RBG NALT (New Afrikan Leadership Training) Center

A Marcus Garvey Story, Narrated by Ossie Davis, Garveyism and Education and Marcus Garvey Maxims

2008-08-02T13:53:00.028-04:00

Who Was Ossie Davis?
Click n Learn

A RBG Street Scholars Google Doc.

Garveyism and Education

“The time has come for the Negro (African) to forget and cast behind him, his hero worship and adoration of other races and to start out immediately to create and emulate heroes of his own.” Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, 1925 African Fundamentalism

The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey born August 17^th 1887, Jamaica, Caribbean is one of if not the greatest leader the African race has had in the last 150 years. Garveyism is Universal African Nationalism that has lead the fight for a place for African centricity, which is an intellectual category that allows us to view social and human reality from an African perspective or stand point. Through Garveyism African-centricity will be used to focus on the cultural and human quality of African thought and practice. African centricity will combat Euro centrism, which is, academic terrorism and an ideology and practice of domination/banditry that is based on the fundamental assumption that all relevance and value are centered in European culture alone.

1. Garveyism is first, based on the knowledge that African culture is not only worthy of study and teaching, but also critical to understanding society and the human experience given its key role in each. Second, Garveyism is a methodological orientation, that has proven the most effective and fruitful way of studying and understanding African people from their own perspective. Third, Garveyism recognizes the diversity of perspectives and approaches within the African experiences and places itself at the head as the most successful ideology. Fourth, Garveyism recognizes Africa’s dynamic and diverse character and seeks brotherly and sisterly cooperation. Fifth, it focuses on the continent of Africa’s greatness in people, natural resources and beauty to change the image of Africa, as well as the greatness in the African American past and present nationalist struggles and leaders. Sixth, Garveyism is parts of African culture and Afro-centric nation building. In essence Garveyism accepts the tremendous amount of historical and philosophical material that is invaluable to the growth of our race and is a “race first” approach used in the definition, defense and development of African interest.

2. There is a denial by racist historians of the status of Africans as major players in world history. This denial has created, within the African-American community, the need for the development of Africa and African American studies, principally for the protection of the psyches of African-American students. Our students are fed the lie “that, outside of becoming slaves, African people had made no serious contributions to humanity therefore, they are made to feel that they have no historical worth which is often reflected in students failure rates.

3. Garveyism is based on the principles of self-determination, confidence, pride and responsibility which will allow them to build a new world based on the principles of truth, justice, balance and order which is in our best interest. Garveyism education of African students is fundamental to the continued survival and liberation of African people.

4. We over come mentalcide, the genocide of the mind, by using Garveyism to reach our optimum state. A person in an optimum state is a person who has a viable and strong mental state of African consciousness and a sense of their collective Africaness, a high priority of self knowledge, valuing African centered institutions, actively involved in building and rebuilding African institutions and maintains resolute posture of resisting any forms of anti-Africanism. When you see them their behavior consequences are positive affirmations for Pan-African Nationalist Nation building. Their goals, belief, discussion, debate, argument and purpose are to build an African Centered World order for African people.

5. We define the deficit as it relates to a lack of confidence or low self esteem as a cultural deficit. Through Euro-centric education, they have extracted from us our cultural expression. Garveyism is a way we can revitalize our cultural infrastructure. We plan to look at rituals that are centered in our cultural reality. We will return to our own cultural traditions that were intelligently conceived. They feed an inner core of African and African American student’s psychic reality.

6. It’s going to take Garveyism to produce an African centered education movement that is critical in dismantling the kind of miss-education that defines the legitimate medium for dispensing information. Black Student Unions and African-American studies programs on college campuses must generated the leadership for Garveyism. The battle is for knowledge and information and the minds of the students.

7. Wherever we find ourselves we have to battle to create as much Garveyism breathing space as we can. We have to stretch the limits of whatever environments we are in until we create the space.

8. The objective has to be African nation building no matter where we are, which is the mega umbrella objective or coherent larger plan.

9. Once African people have confronted the issue of Garveyism we have to remain very serious if we plan to survive and save ourselves as African people. We cant slack off once we recognize what we are really up against.

10. Garveyism shows us that the serious nationalist in our community and our history, like the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey is the correct role models for African students and we must elevated him to his proper place of dignity and of esteem.

11. Garveyism allows us to hold up an Africans who projected under the constraint of his conditions some degree of optuminzation for our people. Then we are using him as a role models to teach lessons of excellence and empowerment.

12. The Euro-centric value system has in some psychological way intimidated us through miss-education into feeling that we are guilty about that African holocaust. In so doing, the best way we can handle our ancestor’s connection is to try to ignore or try to have this selective amnesia to act like they weren’t here and never existed. Garveyism teaches us that spiritually and historically they are our connection to Africa. They are the Africans we came from.

13. Euro-centric education is why we can easily get so confused about whether we are Africans or not and get into that debate because we don’t have that sense of continuity. Garveyism will bring us straight from the African continent through our ancestor of the African holocaust right into the present. We will no longer walk around here and either we don’t remember or we don’t feel any deficiency because we don’t remember. We will learn how to commemorate in a regular way with rituals.

14. Garveyism will expose students to rituals that allows Africans in the Diaspora to go back and spiritually re-enter that zone of the holocaust and re-experience the pain, the degradation, the insult, the barbarity on the psychological and spiritual dimension.

15. Through Garveyism we will understand how our people were overworked to complete exhaustion, maltreated worst than animals, fed unhealthy food rationed down to starvation levels, nocturnal lock-ups, and corporal punishments, such as beatings, torture and mutilations. We need to understand how we used our creative genius given us by the creator to build civilizations and make our distinct contributions to the history of the world. We need to re-enforce both our pain and prosperity into ourselves so that we can see through the eyes of our ancestors.

16. Through Garveyism we will vindicate our ancestors. We are their vindication. We have to relate culturally to our ancestors. We have to counter the erroneous concept of our permanent separation from our ancestors exhibited in the writings like those of E. Franklin Frazier that says, “But, the habits and customs as well as the hopes and fears that characterized the life of their forebears in Africa, nothing remains.” We are Black and beautiful Africans at home and abroad today and tomorrow.

Sincerely Yours

Shaka Barak

Brother Shaka is President of The Marcus Garvey Institute since 1992. From District Commissioner down to dish washer in the UNIA & ACL, from 1976 to 1991, Member of Local Organizing Committees of Million Man, Million Woman and Million Youth Movement, Presently he is a board member of Black Wall Street Chicago, initiator of the Manifesto for African Children and Tulsa, Oklahoma Race War Researcher, (He provides our people with the books "Riot on Greenwood, the total destruction of Black Wall Street), a writer for the South Street Journal newspaper. He is also a substitute teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. He can be reached at can call 708-802-1445 , or email: shakabarak1@yahoo.com or write The Marcus Garvey Institute, PO Box 1723, Oak Park, Illinois 60304-1900.
(Click his thumbnail to visit his website)

Maxims of Marcus Garvey
Maxim:

1 : a general truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct
2 : a proverbial saying

• What you do to-day that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time.

•There is nothing in the world common to man, that man cannot do.

•The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself; but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you even into eternity.

•EDUCATION is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their own particular civilization, and the advancement and glory of their own race.

•The masses make the nation and the race. If the masses are illiterate, that is the judgment passed on the race by those who are critical of its existence.

•Every student of Political Science, every student of Economics knows, that the race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation. That the race can only be saved through political independence. Take away industry from a race; take away political freedom from a race, and you have a group of slaves.

•Be as proud of your race today as our fathers were in days of yore. We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.

