Some of us tink we shouldah satisfy wid crumbs and uncle tom tokenism; from genocidal criminals. Dere are dose who need a fyahing squad fi wake up to di Ifreecahn reality of BLOOD and FYAH GENOCIDE!!!!
As usual dem claim seh dem love GOD?!!!!; yet manifest di werks of SATAN and always wid a program of pius pacification. THE VAIL HATH BEEN LIFTED FROM InI EYEIS.
Education for a New Reality in the African World
By John Henrik Clarke
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Part 9 of 10
Education Is Power
Recently some of the new leaders of African nations
are beginning to sell their gold mines to Europeans,
land to Europeans and to make concessions within
Africa that violate the traditional values of African
people. What these European-minded Africans fail to
remember is that by custom and culture, land in
African can neither be bought nor sold because land
has been traditionally seen as the collective property
of the whole people and no leader has the right to
sell this birthright and the birthright of generations
of Africans still to come because land is essential to
nationhood. For more information about the land
problem in Africa I suggest you read, The Truth About
the West African Land Problem, by Casely Hayford, and
Facing Mt. Kenya and Kenya, Land of Conflict by Jomo
Kenyatta.
Education for a new reality in the African world must
be an education that enables the African to handle all
of the wealth producing resources of Africa. An
education that enables the African to manage and
market these resources and an education that enables
him/her to prepare the generations still to come to do
the same thing. A large number of African children
should be chosen at birth and trained toward these
ends and all education should be for the total
sovereignty of African people. There is nothing in
African traditional values that prohibits modernism,
upward mobility, or the use of science and technology.
Africans must realize that they live in a modem
technical world and that there are lessons we can draw
from our ancient societies to guide us. Africa has to
move with the age in which it finds itself in order to
survive.
What I am proposing here is a holy order of
commitment. In the future we can not leave land and
nation management to chance. What I am alluding to
here is the establishment of an international
priesthood of liberation and an institute to maintain
that priesthood. If we are to go back to nationhood
and be safe and secure, we must understand that a
nation must be a cultural, political and economic
container of the national and international
aspirations of a people. The commitment to maintain
the nation and secure it against all enemies, both
foreign and domestic, must be part of everyone's
mission, not something left solely to politicians.
Africans the world over must stop playing games about
who is an African. Everyone in Africa who cannot be
addressed as an African is either an invader or a
descendant of an invader. It is time for the African
to ask the guests in their house the question: What is
your mission in my house? and-Do you have any loyalty
or commitment to the preservation of my house, as I
conceive it to be? Africans must be bold enough to let
the non-African in Africa know that, "I will share
power with you in Africa to the extent that you are
willing to share power with me in Europe. You demand
and get the prevailing power m your countries and I
have every right to demand and get the prevailing
power in my country." Africans should demand and get
Africa as African-ruled as France is French-ruled and
England is English-ruled. Too many times Africans are
expected to share power with others who have no
intention of sharing power with them. In educating
Africans to realistically face the world of the
immediate tomorrow, I am referring to the essential
selfishness of survival.
My subject, Education for a New Reality in the African
World, was not casually chosen. I have spoken and
written on this subject or some aspect of it many
times over the years. I have exhausted my arguments in
favor of the subject without losing my passion for the
subject. And yet I still have not made everyone
understand the importance of education; education is
power. When education is properly done, education
opens the door to power. A true education has one
purpose, and one purpose alone: to train the student
to be a handler of power. One of the things that we
fail to understand is that our oppressor cannot afford
to educate us to handle power. We live in a society
where, if we were properly educated, we would not ask
for power. We would take power. We will have to stop
answering to names that our mothers and fathers did
not give us. We will have to stop answering to names
of which we are not.
The real crisis facing black educators began a long
time ago with things we did not understand. I think
back to reading about a scene of an African being
forced on a slave ship, and he reaches back and puts a
handful of African dirt in his mouth. I think that
African understood more about education than most of
us. He understood the basis of nation-land. Until we
understand the land basis of education and the nation
basis of education, we will miss the point. Where did
we go wrong and when did we stop being innovators and
became imitators?
In the nineteenth century we began to be "those things
most unlike ourselves." When we had the golden
opportunity to set a new tone in education, we tried
to be like our oppressor instead of setting a new
basis for education. Professor Ivan Van Sertima says
that European expansion into the broader world and
European colonization of history have locked us into a
"five hundred year room" of history. A room wherein
African people and their contributions to the world
were removed from history. The basis of education for
a new reality is to pull us out of this five hundred
year room. We have to understand what was wrong with
our education and examine the nineteenth century in
the African world. The nineteenth century might have
been the greatest century in the whole of the African
world. This might be the century that we have to go
back and examine in order to survive in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.
