Monday, February 24, 2014

Is it ‘Cause She’s Black? 7-Year-Old Stripped of Hispanic Beauty Title

Is it 'Cause She's Black? 7-Year-Old Stripped of Hispanic Beauty Title

jakiyah Mckoy*Not long after 7-year-old Jakiyah McKoy won the title of the new Miss Chiquita Delaware did questions about her heritage lead to her being stripped of the title.
McKoy is a Brooklyn, New York native who's grandmother was born in the providence of La Vega in the Dominican Republic.
 
Many people apparently felt Miss McKoy wasn't a good representative of Latin beauty, and pushed for a further look into her cultural background which led to her having to relinquish her crown.
 
According to Buzzfeed and Latino Rebels, some of the pageant-goers started to complain after Jakiyah was crowned with claims that she was black. The pageant rules state the all participants have to be of at least 25 percent Latino heritage.
 
While no other participants were asked to verify their backgrounds, McKoy's family was prompted to confirm her heritage. She was supposed to qualify based on her grandmother being born in the Dominican Republic.
"Her parents were asked to bring in documentation. Of all of the documentation brought in there was nothing that confirmed Dominican heritage," Maria Perez, president of Nuestras RaĆ­ces Delaware, told Latino Rebels. Perez works for the organization that sponsors the pageant.
"Whenever we are questioned, we ask for them to bring that stuff in," she added.
 
If her mother would've showed proof of Latino heritage on her birth certificate, Perez claims she would've qualified.
 
"The mother said she didn't want to go through it," said Perez.
They did however provide proof of guardianship, but was unable to really clear up the question of her grandmother's heritage because she passed away.
 
"We can't have her be the queen if she doesn't have the proper documentation," Perez said. "It's not the first time that we've been confronted with the [burden of proof]. It's happened in the past and they've brought in the proof and we were satisfied with it."
 
Perez says that McKoy's family spread rumors that she was dethroned because she was black instead of what she says was simple lack of proof.
With McKoy's crown taken away, she was moved to runner up; but one resident is continuing the fight for the young girl and has launched a petition.
"This petition is to demand that Jakiyah McKoy keep her rightfully won crown, because her beauty represents us all," according to the petition, launched by Daniel Jose Older on Change.org.
 
The petition has gathered over 450 signatures so far. Meanwhile, Perez maintains that McKoy's race has nothing to do with her crown being stripped away.
 
"Color has nothing to do with it," she said. "We're all Latinos. That's why we're so beautiful because we come in all different colors."

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Monday 02-17-2014 Hon. Gov. Doug Wilder speaks for Black History in Norfolk, Va

FREE & Open to the public. Hon. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder coming to speak on "Civil Rights I America" at Old Dominion University for Black History Month. There is a reception earlier that is only open to students, the keynote address is free and requires no RSVP or advance notice for

'Civil Rights in America'
Honorable Govenor L. Douglas Wilder
02 17 2014 at 6:30 pm FREE
Old Dominion University, Webb Center
Norfolk, Virginia

Friday, February 14, 2014

The Subliminal Seduction of Holiday Celebrations, Dr Ray Hagins

Hetepu (peace & blessings) All,

As we fall upon another European money making Holy-Day scam, I thought this video by Dr. Hagins was fit for the occasion especially as we approach the next European Holy-Day scam called Easter. 

Yes ... Valentine's Day and all of these other European Holy-Days are truly creations of their mind because they have "NO" verifiable truth behind any of them especially when they pertain to Black people anywhere in the world.

I think the title of this message says it all.  If you are one who craves knowledge and TRUTH, feel free to click on the Youtube video and prepare to open up your third eye. The video link below is Part 1 of a 7 part series.  Take time to look at all of them.


The Subliminal Seduction of Holiday Celebrations, Part 1 - Dr Ray Hagins  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNvoEW93qvE


Nehast (Wake up)
Asar Maa Ra Gray

"It's ok not to know, it's a shame not to want to know."
  
"Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it."
                       Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Why the Heck Are you Celebrating Valentine’s Day?

Hetepu (Peace & Blessings) All,

You know I was coming with some truth for you.  Again as always, it's ok not to know, its shame not to want to know.  They key is...once you do find out the truth do you keep doing the same thing which doesn't make sense or do you make a change for the better.