•So many of us find excuses to get out of the Negro Race, because we are led to believe that the race is unworthy—that it has not accomplished anything. Cowards that we are! It is we who are unworthy, because we are not contributing to the uplift and upbuilding of this noble race.

•For over three hundred years the white man has been our oppressor, and he naturally is not going to liberate us to the higher freedom—the truer liberty—the truer Democracy. We have to liberate ourselves.

•Let us prepare TODAY. For the TOMORROWS in the lives of the nations will be so eventful that Negroes everywhere will be called upon to play their part in the survival of the fittest human group.

•The evolutionary scale that weights nations and races, balances alike for peoples; hence we feel wure that some day the balance will refister a change for the Negro.

•The world ought to know that it could not keep 400,000,000 Negroes down forever.

There is always a turning poing in the destiny of every race, every nation, of all peoples, and we have come now to the turning point of Negro, where we have changed from the old cringing weakling, and transfromed into full-grown men, demanding our portion as MEN.

•A race without authority and power, is a race without respect.

•The only protection against INJUSTICE in man is POWER—Physical, financial and scientific.

•Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.
•CHANCE has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.

Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realised the light of their own freedom.

•Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must first of all think in terms of blood. Why even the Heavenly Father tells us that "without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins." Then how in the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to redeem Africa without preparing ourselves—some of us to die.

•LEADERSHIP mean everything—PAIN, BLOOD, DEATH.

•Let Africa be our guiding Star—OUR STAR OF DESTINY.

•How dare anyone tell us that Africa cannot be redeemed, when we have 400,000,000 men and women with warm blood coursing through their veins? The power that holds Africa is not Divine.

•The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man can do.

•All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishment of an African Empire—so strong and powerful, as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our life-time can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility within another generation.

•Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations.

•No one knows when the hour of Africa's Redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a storm, it will be here. When that day comes all Africa will stand together.

Reference: Marcus Garvey Edited by E. David Cronon.
(He quotes from Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, vol. II by Amy Jacques Garvey, Editor.)

http://www.zimbio.com/Black+History+Month

The New Racism on Television: Featuring Our Prophetic Leader and Teach Minister Malcolm X

2008-06-28T17:34:00.010-04:00

Who Taught You To Hate Yourself - Minister Malcolm X

RBG Learning Tips:
Once the video has loaded, click full view /mouse over lower left any time will viewing images to access video.
"View All Images" will open in a new tab/window.
Minister Malcolm demonstrates "The more things change, the more things remain the same."

Learn More:

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank as Re-Afrikanization Symbolism:

Who We Were vs Who We Are

"Mass media have played and will continue to play a crucial role in the way white Americans perceive African-Americans. As a result of the overwhelming media focus on crime, drug use, gang violence, and other forms of anti-social behavior among African-Americans, the media have fostered a distorted and pernicious public perception of African-Americans".
The Yale Political Quarterly / Read More

In light of the above stated fundamental truths, all of RBGz EduTainment / teaching-learning methodologies and content are presented in the tradition and spirit of Afrikan Symbolism (as well as our oral / musical tradition) as this is the way we learn, interpret and experience the world as Afrikan people. So we are applying a traditional philosophical precept in the context of our westernized experience to project us in a positive and unified manner, working together doing what we do best for the collective advancement of the group. It is the reason why one of our rules of engagement is "a picture (image/symbol) is worth more than a thousand words". RBGz images/symbols are what make you think (Think Tank) and learn so intently, and also what makes you feel so inspired. So we teach the same lessons on multiple levels to strike a responsive cord with our whole family by integrating all four forms of media (image, audio, video and text) in any given lesson/topic/subject. This is important to do because if our young people don't see themselves in what we want them to learn then how can we blame the for not wanting to learn it! Hence the problem with us and Euro-education (mis-education and dis-education). Furthermore, we are also demonstrating computer skills that you will not learn at M.I.T., but are nonetheless more in keeping with our way.

In all cases RBGz presentations / lessons are simply saying what the great Afrikan religious philosopher John Mbiti says in "African Religion and Philosophy"

"i am because We Are and
because we are therefore I Am"

You give me your work / ideas/ energy & warrior spirit and I synthesize and integrate them into the various curricula and give them back to you by first applying my knowledge, skills and creative abilities to them and thus, our now having a scholarly product in our own image and interest that will hold you til you put it down and is accessible/understandable by the masses. It is based on a concept I derived and coined as ACCNL "Afrikan Centered Collaborative Network Learning" That is what makes the college uniquely Ours...A communiversity in the literal since of the word. RBG doesn't use computer apps. linearly like Europeans designed, developed and/program them, as that is the way they think. The communiveristy is Afrikan in it conceptual framework, ie. concentric / circular in its functionality. Thus, I push the limits of modern day Web 2.0 , in an academic context, to reaches yet matched heights by saying "Let The Circle Be Unbroken".This is why I say "RBG as Re-Afrikanization Symbolism".
All you need do to feel what I'm saying is go back up about mid-page where the RBG image player is to the right (Who We Are/Our current shit-uation is being projected) and to the left is flashing Who We Were (positive images).

The more you read/study the school the more you will see the symbolism being applied in real time...My photo-story mini-lectures/videos become deeper as you study more because the same images/photos/symbols continue to tell Our-Story on a deeper level elsewhere in the school. Each image tells another part of its story in other assets , as the audio and/ or text is its speaker.
Thus, symbolism is the building block which preps you for deeper layered learning.

We do this because I believe that in order to bring about our re-unification indeed, We must first see ourselves as such. It is why the school is totally for, by and about us-New Afrikan people.

RBG is a very smart, academically comprehensive and positive EduTainment center, suitable for the whole Afrikan family. It is designed and deployed to purposefully counter the corporate white elite/white supremacist (racist) media images of us in the form of a school; using their technology and our razor sharp intelligence and undeniable/ well documented truths. It is an intermediary in our total "return to the source".

Symbolism is at the foundation of our efforts to research, rescue and restore Who We Were.
The potency of symbolism in our traditional Afrikan cultural way (see below) is why I write the whole school in the image of Red, Black and Green and say RBG4Lif. It is our most lethal weapon in de-colonizing the Afrikan mine and reversing the deculturalization process. (Who We Are).

The links/extensions below will enable you to do your due diligence to further assimilate what I'm saying; and study the precepts most directly.

African Symbols:

African Culture & Symbolism

West African Wisdom: Adinkra Symbols & Meanings

African Writing Systems

Akan Architecture Symbols

Akan Political Beliefs Symbols

Akan Cultural Symbols Project

University of Wisconsin: Africology

The Detroit Institute of Arts: African Art

The Symbols of Kwanzaa

Dr. Jefferies, Dr. Smalls, Dr Ben and Dr. Clarke: Pearls of Wi7dom as to Leadership

2008-06-27T13:00:00.016-04:00

Dr. Leonard Jeffries / Controvesial Harvard U. Speech pt5/12

Dr.James Smalls: Post Slavery Trauma Syndrome

Dr. Ben in Kemet (Pt. 1)

Dr.Clark on MalcolmX pt.2

RBG: SDL (Self Directed Learning) Black Studies Outline for Advanced Learners

The Master Keys to the Study of Ancient Kemet/Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III

DR. YOSEF BEN-JOCHANNAN ON IMHOTEP... & more

Dr. Ben, Dr. Clarke and Dr. Van Sertima on Our Holocaust and A Maafa Timeline

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante: Foundations of Afrikan Pedagogy

Afrikan History and Culture Lessons: Our Scholars, Historians and Educators Teach

Dr. Marimba Ani On Yurugu and Afrikan Rebirth

Tony Brown's Afrocentric Education Conference...more

Dr. Chancellor Williams On "The Destruction of Black Civilization"

Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop On the Origins of Civilization

Oyotunji Village: "A Spiritual and Cultural Re-Awakening"

Dr. Carter G. Woodson On Education and Mis-Education..more

The American Indian Holocaust

Professor John Glover Jackson, "One of Our Greatest Cultural Historians"

The Science of the Moors, Dr. Ivan Sertima Lecture...and more

Racism: A History (3 Part Video and RBG Notes)

Dr. Leonard Jefferies on the Afrikan Mind and 10 Areas of conflicts with White Supremacy

Dr. Amiri Baraka On Dr. Du Bois's Double Consciousness Precept and more

A People's History Of The United States / by Howard Zinn : RBGz Audio and History Is A Weapon e-Books

Robert F. Williams: The Man They Don't Want You To Know About

"From Jim Crow to Civil Rights to Black Liberation?"