We produced the finest minds that we have produced
since the decline of Egypt and Nile Valley
Civilization in the nineteenth century. We produced
the rebels, the activist mentality, the realists in
the nineteenth century. This is the century of
Frederick Douglass and Martin I)elaney. This is the
century of the great ministers, who tower over Martin
Luther King, Jr. and were more realistic than Martin
Luther King, Jr. Taking nothing from Dr. King, this is
the century of Henry Highland Garnett whose motto was
"Resistance, Resistance, Resistance." This is the
century of a search for Africa again. This is the
century of the great black women: Sojourner Truth and
Harriet Tubman. We have forgotten that century, but we
will not orient ourselves in the twentieth century
until we go back to that century, and I was just
talking about what was happening in the United States.
When we look at the Caribbean Islands, this is a
century of physical resistance. Looking at South
America, especially Brazil, Africans brought into
being two black nations. African captives were able to
by-pass the auction block, escape into the hinterlands
and form African nations. One of these nations,
Palmares lasted for one hundred and ten years. The
other one, Bahia, lasted almost as long. During this
century African cultural continuity produced the most
successful slave revolts in the history of the world.
The best known revolts were those in Jamaica and in
Haiti. Jamaica fought longer and harder than Haiti,
but Haiti was able to bring off an independent state
and Jamaica could not, and we wonder why.
Haiti fought over a shorter period with a greater
degree of consistency, and hit the French at a
strategic time-when Napoleon was involved with other
campaigns in Europe. They were successful in their
revolt. When the Jamaicans revolted, their revolts
were put down and too much time elapsed between
revolts, giving the British time to destabilize them.
After each defeat the Jamaicans had to remount each
revolution from scratch. The time lapse did not give
them the facility to bring forth a nation, while the
total of the Haitian revolutions (there were more than
one) happened over a twenty year period.
The physical resistance in the Caribbean Islands
challenged Europe and changed the geography of this
hemisphere. Because of the challenge of the Caribbean
Islands-Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques
Dessalines, and Christophe-Napoleon had to sell the
Louisiana Territory. These Caribbean revolutions
brought into being the stimulation for the massive
slave revolts in the United States.
While we are looking at the Caribbean, let's look at
the Caribbean mind and its contribution to the
stimulation of black social forms in the United
States. We need to understand that the Caribbean mind
never functioned well at home. Once the Caribbean mind
begins functioning well it is driven away from home.
The Caribbean mind has a way of producing seed that
does not grow in the soil of the Caribbean. The soil
was fertile in the United States and the best of these
minds came here. It started with Prince Hall. Robert
Campbell would come here. He would travel with Martin
Delany to Africa and write A Search for a Place. John
B. Russwurm would edit Freedom's Journal. Peter Ogden
was one of the founders of Odd Fellows. Prince Hall
would found the Masons. H. Sylvester Williams had
tried to establish a Pan-African League in Trinidad.
It failed. Trinidadians did not pay any attention to
it. The same thing happened when Marcus Garvey started
his Universal Negro Improvement Association and
African Communities League in Jamaica. He could not
get it off the ground. The soil would not take the
seed. The greatest contribution to the formal idea of
Pan-Africanism was made by three Trinidadians: H.
Slyvester Willlams, C.L.R. James, and George Padmore.
Why couldn't these minds function at home? You can
trace the history of these minds for two hundred years
all the way up to Marcus Garvey, including those that
returned home and were killed. None of them were
accepted at home.
The greatest and clearest of the minds of the
nineteenth century was Edward Wilmot Blyden. What he
said about education in his famous inaugural address
at Liberia College, in 1881, said more about education
over one hundred years ago than we are saying right
now. He said:
We will have to work for many years to come. Not only
without the popular support that we must have, but
with inadequate resources.
...We strive to be those things most unlike ourselves.
No matter what talent we have, we feed grist into
other people's mills and, of course, nothing comes out
except what has been put in. And that then is our
great sorrow.
This was said in 1881, over one hundred years ago, and
we are still doing it. Edward Wilmot Blyden was one of
the finest voices of the nineteenth century. He was
not only ahead of his time, he is ahead of this time.
Let's look at Africa in the nineteenth century. This
is the century of the massive anti-colonial revolts.
This is the century when the African world faced
reality as it had never faced reality before. In the
first half of the century, the Zulu Wars in Southern
Africa had already started. The Ashanti Wars in Ghana
had already started. The Islamic Wars in the Sudan had
already started. The Maji Maji Wars in Tanganyika and
neighboring territories, and the Riff Wars in North
Africa had already started. And the wars in Nigeria
led by Ousmane Dan Fodio had already started.
The physical confrontation diminished as the slave
trade turned into Colonialism (another form of
slavery) and the Africans soon realized that
missionary efforts were also a form of slavery. The
Europeans began to take away the African energies and
began to destroy the African images of god. One of the
ways to continue to enslave a people is, after
removing one set of chains from their body, to place
another set of chains on their mind. Not only make
them change their religion but make them abandon their
religion. Make them change their dress, their tastes,
their music, their food, and when this is done, you
don't need any prison walls to confine these people.
The prison walls inside their mind will be more
binding than any prison walls you can construct.
