As some of yall may recant, I am about to publish a book of essays. Here is one i found that i wrote in 1991, think it was published in a UCLA based newspaper called NOMMO, March 1991 Vol 22, No. 4. BTW, this will not be in the aforementioned book.Carter G. Woodseon, the astute African American historian and social scientist, once stated that “To know the possibilities of a race an appraisal of its past is necessary.’ This important to note, given the infectious manifestations of centuries of displacement of African peoples by materialist cultures. As a collective union, and particular, as African descendents living under western influences, we lack a true understanding of world history. Barashango stated that without a competent understanding of the past, one cannot understand and/or determine the direction of their future. It is true then, and not an excuse that the effects of slavery, which produced the ubiquitous definition of racism in these United States as many understand presently, have contributed significantly to our present status, appearance, condition. To advance that by documenting the fat of slavery and racism in reference to our present as an excuse, is the equal of suggesting that just because one drops a brick on your toe two weeks prior, that the injury, pain and discomfort experienced today, is not the result of the same brick.
As a people, we have a tendency to believe everything we are confronted with. Like black crime. Now think about it, you never hear of white on white crime, but we know it happens. I am not justifying any action, just pointing out a blatant inconsistency. This is what I call Dogma or settling for prescribed and, ‘or established opinion. To white people it is an opinion that there exists black crime, although white on white crime does not exist, when it does.
There are some who believe, or should I say perceive – because it is based on the organization of external stimuli, that slavery and racism are excuses for the present conditions afflicting African peoples world wide. But from a historical perspective, to hold and value the opinion, the perception and the belief that the present situations of Africans peoples around the globe, especially in America, is not a result of slavery and racism, presents a view that is not supported vehemently by historical, economic, political and scientific evidence. Reading is fundamental. Let me show you what I mean.
For in addition to lacking an understanding of world history, we also don’t understand or know in most cases what racism is. Racism is the act of oppressing peoples based on racial distinctions. African Americans can not be racist because we are not in position to oppress others. Africans all over, from Australia to Denver, Colorado have to depend on Western oriented systems for all aspects of their development. It is the European ordered political systems, that African Americans had no part in forming, that we used to define this republic. The fortune top 500 will always be incessant reminder of these truths, of which, their very foundations were buttressed on slavery. More than 1600 acres was donated to Harvard by a famous slave trader.
Diop, the extraordinary Africans scholar and scientist, documented, through the Rhind and Moscow papryi, that even the scientist, documented, through the Rhind and Moscow papryi, that even the sciences have manifested certain tendencies of racism. He demonstrated that the exact surface of the sphere and circle, the volume of a cylinder, and the calculation for P had been documented in Kmt (what the Greeks called Egypt) some 2000 years before Archimedes. Diop. Diop noted this peculiar given that Archimedes, who studies in KMT, never made references to these facts in his works. On the Sphere and Cylinder or Measurement of the circle. In addition to these facts, problem 56 of the Rhind mathematical Papyrus shows how calculate the incline of a pyramid – the same as finding the tangent.
Now there are those who might advance the premise that this is old material, that it has nothing to do with the present situations of African Americans. But it does. For the occurrent and practical of us, it indicates that occurrences of these conditions was not by accident, but rather contrived. This is to say managed. Archimedes did not accidentally take the information back to Greece without giving credit to his teachers. He knew what he was doing. Moses knew where he actually got those ten commandments. Just look in the Temple of Ramses VI. You’ll find the same ten commandments along with 32 more that the Kemetic people called the 42 Negative confessions. It’s even documented that the priest and scholars had to repeat the daily. He knew what e was doing. Daedulus took architecture and the rule of frontality to Greece from Africa. But few history books if any give credit to its origins. Orphus took back to Greece the fable of heaven and hell. They all knew what they were doing.
Francis Bacon knew what he was doing when he wrote, in 1624, New Atlantis when he stated:
“An holy hermit desired to see spirit of fornication and there appeared to him fowl a fowl ugly Aethiop.”
Cecil Rhodes knew what he was doing when he formed a monopoly of the Diamond mines in Southern African in 1888. That’s why he formed the Rhodes scholars program, so that they, the elite could rule without question. He forced Africans off of their land and ` made them work in the mines without payment. He even had this idea about converting all of African from Egypt to South Africa into a British Commonwealth.
It is important to know information like this. Why? Because it reveals a pattern of operations specific to the influence of European cultures on people of African descent. Carl Degler wrote a book that described a historical comparison of slavery in North America to slavery in South America. Both cultures, tried to suppress African customs, dances, languages and religions. But in North America, as the author notes, slavery was based on the color of the individual. In Brazil, for example, Africans, Mulattoes and other people of color could own slaves. Even revolts were handled differently. Severe death penalties for salves were not as prevalent in Brazil. As in the United States. In North America, Nat Turner was hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia along with seventeen others. The famous and monumental Denmark Vessey conspiracy, in which no whites were killed, thirty-five slaves were hanged. Their heads were cut off and placed on placed on poles as deterrents, you know, like starwars and George Bush.
In order to understand the history of African people involvement in the development of the new world, the attitudes of European and African peoples and how they view themselves and each other is paramount. Mark Twain provide a terse view of this in Huckleberry Finn.
“Good gracious – anybody hurt.”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well it’s lucky because sometimes people do get hurt.”
This is firm evidence of the way white people viewed and continue to view African Americans. This text is still a significant part of American Literature classes. We fail to realize that in the very beginning that words like English, Free, Christian and White were synonomous, this to state that they meant the same thing; In colonial and post colonial America.
We live in post-colonial American now. Slavery is important because it was a major factor in determine American race relations. The government and the colonist defined slavery as a perpetual state, ‘durante vita’ –for life. Now if the government that we use presently was designed to support such, and if no major changes to these referred systematic processes have occurred, then why should African Americans perceive that such a system will catalysis change in the African American communities?
Why is it that we think that attitudes that inundated the founding of America, do not exist today. In may 1971 issue of Playboy Magazine John Wayne was quoted in an interview as saying, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated at a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.” Albert Schweitzer suggested that Negroes were children and tat “with children nothing can be done without the use of authority..” HEeconcluded by saying that if he was our brother, he was the eldest brother.”
We must not ever except any dogma in reference to ourselves and our communities. As we see, if we do not define ourselves, others surely will. The acknowledgment of slavery and racism by peoples of African Descent is a truism and a document fact. It is not an excuse. Those who continue to think otherwise should understand, that although they did not come over on a boat today, their elders and fore parents did a longtime ago.
We need to take a serious, serious look at our institutions of higher learning. We are not teaching this type of information. We need to look at them from a historical perspective and should ask ourselves the question, what are we doing? I’ll tell you, we are doing the same thing that was going on when our fore parents got off the slave ships. Because as soon as our students get out of college, we sell them off to the highest bidder. Whether its IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Martin-Marietta, we give them away as if they were cheap labor. We do not even consider the point of how they can best serve the interest of the African American community. I was taught never to forget off my relatives and I am not about to start now.