Malcolm X / Make It Plain: The Classic Documentary and A Timeline

Principles of Time Management, Problem Solving, Decision Making,Critical Thinking, Tools of Analysis and Leadership Skills

2008-06-27T12:22:00.013-04:00

Models of Black (New Afrikan) Leadership

ICE BREAKER VIDEOS

Martin Luther King on Malcolm X

MALCOLM X: Malcolm X on Dr. Martin Luther King

Time Management

Source:http://www.studygs.net/index.htm

Developing time management skills is a journey
that may begin with this Guide, but needs practice and other guidance along the way.

One goal is to help yourself become aware of how you use your time
as one resource in organizing, prioritizing, and succeeding in your studies
in the context of competing activities of friends, work, family, etc.

First: try our exercise in time management

Strategies on using time:

* Develop blocks of study time
About 50 minutes? How long does it take for you to become restless?
Some learners need more frequent breaks
for a variety of reasons
* More difficult material may also require more frequent breaks Schedule weekly reviews and updates
* Prioritize assignments
When studying, get in the habit of beginning with the most difficult subject or task
* Develop alternative study places free from distractions
to maximize concentration
* Got "dead time"?
Think of using time walking, riding, etc. for studying “bits”
* Review studies and readings just before class
* Review lecture material immediately after class
(Forgetting is greatest within 24 hours without review)
* Schedule time for critical course events
Papers, presentations, tests, etc.

Try the University of Minnesota's Assignment Calculator

Develop criteria for adjusting your schedule
to meet both your academic and non-academic needs

Effective aids:

* "To Do" list
Write down things you have to do, then decide what to do at the moment, what to schedule for later, what to get someone else to do, and what to put off for a later time period
* Daily/weekly planner
Write down appointments, classes, and meetings on a chronological log book or chart.
If you are more visual, sketch out your schedule
First thing in the morning, check what's ahead for the day
always go to sleep knowing you're prepared for tomorrow
* Long term planner
Use a monthly chart so that you can plan ahead.
Long term planners will also serve as a reminder to constructively plan time for yourself
Learn more

Problem Solving and Decision Making: Overview

Source:http://www.studygs.net/index.htm

We solve problems and make decisions everyday/all the day:
at home, at work, at play, even at the grocery store!

Some problems and decisions are very challenging,
and require a lot of thought, emotion, and research. The steps of this guide are designed to help you make good decisions
Good luck!

Flexibility

This procedure looks as if one moves neatly from step to step. This isn't the case. These steps simply provide a structure for working on the problem. They overlap, and you may have to return to earlier steps or work them simultaneously as you find the best solution.

Examples of flexibility:

Information gathering occurs in all steps—from recognition of the problem to implementation of its solution
New information may force you to redefine the problem
Alternatives may be unworkable, and you'll have to find new ones
Some steps may be combined or abbreviated

Learn More

Thinking Critically

Source:http://www.studygs.net/index.htm

Strategies for critical thinking in learning

Critical thinking studies a subject or problem with open-mindedness.

The process begins with a statement of what is to be studied,
proceeds to unrestricted discovery and consideration of possibilities,
and concludes with a pattern for understanding that is based on evidence.
Motives, bias, and prejudice of both the learner as well as the experts are then compared and form the foundation of judgment.

Enter with an open mind:

Define your destination, what you want to learn
Clarify or verify with your teacher or an "expert" your subject

Topics can be simple phrases:
"The role of gender in video game playing"
"Political history of France between the Great Wars of the first half of the Twentieth Century"
"Mahogany tree cultivation in Central America"
"Domestic plumbing regulations in the suburbs"
"Vocabulary and structure of a human skeleton"

Think about what you already know about the subject
What do you already know that will help you in this study?
What are your prejudices?
What resources are available to you, and what is your timeline?
Gather information
Keep an open mind so as not to close your options
and for chance opportunities
Ask questions
What are the prejudices of the authors of the information?
Organize what you have collected into patterns to understand it
Look for connections
Ask questions (again!)
Think in terms of how you would demonstrate your learning for your topic
Yes! how would you create a test on what you have learned?
From simple to more complex (1-6) operations:

1.	List, label, identify	Demonstrate knowledge
2.	Define, explain, summarize in your own words	Comprehend/understand
3.	Solve, apply to a new situation	Use your learning; apply it
4.	Compare and contrast, differentiate between items	Analyze
5.	Create, combine, invent	Synthesize
6.	Assess, recommend, value	Evaluate and explain why

Think in terms of making your learning an adventure in exploration!

Summary of critical thinking:

Determine the facts of a new situation or subject without prejudice
Place these facts and information in a pattern so that you can understand them
Accept or reject the source values and conclusions based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs
Learn More

RBG Tools For Analysis

Source:" Black Nationalism and Pan Afrikanism At Home and Abroad": A Historical Look at the Afrikan Independence Movement / Struggle

Nation-Class Perspective: We must analyze everything from the interests of our African nation (i.e., our homeland Africa and our people, Africans) and also in the interests of the oppressed, exploited African masses. We must always try to analyze the nation/class interests involved in everything; historical present-day, and future. Thus it is clear that anywhere you find racism (national oppression) and class exploitation, they must be fought against.
There is positive and negative in everything: We must always try to identify opposing forces in everything. We must look for the positive forces and the negative forces in all social processes; at all levels, and in all aspects. When we say positive, we mean those forces which are in line with our goal (Pan Africanism, one unified socialist Africa) and our ideology (Nkrumahism Toureism). When we say negative, we mean anything that is opposed to our goal and ideology.
Change is constant: Everything changes: It is the struggle between the positive and negative forces in everything that produces change. We must look for the movement and direction of movement in all things because everything is in motion, although at different rates and speed. Change that occurs slow and gradual without violent or sudden jumps is called evolutionary; while change that occurs rapidly, violently, or with a sudden leap is called revolutionary change (if the change is total and some new quality or state of being occurs). From this we can see then that revolution is a way for man to consciously speed up his positive development. Conflict that causes change is either antagonistic, (violent, principled, intense) or non-antagonistic (non-violent, tactical, less intense and hostile).
Always look for the new in the old.
Always look for the old in the new.
Always remember that the masses are the makers of history. This will help us properly understand the role of heroes and individuals as only catalysts in the historical development of mankind. We know that history is only changed and moved forward through the collective activity of the working, struggling masses of the people.
Matter is primary: We know that both matter and mind (spirit) exist, but that matter is primary, and all that is "spiritual" (i.e., not matter) arises from matter. Ideas, attitudes, etc. always arise from specific concrete conditions which must be looked at and understood to properly understand the impact of the ideas, attitudes, ideologies, etc. on the concrete material world.
Remember that history is a process, not a series of unconnected events. Look for the interconnection between all social/historical forces. History is also subjective. In other words, while we understand that what has happened and what is happening is objective (factual, independent of man's will), the interpretation or emphasis given to history always reflects the outlook or interests of a particular nation and a particular class, at a particular time in history.
The basis or cause for change is internal; i.e., the internal qualities of a thing determine the kind of change it can or does go through. The conditions for change are external; i.e., the changes that a thing goes through are greatly affected by the environment or conditions around it and outside of it.
Learn More

Developing Leadership Skills:

Our goal here is to create leadership skills in everyone involved in revolutionary organization. With the strengthening of leadership traits in everyone, the organization will reduce the amount of dependence on a select few individuals and create a more even-structured and egalitarian organization, creating a higher degree of flexibility and options for the organizations. We must be able to provide the necessary room for people to be able to nurture these skills so they may grow, learning from their successes and failures.
Below are numerous traits that help make a good leader:

Commitment: If you are not committed to what you are doing, it will show. You need to have a long-term commitment to social change, and vision of what the future can be.

