans which gave him more access to such a writing. Walker’s Appeal was circulated in Virginia. In addition, the timing of the release and spreading of the Appeal went along with the revolt led by Turner. Walker was very likely an influence on Nat Turner and other armed revolutionaries of that time. Anyone who reads the “Confessions of Nat Turner,” understands that it is due to the evils of slavery why he felt he should give his life as a sacrifice on the altar of Afrikan liberation. The mere fact that Nat Turner rose in rebellion against the slavocracy of America does more to prove that he was committed to the Afrikan worldview than anything else. He understood that Afrikans were not meant to be
anybody’s slaves, and he set out to make sure others understood it.

Further, we can trace the lineage of the Afrikan worldview through the
confessions of Nat Turner. Although he was a Christian, Turner helped carry the Afrikan worldview into the next generation. As Prophet Nat Turner began to give his “confessions,” his first recorded words were, “Sir, You have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection, as you call it…” This speaks volumes to Nat Turner understanding that there was a fundamental difference in the worldview of his own people and those who saw nothing wrong with the inhumanity of slavery. Instead of calling his actions an “insurrection,” in my estimation from Turner’s own language, he would have preferred to say he was carrying out the “great day of judgment” or the “great work” of liberation. Obviously, Turner wanted to free Afrikans as much as he wanted to terrify and shake the very foundations of the
slavocracy of America. Nat Turner stated in his confessions that he was not meant to be a slave. He was meant for a higher purpose.

I strongly recommend William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond edited by John Henrik Clarke. It not only has the Confessions, but Dr. Clarke and contributing writers set the record straight about our revolutionary ancestor Nat Turner. Dr. Clarke stated in some of his many lectures that the so-called “Confessions” was no confession because Nat Turner did not give away anyone who was not already caught. His “confession” only included those already caught who should have been ready for the gallows like him.

Also, the great David Walker had a significant impact on a radical Afrikan
woman named Maria Stewart. Her husband had been a friend of David Walker, and she admired Walker as an abolitionist. Maria Stewart was strongly moved by Walker’s death defying courage in the publication of his Appeal. In her 1833 lecture at the African Masonic Hall, she asked, “Have the sons of Africa no souls?” In carrying the generational struggle, Maria Stewart called on men who had made themselves too comfortable in the face of injustice to stand up. She asked, where are the men who will defend “African rights and liberty?” Speaking of David Walker who was now an ancestor, she said, “There was one, although he sleeps, his memory lives.” The Black leadership of Boston could not take the hard truth told by Maria Stewart. She eventually moved to New York, but she would continue to work in the interest of Afrikan people her entire life. Marilyn
Richardson’s Maria Stewart: America’s First Black Woman Political Writer includes the writings and speeches of this great ancestor.

Others held Walker’s words to be sacred. The intergenerational Afrikan
worldview, the promotion of the struggle through the power of language that broke ground in David Walker’s Appeal would be carried through time through the life of a former enslaved Afrikan, the great Henry Highland Garnet. In 1843, at the Ohio meeting of the Negro Convention Movement, Garnet gave an historic mandate of resistance to oppression, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America.” The speech was too radical many thought, and it was voted that it would not be published. In 1848,
Garnet not only published his speech, but he included a reprinting of David Walker’s Appeal. His conclusions were the same that Walker had reached, Afrikans must rise up and strike for freedom or die trying. Garnet spoke to the hearts of enslaved Afrikans, having been himself once enslaved. He said to the enslaved on behalf of the “freed” Afrikans:

Many of you are bound to us, not only by the ties of a common humanity, but we are connected by the more tender relations of parents, wives, husbands, children, brothers, and sisters, and friends. As such we most affectionately address you (Bracey, 68).

Like many 19th century leaders, Garnet was a Christian. Yet, as I have said, the Afrikan worldview was being molded during these critical years. In the speech, this historic mandate of resistance, Garnet spoke about the contradictions of a self-proclaimed democratic and Christian nation founded in the evils of slavery. Over a century before the
world would come to know the words of our ancestor Malcolm X, Henry Highland Garnet would say:

The diabolical injustice by which your liberties are cloven down, neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore: it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promises success (Bracey, 71).

Displaying within the Afrikan worldview, ancestral struggle and an indictment to the European enslaver of Afrikan people, Garnet continues:

Brethren, it is as wrong for your lordly oppressors to keep you in slavery, as it was for the man thief to steal our ancestors from the coast of Africa. You should therefore now use the same manner of resistance, as would have been just in our ancestors, when the bloody foot-prints of the first remorseless soul-thief was placed upon the shores of our fatherland (Bracey, 71).

Again, foreshadowing the revolutionary language of Malcolm X who said, “The price of freedom is death” in 1964 - Henry Highland Garnet said in 1843:

If they then commence the work of death, they, and not you, will be
responsible for the consequences. You had far better all die – die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity. If you would be free in this generation, here is your only hope. However much you and all of us desire it, there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once – rather die freemen, than live to be the slaves (Bracey, 73).

In finishing the historic mandate, Garnet spoke of Denmark Veazie, Nat Turner, Joseph Cinque, and Madison Washington. Not only was he historically conscious, Garnet was conscious of the resistance of Afrikans against slavery. He had lived that resistance, and was continuing it long after 1843. In an 1848 speech delivered in Troy, New York, Henry Highland Garnet shows that he was not only conscious of the need and obligation
for resistance against slavery, but that he was also conscious of the need for historical restoration. While he did rely heavily on Biblical references, as all 19th century Christians did. He displayed a timeless Afrikan consciousness and love for his ancestral land. In the
1843 address, he spoke about the Afrikan identity of Egypt; the Heru-m Akhet (Sphinx), Menes, Nitocris, and Cleopatra. He made reference to “Hannibal, the sworn enemy and
the scourge of Rome…”

As the landmark research of John Bracey so clearly informs us in Black
Nationalism in America, Garnet was not an exception to Afrikans in the United States who were not only conscious of the obligation to undying struggle, but conscious of the need to restore the history of Afrika. This movement is hardly a modern creation. The building of historical consciousness has become more progressive over time, and it has led to some level of cultural restoration. Yet, as has been maintained, this has been the work of countless ancestors down through many generations. Those of us alive today are only continuing this great work.

Many of the 19th century nationalists were Christians, but they all thought themselves to be distinctly different from the Christian values of a nation that would enslave their people. Further, although Christians, which reflected their times, they carried the Afrikan worldview in their hearts and minds. It is up to us to advance that worldview today. It is time that Afrikan Spirituality takes its proper place in our hearts and minds. Let us not neglect the historic seeds of Afrikan consciousness because we have been trained in European-western universities and we have not been properly taught to honor our ancestors.

Molefi Asante has been wrongly called “the father of Afrocentricity” by his followers and others who are naïve enough. He has not discouraged the ridiculous claim, and has promoted it. Others mistakenly believe that he coined the term or defined the concept before anyone else. It is the fault of our present generation of “scholars and leaders” for not directly addressing this propaganda-myth at the heart of our worldview. What is called “Afrocentricity” today has no father, and really no innovators, especially from this modern era of history. Additionally, in the Afrikan worldview, nothing has a father without a mother. The idea of a fatherhood for a then modern idea with ancient roots is a form of plagiarism of the older idea. The Greeks were labeled “fathers” of Nile Valley concepts they learned in Afrika. Our scholars and leaders continuously address the Greek plagiarisms of Afrikan ideas, but for political reasons, handshakes, and pats on the back, very few of our “leaders and scholars” will address the modern plagiarism of the cultural worldview improperly defined as “Afrocentricity.” Thus, in not addressing this propaganda-myth, and for some who even support it, the intellectual chaos has become an endless wire of confusion and mis-concepts in our movement. There are no modern
day innovators of the Afrikan worldview because this generation’s knowledge has been passed down from our ancestors. The Afrikan worldview is a product of generations, a product of the history and culture of a people, not an individual.

We should remember that writing was invented in Afrika. The Nile Valley was the world’s first librarian culture. Due to a 2,500 year onslaught against Afrika, the dispersion of populations from the Nile to the rise of the enslavement era in the Arab world and the New World, Afrikans were separated from the language of Mdw Ntr, the language of our ancestors. The language of Mdw Ntr had the cultural imprint of the Afrikan worldview as Baba Jedi noted. However, when Afrikans in the US got the opportunity to use the press, the first words in pen were about freedom. In fact, the first Afrikan newspaper was founded by Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm. They called it Freedom’s Journal. “Too long have others spoken for us” were the 1827 words from the editors of this first Afrikan newspaper in the US. This first copy of Freedom’s Journal
stated dedication to the uplift of the people, a vindication of information about Afrika, and a platform for “whatever concerns us as a people.” The paper spoke against the evils of slavery and highlighted the achievements of our people in the United States, Haiti, and
parts of Afrika. Freedom’s Journal is but another example of how the Afrikan worldview was being shaped and passed down through time. One of the writers for Freedom’s Journal was the great David Walker.

The Arthur Schomburg Generation

No one can claim to be the father of a cultural form that stretches over generations and was shaped by countless men and women. If we allow someone such a preposterous claim, we are ourselves highly questionable in much that we do. John Henrik Clarke’s intellectual roots go back half a century before the publication of Molefi Asante’s Afrocentricity in 1980. Dr. Clarke often illuminated the names of Afrikan ancestors who helped him on the great walk of teaching Afrikan history. He also spoke of the names of
those whom we should all be familiar with in our own studies. By the 1930s, Dr. Clarke had been inspired and taught by greats such as Arthur Schomburg, Willis N. Huggins, and William Leo Hansberry among others. This was all in the 1930s, and Molefi Asante was born in 1942. Anyone who reads Arthur Schomburg’s essay, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” published in Alain Locke’s 1925 The New Negro, will understand that for someone writing then, he was far ahead of his time. Anyone who carefully reads Elinor
Des Verney Sinnette’s biography of Schomburg will understand how ridiculous it is to claim that Afrocentricity was born in this generation. In a lot of ways, Schomburg and Alain Locke were ahead of our time. Anyone reading Schomburg’s little essay will begin to understand that what we call “Afrocentricity” goes way back. I am not saying that Schomburg was the “Father of Afrocentricity,” but I am saying that he is one of our many
ancestors ignored by the current movement that does not understand the historic roots of its own development. Schomburg’s opening statements in the essay speak to his time and ours. He states:

The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.
Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is
unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset….

“History must restore what slavery took way,” is about as Afrikan conscious as a statement can get for the last century or this century. The statement speaks to the necessity to be able to redeem historical consciousness in order to redeem cultural consciousness. No single individual has done or will do this for Afrikan people. This will be the work of a collective movement that must be globally sustained and institutionalized. Schomburg wrote another equally impressive essay abouta century ago in 1913 entitled, “Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History in Our Schools, Colleges, etc.” In ways, Schomburg made the argument for what we call Black Studies more forcefully than many of us today. Why do we think this struggle is a new one? Schomburg said way back in 1913 before the Negro Society for Historical Research:

We have reached the critical period of our educational existence. I have
shown by a few examples of the past available and useful material upon which we can base our future structure. We have chairs of almost everything, and believe we lack nothing, but we sadly need a chair of Negro history. The white institutions have their chair of history; it is the history of their people and whenever the Negro is mentioned in the text books it dwindles down to a foot note (Bracey, Meier, Rudwick; Black Nationalism in a America, 310).