Now ... I don't celebrate Valentine’s day because I'm not going to let society and Capitalism tell me when I should shower that lady in my life with gifts of love and joy. If this person really is special to you, then the showering of love and gifts should not happen on a day Capitalist use to pimp your pockets of your finances. It's estimated that "SUCKERS" spend over 14.2 billion dollars celebrating something they have no clue how the day even came to be.

On a side note, if people really knew the truth about Valentine’s Day they'd think twice about celebrating it.  I encourage folks to do some research and understand the truth behind exactly what it is that you are celebrating.  Valentine’s Day stems from Lupercalia who killed his girlfriend and stabbed her in the heart with an arrow out of a rage of jealousy.

Lupercalia Roman Celebration
How in the heck, do you change murdering your lover into a day where you flower them with heart shaped candy? Deception of course, led by its biggest ring leader...the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church changed the story around like they did with the pagan (Christ-Mess and St. Nicholas story), that St. Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers.

Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death, therefore making him the CATHOLIC martyr St. Valentine.  

So, know what you are celebrating because when you know the truth behind it you may become appalled like (i.e. Easter,  Thanks-killing Day, Christ-Mess, etc...)

Ankh Uja Snb (Life, Health, Strength)
Asar Maa Ra Gray

"It's ok not to know, it's a shame not to want to know."
    Dc. Clarke

“Ending the Slavery Blame-Game” by Henry L. Gates Jr.: Some Perspectives from Kwabena Akurang-Parry


by Kwabena Akurang-Parry:

LET me state some caveats that my effort at interrogating the conclusions of Professor Henry Louis Gates does not mitigate the marginality and chattel nature that reconfigured the lived-experiences of enslaved Africans worldwide, nor does it exonerate slave-holding societies in Africa as well as some African states' participation in the Atlantic slave trade. Second, I do understand Gates to mean that the blame for the Atlantic slave trade should be debited to both Africans and Europeans/Americans, consequently, reparations should also be the responsibility of Africans. Third, this is not about reparations, but more so about querying and rethinking some of Gates' historical arguments and conclusions from the standpoints of "Akan" oral history wedded to "Western" sources, indeed, a bold departure from most of the commentaries framed around "Western" sources.

CAREFUL readings of Gates' efforts at illuminating the Atlantic slave trade and the quest for reparations, pivoted on Obama's presidency, illustrate Gates' subtle preoccupation with blaming Africans for the slave trade. Gates' present essay, full of inaccuracies and spiced with dizzying barber-shop narratives, revisits his perspectives on Africa and the Atlantic slave trade couched during his Conradian scholarly-tour of Africa, packaged as and standardized as homegrown African history for his conservative audience and sponsors.

THE viewpoint that "Africans" enslaved "Africans" is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of "African" in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of "all" Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn't think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media's cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as "African" problem.

GATES writes that "Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante Empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profits to import gold." Asante dominated the Akan gold trade and exported gold overseas; thus, they didn't have to sell slaves to import gold. In sum, Asante had access to gold in the area described by Kwame Arhin as Greater Asante. Absolutely, the slave trade contributed to the expansion of Asante, but Asante's political economy was not wholly dependent on the export of slaves. What is also clear is that the profit from the sale of slaves was used in purchasing guns, the most important commodity that facilitated both the military defense of individual African states as well as the supply of slaves to the Europeans. For its part, the Kongo state was already prosperous before the advent of the Portuguese in 1483. Although, slavery and slave trade were a part of the political economy of the Kongo, it was by no means the dominant one. The people of the Kongo dealt in iron, copperware, pottery, and textile goods, and had extensive markets as well. It was the Portuguese presence that intensified the incidence of slavery and eclipsed other forms of economic ventures just as much as the Portuguese, British, Dutch, etc. presence increased and reconfigured the institutional mechanisms of enslavement in West Africa.