Honesty: Honesty, tempered with tactfulness, is always the best policy.

Positive Outlook: The world is full of negative people and negative situations. It is important to radiate a positive-ness that looks for solutions to problems instead of focusing on the difficulties.

Confidence/Self Assurance: A leader must have confidence in him/herself. Don’t assume that this means you need to act like you know everything, but rather you are self-assured to ask for help or assistance when you need it and to admit weakness. The confidant, self-assured person accepts compliments as well as criticisms.

Confidence is not only important in individual dealings and relationships, but also when the organization is facing adversarial person who represents an unjust institution (i.e., the State.) A person must be able to have confidence to hold firm in a position based on the organization's principles or strategy.

Trust in People: It is important that a person must fundamentally trust and like other people. They must draw out the best in people and urge them to live up to high standards, as opposed to waiting for people to falter. Most people live up to the high standards and trust placed in them.

Mistrust of Unaccountable Institutions: Although a person must trust people, they must mistrust institutions that are not accountable to people (i.e., the State and corporations) A healthy skepticism is a useful quality for leaders.

Listening: It is important to have good listening skill. This not only means opening up one's ears but also really concentrating on what a person is saying.

Diplomacy: There are going to be many times when diplomacy is going to be needed, whether it be with friends or people in organizations. So it is important to learn the skills of diplomacy including being direct, assertive, and yet while at the same time tactful.

Recruitment: As stated above, it important to learn the skills of recruitment. These skills like all the others mentioned need to develop over time and come with experience.

Personal Organization: A person must be personally organized. They need to have a good system for keeping track of meetings, follow-up with people, making calls and so forth. A person must follow through with their commitments as promised. This is not only important to being a good organizer but also to the work we do in the political prisoner aid movement.

Goal Setting: People need to develop skill in setting measurable and realistic goals. Without such goals, we are unclear about where we are going. If we get there, we don’t know how or whether we should congratulate ourselves. Learning these skills will help to reduce burnout, something that we have seen many times in the anarchist community. These skills are needed in all level of the organization from the individual to the chapter to the Federation.
The Leadership Development Process: Guidelines for Leadership Maintenance and Growth

Natural leaders aren't sitting around waiting to be called; leadership skills are developed and nurtured. Like we stated above, the goal is to develop these skills in everyone in the organization. With this goal, it must be necessary to create circumstances and positions in order for these leadership skills to be developed. Not only is important for people to take on responsibility, but it is also important for the collective to actively encourage these skills to be nurtured in everyone. It will take the whole collective to develop leadership skills in individuals. Some methods of how to develop these skills are listed below.

Practice Evaluations: Look for and give positive, as well as, growth-producing feedback. Regular group evaluations at meetings are good, but remember that positive feedback is just as important- if not more important- as criticism. Though criticism must be given to encourage growth, this does not mean you must attack a person. Too many groups and individuals focus all their energy on criticism. All this does is cause people to drop out or not want to be associated with the organization or individuals. Who wants to be criticized constantly? Growth isn't created by telling people how they fail. Growth is created by encouragement and helping people achieve success. In order to be successful in organizing, you need to let people know they are an important part of the process and their actions help to achieve the stated goals.
Institute the Rotation of Roles, and Develop Systems for Training People for New Roles:

Few of us want to remain doing the same job forever. In addition, many times power leadership roles can develop after people remain in certain positions for too long which is not encourage in an anti-authoritarian organization like ours. Rotation of tasks and roles helps to create a more egalitarian organization while at the same time encourages individual leadership growth. Taking on and concurring the new tasks build self-confidence, which is the basis for developing leadership skills.

Use Those People With Well-Developed Leadership Skill to Train Others:
It is important that those individuals who already developed leadership skills assist those who are still working on such skills. No one should ever become "irreplaceable." So it must be important that those skilled people assist others.

Set Goals for Growth (Personal and Organizational):
Goals set and achieved help to create self-confidence in a person and organization. Goals also create a direction, which makes easier to determine whether the direction is one, which collective wished to go or whether the direction desired is being achieved. Not only are Personal and Organizational Goals for growth important but it is also necessary to develop long-term and short-term goals for both.
Adopted and modified from:
ABCF/ Tools and Guidelines for Successful Organizing

Primary/Recommended Textbooks
Pan African Publishers Homepage

The Art of Leadership, Volume 1
By Oba T'Shaka, Ph.D.
418 pages, $18.95 paper, $28.95 hard back

The Art of Leadership, Vol. 1, is the only book in the modern world that defines African and African-American leadership qualities and systems so that African and African-American people can begin to define and train leadership that serves as a mouthpiece and visionary guide for our people. Written in clear, easy to understand language, The Art of Leadership Vol. 1, which is based on 36 years of leadership experience of the author, and thousands of years of Black leadership traditions covers eight areas: (1) Leadership qualities; (2) Restoring extended family community-hood; (3) How to start a group; (4) How to manage cliques; (5) How to establish independent Black schools; (6) How to set up a business; (7) Community mobilization techniques; (8) How to understand the Black Established (the national Civil Rights, church, educational, fraternal, publishing, and business groups), and other social groups in the Black community.

Dr. Conrad Worrill, writing in the Chicago Defender says, "The Art of Leadership is the kind of book you can read over and over again in an effort to digest the many theoretical points and the numerous practical suggestions."

The Art of Leadership, Volume 2
By Oba T'Shaka, Ph.D.
453 pages, $18.95

The Art of Leadership, Volume 2 covers six topics:

How to free the mind, using time tested methods introduced by the Black psychologist Frantz Fanon.
Learning from master leaders such as Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and Fannie Lou Hamer: how to develop organizing strategies to unite our communities.
Understanding the Egyptian Mystery System as the foundation for the Black church in America and throughout the world.
Learning how to form alliances and coalitions with Black churches, Black youth, Black businesses, the Black poor, Black welfare rights advocates, and others.
How to use the mall media to publicize community activities.
Understanding and combating the most sophisticated methods (Low Intensity Operations), used by the white power elite to disrupt Black freedom movements.

The Art of Leadership Volumes 1 & 2 are used by individual readers, Black churches, rites of passage programs, Black seminary programs, Civil Rights organizations, community organizations, Black Studies leadership programs, Black study groups, Blacks in prison and community centers. The books are designed to help shape a dedicated, non-compromising leadership that serves the needs of African people wherever we are.

Last Poets with Pharoah Sanders, performing their all time classic, THIS IS MADNESS!

2008-06-27T02:23:00.004-04:00

Last Poets with Pharoah Sanders: THIS IS MADNESS!

http://www.pharoahsanders.net/

Pharoah Sanders (born October 13, 1940) is an American jazz saxophonist. Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world."
Emerging from John Coltrane's groups of the mid-60s Sanders is known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound."