What would Schomburg say about the current state of Black Studies across the country? Would he feel we that we have arrived? Would he feel that we are on the right track? I think Schomburg would be as frustrated with our times as he was with his own. The Black Studies movement is in dire need of new life and new leadership at all levels, from the student leaders to the scholar leaders. This new leadership must first recognize Schomburg and the others of his era as the path-makers of our current foundation.

A significant work from this era of history was The Children of the Sun by
George Wells Parker, published in 1918. Also, Parker had been instrumental in the organization known as the Hamitic League of the World, founded the year before he published the essay. Parker would foreshadow the Afrikan-Centered Nile Valley studies of this present generation by decades. In fact, the little essay by Parker prefigured the studies of Afrikans in the early civilizations of Asia and Europe. Decades ago, Parker had already opened the door of Afrikan global studies. Drusilla Dunjee Houston’s Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire in 1926; WEB Du Bois’s The World and Africa in 1947; Joel Augustus Rogers 1947 World’s Great Men of Color; G. K. Osei’s 1966 African Contribution to Civilization; John Jackson’s Man, God, and Civilization in 1972 were some of the earlier works on Afrikan global studies. Afrikan-Centered research is simply not new by anyone’s standard. John Jackson’s Ages of Gold and Silver in 1990,
the recent research and travels of Runoko Rashidi, and the recent editorial works of Ivan Van Sertima continued the work of Afrikan global studies.

WEB Du Bois, probably at his near finest as far as I am concerned, presented “The Conservation of Races,” a paper over 100 years ago in 1897 before the American Negro Academy. In a lot of ways, like Schomburg, he also made a stronger argument for Black Studies than many of our leaders are making today. Du Bois stated:

For the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: Negro colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro businesses organizations, a Negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy. Not only is all this necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative for negative defense (Bracey, Black Nationalism in America, 258).

There is a difference that must be understood in Molefi Asante and John Henrik Clarke. While Dr. Asante fans the propaganda-myth of being father of a movement, or originator of ancestral ideas, Dr. Clarke on the other hand would always say:

Arthur Schomburg taught me the interrelationship of African history to
world history. Willis N. Huggins taught me the political meaning of history. William Leo Hansberry, in his lectures when he came over from Harvard taught me the philosophical meaning of history (Who Betrayed the African World Revolution, 117).

This often-repeated statement by Dr. Clarke was not to lift up himself, rather it is like a libation to the work of his ancestors. I am not saying that Dr. Clarke was the “Father of Afrocentricity,” but that he was a mover and a way maker in this movement when Asante was known by another name and doing basically multi-cultural research in the 1970s. Molefi Asante, under the name Arthur Lee Smith, authored several multicultural books such as Toward Transracial Communication in 1970; How To Talk
To People Of Other Races with Allen and Hernandez in 1971; Transracial
Communication in 1973; Intercultural Communication: Theory Into Practice in 1976 with Newmark. Few of the followers of “Afrocentricity,” or those who believe they are following “Afrocentricity” understand that Asante was a multiculturalist, or an interculturalist as he might say, before he considered himself “Afrocentric.” How could he be the father of the Afrikan worldview? Why are so many so silent? I bring up Dr. John Henrik Clarke and others for several reasons. The acknowledgement of Afrikan
ancestral influence is not only a show of humility; it is also acknowledgement of a spiritual-cultural-intellectual bridge of those ancestors to our times. If one were supposedly originating ideas that are over hundreds of years old, thousands even, then one could not at the same time properly acknowledge that bridge built by our ancestors.

Many of us have not studied the little known, but great ancestor John Edward Bruce, known as Bruce “Grit.” They called him Grit because he defiantly spoke out and spoke up against injustice at risk of his own personal safety. We think that “Afrocentricity” is new when this great ancestor Bruce Grit founded the The Negro Society for Historical Research in 1911 to promote the study of Afrikan interest. Ralph Crowder has provided us with a biography of Bruce Grit. Bruce was among many
collectors of Black books like Schomburg. Black Bibliophiles and Collectors: Preservers of Black History edited by three distinguished people; W. Paul Coates who is the founder of Black Classic Press, Elinor Des Verney Sinnette who is the biographer of Schomburg, and Thomas Battle who is director of the massive research center at Howard University.
Not only was this great ancestor, Bruce Grit, a self-trained historian, world-renowned journalist, and organizer; he was a fiery journalist at a time when Afrikan people in the US could be lynched for looking a white person in the eye. Bruce Grit, born a slave, was also an early Pan-Afrikanist at the turn of the last century. He built an international
network known as the Loyal Order of the Sons of Africa with members in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. Bruce Grit was a forerunner and eventual partner in the struggle with the great Pan-Afrikanist Marcus Mosiah Garvey of the UNIA who captivated the whole of the Afrikan world.

While Schomburg’s 1913 essay, “Racial Integrity: A Plea for the Establishment of a Chair of Negro History,” was very impressive and progressive in Afrikan thought, he limited the argument to only the Chairpersonship within a university and other educational settings. In the essay, he said himself:

The object of this paper is not to revolutionize existing standards, but
simply to improve them by amending them, so that they will include the practical history of the Negro Race, from the dawn of civilization to the present time (Bracey, Black Nationalism in America, 304).

Of course, although Schomburg didn’t consider the proposal one that would
revolutionize education, it was a revolutionary idea for his times and ours. Still, such a proposal has not been taken seriously. The reason is quite simple; we must build our own schools! If we want educational institutions to train teachers and students to teach what we know is necessary for the future of our people, we will have to build those schools ourselves. Where am I going with this?

Here’s the multi-fold point:

1. What we call “Afrocentricity” is not a new concept to our era of history.
2. Schomburg was Afrikan conscious and so were others of his era, others before his era, and the entire body of men and women who laid the historic foundations for the Afrikan consciousness of our era. This second point has not been properly studied by many of today’s “Afrocentric” scholars who themselves fail to fully understand what they call “Afrocentricity.”
3. As historic as Arthur Schomburg’s “Chair of Negro History” was as a foundational display of Afrikan consciousness, someone else made a stronger case in writings five years prior.
That some else was a Ghanaian of a Fanti background. He was Ekra Agyiman,
better known to history as Joseph Ephraim Casley Hayford, or simply Casley Hayford. I prefer to call him by his Afrikan name, Ekra Agyiman. He lived from 1866 to 1930. He was a strong Afrikan nationalist and Pan-Afrikanist. He was a lawyer, author, educator, and politician. Agyiman was so influential in the political arena as a nationalist that he was called “The Uncrowned King of West Afrika.” Here was a man who was a
foundation to the Pan-Afrikan movement and the Afrikan conscious movement.
Agyiman’s impact was global.

Ekra Agyiman was one of the many distinguished members of the Negro Society for Historical Research founded by John Edward Bruce, Arthur Schomburg, and others in 1911. Schomburg was familiar with the works and the person of Agyiman. The writing in question was Ekra Agyiman’s response in 1908 to a series of articles authored by Edward Wilmot Blyden entitled “African Life and Customs.” Blyden was a world-renowned Pan-
Afrikanist himself who had written Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race in 1887. In his 1887 debate with religion and race in his larger work, Blyden had not seriously considered Afrikan Spirituality. In 1908, Blyden sought to redress the issue in “African Life and Customs.” As only an appendix to Blyden’s articles, Agyiman wrote a short response that was ahead of his times and ours in Afrikan thought on “the Race Question.”

The crux of the educational question, as it affects the African, is that
western methods denationalise him. He becomes a slave to foreign ways of life and thought. He will desire to be a slave no longer. So far is this true that the moment the unspoilt educated African shows initiative and asserts an individuality, his foreign mentor is irritated by the phenomen (84-85).

Agyiman was very clear of the role that education would have to serve in the liberation of an oppressed people. In 1908, he asked a question, “Does a native [Afrikan] cease to be a native [Afrikan] when once he is educated?” Based on that question, this Afrikan made a plea a century before our time: “Heaven grant that the educated native [Afrikan] may never be wanting in his duty to his less privileged brethren or betray their trust in him.” What would he say if he saw how far we have advanced a century later?

Ekra Agyiman seems to have had an impact on the essay by Schomburg.
However, as I stated, Agyiman went a step further. He not only made the case for a “chair of History,” as Schomburg did five years later, but Agyiman said we need a whole university. Afrikans must build the types of institutions free of foreign influence in order to promote the liberation and maintenance of Afrikan nations, in order to preserve our worldview and potential as a people. What we think is a new discovery of Afrikan consciousness is old, and our ancestors have already made the case. Our Afrikan consciousness is due to the worldview passed down by our ancestors. Instead of claiming originality where we have no right, we can make the unique contribution of continuing and institutionalizing the work of our ancestors in our time. In his own words, Ekra Agyiman stated in 1908:

And now I come to the question of questions. How may the West African
be trained so as to preserve his national identity and race instincts?

As a precautionary measure, I would take care to place the educational
seminary in a region far beyond the reach of the influence of the Coast. If I were founding a national University for the Gold Coast and for Ashanti, I would make a suitable suburb of Kumasi the centre. But why do I speak of a national University? For the simple reason that you cannot educate a people unless you have a suitable training ground…

A National Afrikan University, free from “the influence of the Coast” is
something Afrikan people don’t have in Afrika or anywhere else today. After stating the case for an independent Afrikan university, Agyiman then went on to explain some of what the curriculum and instruction in the school would look like. In addition to having languages in the study of Fanti, Hausa, and Yoruba, Agyiman’s ideal university that he hoped of a century ago is one we have yet to come to in our times. He foreshadowed
what we call Black Studies / Afrikan Studies / Nile Valley Studies back in 1908 with the following words:

I would found in such a University a chair of History; and the kind that I
would teach would be universal history, with particular reference to the part of Ethiopia played in the affairs of the world. I would lay stress upon the fact that while Rameses II was dedicating temples to “the God of gods, and secondly to his own glory,” the God of the Hebrews had not yet appeared unto Moses in the burning bush; that Africa was the cradle of the world’s systems and philosophies, and the nursing mother of its religions. In short, that Africa has nothing to be ashamed of in its place among the nations of the earth… (86)

In discussing the impact that Ekra Agyiman had on Afrikan thought, note must be made of two people that touched his life, his wife of some years Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford and his Pan-Afrikanist colleague Edward Wilmot Blyden. Adelaide S. Casely Hayford was a leader in her own right. Adelaide M. Cromwell gives us the biography, An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford.