ADDITIONALLY, Gates notes that:
"some African monarchs also sent their children along these same slave routes to be educated in Europe. And there were thousands of former slaves who returned to settle Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Middle Passage, in other words, was sometimes a two-way street. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to claim that Africans were ignorant or innocent."
Even if Africans knew about the conditions of slaves in the Americas, there was very little that the so-called 90 percent of "Africans" enslaved by fellow "Africans" could do to thwart their enslavement. In other words, they did not choose enslavement over freedom. Besides, Africans educated in Europe were pedagogically conditioned to accept the demonization of people of African descent in currency, and when they returned home imputed similar inferiorization to other Africans. For example, Gates should know that Jacobus Eliza Johannes Capitein, an African intellectual giant educated overseas had even defended the slave trade. Capitein was born in 1717 in the Gold Coast and sold into slavery to Jacob van Goch, an official of the Dutch West Indian Company then operating in the Gold Coast. Capitein accompanied his master to the Netherlands, studied and attained advanced degrees, and in 1742 chronicled One of the most covered themes in the book is Capitein's sustained perspectives on compatibility of slavery and Christianity. Thus, it is fair to conclude that some of those who had acquired European higher education like Capitein had assimilated dosages of Eurocentric pedagogies and epistemologies then in currency and which had informed their education. This should not be difficult to understand: throughout the early colonial period some Africans who hailed colonialism belonged to the educated elite. In contemporary Africa, it is the educated elites that have increasingly championed the movement away from composite African values by happily latching onto neocolonial tastes and values, in fact, seismic cultural shifts called Globalization in some quarters.

THERE are a number of subtle suggestions which undergird Gates' essay of blame-game that are plucked from the works of Linda Heywood and John Thornton whose conclusions are shaped by the extant Eurocentric records. One is the notion that wars in precolonial Africa were mostly geared toward the acquisition of slaves for the Atlantic market. Oral history/traditions amply illustrate that some wars in precolonial Africa, even during the period of the Atlantic slave trade, also served as conduits of freeing slaves. Historians of slavery in Africa, mostly non-Africans, have overemphasized the colonial conquest and its consequent wars as auspicious moments that enabled slaves in Africa to take to the pathways of freedom. Conversely, warfare among precolonial African states and African wars of resistance to incipient European domination in the precolonial 19th-century, both of which contributed to slave flights and reunited deserting slaves with their families, have not garnered the attention they deserve. For example, in 1730-31, when Akyem Abuakwa assisted the region of Akuapem to wean the inhabitants off Akwamu domination, a large number of Akuapems, who had been enslaved by the Akwamus, returned to their families in Akuapem and public celebrations were used to welcome them home. Also in the aftermath of the Asante resistance to the budding British imperialism in 1873-74, "slaves," according to colonial and Christian missionary reports as well as newspaper accounts, left their slave-holders in Greater Asante and its coterminous regions, including Bono, Adansi, Asante-Akyem, Denkyira, etc. and returned to their families and communities. Of course, not all fleeing slaves were able to return to their respective homes in a timely fashion, and about this, the reports describe massive "refugee" movements in the area between the Pra, Ofin, Birim, and Densu Rivers, notably encompassing parts of Akyem Abuakwa, Denkyira, Gomoa, Agona and Fante territories. Even war-scares, such as the ones which occurred between the Akuapems and Krobos in the l8th and 19th centuries, also triggered slave flights and some of the fleeing slaves found their way home, or built slave villages that would form the nucleus of some Krobo and Akuapem satellite communities.

ECONOMIC motives, according to Gates, are what compositely explain the "role Africans themselves played" in the Atlantic slave trade as suppliers of the European slave traders' appetite for slaves. Although, direct economic reasons may be used to explain the European involvement in the age of capitalism and slavery, it does not fully explain African states' participation in the Atlantic slave trade. More than economic gain was the pernicious gun-slave-cycle that compelled African states to arm themselves with European-made guns, the most important commodity of the Triangular Trade to West and West-Central Africa, both for protection and as a means of acquiring war captives to sell to European slave traders in order to paradoxically procure more guns for protection. In my view the participation of African states was conditioned more by political motives for protection than short-term economic gains.

GATES argues that since European slave traders lived in the coastal trading posts, the blame for the Atlantic slave trade wholly lies with Africans who captured fellow "Africans" in the interior and sold them to Europeans. His argument is an attractive proposition obviously quarried from the historiography. Unlike "Western" sources that inform much of the historiography, the use of oral history allows us to interrogate Gates' conclusions at several levels. First, 1871, Gates' date for the so-called European exploration of the interior of Africa, is wrong: long before 1871, Europeans had visited the interior parts of the continent. Oral history collected by scholars at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, shows that during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, "aborofo/oburoni"[whites] visited the interior of what is today Ghana, broadly defined as the region between Greater Asante and the littoral stretching from Edina [Elmina] in the west to Keta in the east. Even granted that Europeans never set foot in the interior of West Africa and West-Central Africa, there is no doubt that their presence in the trading posts along the coast enabled them to influence politics that led to wars of enslavement, and the example of Portuguese predatory activities in the Kongo may be summoned to elucidate this conclusion. Second, oral history shows that some indigenous rulers in the Gold Coast and European agents held regular meetings regarding the on-going slave trade in the precincts of the castles and forts. During such durbars or "palavers" Asafo Mma [so-called Companies] or lineage-based warrior groups exhibited their weaponry and demonstrated their military skills defined by warrior "traditions" to the delight of all. Third, the extant literature illustrates that the forts and castles served as permanent hegemonic sites that enabled some European states to influence economic, social, and political developments in both the coastal and immediate interior regions. Finally, the bolts of supply and demand were not tied to space and physical presence: some European/American states' demand for slaves existed and African states like Asante and Dahomey supplied it; more importantly, the Asante and Dahomian supply curves met the European/American slave traders' demand along the lines of proliferation of European-made guns which fueled the political economy of destructive gun-slave-cycles in much of West and West-Central Africa.