Last Poets with Pharoah Sanders

The Last Poets Official Website

The Last Poets is a group of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African American civil rights movement's black nationalist thread. Their name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over.

The Last Poets have been cited as one of the earliest influences on what would become hip-hop music; critic Jason Ankeny writes, "With their politically charged raps, taut rhythms, and dedication to raising African-American consciousness, the Last Poets almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop."

The related videos/ menu contain more Pharoah classics

A RBG Q and A: Problems and Solutions, "The Blueprint"

2008-06-26T15:39:00.018-04:00

aiwal13

L.O.G.
"Let There Be Light" Aiwal feat. Subject 2 Change & Abyss

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH FEAR, DEPENDENCY AND DIS-UNITY IN AND AMONG BLACK (AFRIKAN) PEOPLE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA

WHY HAS THERE BEEN A NEVER ENDING EFFORT TOWARD THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BLACK MEN IN AMERICA

WHY DO WE ROB, STEAL, KILL AND HURT EACH OTHER SO MUCH

WHY ARE WE SO INVESTED IN INDIVIDUALISM, MATERIALISM,CONSUMERISM, JEALOUSY AND ENVY

WHY IS POLICE BRUTALITY/MILITARIZATION/ DWB /RACIAL PROFILING AT AN ALL TIME HIGH

WHY ARE BLACK COMMUNITIES THROUGHOUT THE NATION PLAGUED BY POOR PHYSICAL HEALTH AND MENTAL HYGIENE

WHY ARE SO MANY OF US UNDER AND DE-EDUCATED AND DE-AFRIKANIZED

WHY ARE SO MANY OF OUR YOUNG AND OLD LOCK DOWN IN JAILS, PRISONS, ON PROBATION AND/OR PAROLE

WHY ARE THERE SUCH WIDE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATIONAL GAPS WHEN BLACKS ARE COMPARED TO OUR WHITE COUNTERPARTS

WHY IS THERE SUCH A REMARKABLE LACK OF COMPUTER LITERACY SKILLS AMONG OUR YOUNG IN A DAY AGE WHERE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RULES

WHY IS IT THAT SO MANY OF OUR YOUNG DON'T KNOW HOW TO READ AND DON'T WANNA KNOW AND CAN'T SPEAK A SENTENCE STRAIGHT AND DON'T CARE TO LEARN HOW

WHY DOES EVERY YOUNG PERSON WANNA BE A GANGSTA RAPPER AND/OR A THUG

WHY IS THERE SUCH A REMARKABLE LACK OF WEALTH AND OPPORTUNITIES TO LIVE A DECENT LIFE FOR THE MASSES OF OUR PEOPLE

WHY IS THERE SO MUCH BLACK FAMILY AND COMMUNITY SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION/ALIEN CONTROL / DEGRADATION

WHY ARE WE STILL VICTIMS OF POLITICAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT

WHY ARE WE STILL VICTIMS OF ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION

WHY ARE WE STILL THE VICTIMS OF SOCIAL DEGRADATION

WHY DO WE HAVE SUCH HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATES AND UNDER-EMPLOYMENT

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY POOR NEIGHBORHOODS AND SUBSTANDARD HOUSING AND OTHER STRUCTURES

WHY IS THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ITS RECONSTITUTION OF SLAVERY ABLE TO GROW SO FREELY

WHY IS ALCOHOLISM, DRUG ADDICTION, NARCOTIZATION OF OUR COMMUNITIES AND HIV/AIDS GROWING CONSTANTLY

WHY DO SO MANY OF US SUFFER FROM NIGGERIZATION AND HUMANIST-INTEGRATIONIST INBETWEENITY

WHY DO SO MANY BLACK PEOPLE STILL SUFFER FROM PASSIVIST PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

LAST QUESTION:
SHOULD NOT ANY PROCESS , AS "NEW AFRIKANS IN 21 st CENTURY AMERICA,WE ENGAGE IN WORTHY OF THE NAME EDUCATION BE ADDRESSING THESE ISSUES FIRST AND FOREMOST?

BELOW DR. WILSON OFFERS THE ANSWERS AND THE SOLUTIONS.

Blueprint for Black Power: Dr Amos Wilson (RIU)

http://rbgnation.ning.com/group/theblueprintstudycell
Dr. Amos Wilson(RIU) Blueprint is our school's required textbook. Please visit/join our study cell at RBG Worldwide and / or share your thoughts on how we implement right her via our communication tool/Google talk.

Extracts from Blueprint:

"The oppressed and downtrodden, having been traumatized by the abuse of power by their powerful oppressors, often comes to perceive power itself as inherently evil, as by nature corrupting and therefore as something to be eschewed, denied and renounced.

The pursuit of power is viewed as unworthy of virtuous persons, and the desire to possess it as sinful. Therefore, many among the powerless and poor feel compelled to find in their powerlessness and poverty the emblematic signs of their Godliness and redemptive salvation.

How convenient a precept for rationalizing and maintaining the power of the haves over the have-nots! As the result of their ideological manipulation by the powerful and their own reactionary misperception of reality, the poor and powerless have been made to perceive the pursuit, possession and application of power in their own behalf as unbecoming to themselves.

This is even more the case when through their naïve acceptance of the self-serving deceptive propaganda perpetrated by the powers-that-be, their own reactionary self-negation, and their nursing of their internalized inferiority complexes, the poor huddled masses perceive the possession and exercise of power as the inherent and exclusive prerogative of the ruling classes or races."

"To a significant degree Afrikan Americans accept and obey predominant White American power and its authorities (at least from social-psychological standpoint) because they agree with the rules of their establishment and expression as defined by White Americans; share with White Americans the moral, legal, and other values and perspectives which justify them; and to some extent (limited and of recent origin) because they, i.e., Blacks, have been permitted by White Americans to participate in political and social processes by which White power is given legitimacy.

To a limited degree, Afrikan Americans have been permitted access to certain positions of competent and legitimate authority. These factors contribute mightily to their acceptance of White American power (domination) and the White American monopoly of positions of authority as legitimate.

These forms of giving consent to the social power status quo on the part of Blacks help to obscure as well as deny the fact that they are in fact a dominated and severely exploited group (regardless of class); and helps to obscure the fact that their uncritical acceptance of the 'rules,' moral beliefs, perspectives, and their customary-traditional participation in the 'American (White) political-economic process and system is tantamount to the legitimating of their own oppression and to the consensual ensurance of their own powerlessness.

Rules, beliefs and consent are manufactured by those in power to justify, legitimate and serve their interests. In its origins White American power was not legitimated (i.e., voluntarily or contractually consented to, morally justified or politically-socially ratified) by Afrikan Americans who at the time of its origination were held in captivity (slavery) and to this point in time have been largely excluded from significantly participating in American legitimating processes.

From the historical point of view of Native and Afrikan Americans, White power, in whatever form, is illegitimate. This is because such power rests essentially on the near physical and genocidal decimation of Native Americans, the theft of their properties, on the exploitation or forced labor (enslavement) of Afrikans, and on the systematic exclusion by Whites of both Black and Native Americans from the influential exercise of practically all forms of 'legitimate' power and authority in the United States.

The rules and beliefs which provide the means for legitimating White power were in fact pre-established, preordained and imposed on Blacks against their will by Whites from the beginning. The illegitimacy of White American power is founded on the illegitimacy of its original sins--genocide, theft of property, and enslavement."

"For social power to be exercised effectively the power holder must possess or control some important or valued material and/or social resource(s) which is the basis of his power. By strategically rewarding or depriving others of these resources, he may use them to influence behavior in ways compatible with his interests.