Adelaide Hayford was herself a nationalist, Pan-Afrikanist, and an educator who understood that education was essential for Afrikan people. Adelaide was a supporter of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA and an officer of the Sierra Leone branch. Her life was dedicated to the interest of her people in general and the educational uplift of Afrikan girls in particular. We owe to the great Adelaide Casely Hayford the raising of Afrikan consciousness and activism in Afrika and the United States. When she toured the US on speaking engagements, she would often wear the pride of Afrika in traditional kente cloth. She promoted Afrikan arts, crafts, song, and dance. This was in the 1920s when she and others promoted Afrikan culture before anybody was using the word “Afrocentric” at
the time. Today, we have a word and don’t know the contributions of women like Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford.

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832 – 1912) was one of the leading Pan-Afrikanist and nationalist of the 19th and the early 20th century. Hollis Lynch authored the informative biography Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot. He was born in the Caribbean, the island of St. Thomas. After moving to the United States to attend Rutgers Theological Seminary, he was turned down because of American racism. He was in the United States
when the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was being enforced, kidnapping Afrikans who were never enslaved before and others who had ran away to gain their freedom. Shortly thereafter, Blyden was recruited by the American Colonization Society (ACS) and emigrated to Afrika, Liberia and then Sierra Leone. He came back to the United States over a dozen times, and each time was to interest Afrikan people in America of returning to Afrika. This did not mean giving up the battle against slavery. As the great Pan-Afrikanist and emigrationist Martin Delany, a contemporary of Blyden, had shown in the example of his life, the fight against slavery and the right of emigration to our Mother Land were one and the same. In fact, Delany’s response to the 1850 US Constitutional Fugitive Slave Law is historic:

Honorable mayor, whatever ideas of liberty I may have, have been received from reading the lives of your revolutionary fathers. I have therein learned that a man has a right to defend his castle with his life, even unto the taking of life. Sir, my house is my castle; in that castle are none but my wife and my children, as free as the angels of heavens, and whose liberty is as sacred as the pillars of God. If any man approaches that house in search of a slave -I care not who he may be, whether constable or sheriff, magistrate or even judge of the Supreme Court nay,
let it be he who sanctioned this act to become a law [President Millard
Fillmore], surrounded by his cabinet as his bodyguard, with the Declaration of Independence waving above his head as his banner, and the constitution of his country upon his breast as his shield - if he crosses the threshold of my door, and I do not lay him a lifeless corpse at my feet, I hope the grave may refuse my body a resting-place, and righteous Heaven my spirit a home. O, no! He cannot enter that house and we both live. (Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism, 112).

Edward W. Blyden is one of the many ancestors who carried the Afrikan
consciousness movement into the 20th century. He and other ancestors passed the Afrikan conscious spirit to the generation that would pass it to our times. My elder and teacher, Baba Jedi Jehewty (Carruthers), would often read one of his favorite quotes from Edward Blyden about the Afrikan personality. The statement was made in 1893, and shows significantly enough that the roots of the Afrikan worldview are not a modern affair.
Blyden shows us that our ancestors carried the burden and love of fighting the struggle and passing it through the generations. Here’s the 1893 quote by Edward Blyden:

It is sad to think that there are some Africans, especially among those who have enjoyed the advantages of foreign training, who are blind enough to the radical facts of humanity as to say, ‘Let us do away with the sentiment of race. Let us do away with our African personality and be lost, if possible, in another race.’

This is as wise or philosophical as to say, let us do away with gravitation, with heat and cold and sunshine and rain… There is, only then, one fatal influence against all this teaching, and that is, The Whole Course of Nature. Preach this doctrine as much as you like, no one will do it, for no one can do it, for when you have done away with your personality, you have done away with yourselves. Your place has been assigned you in the universe as Africans, and there is no room for you as anything else (Carruthers, Intellectual Warfare, 264-265; Lynch, Black Spokesman, 200-201).

Over a hundred years ago, in 1893 Blyden gave an historic mandate to the 20th century centered on the Afrikan personality. In the university, WEB Du Bois’ mandate has been overplayed while Blyden’s mandate has been all but totally ignored. In 1903, Du Bois opened Souls of Black Folk with the following words:

HEREIN lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.

With all due recognition to the monumental works of Du Bois, in the Souls of Black Folk, he only stated a problem. This statement from Souls of Black Folk is often quoted, but more focus should be placed on some of Du Bois’ other works, in particular his 1897 “Conservation of Races.” The 1897 presentation of Du Bois was like Blyden’s 1893 statement, both were prescriptive, that is solutions to the problems of Afrikan people. If the Afrikan Creator assigned us our place in the universe as Afrikans, we must
protect and maintain that place as Blyden and Du Bois explained over a century ago. The historic mandate of the Afrikan personality and conservation of the race did not wither away after the 1890s. Fortunately, along with Blyden’s and Du Bois’ Pan-Afrikan spirit, the mandate was given breath through the ages.

One of our ancestors who labored throughout his life to provide our people with an Afrikan intellectual frame of reference was Carter Godwin Woodson (1875 – 1950). Let me say at the outset that he was not the “Father of Black History.” In 1915, Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The following year, the Journal of Negro History was founded. The pages of the journal are still a wealth of valuable information for the Afrikan-Centered researcher today. In 1926, Woodson
started what was then known as Negro History Week, and by 1976, it developed into Black History Month. Some may call him the founder of Black History Month, but the notion that he is the “Father of Black History,” which is the oldest Human history in the world, is as silly as calling Molefi Asante the “Father of Afrocentricity.”

Carter G. Woodson’s most enduring and classic work is the Miseducation of the Negro from 1933. In this work, he laid out a foundation of study relevant to the reality of people of Afrikan descent in America. He understood, as many of his contemporaries did, that a European based education for Afrikans, without a critical analysis, is detrimental. Consider this often-quoted statement from the text:

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door.

He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.

The statement by Woodson speaks to the need for Afrikan people to create a
system of education that meets the needs of our existence. Education, Woodson understood, is training for subordination or it is liberating. Either we will be trained into another people’s worldview, or we will receive an education that will promote our own. Woodson understood the need of an education for our reality decades before our times, and others understood it decades before his time. Our task today is to institutionalize the Afrikan worldview in bricks and stones. We must build the universities and schools that our leaders have designed the blueprint for some time ago.

While Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro is his most enduring work, he has some other equally impressive works. One of which is African Heroes and Heroines, published in 1939. This work is highly Afrikan-Centered for its era, and that he laid foundational groundwork with it is undoubted. He opened chapter one of African Heroes and Heroines with a statement that expresses a common theme throughout his work that has helped chart the proper course of Afrikan history. The statement follows:

Neither Europeans nor Americans, as a rule, endeavor to tell the truth
about Africa. Most foreign writers produce such accounts as support their
religious propaganda and the program of the economic imperialists. What they have found in Africa is observed through the eye of a prejudiced mind, and the faults of the natives are played up as justification for conquest and exploitation.

Carter Woodson went on in this work to detail great events and ancestors in Afrikan history, to disprove the idea that Afrika has no history, and to show to his generation of readers and ours that Afrikan people have an esteemed place among the people of the world. Woodson understood the need for Afrikan people to learn and appreciate their history at a young age. This is significant to his starting Negro History Week in 1926.
Additionally, in 1928 he authored African Myths, Together with Proverbs. This was a children’s book that was used in public schools that had folktales, proverbs, and myths from various parts of Afrika. The reader should see the need to understand that the historical basis for Afrikan-Centered thought is not new to our era in history.

The study of Afrikan nations, especially those at a time when they were less corrupted by foreign influences, is a study of Afrikan societies living the Afrikan worldview. John G. Jackson’s Introduction to African Civilization and Cheikh Anta Diop’s Precolonial Black Africa have been very helpful in basic yet fundamental research in this area to readers. Jackson and Diop, both foundation building, Afrikan-Centered scholars who laid groundwork decades prior to the 1980s, are names that any serious
researcher will seek out. Jackson became an ancestor in 1994 and Diop made his transition in 1986. We tend to think of these men as contemporaries, but there works stretch back decades before the 80s and 90s. It was in Diop’s 1955 work, Nations Negres Et Culture and his 1967 Anteriorite Des Civilisations Negres: Mythe ou Verite Historique, that would give rise to the English translation of African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality in 1974. John Jackson’s masterful work in 1970, Introduction to African Civilization, branched from at least two earlier works from the 1930s. With Willis N. Huggins, Jackson co-authored A Guide to the Study of African History in 1934 and An Introduction to African Civilizations in 1937. To this list, we should add the already mentioned 1939 African Heroes and Heroines by Carter Godwin Woodson and his 1936 The African Background Outlined. Also, the historic 1947 work of WEB Du Bois entitled The World and Africa was a contributing piece to the era. These works and many others began to pave the way for the Black Studies era and Afrikan
intellectual thought in general for the latter half of the 20th century.

My emphasis, however, has been that from this historiography we can see that two generations of Afrikan people who did not know of or use the words “Afrocentric” or “Afrocentricity” became more knowledgeable about traditional Afrikan civilizations that existed after the decline of dynastic Kemet to the rise of the resistance campaigns against foreign incursions into Afrika. My emphasis has also been that Afrikan people had the blueprint of their cultural worldview from at least the beginning of Nile Valley civilization over 5,000 years ago. As Afrikans dispersed from the Nile and East Afrika to populate the continent, they may have lost the Nile Valley writing systems of Kemet and Kush, but they took with them the Afrikan worldview as they founded new Afrikan civilizations throughout the continent. The great challenges of Afrikan civilizations came from foreigners whose very religions were based on the domination of Afrikan land and people. With the rise of Arab and European slavery and colonization, the Afrikan worldview was severely challenged, yet not destroyed. The Afrikans taken in slaveships to the Americas took the cultural blueprint of the Afrikan worldview. The Afrikan worldview manifested itself in massive resistance campaigns throughout the Americas
and massive resistance campaigns throughout Afrika against colonization. The blueprint or seed of the Afrikan worldview can be traced across the generations because our ancestors have successfully transmitted this knowledge and wisdom in spite of the inhumane persecution they had to endure and fight. We must properly honor their struggle and continuity of the Afrikan worldview to gain our own strength.

Afrikan Worldview in Afrika

Afrikan-Centered intellectual thought is not new to our era, and it is not limited to the geographic confines of America. In fact, I totally disagree with the many scholars who believe it is an “African-American” creation. Afrikan-Centered thought is a birth from the worldview of Afrikan people and cultures. The ancient, classical worldview of Afrika from Kemet (Tawi) has been given some space above. It is necessary to understand that before the rise of dynastic Kemet, Afrikans had a worldview. During the rise of dynastic Kemet, Afrikans had a worldview. Then, after the decline of dynastic Kemet, Afrikans still and have since maintained a worldview. The rise of Afrikan nations through civilizations, kingdoms, and city-states were all expressions of the Afrikan worldview to varying degrees. Some of the primary source writers who eye-witnessed Afrikan civilizations before the rise of the trans-Atlantic Maafa were explorers who very frequently reported on the level of advanced civilization the Afrikan nations reached. These explorers reported on peaceful societies with intake cultural traditions, well built homes or palaces, trading systems, and specialized labor. A good work on the subject is Basil Davidson’s African Civilization: Revisited.