FURTHERMORE, Gates, like most Western interpreters of slavery, slave trade, and abolition, attributes abolition solely to non-African agency. The Atlantic slave trade was as much a trade in "commodities" as it was in diffusing prevailing osmotic abolition ideologies in the Atlantic world. Even if we assumed that abolition began in the West as a staple pearl of the historiography would have us believe, the movement of osmotic ideas was also assimilated by Africans, unless Gates and others want to argue that Africans did not know the meaning of freedom, or were incapable of constructing and applying freedoms during the global abolition epoch. In fact, recent research amply suggests that the seeds of abolition in the Gold Coast had been nursed by the Gold Coast educated elite long before the British colonial agents implemented abolition in 1874-75, and the Gold Coast educated elite led by Timothy Hutton Brew, for example, argued that the British colonial government's abolition policy was woefully inadequate...CONTINUE READING FOR MORE





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Black History ! Our struggle with the Africans in Argentina !

Statue of  "The Slave", by Francisco Cafferata in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Statue of "The Slave", by Francisco Cafferata in Buenos Aires, Argentina http://usslave.blogspot.com
Tens of millions of black Africans were forcibly removed from their homelands from the 16th century to the 19th century to toil on the plantations and farms of the New World. This so-called "Middle Passage" accounted for one of the greatest forced migrations of people in human history, as well as one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever witnessed.
Millions of these helpless Africans washed ashore in Brazil -- indeed, in the present-day, roughly one-half of the Brazilian population trace their lineage directly to Africa. African culture has imbued Brazil permanently and profoundly, in terms of music, dance, food and in many other tangible ways.
But what about Brazil's neighbor, Argentina? Hundreds of thousands of Africans were brought there as well – yet, the black presence in Argentina has virtually vanished from the country's records and consciousness.
According to historical accounts, Africans first arrived in Argentina in the late 16th century in the region now called the Rio de la Plata, which includes Buenos Aires, primarily to work in agriculture and as domestic servants. By the late 18th century and early 19th century, black Africans were numerous in parts of Argentina, accounting for up to half the population in some provinces, including Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, Salta and CĆ³rdoba.

