-By Shabaka Ture
Let me say from the start that I was born in the USA however; I identify myself as an Afrikan born in America. I know that the majority of Blacks (Afrikans) find ourselves in America as a result of slavery. Those Black people who were in the western hemisphere, before Christopher Columbus, migrated from the area now known as Afrika. Any Afrikan who is ashamed of who they are, is an Afrikan who doesn’t know their history, they don’t know who they are.
We Afrikans have the ability to solve our problems. However, if we don’t know who we are, it will be difficult to even determine what our real problems are. Those who are benefiting from our confusion understand this. They have understood this from the beginning and since they control the “educational” system and the media, they have made sure that we remain confused as to who we really are. For example, they continue to say that Greece was the first civilization. Anyone with clear understanding of history knows this is a grand falsehood. Or their continual portrayal of Jesus as a European man
I say that we Afrikans are being told who we are by those in power. For example, Afrikans born in the USA are repeatedly told that our history began in 1619. We are told that we are gangsters, pimps, dope pushers. We are told that nothing was going on in Afrika until the European came, etc. We have been told this so much that we repeat these things ourselves.
We have been led to believe that we have made much progress because some of us have become “successful”. However, if we take a honest look at Afrikans scattered all over this earth, we will see that the majority of us still remain at the bottom politically, economically and socially.
People have the right to define themselves and determine for themselves what success means. This power has a direct impact on their collective self-image. We can’t define ourselves if we don’t know who we are. The best we can do is use the definition given to us by someone else.
Having a clear understanding of one’s origin plays an important role in how one sees him or her self. It helps determine ones self-image. Unfortunately, I think it would be safe to say that most Afrikans who were born in or out side of Afrika either do not know these facts or do know them and reject them. Therefore we have a poor self-image because we believe in the lies that continue to be told about us.
Why would any conscious individual deny his or her own history and culture? It happens for the same reason that some Afrikans are ashamed to be Afrikan, they either don’t know any better or they have chosen to turn their back on their history and culture. In my view, this represents a certain degree of neurosis brought about by centuries of brutal, and subtle oppression and the continued denial of our human rights.
When a traumatic event occurs the people affected are often offered grief counseling and therapy to help them recover psychologically. Afrikans still continue to suffer from the legacy of slavery and colonialism and most of us have never experienced any therapy designed to deal with the psychological damage. And those of us, who have received therapy, can’t begin to get to the heart of the damage because the therapy is based upon a euro-centric outlook. From what I can see, this psychological damage has been passed down from generation to generation.
I’ve heard some people say, “All of that happened a long time ago, you got move on”! First of all, look around, it’s still going on, and as Malcolm X once said, “The form has changed but the essence remains the same”,
For those of us born in the USA, we must know that our history started long before 1619. We must know that, at one time, Afrikan people were on top, that we created the first civilizations on the planet. We must know that that everything we needed to live was, and still is, in Afrika because Afrika holds the majority of the earth’s natural resources. Armed with this knowledge, Any Afrikan living in America or anywhere else cannot help but be proud to be an Afrikan.
So, one form of therapy would be to study the history of your people, from the BEGINNIG, so that we can know that we are not descendants of slaves or that our history did not begin when the first European person came to exploit Afrika. We must realize that both slavery and colonialism are just a SMALL, yet devastating, part of our history.
However, just having knowledge of these facts is not enough. Another part of the therapy would be to help teach your sisters and brothers these facts so that they to can begin to heal also.
The reason why some of us are ashamed to be Afrikan is because we don’t know who we are and what our existence really means. We don’t know about the great contributions we have made and continue to make towards forward advancement of humanity. We don’t know that Black people were the first people on the planet. We don’t know that a Portuguese explorer, during Europe’s feudal period, sent word back to the royal court, that he observed Afrikan social organization at a higher level than any he had observed in Europe.
We clearly are a mighty people. We must know who we really are and that being armed with this knowledge will enable us to do much more to uplift our people. We do not need to follow the European model, which continues to keep us enslaved; we have everything we need within us!
Most importantly, we must use this knowledge to properly organize ourselves, globally, in the spirit of people like Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah. As I said before, we have the ability to solve our problems we just need an Afrikan outlook and proper organization.
In the words of the Honorable Marcus Garvey, “Rise up ye mighty race”!
*Afrika is spelled with a “k” because according Afrikan Linguists the “c” sound cannot be found in any original Afrikan language.
Copyright Ó 2008 Blue Nile Enterprises