Resources when used for such ends are referred to as power bases or resources.

Power bases or resources may include physical safety, health and well-being, wealth and material possessions; jobs and means to a livelihood; knowledge and social skills; social recognition, status and prestige; love, affection, social acceptability; a satisfactory self-image and self-respect…

We have no intentions to review the quite sizable number of possible power bases here. We shall constrain ourselves to brief, but pertinent, discussions of those power resources which are of important relevance to Afrikan Americans and the power relations between them and European Americans. These power resources include property, organization, race consciousness and ideology.

We do not include state politics in our discussion at this juncture because in the context of contemporary Afrikan American social, political and economic culture and the more basic issues it must resolve, state politics is of secondary importance to the Black community. Black politics and activism without the Black ownership of and control over primary forms and bases of power such as property, wealth, organization, etc., is the recipe for Black political and non-political powerlessness.

The rather obtuse pursuit of political office and the ballot box as primary sources of power by the Black community and its politicians without its concomitant ownership of and control over important resources has actually hindered the development of real Black power in America. More ominously, there appears to be a paradoxical and positive correlation between the number of Blacks elected and appointed to high office and retrogressions in the civil and human rights extended to Black Americans during the past twenty years.

Increases in homelessness, poverty, unemployment, criminality and violence in the Black community; disorganization of the traditional Black family, inadequacies in education, increases in health problems of all types, and a host of other social and political ills have all attended increases in the number of Black elected and appointed officials. That is, the more elected and appointed Black politicians, the more social-economic problems the Black community has suffered.

While we are not implying a causal relationship between the increase of the number of Black appointed and elected officials and the increased misery indices of the Black community, we are implying or asserting that their increase obscures those things which are responsible for and do little to ameliorate or uproot the increasing prevalence of social and economic problems in the Black community.

The community's concern with the election and appointment of Black political figures helps it to maintain false hopes that their attainment of office will significantly resolve its problems. The activities of Black politicians, given the current inadequacy of social organization and economic resources, harmfully distract the Black community's attention from recognizing and eradicating the true causes of its problems and the remediation of its powerlessness."

"The responsibility of the Afrikan American community [is to ensure] Afrika's economic development. The ignoring of Afrika by the Western nations provide windows of opportunity open to native Afrikans to drastically reduce the massive outflow or flight of capital, which has been estimated to exceed 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, and to reinvest it in their own countries.

Afrikan peoples and nations across the Diaspora must apprise themselves of a full, ongoing knowledge of the social, economic and cultural history of Afrikan nations as well as their contemporary status and reorganize their sociocultural and economic structures so as to initiate and fuel continental Afrika's growth and development.

The Afrikan American community, especially, should vastly overhaul and reconstruct its educational orientation toward knowledge of the Motherland. It must realize that its own economic salvation is coterminous with or tied to that of Afrika's. It must invest money and human resources in Afrika's development and perceive its economic prosperity as its special responsibility and mission…

The Afrikan American community must become vigilantly and jealously interested in U.S. and European policies toward Afrika and seek to influence those policies in both its own and Afrika's favor."

A Quick Synopsis On RBG ComminVersity

2008-06-26T06:28:00.009-04:00

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by RBGStreetScholar

RBG Peace, Power and Unity,

Its Bigger Than Hip Hop

An Overview of the African Centered Perspective in Education: By Uhuru Hotep

2008-06-25T16:36:00.008-04:00

Image Video and Link Embellishment by RBG Street Scholar

ICEBREAKER Video:
Dr. Ben and Professor Clarke

An Overview of the African
Centered Perspective in Education

by Uhuru Hotep

The central objective in decolonising the African mind is to overthrow the authority which alien traditions exercise over the African. This demands the dismantling of white supremacist beliefs, and the structures which uphold them, in every area of African life. It must be stressed, however, that decolonisation does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; it simply means denial of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them.

-Chinweizu-

"Utopia is an African's fuel."

-Amiri Baraka

Introduction

The concepts outlined in this paper were presented in 1997 at the Norham Centre for Leadership Studies' 9th Annual Conference held at Oxford University. I am indebted to Dr. Vivian Williams, director of the Norham Centre, for his kind suggestion that I further refine my thoughts on this topic. This paper attempts to acknowledge his request by providing a framework for a discussion of the African centered perspective in education first by presenting its recent historical background, second by identifying its guiding concepts, and third by delineating its major goals and objectives.

The Historical Context

African centered education is an evolving liberatory project having a philosophy and practice informed by the 500-year history of unrelenting struggle waged by Africans in the Americas to first maintain and now recover and reconnect with the best of our African intellectual and cultural heritage. Among the 20th century pioneers in this movement, perhaps no one is more important than Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Dr. Woodson's major contributions include not only the establishment of Negro History Week (now Black History Month) in 1926, but also the 1933 publication of what remains the definitive critique of African American education, The Mis-Education of the Negro. Equally important are the pioneering school-building efforts of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975), founder of the Nation of Islam, who during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, established dozens of independent, private African-Islamic schools for the children of his followers and supporters.1
Ascending on the sweet winds of freedom that criss-cross the African World, the youth who energized the U.S.-based Civil Rights/Black Consciousness movements of the 1960s and 70s began to realize in varying degrees that a different type of education was imperative if African Americans were to elevate their group status in American society and the world. In such ideological disparate formations as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at one end of the political continuum and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPPSD) and the Congress of Afrikan People (CAP) at the other, there was a growing awareness among the youth that African Americans had not only been politically and economically disenfranchised by the ruling elites, but educationally disenfranchised as well.
Further politicized as much by Kwame Ture's (Stokely Carmichael) clarion call for Black Power in 1966 as by the assassinations of El-Hajj Malik Omowale El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) in 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, these student activist established what were known in the African American community as freedom or liberation schools, in part inspired by SNCC school-building efforts in rural Mississippi initiated earlier in the decade.
At these schools, PE (political education) classes, as the Black Panthers called them, routinely included readings in and discussion of African and African American history and culture. Three of the most successful Northern freedom schools of this period were the Freedom Library Day School, established in 1968 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by John Churchville, Uhuru Sasa Shule, established in 1970 in Brooklyn, New York by Jitu Weusi and the African Students Association, and the Oakland, California-based, BPPSD-operated Intercommunal Youth Institute, established in 1971.2
These efforts at re-centering and politicizing African American education represented not only a growing community demand for schools offering a historically-inclusive and culturally-affirming education for African American children, but led to the establishment of the Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) in 1972. As the premier association of Pan African nationalist educators, school administrators, and parents committed to developing counter hegemonic curricula and pedagogies for Africans in America and around the world, the creation of CIBI institutionalized this shift in educational vision from cultural assimilation to cultural nationalism.3
During the 1970s and 1980s, CIBI-affiliated African centered shules (schools) sprung up in nearly every major American city with a significant African American population. Washington, DC and Pasadena, California are the homes of two of the better-known CIBI institutions, NationHouse Watoto and Omowale Ujamaa, respectively. Many of these enterprises, like the two just mentioned, have grown into full-time operations.4
The 1990s have witnessed the internationalization of African centered educational theory and its embrace by increasing numbers of African educators and parents both in the U.S. and abroad. Advocates are impressed with the high self-esteem, wholesome social values, and abundant academic skills of African centered students, and depressed by the public schools' half-hearted efforts, lack-luster commitment, in short, dismal failure at unlocking and then developing the genius potential of African American learners.