In Buenos Aires, neighborhoods like Monserrat and San Telmo housed many black slaves, some of whom were engaged in craft-making for their masters. Indeed, blacks accounted for an estimated one-third of the city's population, according to surveys taken in the early  1800s.
Slavery was officially abolished in 1813, but the practice remained in place until about 1853. Ironically, at about this time, the black population of Argentina began to plunge.
Historians generally attribute two major factors to this sudden "mass disappearance" of black Africans from the country – the deadly war against Paraguay from 1865-1870 (in which thousands of blacks fought on the frontlines for the Argentine military) as well as various other wars; and the onset of yellow fever in Buenos Aires in 1871.
The heavy casualties suffered by black Argentines in military combat created a huge gender gap among the African population – a circumstance that appears to have led black women to mate with whites, further diluting the black population. Many other black Argentines fled to neighboring Brazil and Uruguay, which were viewed as somewhat more hospitable to them.
Others claim something more nefarious at work.
It has been alleged that the president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, sought to wipe out blacks from the country in a policy of covert genocide through extremely repressive policies (including possibly the forced recruitment of Africans into the army and by forcing blacks to remain in neighborhoods where disease would decimate them in the absence of adequate health care).
Tellingly, Sarmiento wrote in his diary in 1848: "In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 [million]…. What is [to be] done with such blacks, hated by the white race? Slavery is a parasite that the vegetation of English colonization has left attached to leafy tree of freedom."
By 1895, there were reportedly so few blacks left in Argentina that the government did not even bother registering African-descended people in the national census.
The CIA World Factbook currently notes that Argentina is 97 percent white (primarily comprising people descended from Spanish and Italian immigrants), thereby making it the "whitest" nation in Latin America.
But blacks did not really vanish from Argentina – despite attempts by the government to eliminate them (partially by encouraging large-scale immigration in the late 19th and 20th century from Europe and the Near East). Rather, they remain a hidden and forgotten part of Argentine society.
Hisham Aidi, a lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, wrote on Planete Afrique that in the 1950s, when the black American entertainer Josephine Baker arrived in Argentina, she asked the mixed-race minister of public health, Ramon Carilio: "Where are the Negroes?" In response, Carilio joked: "There are only two -- you and I."
As in virtually all Latin American societies where blacks mixed with whites and with local Indians, the question of race is extremely complex and contentious.
"People of mixed ancestry are often not considered 'black' in Argentina, historically, because having black ancestry was not considered proper," said Alejandro Frigerio, an anthropologist at the Universidad Catolica de Buenos Aires, according to Planete Afrique.
"Today the term 'negro' is used loosely on anyone with slightly darker skin, but they can be descendants of indigenous Indians [or] Middle Eastern immigrants."
AfricaVive, a black empowerment group founded in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s, claimed that there are 1 million Argentines of black African descent in the country (out of a total population of about 41 million). A report in the Washington Post even suggested that 10 percent of Buenos Aires' population may have African blood (even if they are classified as "whites" by the census).
"People for years have accepted the idea that there are no black people in Argentina," Miriam Gomes, a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires, who is part black herself, told the Post.
"Even the schoolbooks here accepted this as a fact. But where did that leave me?"
She also explained that almost no one in Argentina with black blood in their veins will admit to it.
"Without a doubt, racial prejudice is great in this society, and people want to believe that they are white," she said. "Here, if someone has one drop of white blood, they call themselves white."
Gomes also told the San Francisco Chronicle that after many decades of white immigration into Argentina, people with African blood have been able to blend in and conceal their origins.
"Argentina's history books have been partly responsible for misinformation regarding Africans in Argentine society," she said. "Argentines say there are no blacks here. If you're looking for traditional African people with very black skin, you won't find it. African people in Argentina are of mixed heritage."
Ironically, Argentina's most famous cultural gift to the world – the tango – came from the African influence.
"The first paintings of people dancing the tango are of people of African descent," Gomes added.
On a broader scale, the "elimination" of blacks from the country's history and consciousness reflected the long-cherished desire of successive Argentine governments to imagine the country as an "all-white" extension of Western Europe in Latin America.
"There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty," said Paula Brufman, an Argentine law student and researcher, according to Planete Afrique.
"The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized."

Images of the Africans in Argentina !

Essay: Pan-Africanist Wisdom, 1791-2013: selection from Pan-Africanist thinkers since Boukman I by Chinweizu]