The Arab and European slave trades, and the wars that resulted, eroded Afrikan cultures in many locations. Yet, the traditions and links from one generation to the other were not destroyed. From the decline of dynastic Kemet to the rise of the European slave trade, the ancient civilizations of Ghana, Mali, Benin, Congo, Zimbabwe, Kilwa, and others; we know that Afrikans were building thriving nations throughout the continent at
different stages. While much of the early writings from this era are translated from Arabic, researchers must be mindful of the flagrantly racist or anti-Afrikan bias of such primary sources from the accounts of Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, Ahmad Baba, and others. However, these accounts and others give us some insight into Afrikan nations before foreign influence and the devastation that foreigners had on the societies.

Olaudah Equiano

One such account is from an autobiography of an Afrikan who was enslaved as a child. We can get a glimpse into an Afrikan society uncorrupted by foreign influence through the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, entitled The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings. Equiano was only a boy when he and his sister were kidnapped into the horrors of the bowels of the slave trade in 1755. His account offers a vivid picture into Afrikan life, the inhumanity of slavery, and the endless desire to promote freedom. While separated from his people and their worldview, Equiano was converted to Christianity. Yet, as an abolitionist and a promoter of Afrikan emigration, Equiano believed in the struggle for freedom’s cause. His autobiography was completed in later years, and it gives us a view of an Afrikan nation before foreign corruption. He was from the kingdom of Benin, and the people were very conscious of their worldview and the role of the ancestors in it. Equiano explains in recounting his life that his people were a very Spiritual people who believed in the “one Creator,” but like all Afrikan cultures they also believed in the spirit-forces of ancestors and nature. He explains:

For this reason, they always, before eating, as I have observed, put some
small portion of the meat, and pour some of their drink, on the ground for them; and they often make oblations of the blood of beasts or fowl at their graves. I was very fond of my mother, and almost constantly with her. When she went to make these oblations at her mother’s tomb, which was a kind of small solitary thatched house, I sometimes attended her. There she made her libations… (40)

Afrikan Spirituality is displayed here when Equiano described how his mother gave homage to his grandmother with libations. The fact the he was with her at the grave was another link in the intergenerational commune. In essence, with the reconstruction of the Afrikan worldview being our major project, commissioned to us by our ancestors; we intend to give a proper libation to our Mother Land, our culture, and our past. We are all
Equiano’s now in search of the gravesites of our ancestors. The reverence and honoring of the ancestors is a cornerstone or pillar in the Afrikan worldview and Spirituality. The tradition is much older than the 1700s, but I note it here to explain the continuity of the Afrikan worldview throughout time. Like Kenyatta’s account of his nation that will be
explained shortly, Equiano also explains how some traditions and knowledge were passed down through the generations.

It is worth noting that Afrikan nations had an intergenerational system of passing down traditions, wisdom, and culture. When foreigners went into Afrika, they brought devastation, not help and civilization. The people of Afrika needed no help from the Arab or the European. The Afrikan had a culture, language, and a spiritual system. The Afrikan soul needed no saving from the foreigners. In fact, foreigners have done a great deal of
wrong in Afrika. Consider George Washington Williams’ 1890 letter entitled “A Report upon the Congo-State and Country.” Williams was equally appalled by the Arab slave trade in the Congo, as he said in the letter that the trafficking in Humans went on with the basic approval of Leopold’s men. He explains from his travels how contact with the
European slave trade, Belgian colonialism, and rum had devastated whole populations:

These various peoples are differentiated by their environs and
occupations. In the Lower Congo, where the natives have been in contact with Europeans for centuries, felt the shock of the slave-trade and the degrading influence of rum, they are diminutive in form, obsequious, deceitful, untrustworthy, unmanly and unreliable. Their villages are the abodes of wretchedness, misery and common vice. Their huts, poorly constructed of bad material, and their uncleanness breed the most pestilential diseases, which often devastate whole communities of these hapless victims of their own filth.

Passing from the coast inland I found a slight improvement, a stronger
and more active people, in the Cataract Region; and yet these pastoral people are surely falling under the destructive influences of poisonous liquor. Under the effect of this deadly liquor I found the old people looking older, and the young men weary and prematurely decaying; and villages, formerly the scenes of content and activity, at present rent by brawling disorder.

At Stanley-Pool, where the natives cannot obtain liquor, I found them an
industrious and prosperous people. They are fishermen and traders, and live in neat and comfortable villages. And as I continued my journey up the river, I noticed the native type improving in feature, size, complexion and even in character. Among the people around Bolobo, Bangala, and Equator I beheld the most splendid types of physical manhood I had seen in any land or among any people I have traveled; I found them brave, frank and generous; but how long they will be able to keep this character if rum is introduced among them, I cannot say (Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography, 272).

It was clear from Williams’ writings that he understood the damage done to
Afrikan nations by slavery and colonization. In the letter, he not only spoke of the physical damage done to the people, but also the damage done to the nations’ character. People who once lived by the moral codes of their cultures had lost their ways and traditions. This is in the wealthy nation of the Congo where devastation and genocides still haunts the people. In the new Congo, just as in the old, the need for an Afrikan
defense system of a continental scope is urgently needed. I use the example of the Congo, through the eyewitness account of Williams to show the damage done to the Afrikan worldview by Arabs and Europeans. Equiano’s autobiography gives an example of the Afrikan worldview and how European slavery would erode it. Let us briefly consider the Afrikan worldview through the account of another Afrikan.

Facing Mt. Kenya

I absolutely recommend a reading of Facing Mt. Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta for
everyone, and a revisit of the text by those who are familiar with it. In essence, the central purpose in Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mt. Kenya was to explain the cultural worldview of his people. Kenyatta belonged to the revolutionary generation of Afrikans who led the Independence movement that stretched across the Afrikan continent. Kenyatta himself, in
spite of his contradictions, was a great leader in the Independence movement. He would go on to be the first president of the nation of Kenya in 1963. Kenyatta understood the role of Afrikans understanding the intergenerational worldview. In Facing Mt. Kenya, he wanted to present the Afrikan nation of the Gikuyu before foreign domination.

The Gikuyu (or Kikuyu) people had a very stable and intake nation beyond the Arab and European slave trading and colonization assaults against Afrika. Kenyatta’s writing gives us an in-depth look into that part of Kenyan culture not damaged by foreign influence. In the preface of the book, Kenyatta says, “The cultural and historical traditions of the Gikuyu people have been verbally handed down from generation to generation.” He referred to this handing down of knowledge being equivalent to liberal
education. Throughout the text, he explains how the elders and adults of society teach the Gikuyu Spirituality, customs, oral histories, legends, and traditions to the children. As a result, the Afrikan worldview was re-germinated in every new generation. Facing Mt. Kenya, published in 1965, is part of the intergenerational dialog or commune among Afrikan people and the Afrikan worldview. Kenyatta knew this well as he wrote, “I know
that there are many scientists and general readers who will be disinterestedly glad of the opportunity of hearing the African’s point of view, and to all such I am glad to be of service.”

On a second examination of the statement, Kenyatta reveals that his writing was for a higher purpose, a “service” as he put it. Likewise, Kenyatta was clear, as many of his contemporaries and comrades were, on the Afrikan worldview. He said that his writing’s were “the African’s point of view.” That Afrikan point of view, Kenyatta explained throughout the book, was taught by remote ancestors to ancestors, and then taught by ancestors to living elders, and transmitted by elders and adults to young people and children. The children would one day have the responsibility and obligation to pass the Afrikan worldview to the unborn. In fact, he begins the text by discussing the divine origin of the world and the nation according to his people. Thus, we can infer from Kenyatta’s knowledge, the Afrikan worldview is not the domain of any individual man.
Rather, the Afrikan worldview is a gift of the Afrikan Creator that is passed on through time to maintain our societies. This analysis would make sense among any Afrikan culture at any time in history.

Amilcar Cabral

Again, the fact is that all Afrikan cultures, by the divine rite of coming into existence from a very distant past, possessed the Afrikan worldview. That worldview was thus passed down through the ages. My fundamental position is that the Afrikan worldview was not created in America among “African Americans,” but rather began in Afrika. The Afrikans taken to America on slave ships carried the worldview with them. In a 1970 publication of his memorial to Eduardo Mondlane, entitled National Liberation and Culture, I agree with Amilcar Cabral where he states:

Whatever may be the ideological or idealistic characteristics of cultural
expression, culture is an essential element of the history of a people. Culture is, perhaps, the product of this history just as the flower is the product of a plant.

This 1970 statement of Cabral, a revolutionary leader in the armed struggle for independence, were words to honor another revolutionary leader in the armed struggle, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique who had founded Frelimo. Amilcar Cabral was the foremost leader of the armed struggle for the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in West Afrika. Cabral dedicated his life to the resistance campaign for his people, and eventually he gave his life to this struggle with his assassination in 1973 – Mondlane was assassinated in 1969. Cabral’s soldiers of the PAIGC often saw him, not only directing battle, but in battle with them. Cabral and Mondlane are honored ancestors for Afrikan people throughout the world as anti-imperialists and armed freedom fighters.

Cabral was an Afrikan nationalist and Pan-Afrikanist. Often, he is wrongly called a Socialist, Marxist, or Leninist. Without a doubt, he had Soviet leaning propaganda in his speeches and writing. Unfortunately, Cabral and his generation of armed revolutionaries have been seriously misunderstood, including Mondlane. Cabral and the other independence leaders were first and number one committed to the freedom of Afrikan people and Afrikan land. Many espoused Soviet-influenced propaganda for the primary purpose of getting arms and supplies for battle. They saw some valid parallels
with class exploitation or the potential thereof among middle and upper class Afrikans in Soviet-influenced propaganda. Yet, Cabral and the leaders of the independence generation of the 1960s and 1970s were all first and foremost committed to Afrikan nationalism. Without understanding this, one can miss the fact that Cabral and his generation have made a great contribution to the Afrikan worldview.

Cabral’s contribution to the Afrikan worldview came on the battlefield. He was a modern day Afrikan warrior. Cabral was of the utmost what we call Afrikan-Centered or “Afrocentric” before either term became popular. Why? Because he was willing to go into battle for the land of his people, the land of his ancestors. He was not seeking status, tenure at some university, or political office; Cabral was concerned about one thing:
liberation by any means.

Further, he has left us some of his writings and speeches. Our People are Our Mountains, Return to the Source, and Revolution in Guinea are among his contributions. In National Liberation and Culture, Cabral said that culture grows out of a people’s history as a flower grows from a plant. How appropriate that is for the issues raised in this essay! For anyone who would dare say that Cabral was not Afrikan-Centered, he spoke about the revolutionary influence of culture to a people. He also spoke about how oppressors always attack the culture of the oppressed. Cabral understood that resistance and freedom rest in Afrikan culture for Afrikan people.