Guiding Principles

There are five key concepts essential to the African centered perspective in education. First, African centered education is immersed in sankofa. Sankofa is an Akan principle which in African centered education means to reach back, bring forward, and reconnect African students and their communities with the best of those life-enriching philosophical principles and community-building cultural practices that sustained for thousands of years what Agyei Akoto calls the "classical African civilizations" of Kemet (Egypt), Nubia, Axum and Meroe 5, as well as the Yoruba, Asante, Zulu, Gikuyu, Dogon and other traditional societies in Africa and around the world.
One life-giving principle resurrected from the ancient Nile Valley cultures embraced by African centered educators is ma'at, which means not only justice, but also truth, righteousness, order, harmony, reciprocity and balance. According to Maulana Karenga, ma'at was the "heart of Kemetic ethics and spiritual striving;" today it is the "soul" of African centered pedagogical theory and practice.6 As an emancipatory and humanistic enterprise whose terminal objective is the empowerment of African people who will restore ma'at to human affairs, African centered education seeks no hegemony over others, but only a "pluralism without hierarchy" where the African centered idea would take its rightful place, "one perspective beside many."7
Next, African centered perspectives in education aspires to provide African students and their communities with the cognitive and affective tools required to reconstruct the African World and end the maafa. Maafa is a Swahili word meaning "disaster," and is usually associated with the African Holocaust, or the past five centuries of European and Arab orchestrated destruction of traditional African societies and subsequent devastation of indigenous African people first through enslavement and colonialism, then segregation and apartheid, and now miseducation and genocide. The reign of terror - resulting in the deaths of tens of millions - unleashed by Europe alone against African people is without precedence in the annals of human history.8 Among the warriors in the struggle to end the maafa and restore ma'at, African centered education is the weapon of choice.
Operating on the premise that all true education begins with and is centered in self-knowledge, and therefore is autocentric, African centered education relocates African students and their communities to the center of the educational process for elevation and then placement back on to what Marimba Ani calls "our ancestral power base."9 Education is meant to be empowering, and to be so it must be rooted in the history, traditions, and culture of the people it is intended to serve. As a refocusing and relocative vehicle, African centered education re-positions African students and their communities not to the margins of the educational enterprise as does the prevailing eurocentric view, but to the very heart of the teaching and the learning.
Lastly, African centered education in the American context is unabashedly nationalistic, and thus committed to the intergenerational transmission of nationalist theory and practice. Though it rejects the assimilationist outcomes inherent in mainstream American education, it is not isolationist or exclusionary. It is Pan African and global. In a pluralistic, capitalistic society like the United States, each nationality must organize its members to advance their group interest or risk being the victims of those who do. At the same time each nationality must cooperate with others for the good of the larger whole.

Goals
African centered education has as a major goal providing African students and their communities with African-based educational philosophies, curricula and pedagogies designed to:

• Elevate self-esteem
• Broaden cultural references
• Deepen spirituality
• Shape social values
• Heighten political awareness
• Accelerate skills development
• Improve life chances

These seven educational goals, I believe, would, as Safisha Madhubuti teaches, "contribute to achieving pride, equity, power, wealth and cultural continuity for Africans in America and elsewhere."10
On a sociopolitical level, African centered education recognizes that 21st century Africans struggling to end the maafa and to restore ma'at will require what Kwame Nkrumah called "liberated zones" honey-combed with sets of interlocking institutions where they can grow, develop and create in a wholesome, loving and nurturing environment. Mwalimu Shujaa teaches that our shules are the seedbed of Nkrumah's "liberated zones."11
Least we loose njia (the way), Molefi Asante, the grand architect of African centered theory, reminds us that, "We do not seek education to reign over others or to amass great wealth; we seek education to become better people which means to work for harmony and peace in the world."12 But, implicit in the restoration of ma'at, the end goal of African centered education, is the termination of the maafa. The one cannot be achieved without the other, and neither can be realized without first recognizing that the thoroughly utopian but absolutely essential task of establishing a New World Order is the goal.
In preparation for world leadership and service, for five centuries the sons and daughters of the most ancient societies on earth - the sons and daughters of Africa - suffered the torturous middle passage in the bellies of slave ships; suffered the brutalizing chains of physical slavery; suffered the crippling shackles of mental bondage, but now are being gloriously resurrected, moved toward their "ancestral power base," and called by their history to redouble the struggle to humanize the world. Armed only with the wisdom of their ancestors, African centered educators seek to perfect and then accelerate this historical process.
The meta-goal of African centered education is to create the conditions on earth where not only African people, but all people, can live in peace free from privation and want, free from exploitation and oppression, free to grow and develop to their fullest.

Conclusion

The African centered view in education is both theory and praxis informed by a world view shaped by the best of the indigenous philosophical principles and cultural practices of African people without regards to time or place. Only in this way is it universal. Like other curricula and pedagogies, it is cultural group specific. In this case, centered in African epistemological and axiological systems and thus uniquely suited for African upliftment, yet all of humanity will benefit from the truths and the outcomes of this emerging educational idea.
A little more than 25 years ago, the visionary sage Amiri Baraka wrote in the Mwalimu Texts, "Africans, now, are the unleashed energy that will force change and new vision."13 The African centered perspective in education is most assuredly a dynamic articulation of this righteous, ascending, "unleashed energy" generated to reinforce the movement toward positive "change" by creating a "new vision" for African people in the 21st century.

Glossary

autocentricism - A feature of African centered education that holds that true education is centered in self-knowledge.
nationalism - A feature of African centered education that posits that the intergenerational transmission of nation-building and maintenance skills are the sine qua non of African centered education.

Notes and References
1. Clegg, C. (1997). A nation of
shopkeepers. In An original man: The life and times of Elijah Muhammad. (pp. 239-240). Clegg reports that by 1972, the Nation of Islam had established 47 independent private schools (p. 252). New York: St. Martin's Press; Lincoln, C. (1961). The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon Press; Essien-Udom, E. (1962). Education of Muslims. In Black nationalism: A search for identity in America. (pp. 253-273) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2. Payne, C. (1995). Transitions. In I've got
the light of freedom: The organizing tradition and the Mississippi freedom struggle. (pp. 302-306). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; Ture, K., & Hamilton, C. (1967). The search for new forms. In Black Power: The politics of liberation in America. (pp. 164-177). New York: Vintage Books; Van Peebles, M, Taylor, U. & Lewis, J. (1995). Growing pains. In Panther: A pictorial history of the Black Panthers. (pp. 119-120). New York: New Market Press.
3. Hotep, U. (2001). Dedicated to
excellence: An Afrocentric oral history of the council of independent Black institutions, 1970-2000. doctoral dissertation. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA.
4. According to the Washington, DC-based
Institute for Independent Education, 90 percent of the nearly 400 independent community-based schools listed in their 1995 Directory were created by African Americans, and enrolled close to 60,000 students, pp. ii,iv.
5. Akoto, A. (1994). Notes on an African
centered pedagogy. In M. Shujaa. (Ed.). Too much schooling, too little education. (p. 322). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
6. Karenga, M. (1986). Restoration of the
Husia: Reviving a sacred legacy. In M. Karenga, & Curruthers, J. (Eds.). Kemet and the African worldview. (p. 93). Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press.
7. Quoted in a Detroit Public Schools
position paper on African Centered Education, p. 12.
8. Rodney, W. (1982). How Europe
underdeveloped Africa. Washington, DC: Howard University Press; Williams, C. (1974). The destruction of Black civilization. Chicago: Third World Press; Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press; Gallen, D. (1994). Black America: The FBI files. New York: Caroll & Graf.
9. Ani, M. (1996). Kuugusa mtima: The
Afrikan "aesthetic" and national consciousness. In E. Addae. (Ed.), To heal a people: Afrikan scholars defining a new reality. (p. 120). Columbia, MD: Kujichagulia Press.
10. Madhubuti, S. (1994). African-centered
pedagogy. In H. Madhubuti and S. Madhubuti African-centered education (p. 16). Chicago: Third World Press.
11. Shujaa, M. (1996). Coming home again:
Re-Africanization as personal transformation. In E. Addae. (Ed.), To heal a people. (p. 50) Columbia, MD: Kujichaulia Press.
12. Asante, M. (1994). The Afrocentric
project in education. In M. Shujaa, (Ed.), Too much schooling, too little education (p. 397). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
13. Baraka, A. (1969). Mwalimu texts. In
Raise, race, rays, raze: Essays since 1965. (p. 167). New York: Vintage Press.