  The Husia teaches that we must emulate the excellence of our ancestors, study
their wise teachings, great works and good deeds in everyday life, and struggle to
embody and add to the legacy they've left. It states that the wisdom of the
ancestors are "teachings for life, instructions for well-being and flourishing, for
directing one on the path of life and causing one to flourish on earth." And we are
to "love learning, seek after truth," and constantly bring forth that which is useful
for the people and the future.
--[Maulana Karenga, "The Sacred Narrative Of Africans", Los Angeles Sentinel,
11-14-13, pp.6-7 ]
---------------
"No one man has the solution to the
multitude of problems that confront us as a
race of people."
--"Youth Perspective on the 7th PAC"
by NSAJIGWA ISUBHA-GWAMAKA, <b.1964>, (1994)
on behalf of SISI KWA SISI, Mbeya, Tanzania.
--------------------------------
Foreword
We need to study the lessons of the Pan-Africanism Movement of the last two centuries,
develop its good points and discard its mistakes. One of the most tempting mistakes for
sectarian minds is to think that any one person has the solution to the multitude of
problems that confront us as a race of people. Certainly not Du Bois, certainly not
Nkrumah; and not even Garvey the Great, was able to display that humanly impossible
omniscience. This anthology aims to help correct that mistake by showing us a sample of
the range of wise thoughts that have emerged from the many different terrains of the Pan-
African struggle for liberation from slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism.
2
As these selections show, much intellectual work has been done by Pan-Africanist
thinkers in the two centuries since 1791. However, their work has not been collected and
made available for tackling the many tasks of Pan-Africanism.
As these selections show, useful insights have been supplied into such nitty-gritty
issues as mental independence; "Independence or death"; criticism and self-criticism; the
(Black) Race First principle; racial honor, racial self-reliance, racial unity, racial
solidarity, racial privacy; our implacable white enemies—Arab and European; economic
decolonization; cultural liberation; Afrocentric education; Black power; leadership and
followership; war; charity; propaganda; polygyny; racism/Negrophobia; Marxism and
blacks; re-Africanization; Afrocentrism; people's democracy; Black African weaknesses;
the Pan-African Congress; the national army; collective security; cultural renaissance; the
lure of Marxism; integrating ancestral African values into contemporary African life; race
and class; the one-drop-rule; justified prejudice; the extermination of the Black race;
Negrocentricity; scientific socialism; communalism; socialism and racism; ethnofederalism,
ethnic autonomy and African unity; Kwanzaa and unity; Diaspora-Homeland
relations; and much else.
These are some of the nitty-gritty issues we must grapple with, the engineering
details we must think through, if we are to move beyond the affirmation of lofty
sentiments and vague ambitions, and actually get down to building the structures for
attaining the objectives of Pan-Africanism.
I urge other Black African scholars to contribute to this effort by searching through the
Pan-Africanist literature and compiling anthologies of the wisdom they find therein.
Then, the next generation of Pan-Africanists will have anthologies to educate them on the
tenets and ideas and best practices of Pan-Africanism, and so be spared the misfortune of
intellectual orphans who start out in a vacuum of ideas, as if they have no heritage to
draw from.
Please Note: This is a work in progress. I shall continue to add to it as I find more words
of Pan-Africanist wisdom. So, treat this as a preliminary report.
The dates in the format < 19xy-19xz > are the dates, if known, of the person quoted; the
date in the format (19yy) is the date, if known, of the statement just quoted.
Chinweizu's commentaries are in red bold italics. They are comments or bald statements
or summaries of positions that, when the anthology is completed, will be argued and
demonstrated in mini essays. Some of these comments elaborate on, and some amend, the
quoted statement.
--Chinweizu
---------------------------------------------------------------
Section A
Examples of ideas (principles, doctrines and tasks) formulated by Black thinkers as
the lessons from the rich experience of Black struggles against imperialism, slavery,
colonialism, racism and neo-colonialism, both in Black Africa and the diaspora.
3
In the last two centuries of Black peoples' struggles against imperialism, racism,
enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism, many doctrines and principles have
been formulated and various tasks have been set that capture the lessons of the
liberation experience. Since they are derived from the practice of Black African
liberation, and are guides to the practice of Black African liberation, these ideas
belong among the resources of a Pan-Africanism whose project is the liberation of
black Africans, whether or not their articulators were avowed Pan-Africanists. They
should be harvested and used to equip the minds of Pan-Africanists. Below are a few:
A1] Boukman's call:
"Throw away the symbol of the god of the whites who has so often caused
us to weep, and listen to the voice of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of
us all."
--[Boukman, <d. 1791>, (1791), quoted in C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins,