Marcus Garvey,
The Harlem Renaissance and Negritude Movements

First, the Harlem Renaissance was bigger than Harlem, and Negritude was bigger than Paris. These are movements that developed from a growing historical and cultural consciousness among Afrikan people in different parts of the world. It was the international emigrationist and rising nationalist movements of the 19th century that laid the historic groundwork for the UNIA, the Renaissance, and Negritude. The 20th century
movements were all anti-colonial. These movements would give foundation to what would later develop as the Afrikan Independence Revolution beginning with Ghana in 1957, and would spill over in the 1960s to other colonies in Afrika. My point is that, the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude had historical models before their times, and no movements ever develop out of a vacuum.

When discussing the development of the Afrikan worldview of the 20th century, its’ influence on the opening of the 21st century, and the intergenerational development of Afrikan intellectual thought, we must make note of certain influences. The impact of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) on the 20th century must not be underestimated. Basically, after the height of Garvey’s UNIA, every Black nationalist organization in America was influenced one way or another by the movement he led. His influence was felt deep in the Pan-Afrikan and decolonization movement decades after he became an ancestor. Garvey belonged to an era of the Harlem Renaissance and the general stirrings of decolonization in Afrika and around the world. Although it is not wise or accurate to do so, many have tried to write Garvey out of the Harlem Renaissance. If the Harlem Renaissance was a storm, Garvey and the UNIA were the eye of it. Garvey’s name and organization was the name spoken of by the conscious masses of people in the 1920s at the height of the UNIA. Garvey impacted millions in America and around the world. For his era in history, none carried the Afrikan worldview over to the next generation like him. It is because of Garvey’s
organizational genius that his influence is still very much alive in our times.

Although not as far reaching as Garvey and the UNIA, the Negritude movement is in many ways equally impressive. The primary founders of the Negritude movement were Aime Cesaire from Martinique in the Caribbean, Leopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal in West Afrika, and Leon-Gontran Damas from French Guiana in South America. The lives of these three Afrikan men crossed the borders of their respective countries to help build a movement. Their associations were examples of the potential of Pan-Afrikanism. While it is widely recognized that the writers of the Negritude movement were at times preoccupied with European culture, no one can deny that these writers and activist helped carry the Afrikan worldview into the following generation.

The same is true about the Harlem Renaissance. Some writers were more preoccupied with American and European values than Afrikan restoration, yet the movement as a whole was significant in the intergenerational struggle for Afrikan people. We may critique the movements and leaders of the past, as certain Afrocentrists seem to often find necessary, but those leaders and movements of the past must be honored for laying the foundations upon which we stand today. We have not built our own foundation; on the contrary, our ancestors have built our foundation. We have an obligation to renew the foundation and pass it on, but we did not create it.

It must be acknowledged that Afrikan women were active in both movements. Zora Neal Hurston, Jessie Fauset, Queen Mother Moore, the women in leadership positions in the UNIA, and others were active in the Harlem Renaissance. TD Sharpley-Whiting has authored the text Negritude Women. In the Negritude movement, the works of Suzanne Lacascade, Suzanne Roussy-Césaire, and others were invaluable. There has been no movement or revolution of great significance in Afrikan history that excluded women. Our sisters have always been in important roles or in leadership positions.

The Negritude movement developed for many of the same reasons as the Harlem Renaissance. The historical era preceding the birth of both movements was marked by the heightened colonization of Afrikan lands. In America, the Garvey movement was also fueled by the rise of segregationist laws and practices against people of Afrikan descent. In essence, both the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude movements were logical reactions to growing white supremacy in a world where Afrikans saw their continent
being taken over by alien rule.

It would not be chronologically accurate to compare the Harlem Renaissance to the Negritude movement, the first went into decline in the 1930s as the other was just beginning. It is rather more accurate to look at these movements as an intergenerational continuum that bridged across language and space. The Negritude works were primarily in French while the Harlem Renaissance works were in English. In fact, the Negritude writers acknowledged the influence that Harlem Renaissance writers had on their works. Claude McKay, Langston Hughes and others impacted the Negritude movement. It is highly commendable that the Negritude writers did this because there was not only the language barrier, but national boundaries that separated the movements.

Over time, the Afrikan worldview has and will always adjust to current struggles faced by our people in the world. The one constant factor of the Afrikan worldview is the struggle for Afrikan liberation. Developments and adjustment have occurred with time, and these will continue to evolve, as they should. At no point does the worldview completely recreate itself. The Afrikan worldview stems from Afrikan culture, people, traditions, and history. One of our great challenges as Afrikan people is to take the
historical development of Afrikan intellectual thought, institutionalize it, and pass it to the future generations. Few understood this as much as Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

Tony Martin is the world’s foremost authority on Marcus Garvey and the UNIA. His works, among others, include Race First, the biography of Garvey entitled Hero, Literary Garveyism, and The Pan-African Connection among other works. The Jamaican Robert Hill has published the massive volumes of the Marcus Garvey Papers. John Henrike Clarke and Amy Jacques Garvey have an informative work entitled Garvey and the Vision of Africa. There is endless number of books, websites, and other publications on Marcus Garvey today.

Garvey founded the UNIA in 1914 in Jamaica. The organization was rather
conservative at the beginning. Yet, after Garvey toured the United States giving lectures, he decided to set up headquarters in Harlem, New York. Through his newspaper, The Negro World, Garvey and the writers who contributed to the paper would carry the message of Afrikan liberation to the far corners of the world. Beyond his times, Garvey and the UNIA would carry the message of liberation beyond his era. The UNIA would set up an international network of organizational chapters and businesses. Garvey did not fully realize his “vision” of Afrika, yet after his transition into being an ancestors in 1940, no one can doubt that he has impacted the Afrikan consciousness movement throughout the world. He has likewise left an indelible mark on the Afrikan Independence Movement. In short, Garvey was monumental, and it is because of the impact he left on history that we must look back to understand Afrikan consciousness today. If we do not
look back to understand Afrikan intellectual thought, whatever “theories” we create supposedly based on what we have not accurately studied and given homage to is what I have called a propaganda-myth.

As the Garvey Movement and the Harlem Renaissance began to decline in the
1930s, across the ocean, The Negritude movement was just stirring. Unfortunately, most of the books on Negritude deal with the movement as a literary movement. The same mistake is made with the Harlem Renaissance. Both movements were more than literary works, poetry, and dance. The movements were also political, radical, and anti-colonial. Both movements were a channel for nationalists thought and activism, some writers and
leaders were more radical than were others. The Renaissance came after a low point in the 19th century emigration and nationalist movement in America. Yet, the Renaissance peaked at a time when segregation reigned in America. Negritude happened while France was a colonial power in Afrika and around the world. The Negritude movement developed from the anti-colonial sentiments of Afrikan students from various French colonies. Marcus Garvey, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Negritude movement would
all have an impact on the Independence movement that would sweep through the Afrikan continent.

The UNIA of Marcus Garvey, the African Blood Brotherhood of Cyril Briggs, the NAACP of WEB Du Bois, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters of A. Phillip Randolph, and various other organizations should tell us that the Harlem Renaissance was much more than poetry and dance. The Afrikan consciousness literature, entirely unrelated to poetry, is often neglected. The Renaissance was a period of Afrikan cultural, educational, and political awakening. Likewise, the Negritude movement has been marginalized as only an aesthetic movement. Cesaire, Senghor, and Damas were all writers, but they were all politicians in their countries of birth at some point in their lives. That’s more than what we can say about particular “Afrocentrists” who are so quick to downsize Negritude, but are basically academicians in universities. One of the common factors among those who made the Negritude movement is that Afrikan nations on the continent and throughout the Afrikan world had a right to independence and sovereignty. To varying degrees, this idea influenced the political careers of Cesaire, Senghor, and Damas. The arts have an important place in Afrikan culture; however, Negritude and the Harlem Renaissance were much more than poetry and dance.

Again, it is silly to think that the Harlem Renaissance or Negritude were only artistic and literary movements. Alioune Diop is not considered one of the “founders” of the Negritude movement, but his contributions would be immense. He gives us a concrete example of how Negritude was anti-colonial and political. Diop was a close friend of Senghor, both of them being Senegalese. Alioune Diop decided to create a central clearing house for the Negritude movement, and that is exactly what he did. The journal,
Presence Africaine, was founded in 1947. Shortly afterwards, in 1949, the Presence Africaine Editions publishing company was founded. Presence Africaine became one of the most significant literary vehicles for Afrikan nationalism and Pan-Afrikanism on the eve of the Independence era in Afrika. Presence Africaine retained its’ anti-colonial, pro-independence tone throughout the 1960s and 70s. If there was any single literary bridge
from the colonial era through the Independence movement, most would agree that it was Alioune Diop’s Presence Africaine. Such writers as Senghor, Julius Nyerere, and Sekou Toure were all heads of state who at some time wrote for journal. What seemed like a very modest project in the beginning would eventually impact an entire era.

It has been noted that Senghor was a factor in the publishing efforts of Alioune Diop, but so was Richard Wright and many others. In Great Afrikan Thinkers, James Spady notes the Wright-Diop connection (95). Alioune’s publishing vehicles thus represent a bridge for not only Negritude, but also the Harlem Renaissance into the era across the 60s and 70s. Diop’s publishing house, Presence Africaine Editions was founded as a vehicle for Afrikan authors. It was through publishing efforts of Alioune Diop, that one of many young writers got a start. One young writer in particular was
Cheikh Anta Diop who published his first essay in Presence Africaine before he was 25 years old in 1948. The essay is entitled “Origins of the Wolof Language and Race.” Subsequently, all of Cheikh Anta Diop’s books were first published by Alioune Diop. In Great Afrikan Thinkers, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, John Henrike Clarke discusses how he came to know Diop. It was after becoming familiar with the research of Cheikh Anta Diop, Clarke sought an American publisher to reproduce his works in English from
French. It took seven years (Clarke, Great Afrikan Thinkers “Cheikh Anta Diop and the New Concept of African History,” 110). John Henrik Clarke was in ways a product of the Harlem Renaissance movement; Cheikh Anta Diop was in ways a product of the Negritude movement. This was the most significant bridge of the two movements that would combine to have a great impact on the Afrikan conscious movement of the present generation. Between these two monumental ancestors, Cheikh Anta Diop and John Henrik Clarke, neither of whom relied on using the word “Afrocentric” in their research, few have contributed to the Afrikan worldview as they did.