Once we face the reality of the imprisonment of the
African mind in the nineteenth century, we will face
up to what was happening to that mind. We will look at
the debates between blacks and blacks and look at the
blacks going to Liberia to "Christianize" their
"heathen" brothers. Read Alexander Crummell's work.
Alexander Crummell was a great black missionary. But
Alexander Crummell was a missionary with the mentality
of a white missionary. He was going to Africa to
spread Christianity in a continent where every element
that originally went into the making of Chrisfianity,
Islam, and Judaism began. Every element that went into
these three religions had long been in practice on the
African continent.
Once we understand the nature of our oppressor's
religious oppression, we must look at the mentality of
our respective oppressors. The oppressor in the United
States has taught us to face reality better than any
of the others. The oppressors in the Caribbean area
and in South America gave their black population the
illusion that one day they would be allowed to join
the club. The oppressor in the United States has
taught us explicitly that we will never join the club.
Even with what we like to call integration, another
fakery, they still let us know that if we manage to
get into the club, we will never be accepted.
In the physical integration in the Caribbean Islands
and in South America, if you are almost white a
special place is made for you in society. You are not
allowed in the house, but you would be allowed in a
designated area close to the house. In the United
States, the crudest of oppressors say, if you've got
one drop of one drop you will be placed with the
blackest of blacks and at one word, all of you will be
placed in the same sack. Although the females with the
one drop had some advantage in the domestic job market
and the husband market, and another market which I
will not mention, no place was made for them in their
father's house. And this is reality.
In my research for this paper, I re-read a
dissertation on religion written by an African
attending Syracuse University. His dissertation
detailed why African religions never became world
religions. He said they had no pews, no collection
plates, no temples, no missionaries, everything was
free. He asked the question: How can such a religion
become a world religion? Nobody was exploiting
anybody. Priests were free. The community paid the
priest so they did not have to pass the hat. The
community brings the priest his food and makes his
clothes. He pointed out that all of the elements that
we call Christianity came out of Africa. All of the
symbols of Christianity came out of Africa. He
explained that when the people from Israel came into
Africa, they had no clear religion, no law and no
language, when they left they had all three. His
dissertation was not well received by Syracuse
University and he was thrown out, in 1933.
I would like to approach my conclusion with quotations
from great African American women poets because in the
great civilizations of Africa, long before we knew
Europeans existed, women were revered, were treated
equally and moved freely through the society and
played all kinds of roles. The first deity in history
was seen as a female goddess. The first woman to ride
at the head of an army was an ancient Africa woman.
The first woman to challenge the foreigner challenged
Octavius, who later became Caesar Augustus. Another
African woman challenged Alexander of Macedonia.
In her poetry, Mari Evans has said that part of the
immediate solution to education is to "speak the truth
to the people." With this she implies that if you give
people the light, they will find their way.
In her early poetry, Pauli Murray, now The Reverend
Dr. Pauli Murray, speaking of freedom, in her Dark
Testament, says:
Freedom is a thing like amber wine
that lures man down a path of skulls.
For they killed the dreamer but not the dream
the dream is always the same.
The dream is about freedom.
Professor Carolyn Fowler of Atlanta University, in
speaking of the need to bring African people back
together again, said:
We need to look at each other more. We need to get
acquainted with each other's personality. We need to
remove the strangeness that has grown up between us
across all the seas and all the centuries.
Margaret Walker challenges us to take action in her
classic poem, For My People. She called for us to:
Let the new earth begin.
Let a new race of men rise and take control.
We will accept her challenge and my answer to her will
be, Sister Margaret, we are people of vision and we
see tomorrow, not as a male-dominated tomorrow, but as
a collective tomorrow with males and females
functioning as equals. We will say to her: We have
heard the martial music. We have heard the trumpet
call. We accept the challenge. We are the new men who,
with our women at our side as equal partners in this
enterprise, are prepared to take charge.
As we enter the twenty-first century there will be
over one billion African people on the face of the
earth. Properly counted, the Africans in the United
States, the 1990 census says, are at 30,000,000, and
the census takers missed over twenty percent of us. In
the Caribbean there are 60,000,000 admitted people of
African descent. In Asia there are millions who are
African, whether they know it or not, and on the
islands of the Pacific that are several more million
who are yet to consider their African ancestry. The
population of Africa was last fixed at over
700,000,000 and continues to grow.
These are staggering figures. Our study of history has
taught us that we were yesterday's people, and by our
shear numbers we will be tomorrow's people too. With
this understanding of our new importance we can change
the world, if first we change ourselves by educating
ourselves for this new reality. When we count one
billion of this earth there will be very few people
who we will need as allies. The main allies that we
will need we will be able to find among ourselves. We
will be the only people who will have a continent for
themselves. We will not be an oppressed people and we
will not be an oppressor of any people. We will not
need to exploit or take advantage of other people. We
could bring to the world a new humanity and build a
new age of man. This might be our mission, it might be
the greatest legacy that we can leave for mankind.
--
Author