p. 87]
---------------------------------------
A2] "the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed."
--[Steve Biko, <1946-1977> (ca. 1971), "I Write What I Like" p. 68]
----------------------------------------
A3] "Black people reject this [Bantustan idea fundamentally because] . . .it is a
solution given to us by the same [white] people who have created the
problem. . . and [Blacks] are beginning to rid their minds of imprisoning
notions which are the legacy of the control of their attitudes by whites."
--[ Biko, <1946-1977>, (ca. 1971), "I Write What I Like" pp. 82, 68]
------------------------------------------
A4] "in order to feature well in this game of power politics, [we Blacks] have
to use the concept of group power and build a strong foundation for this"
--[ Biko, <1946-1977>, (1971), "I Write What I Like" p.68]
------------------------------------------
A5] On our racial privacy:
a) "We demand complete control of our social institutions without
interference by any alien race or races."
--[UNIA, "Declaration of Rights of the Negro peoples of the world", 1920,
P&O, II: 140]
-----------------------------------
b) ". . . give the Negro race of Africa a chance to develop unhindered by other
races."
--[Resolution of the 1st Pan-African Congress, (1919)]
---------------------------------------
4
A6] On practice of racial privacy by firmly excluding all whites from our group:
As Dessalines put it
"What have we in common with that bloody-minded people? Their
cruelties compared to our moderation –their color to ours—the extension
of the seas which separate us—our avenging climate—all plainly tell us
they are not our brethren; that they will never become such. And if they
find asylum among us, they will still be the instigators of our troubles and
our divisions."
--[Dessalines, <d.1806>, (1804), quoted in Jacob Carruthers, Irritated
Genie, p. 124]
----------------------------------
A7] Black/Sub-Sahara Africa as the Africa of Pan-Africanism:
a) Garvey's United States of Black Africa.
It is for you to decide; it is for the British government to decide; it is for
the French government to decide, it is for the governments of Belgium
also and of Portugal and of Spain, all in conference with us, to decide what
part of Africa they will place at the disposal of the natives so that they can
live in peace in their own native land. . . . There are certain parts of Africa
in which you cannot live at all; now it is for you to come together and give
us a United States of Black Africa.
[Marcus Garvey, <1887-1940>, (1928), "Speech at Royal Albert Hall" ,
London, June 6, 1928. See John Henrik Clarke, ed. Marcus Garvey and
the Vision of Africa, p. 297]
b) Sub-Sahara/Black Pan-Africanism--Du Bois' advice to Nkrumah:
" Ghana must on the contrary be the representative of Africa, and not only
that, but of Africa below the Sahara desert. . . . Ghana should lead a
movement of black men for Pan-Africanism, including periodic
conferences and personal contacts of black men from the Sahara to the
Indian Ocean. . . . a new series of Pan-African Congresses should be held;
. . . The new series of Pan-African Congresses would seek common aims
of progress for Black Africa. . . . I pray you, my dear Mr. Nkrumah, to use
all your power to put a Pan-Africa along these lines into working order at
the earliest possible date"
---[Du Bois, <1868-1963>, (1957), in "Letter to Nkrumah", (March 1957),
in The World and Africa, pp. 295, 296, 297]
--------------------
Du Bois was being historically correct in urging a Black or Sub-Sahara Pan-
Africanism. The captives transported from Africa to the Americas were Negroes, and
5
they had been procured from Sub-Sahara Africa. The Trans-Atlantic slave ships called
only at the Sub-Sahara coasts of Africa. They did not call at the Mediterranean coast
of North Africa or at the Atlantic coast of Morocco. They did not procure and transport
any whites—Arabs or Europeans-- only Negroes. Hence the ancestors of the African-
American Diaspora did not include Arabs, but were only Negroes from Sub-Sahara
Africa. Hence the homeland of the diaspora Africans is not the
whole continent but only Sub-Sahara Africa. And that is the
correct Africa of Pan-Africanism.
But, for reasons best known to himself, (possibly the strong blancophilia—
aspiration to whiteness--that also manifested in his choice of white Arab and very light
octoroon-type African mothers for his children, and in his marked preference for close
white advisers and white personal assistants when he could have had Ghanaians or
other black Africans in those intimate positions) Nkrumah disregarded this historically
sound advice from the founder of the Pan-African Congress, and proceeded to
inaugurate a multi-racial, Afro-Arab, whole-Continent brand of Pan-Africanism. In
fact, but for their refusal to attend his 1958 Conference of Independent African States
(CIAS), even the European whites of Apartheid South Africa would have been
included in Nkrumah's strange brand of anti-colonialist Pan-Africanism. Many
confusions have been spawned by this multiracial Continentalism: such as Black
Diasporans defending our white Arab enemies (such as Gadafi and his Libyan Arabs)
who are white settlers occupying North Africa, on the ground that they live in Africa
and therefore are Africans and of legitimate concern to Pan-Africanism. Which is like
Pan-Africanism defending the Boers—the European settler-colonialists who occupy
South Africa.
--Chinweizu