Cheikh Anta Diop received an honorary doctorate from Morehouse in 1985. His words are as pertinent now as they were then. He spoke about the need to continue the work of intergenerational knowledge and the need to institutionalize the transmission for the very sake of survival. These are his words:

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. President, my colleagues
and friends, I wish to seize this opportunity that has been given me to direct your attention to the gravity of the responsibility which has been entrusted to you – that of the transmission of knowledge to young generations of our community. Looking over history we are quickly drawn to the fact that our nations have declined, and, as a result, our communities. This is intimately tied to national sovereignty and especially to the loss of control of our educational systems which
assure the transmission of understanding from generation to generation… It is also the classical technique of domination, of colonization, throughout history, to destroy and to weaken the historical consciousness of a people who become dominated. All the factors which reinforce that consciousness are taken away, taken out of the instruction so that progressively the dominated nation becomes amnesiac (Great Afrikan Thinker, 319).

Diop was fueled throughout his life to continue the intergenerational transmission of Afrikan consciousness to the next generation. He was very clear about the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and culture being the great issue of survival for our people, for any people. Diop was also clear about bridging the two movements across the Atlantic. In the same speech, Diop also declared, “Research in the periods concerned in prehistory and in antiquity have sufficiently advanced to permit a fusion of our programs on the two sides of the Atlantic.” To this effort, Diop committed his life to the restoration of the Afrikan nation of ancient Egypt (Kemet or Tawi) to Afrikan history. He has led the path that a generation of historians and researchers have followed. We are still in the process of redeveloping Nile Valley civilization to Afrikan history. Racist white scholars have spent at least two centuries removing Kemet (ancient Egypt) from Afrikan history. Understanding the role of a people’s classical civilization to their intergenerational worldview, Diop has basically, single-handedly, corrected the myth of Egypt being anything except a product of Afrika. This has been his major contribution to
the Afrikan worldview. Yet, as John Henrik Clarke was, Diop himself was a product of a movement, and both properly honored those who came before them.

Our Black Shining Prince

The late Ossie Davis eulogized Malcolm X as our “Black Shining Prince.” He
made reference in the eulogy to Malcolm X’s travels in Afrika. Malcolm was in Afrika building bridges, Pan-Afrikan bridges, for the Afrikan world community. He understood that the strength of Afrikan people was in unity. He was quick to clarify to anyone that he was a Black nationalist and a Pan-Afrikanist. Few would argue that at the height of his influence, in the 1960s, Malcolm X did more than any other individual in America in
passing the Afrikan worldview on to the following generation. Through his passion and eloquence, Malcolm X opened the minds of millions of Afrikan people in America to the concepts of nationalism.

There are several loose strings about the life of Malcolm X. There are several issues that are not clear or issues that people have a great deal of confusion about. One great issue is that three chapters were never published with the rest of his autobiography, three chapters that reflected his ideological development in his last years. Foremost
among issues that are unclear about Malcolm X is his assassination. Who killed Malcolm X? For any sensible person, I would only recommend a couple of sources to begin the research in finding the answers about who killed Malcolm. He is very revealing in his autobiography about the involvement of the Nation of Islam (NOI) in wanting him dead, and he was just as clear in his speeches when he was alive. Farrakhan has made statements over the last several decades about wanting Malcolm dead, or of him deserving death, or being partly responsible for “creating the attitude and atmosphere.” Many of us have heard J. Edgar Hoover’s diabolical statement about the need to “prevent the rise of a Black messiah.” Karl Evanzz has written some unearthing details in Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X and his other book The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. I have some disagreements with Evanzz regarding Malcolm’s personal life, but overall his research is sound. Let none of us forget, Malcolm was a
threat to national and global white supremacy. The problem is that some of us are not sensible on this issue of Malcolm’s assassination for one reason or another.

Malcolm X was never only a religious leader. His earliest speeches in the Nation of Islam reveal that he was highly, politically conscious. When he was put out of the NOI, his mind and ideology was able to develop in ways it had not while he was under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. It was after his break with the NOI that Malcolm began to more and more declare that he was a Black nationalist and a Pan-Afrikanist. What must be understood here is that the NOI did not introduce Malcolm to Afrikan
consciousness, and this fact is often overlooked. Malcolm and his siblings were introduced to Afrikan consciousness by his parents who were both members of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA. With the loss of his father through a brutal lynching and his mother’s emotional breakdown, Malcolm would lose the guidance he would have received in his formative pre-teen and teenage years when he became a street hustler and eventually a convict.

There are primarily three groups of people who get this next issue confused: Muslims, Muslim sympathizers, and multiculturalists. The issue is the reality around Malcolm X’s trip to Mecca. Malcolm reported how he had witnessed the brotherhood of mankind on his hajj to Mecca. Maybe he did. What we do know is that for centuries Islam has been used by anti-Afrikan racist the same way Christianity has been used by anti-Afrikan racist. Arabs and their collaborators have been systematically enslaving
Afrikans and committing genocide for about 1,400 years in the name of religion. The great question, as I see it, is if Malcolm X understood the Arab oppression of Afrikans throughout many countries in Afrika and the Middle East, what would he have done or said about it? What we all know is that once Malcolm X transformed his life, he was a man of principles and integrity.

My contention is that, during the height of his influence, none other was more responsible for the intergenerational crossover of the Afrikan worldview than Malcolm X. According to New York Times, in between 1963 and 1964, Malcolm X was the most sough-after Black speaker on college campuses and universities. He was the second most sought-after speaker of any race on college campuses and universities. The first was the influential, Republican senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater who was running for
President of the US in 1964. Malcolm X was not a chosen or accepted leader by mainstream America. Because of his commitment to the struggle, and the sheer passion he brought to it, he was accepted as our Black Shinning Prince. If I can site a few of Malcolm X’s historic speeches, they will give some validity to the fact that he was a man who was developing ideologically after splitting from the NOI. In “Message to The Grassroots,” delivered in 1963, he provides us with his analogy of the House Negro and the Field Negro. In this speech, it is very clear that he believes in freedom and revolution. In the famous “Ballot or Bullet” speech of 1964, Malcolm said over and over again that he believed in Black nationalism, which simply means that Afrikan people throughout the world have every right to control their nations, communities, and destiny. It was also in 1964, July, that Malcolm gave the historic Pan-Afrikan address to the Organization of Afrikan Unity before Afrikan Heads of States in Cairo, Egypt. In Malcolm’s very last speech, given a week before his death, in Detroit, he spoke primarily about the “Afrikan Revolution,” as he put it. He spoke about Afrikans in the Americas and Latin America. It is clear that he was an astute Pan-Afrikanist and very Afrikan-Centered. He explained that the only way to counter white supremacy and neo-colonialism was through global Pan-Afrikanism and nationalism. He also explained some details about the organization he founded, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), founded after the principles of the Organization of Afrikan Unity in 1964.

More so than any of his speeches, Malcolm X’s little-known, very last interview last words before the day of his assassination - speaks volumes to the fact that he was still going through ideological transitions in his life. The Al-Muslimoon Magazine based in Geneva, Switzerland in February of 1965 interviewed him. The text is currently available at www.malcolm-x.org. Malcolm began by explaining the differences between him and Elijah Muhammad that many believe led to his death. The interviewer more than once asked Malcolm X about his concern and attention to the struggles of Afrikan people in America and the world. Malcolm told the interviewer that his loyalty was “first” to his race, and then he informed him that, “I regard Africa as my fatherland.” This very last interview by our Black Shining Prince clearly places his loyalties to Afrikan people above all, a clear shift in his view when he was in the NOI seeking primarily converts.
Again, speculation will never be final about what would have become of Malcolm’s view about Islam had he understood the Arab enslavement of Afrikans. However, we must understand that he carried the Afrikan worldview through the first half of the 1960s and passed it over to a new generation. His influence is still very alive today.

While he is generally celebrated among our people, few people understand
Malcolm X and the significance of his life. Even fewer people understand that the life of Malcolm X was greatly impacted by the Afrikan worldview through the influence of the Marcus Garvey’s UNIA on his family. The UNIA also greatly influenced the Nation of Islam, however, that is not my emphasis. Malcolm was born into a conscious Black nationalist and Pan-Afrikan family. He became misguided as a teenager. Yet, it was due in large part to his family upbringing that he was able to get his life back on its’ divine track. Marcus Garvey was mentioned several times in the first pages of Malcolm X’s autobiography when he began explaining his childhood. In writing the Foreword to her father’s autobiography, Attallah Shabazz found it especially significant to note:

In 1919, my paternal grandparent, Earl and Louisa Little, married and began their large family of eight children. At the same time they both worked steadfastly as crusaders for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, acting as chapter president and writer/translator for more than a decade. Their children were deeply involved and inspired by their parent’s mission to encourage self-reliance and uphold a sense of empowerment for people of the African Diaspora (Autobiography of Malcolm X, 8).

Malcolm X did not fully develop into a Pan-Afrikan nationalist until his mind and ideological foundation was able to grow after his 1963 split from the NOI. Prior to his split with the NOI, Malcolm’s speeches were heavily focused on the conversion of Blacks to the NOI. Malcolm’s most significant speeches came after he left the NOI. The “Message to the Grassroots” was given just before the split, yet friction was high between him and the NOI at the time. Tragically for the world, this great man’s life was cut short
by the bullets of assassins. Yet, Malcolm X was able to bring his life full circle back to the Pan-Afrikan nationalist roots taught to him and his siblings as children by their parents through the teachings of Marcus Garvey. People read his autobiography and often ignore the most important issues. After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X explained that he wanted to develop a Black Nationalist organization, specifically the
OAAU.

“Why Black Nationalism?” he asked in the autobiography. “If you will remember, in my childhood had been exposed to the Black Nationalist teachings of Marcus Garvey…” (382)

I have pointed out that if Malcolm lived longer, he would have morphed again. Since he left the Nation of Islam, his mind and thoughts were allowed to expand, and in his thinking, forming new organizations and contacts, he was still figuring a lot of things out. Besides his travels in the Arab world, highlighted in Spike Lee’s movie; Malcolm had met and had discussions with Presidents of Afrikan nations such as Nkrumah, Nyerere, Kenyatta, Azikwe, Toure, and others (378). Ideologically, Malcolm was still developing. Yet, Malcolm became one of the strongest proponents of nationalism and Pan-Afrikanism in the Afrikan world. In the process, he also became one of the great bearers of the Afrikan worldview.

The Unfinished Revolution

Let us be clear. What is a revolution? How does a revolution translates in terms of Afrikan people? A revolution is a reversal or radical change in the status quo of a society. A revolution can occur by peaceful means, or by armed resistance, or the threat of armed resistance. A revolution by an oppressed population must occur within that population’s total worldview. To be successful, a revolution must also occur in the primary and secondary means of existence of the dominated people; meaning in the areas of political control, economics, education, religious/spiritual institutions, and other cultural institutions that shape a population’s or a nation’s worldview. This is the heart of what so many of our leaders and organizations have not understood. The gaining of the right to vote may be a revolutionary act in itself, but it is not a revolution. A growing number of politicians and access to the judicial system are not revolutions alone. Access to higher learning is a great advancement, but it is not a revolution. A growing middle class is a desired achievement of any nation, but it is not a revolution either. These are some of the honored gains made by people of Afrikan descent in America, but these gains are not revolutions. In fact, in many instances, our progress as a people in America has at times proven to be counterproductive. There is no compromising gain in a revolution. I must add that a revolution is not dogmatic rhetoric, loud talking, or the right to speech. A revolution that would occur in an oppressed society has but one end, and that is the end of oppression and sustained independence.

An Afrikan revolution must occur within all of the aspects of our societies, i.e. culture, economy and business, education at all levels, politics, social, and spiritual. All of our revolutions in the modern era have missed one or more points. A complete revolution that we may use as an example is the revolution in the ancient Nile Valley begun by the founders of the 17th Dynasty from the royal family of Seqenenra Tao
against the invaders known as the Hyksos. That was a very complete revolution because not only did the 17th Dynasty warriors expel the Hyksos, they also restored their total Afrikan worldview, in all domains. A total revolution is indeed a rare historical item because the oppressed usually adopts ways, traditions, and thought of the oppressor to the level that corruption is almost final unless the revolutionary fully understands that revolution is total, complete or physical as well as spiritual, conscious as well as subconscious in all domains of existence. Today, we have a more complete understanding of revolution from the study of the courageous movements and sacrifices of our ancestors. They have left the many examples for our study. Our obligation is to change the world for the better. Our responsibility is to look towards the future. Our motive is a
complete Afrikan revolution and nothing short of it.

An Afrikan world revolution is our historic objective. This is not to say that Afrikans will be the new oppressors of anyone else. The most humane societies the world has known were built on the Afrikan continent. An honest study of Greece and Rome, the rise of modern Europe, America, the Arab nations, and India would all yield evidence of nations built on oppression. This would not be the case with an honest and accurate study
of Nile Valley civilization and most of the early civilizations of Afrika. Unfortunately, many people have fell for this created idea about slavery beginning in Afrika before the European and Arab invasions. These individuals have not seriously studied Afrika, or the rise of Arab and European culture in Afrika. An Afrikan revolution would have a foundation in the concepts of order and justice, known as Maat, in the Nile Valley and found among other Afrikan societies and traditions not so corrupted by foreign worldviews. An Afrikan revolution in any nation would take the environment into consideration. Any Afrikan nation based on the concepts of our ancestors would not pollute the waters, air, and land. The first revolution a technologically advanced Afrikan nation would take up should be a pollution free energy system. The next issue in an Afrikan nation would be how to feed and educate everyone. The Afrikan worldview is not based on oppression; it is based on harmony. Our movements of the past and present are a march to an Afrikan revolution in the future.

John Henrike Clarke wrote two very important books, one Notes for an African World Revolution: Africans at the Crossroads and the other Who Betrayed the Afrikan World Revolution and Other Speeches. He often spoke about the Afrikan world revolution as an “incomplete revolution.” Speaking of the revolutionaries who made their marks on the 20th century, Clarke said, “Our mission should be to complete their revolution and the completion should be the legacy that we leave for our people and for all people” (African World Revolution, 100). One of the major “incomplete revolutions” was the Independence Movement in Afrika. We still have every so-called independent nation in Afrika with neo-colonial ties to the European world or physically colonized by Arab populations and culture. Many nations are being slowly colonized economically by East Asians. In the Sudan, Afrikans have been fighting an independence war that they must fight for survival against a genocidal government. In the DR Congo, the nation is fractured in an instigated resource driven war. Zimbabwe has to defend its’ rightful and sovereign actions of taking lands from whites who are descendents of the colonizers who took the lands in the first place. South Afrika, where the masses protested and campaigned in armed resistance, is enriching European nations more than it is enriching the people who suffered for freedom. Even the nations with a stable environment free of warfare and coups are being ripped off of their resources. The revolution is far from finished. Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movements, the conscious and political movements throughout the Caribbean and South Afrika; all of these movements are unfinished revolutions that must be revitalized and whose bridges must be connected. Consider the following quotes by Clarke:

Perhaps the greatest political mistake that has been made in Africa in
relation to the Independence Explosion is the European training of the African heads of state and their respective supporters, whose ideas of the state are negatively influenced by this training. Whatever system the Africans use for themselves must be reshaped by the concept of Africa for Africa. Neither the communists nor the capitalists have a master plan for African freedom. While there are strong ideological differences between the capitalists and the communists, their intention in Africa is the same. Both of them would like to rule over African people and their resources by any means necessary.

The salvation of Africa must be designed by the collective mind of the
African world. The imitation European states now in existence throughout the African world have no long-range future (Notes for an African World Revolution, xiii).

Also, consider this quote:

In calling attention to the African world revolution and its betrayal, I am asking African people to reclaim those vital assets that have always been a part of their history, culture, and politics. As a people, we have always been revolutionary, creating change and adjusting to change. Today as we stand at the crossroads of our history in particular and world history in general, we might have to strategically step backwards in order to move forward… (Who Betrayed the Afrikan World Revolution, 56)

There can be no complete Afrikan revolution without an educational enterprise totally devoted to the Afrikan worldview and interest. We must educate the future generation to maintain and protect nations. That education must deal with the damages of oppression on the Afrikan mind. Otherwise, we will see a generation of people who think like their oppressors, and they will keep the door open for their oppressors. The Afrikan movements of the 20th century have not been complete revolutions in the march against time. Pan-Afrikan bridges must be built between nations in Afrika and throughout the Afrikan world, and we as a people must understand what a complete Afrikan revolution encompasses. It requires institutions, really an infrastructure or network of institutions, dedicated to all domains of our interest and survival.

The center stage of the Afrikan world revolution was the Independence movement that began sweeping through Afrika once Ghana gained its’ independence from Britain in 1957 with Kwame Nkrumah as the Prime Minister and eventually the President. Nkrumah and the example of Ghana lit a fire in the hearts of the Afrikan world community. The Independence Movement did not begin in 1922 or with the “independence” of Egypt because Egypt is still an Arab colony. Nasser, contrary to what many believe, is not a native Afrikan. He is descendent from the Beni Morr Arabs. Also, Nasser was a staunch Arab nationalist. The so-called “independence” of Sudan was turnover of power from the British to the Arabs in 1956. Morocco and Tunisia was also turnovers of powers from French to Arab governments in 1956. This is why the modern Independence Movement began in 1957 with the Afrikan nation and Afrikan presidency of Ghana. The Independence Movement, or explosion as Clarke calls it, spread quickly throughout the 60s and 70s. Wars against colonial forces would erupt in several places such as Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and
South Afrika. The British suffered financially with the Mau Mau resistance in Kenya. France suffered militarily with the resistance in Algeria. As a result, several nations were able to rely on protest and political pressure to win some level of political independence. The revolution of this era was won on the battlefield in war and by means of protest. On the other hand, the revolution was never completed.

The Afrikan world must recognize that the Independence revolution of Afrikan nations was never complete. North Afrika is still militarily a colony of Arab nations. Understood in its’ historic context, the war in the south Sudan, renewed in 1983, was an armed resistance against the further infiltration of Arabs and Arab culture and religion further into Afrika. If these events were understood, every Afrikan nation would have had troops on the ground supporting the Southern Sudanese who had to fight that war virtually alone and lose over two million lives, mainly civilians, in the process. Those brave Afrikans in Sudan were fighting to preserve Afrikan land, culture, and the worldview of our people.

If the independence movement were better understood, there would have been
more cooperation among Afrikan freedom fighters, military and political cooperation against colonialism and neo-colonialism. The only reason the recent covert, US coup under the Bush administration was successful in Haiti is because the Afrikan world is so splintered. If we know for no other single example in any nation why Pan-Afrikanism is an issue of survival, we should consider the greatest tragedy of any nation in the last half century, the instigated war in the Congo that has cost over five million lives, mostly women and children. This issue of Pan-Afrikanism is not an ideological debate. This issue of the Afrikan worldview is not definitional. This is an issue about our very survival on Earth. We cannot afford to leave the Afrikan world revolution unfinished in a world replete with inhumane and anti-Afrikan interest. The Afrikan world revolution is our only chance to not only change the world, but to first survive in it.

Note to the Present Generation

Well, today, we have kept the Afrikan worldview alive in this generation. It will certainly be passed on to the next generation. If not for anything else, we can be certain of this fact because of the growing influence of the Afrikan conscious movement today. Since the 1960s, Afrikan intellectual thought and consciousness has continued to develop. However, in many ways the current generation has regressed. Those of us in this
generation are not where we should be in the struggle. We have not taken the interest, survival, and worldview of our people seriously enough.

For one, the college and university protest movement for Black Studies has
become a gross, student, careerist, movement and a gross, professor, tenure-track movement. It is gross because many if not most of these students and teachers have lost the memory of how they ended up with their positions in Black Studies or other programs and departments. The Black administrators have also lost sight of how they ended up with their position. The protest movement which peaked in the 1960s has put people in
positions who have now become insensitive to that very movement, and in some cases these individuals have become bitter and even hostile.

As a community, we fought for the right to vote. People were hurt, beaten, and even shot for the right to vote. Now, today we have too many people in offices who care less than an iota about making changes for their people. We have people in office who are afraid to speak up for what is right for their own communities, the constituency as they might say. If the movement was a feast, most of our politicians would arrive late and leave early. The rest would never bother to show up. We have very few exceptions, from
what I see, of politicians who are willing to make a fight for our people.

We often wonder why we don’t have more Black-owned and operated businesses. We wonder this and then look at all of the Asian, Arab, and foreign businesses popping up in our communities. We look at corporate white America getting filthy rich from the hundreds of billions of dollars that slip through our hands every year. We observe all of this and wonder what’s wrong. We have not educated our children in nation-building and
economy creation. We have not taught our young people a basic level of race consciousness and the need for interdependence with their own. A young woman or man leaves our community and learn business management, where do they go? A white university or a white university with a Black population (we call them HBCUs), all the same. We don’t have an educational network to teach Afrikan global marketing or national business creation. With the money we make as a people, we could build a university every few months, one for each season. That’s literally how much money we
throw away. We must educate our children in how a nation of people must cooperate and use their resources to promote their interest, or what happens when they don’t.

The Afrikan-Centered school movement has all but disappeared. In 1972, CIBI was founded. Today, that movement is a shadow of its’ past. Only a few soldiers hold that frontline. We have a charter school movement, but like many of the independent schools, our schools lack teachers and administrators who are Afrikan-Centered. We have basically no Afrikan Spiritual schools today. Most of our people belong to the religions
of foreigners, and thus they will not even take an Afrikan Spiritual based school as a serious thought. We have no Afrikan universities to even dream about. No people can promote their interest without an educational system that they built for that purpose.