c) Nyerere on Sub-Sahara Pan-Africanism:
[emphases, in bold italics added by Chinweizu]
And the new leadership of Africa will have to concern itself with the
situation in which it finds itself in the world of tomorrow —in the world of
the 21st century. And the Africa I'm going to be talking about, is Africa
south of the Sahara, Sub-Sahara Africa. I'll explain later the reason why
I chose to concentrate on Africa south of the Sahara. . . . Europe, Western
Europe, is very wealthy. It has two Mexicos. One is Eastern Europe. . . .
Europe has a second Mexico. And Europe's Second Mexico is North
Africa. North Africa is to Europe what Mexico is to the United States.
North Africans who have no jobs will not go to Nigeria, they'll be thinking
of Europe or the Middle East, because of the imperatives of geography
6
and history and religion and language. North Africa is part of Europe and
the Middle East.
Nasser was a great leader and a great African leader. I got on
extremely well with him. Once he sent me a Minister, and I had a long
discussion with his Minister at State House here [Dar-es-Salaam], and in
the course of the discussion, the Minister says to me, "Mr. President this is
my first visit to Africa". North Africa, because of the pull of the
Mediterranean and I say history and culture, and religion, North Africa is
pulled towards the North. When North Africans look for jobs they go to
Western Europe and Southern Western Europe, or they go to the Middle
East. . . .
Africa, South of the Sahara is different, totally different. . . . Africa
South of the Sahara is isolated. That is the first point I want to make.
Africa South of the Sahara is totally isolated in terms of that configuration
of developing power in the world of the 21st Century — on its own. There
is no centre of power in whose self-interest it's important to develop
Africa, no centre. Not North America, not Japan, not Western Europe.
There's no self-interest to bother about Africa South of the Sahara. Africa
South of the Sahara is on its own. Na sijambo baya. Those of you who
don't know Swahili, I just whispered, "Not necessarily bad". That's the
first thing I wanted to say about Africa South of the Sahara. African
leadership, the coming African leadership, will have to bear that in mind.
You are on your own . . .
The second point about Africa and again I am talking about Africa
South of the Sahara; it is fragmented, fragmented. . . . Africa south of the
Sahara is isolated. Therefore, to develop, it will have to depend upon its
own resources basically. Internal resources, nationally; and Africa will
have to depend upon Africa. The leadership of the future will have to
devise, try to carry out policies of maximum national self-reliance and
maximum collective self-reliance. They have no other choice. . . .The
small countries in Africa . . .should come together. . . . If we can't move
7
towards bigger nation-states, at least let's move towards greater cooperation.
This is beginning to happen. And the new leadership in Africa
should encourage it."
---[Nyerere, <1922-1999>, (1997), excerpt from his 75th Birthday
Celebration speech, Dec 1997. In Reflections on Leadership in Africa –
Forty Years After Independence, ed. by Haroub Othman, Brussels: VUB
University Press, 2000, pp. 17-24]
----------------------
As we can see, Garvey and Du Bois were both agreed on Sub-Sahara/Black Africa as
the Africa of Pan-Africanism. But Nkrumah, for reasons still undetermined, went his
own way and inaugurated his multi-racial, African and Arab, continentalist Pan-
Africanism. In fact, had Strijdom and Vorster accepted his invitation to his CIAS in
1958, Nkrumah would have included Apartheid South Africa in his peculiar brand of
Pan-Africanism. Nyerere, like the other Black African leaders who founded the OAU
in 1963, went along with the multi-racial, continental Pan-Africanism that Nkrumah
had already set in motion in 1958. But shortly before he died, Nyerere made a case for
Sub-Sahara Pan-Africanism. Thus we have three of the four greatest leaders of 20th
century Pan-Africanism in agreement, leaving Nkrumah isolated in his peculiar
version which, unfortunately, became institutionalized in the OAU.--Chinweizu
-----------------------
A8] Black is beautiful:
a) When you say "black is beautiful" what in fact you are saying to him is:
man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human
being.
[Steve Biko, <1946-1977>, I Write What I Like, p.104]
-----------------------
b) I am a Negro. I make absolutely no apology for being a Negro because my
God created me to be what I am, and as I am so will I return to my God,
for He knows just why He created me as He did.
[Marcus Garvey, <1887-1940>, (1923), P&O, II: 212-213]
---------------------------
A9] On the practice of Black Unity by upholding the "one-drop rule":
a) I have seen two classes of men, born to cherish, assist, and succour one
another—mixed in a world, and blended together . . .Blacks and Yellows
[mulattos], whom the refined duplicity of Europe for a long time
endeavored to divide: you, who are now consolidated, and make but one
family. . . [shall be] known under the general name of Blacks.....CONTINUE


Pan-Africanist Wisdom since Boukman- I (Dec 2013)
Pan-Africanist Wisdom, 1791-2013: selection from Pan-Africanist thinkers
since Boukman--I
Selected, edited and with commentary by Chinweizu
December 2013
Copyright © by Chinweizu, 2013







Kwasi Akyeampong
Editor/Moderator
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