Did anybody ever think that with all of these Black administrators and professors, what does it look like for us not to have one independent university? Where is the Afrikan university that promotes our ancient Nile Valley language and literature as classical texts? Where is the independent, Afrikan-Centered university devoted to the promotion and study of Afrikan cultures and Spirituality? Where is the Afrikan university that develops think tanks devoted to the political and economic interest of our people? Where is the Afrikan university that has a medical department and hospital which trains students in the health and medical fields for the particular ailments we face as a people? Why don’t we have a university or universities that address these issues facing our people
and other Afrikans throughout the world? Is this exclusive or racist, some may think? Well, consider the fact that many nations on this Earth with the capital that we earn also have universities to meet the needs of their populations. Look around the world and you will see nations developing studies for their populations. The American university has never been committed to Afrikan people, yet we have yet to build our own. We have yet
to even build enough high schools and grade schools for our children. When we understand the Afrikan worldview, we will begin to understand our mission as a people.

The Afrikan worldview is what I intended to set the record straight about in this essay. With our current state, our worldview is the one thing we got that has been passed down over the generations. We can’t afford to have that distorted or destroyed. We can’t afford to neglect this issue; too much is at stake. We do have some very serious scholars and leaders in this generation who take the Afrikan worldview very seriously, but we also
have many who do not. For example, far too many have been willing to address the ideological chaos around “Afrocentricity.” Still we have a cadre of scholars and leaders who work overtime to introduce our people to their history and potential. In all, I must say, we have yet to build a nation of people that is clear about the meaning of their existence in this world. We have yet to build a people who produce the institutions we
need for our interest and survival. We have yet to build a nation of people committed to nation-building. If we don’t mount the structures in this generation, let us at least be courageous enough to pass the tools, foundation, and blueprint on to the next generation.

Last Thoughts

“Fatherhoods” are from a paternalistic, European worldview. The “Father of
science” Galileo, “Father of medicine” Hippocrates, “Father of math” Pythagoras, “Father of philosophy” Descartes, “Father of history,” Homer, etc., etc., are all European, non-factual, titles. There was science, medicine, math, history, and civilization in Afrika long before people started calling Europeans fathers of what they did not create. The European worldview is linear and set in the belief that through the march of time progress is inevitable and is always good. This mindset has led to mythmaking about the origins of science, math, and civilization in general; and it has led to technological “progress” that has resulted in the destruction of the environment and populations.

In the Afrikan worldview, history is cyclical. Our view of history is that it is based on harmonious cycles that we must stay in tune with. This cyclical view of history necessitates a renewing of the Afrikan worldview over time at different period in history. The renewal is always based on ancestral links or what Jacob Carruthers called the intergeneration communication. Fundamentally so, this is why “Afrocentricity” has no
“Father.” Unfortunately, many of our scholars have adopted the European idea of concepts having “Fathers.” We sit and debate uselessly about whether or not Martin Delany is the “Father of Black nationalism,” Du Bois or Garvey is the “Father of Pan-Afrikanism,” Edward Blyden is the “Father of Negritude,” or if Woodson is the “Father of Black History.” Things really get interesting when we talk about Imhotep being the “Father of medicine” since he lived well over 2,000 years before Hippocrates. Well,
Hippocrates was not the father of medicine, and Imhotep did master the science of medicine two millenniums and some centuries first. Yet, Afrikans were mastering medicine before Imhotep. In fact, in the Nile Valley educational system, Imhotep himself was taught medicine by his teachers or elders.

In the attempt to label Delany, Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, and others with
fatherhood titles, what is missing, among other issues, is the fact that none of these men were self-aggrandizing enough to promote themselves as “Fathers.” They understood they were continuing a tradition of struggle. The “Fatherhood” is not an Afrikan idea, and in every case the title is not historically factual – most of all the present one about
Afrocentricity. That old saying: “it’s nothing new under the sun” is especially true here. Afrikan thought, consciousness, and struggle have been passed down from our ancestors. The gift of Afrikan-ness has been bestowed on the present generation from ages of the past. It is our responsibility to hand it over to the future. It is our responsibility to put the Afrikan worldview back on its’ proper course.

In the final analysis, as I have said, this issue is much bigger than Molefi Asante. This issue of historical consciousness, cultural awareness, and the building of a movement is central to the generation in which we live. It is also central to tomorrow’s generation. Our last frontier in the war for Afrikan minds and souls is the institutionalization of the Afrikan worldview. Institutions are of utmost importance. We must build the necessary educational, Spiritual, cultural, political, social, and economic institutions to promote the interest of our people. Beyond institutionalization, we must nation-build. Institutionalization is a key factor in the process of nation-building, and we must reach the objective. If I may dare, looking back over the 20th century at the links with the Afrikan conscious movements of the Harlem Renaissance, Negritude, the
Independence Movement, the rise of Afrikan consciousness in the 1960s in the US, I see these movements as an era or century of awakening for Afrikan people. Concurrent with these movements were the political movements among Afrikans in the Caribbean and South America where many are becoming conscious of their Afrikan-ness. The Afrikan consciousness movement has moved beyond our hemisphere to India and the South Pacific Islands as Runoko Rashidi has reported from his firsthand research and travels. The 20th century was an era of global Afrikan consciousness. John Henrik Clarke called it the Afrikan world revolution, and he also argued that the revolution was betrayed and left unfinished. As we go into the next century, let us not forget the revolutions of the past again. Those movements of the last century were all ultimately going in one direction,
Afrikan liberation. If we betray that struggle, we betray ourselves.

The charge and mandate of the 21st century must be the institutionalization of the consciousness from the 1900s. Further, we must accept the charge and mandate of Afrikan nation-building in this new century. The Independence movement that swept through Afrika was never completed. Political independence was gained, Afrikans were elected to office, but Independence was never fully actualized. If the nations of Afrika gained independence, the horrific tragedies in Congo, Sudan, and other places would never have happened. Zimbabwe would not have been put in a position to confiscate land that belonged to the Afrikan people in the first place. The revolution of independence was never finished. We must finish this great project in this century. The nations around the
world where Afrikans are growing majorities have a responsibility of nation-building. Afrikan Americans must build their own infrastructures; schools, banks, businesses, cultural centers, etc. The Afrikans of the Caribbean must do the same. The Afrikans of the many nations throughout the Americas must reach over the borders to each other and build nations within nations. The Afrikan populations of the East and the Far East must
unite and nation-build. As a world people, we have no choice. Either we build strong nations and defense systems or witness the regrets of vulnerability as we have seen time and time again over the last century. We must put the Afrikan worldview on its’ proper course in history because the work is just beginning for a new generation and a new
century.

Obama Administration Hunting Down and Killing Civilians with Death Squads

2010-08-05T16:33:00.000-04:00

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, we actually discussed this on Democracy Now! earlier this year, these task forces that are operating in Afghanistan, Pakistan. They operated in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia. Task Force 373 was a task force that was hunting, essentially, people that were determined to be high-value targets. They had a list of some 2,000 people that were going to be targeted for either assassination or some kind of an abduction, you know, or incarceration. And this task force has since been—it then was transferred into a different designation where it was Task Force 714, and now it’s under another designation that’s classified right now. And these task forces are being portrayed by the New York Times and other media outlets as sort of a permanent standing thing. They talk about Task Force 373. There are scores of these task forces that are formed around the world that are made up of different elements of US special forces. They’ll take 160th Aviation people from the Night Stalkers, the specialized paramilitary pilots of the US military. They’ll take people from Navy SEAL Team 6 or from Delta Force. And they form these task forces, and then they go out with a specific set of missions.
This is not about Task Force 373. What we learned from the documents about Task Force 373 is what some of us have been observing for quite some time, that in Afghanistan there are two wars that the US is fighting. One is the publicly available or accessible war. Journalists go and they embed with Marines or other sort of conventional forces. And then you have the special forces war, which is the real war—night raids, kicking down doors, a lot of civilians being killed, very little regard for the value of civilian life if they’re near someone that these task forces consider to be a high-value target. And there are reports that are emerging now that are coming out, studies showing that for every civilian the US kills in Afghanistan, that there is a—there are six attacks that take place then over the ensuing months after that attack. So what we’re seeing is a public rhetoric about reducing civilian casualties and then these task forces literally hunting human beings, killing them, and not caring about the civilians that are killed, and, in fact, actively covering it up and issuing false press releases and blaming other forces, when in reality it’s been US special forces.

for full interview, click on title above

Iraq Withdrawal? Obama and Clinton Expanding US Paramilitary Force in Iraq by Jeremy Scahill

2010-08-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

Iraq Withdrawal? Obama and Clinton Expanding US Paramilitary Force in Iraq by Jeremy Scahill

As a candidate for president, Senator Hillary Clinton vowed to ban the use of private security contractors, which she referred to as mercenaries. "These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq," Clinton said in February 2008. "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." Clinton was one of only two senators to sponsor legislation to ban these companies. Fast forward to the present and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is presiding over what is shaping up to be a radical expansion of a private, US-funded paramilitary force that will operate in Iraq for the foreseeable future--the very type of force Clinton once claimed she opposed.
The State Department is asking Congress to approve funds to more than double the number of private security contractors in Iraq with a State Department official testifying in June at a hearing of the Wartime Contracting Commission that the Department wants "between 6,000 and 7,000 security contractors." The Department also has asked the Pentagon for twenty-four Blackhawk helicopters, fifty Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles and other military equipment. "After the departure of U.S. Forces [from Iraq], we will continue to have a critical need for logistical and life support of a magnitude and scale of complexity that is unprecedented in the history of the Department of State," wrote Patrick Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, in an April letter to the Pentagon. "And to keep our people secure, Diplomatic Security requires certain items of equipment that are only available from the military."
What is unfolding is the face of President Obama's scaled-down, rebranded mini-occupation of Iraq. Under the terms of the Status of Forces agreement, all US forces are supposed to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Using private forces is a backdoor way of continuing a substantial US presence under the cover of "diplomatic security." The kind of paramilitary force that Obama and Clinton are trying to build in Iraq is, in large part, a byproduct of the monstrous colonial fortress the United States calls its embassy in Baghdad and other facilities the US will maintain throughout Iraq after the "withdrawal." The State Department plans to operate five "Enduring Presence Posts" at current US military bases in Basrah, Diyala, Erbil, Kirkuk and Ninewa. The State Department has indicated that more sites may be created in the future, which would increase the demand for private forces. The US embassy in Baghdad is the size of Vatican City, comprised of twenty-one buildings on a 104-acres of land on the Tigris River.
In making their case to Congress and the Defense Department for the expansion of a private paramilitary force in Iraq, State Department officials have developed what they call a "lost functionality" list of fourteen security-related tasks that the military currently perform in Iraq that would become the responsibility of the State Department as US forces draw down. Among these are: recovering killed and wounded personnel, downed aircraft or damaged vehicles, convoy security and threat intelligence. The department also foresees a need to run a tactical operations center that would dispatch of armed response teams. Ambassador Kennedy said that without military equipment and an expansion of personnel, "the security of [State] personnel in Iraq will be degraded significantly and we can expect increased casualties."
For years, companies operating in the private security/defense logistics industry have predicted an increased reliance on contractors in Iraq that would accompany a draw-down of official US forces. What is clear from the current State Department plan for Iraq is that the United States is going to have armed forces in the country for the foreseeable future. The only question is, How many will be there as uniformed soldiers and how many will be private paramilitaries?