(A version of this paper was published in Casile, B. (Ed). (1997) Leadership in schools: The national curriculum and self-development in self-governing schools. Oxford, England: Norham Centre for Leadership Studies)

Uhuru Hotep, Ed.D. , is the associate director of the Michael P. Weber Learning Skills Center at Duquesne University and the creator of the Johari Sita: The Six Jewels of African Centered Leadership. He holds degrees in African American studies, adult education, and educational leadership.

Decolonizing the African Mind: Further Analysis and Strategy by Uhuru Hotep

2008-06-25T16:10:00.011-04:00

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ICEBREAKERS

Dr. Amos Wilson - Education & Genetic Criminality and RBG VLog

Coping With Babylon

Decolonizing the African Mind:
Further Analysis and Strategy

by Uhuru Hotep

PDF/DOWNLOD

Introduction

This paper presents a framework for discussing the psychology of African liberation by using the political terms “colonialism,” “colonization” and “decolonization” as vantage points for contextualizing African American oppression. Over the past 500 years, European ruling elites perfected a method of psychological manipulation and control first discussed from an African perspective by the Nigerian scholar Chinweizu (1987) in his classic Decolonising the African Mind. I call this method “mental” colonization.

Introduced during the era of American slavery through a process 17th, 18th and 19th century English-speaking slaveholders called seasoning, today mental colonization is achieved through deculturalization. Deculturalization is the fuel that drives the engine of mental colonization; both processes turn on a companion process called “mis-education,” and all three are examined in this paper along with their instruments, agents and goals.

Because the African population born and bred in the United States is the classic example of a mentally colonized people, this paper references the 40 million people of African descent in the United States. However, much of what is discussed is applicable to African populations residing throughout the Atlantic diaspora and beyond.

This two-part essay begins with an overview of European colonialism, deculturalization and mis-education. And it concludes with a review of African centered liberatory practices and orientations such as reAfrikanization, sankofa, ma’at and intellectual disobedience. Internalizing these concepts is essential for decolonizing the African mind.

Part I

Typology of European Colonialism: 1645 BCE to Present

Around 3,000 BCE, Aryans (later known as Caucasians) began to settle in the region of Asia known to the modern world as Europe. Over the past 2,000 years, their descendants (today’s Europeans) have practiced consistently and have now perfected three basic types of colonialism. They are: territorial, intellectual, and mental. This section will cursorily address them all.

Perhaps the dominant feature of world history these past five centuries has been the “rise” to world dominance of the Caucasian peoples of western Europe, North America and Australia. In spite of their current “lofty” station, today’s undisputed “lords and masters” of the earth are from very humble origins. They first entered the pages of history as barbaric, nomadic tribes whose sole talent was warfare. Their only early accomplishment of note was the destruction of the Dravidian civilization of ancient India. Later their descendants plundered, pillaged and finally sacked the Roman Empire.

Possessed by demonic forces (Brown, 1998; Ickes, 2001; Mutwa, 2001), the Anglo-Saxons, Gauls and Teutons of England, France and Germany over the past five centuries developed the weaponry and logistics, the justifications and rationales and the strategies and tactics to conquer and colonize the land, knowledge and minds of the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, America, Australia and the Pacific. In the 20th century, to decide who would exploit this vast multitude, Europeans fought two devastating world wars – 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 – that squandered millions of their lives nearly destroying their civilization.

When we focus our attention on Africa, historian Chancellor Williams (1974) tells us that the first Aryans to colonize African territory were the Hyksos (Hebrews) who invaded Kemet (Egypt) in 1645 BCE long after the pyramids were built. Over the centuries, other Aryan/European invaders followed. The Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Germans and Italians all came to Africa as conquerors and colonizers with only one intent: to plunder African people of their wealth.

The European “scramble” to colonize Africa did not reach its zenith, however, until 1884-85 when German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898) organized the Berlin Conference. Attended by the French, British, Dutch, Germans and Portuguese, who over the course of several meetings, debated and then formulated the ground rules for conquering and colonizing the whole of Africa. These five, small European states “planned their work and worked their plan” so effectively that by 1915, all of Africa, save Ethiopia was a European colony.

In addition to colonizing African land, Europeans also colonized African knowledge not just to claim it as their own, but also to disconnect Africans from their heritage and culture. Why? Because people who are cut off from their heritage and culture are more easily manipulated and controlled than people who are not. Adisa Ajamu (1997) calls this “intellectual colonialism.”

Beginning with the Hyksos Invasion, the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Romans each during their period of African occupancy seized control of Kemet’s temple-schools and captured her priest-teachers. Then they plundered her libraries and archives and “borrowed” African philosophical and religious ideas, practices, beliefs and customs, which they later claimed as their own.

The Hebrews, for example, during their stay in Kemet adopted Kemetic names like Moses, customs like circumcision, and beliefs like monotheism. Plato (427-347 BCE), the “father” of western philosophy and tutor of the military leader Europeans call Alexander the Great, was a regular visitor at the great library at Rhakotis, later called Alexandria, from where he “borrowed” numerous books. And Herodotus (484-425 BCE), the father of European history, who actually traveled to Kemet, wrote that the Greek (and later the Roman) upper-classes sent their children to Kemet for higher education and “borrowed” many of their religious ideas from this African nation.

As a consequence of Europe’s successful colonization of African lands and African knowledge, she was able to successfully colonize African minds, and thereby complete the conquest of African people. The 20th century witnessed the globalization of European consciousness and the planetary-wide imposition of European worldviews and life styles as the human norm. No where has this imposition been more thorough than in Africa among the Christianized, western-trained, African intellectuals and other members of the ruling class. The same holds true for Africans in the Americas, and especially the United States.

Deculturalization and Black America: 1500 to Present

Deculturalization is a method of pacification and control perfected over the past 500 years by European ruling elites. This practice involves first the systematic stripping away of the intended victim’s ancestral culture and then systematically replacing it with European culture. According to educators Felix Boateng (1990) and Joel Spring (1997) Africans, Asians, Native Americans, (and I would add Native Australians and Pacific Islanders), have all been the victims of this form of psychological and spiritual abuse. Early American slaveholders called this practice seasoning. Today, the academic community calls it deculturalization, but the popular term is brain-washing.

As it affects Africans in the United States, decultualization is a three-stage process. First, African Americans are quietly taught to feel ashamed of so they will reject their African and Native American heritage. Next, they are taught in schools and churches to admire and respect so they will adopt and practice only their European heritage. And finally, if they obediently submit to this indoctrination, they are rewarded with opportunities to receive even more indoctrination. And ultimately once they have been effectively indoctrinated, they are allowed an opportunity to compete for a “professional” job in the “main stream.” And a rare, handpicked few of the most thoroughly indoctrinated (brain-washed) are allowed access to the inner sanctums of White power, prestige and privilege.

The American system of deculturalization has been an extremely effective process. It has successfully brain-washed the majority of African Americans to accept the dominance of Europeans and European institutions over their lives. History teaches us that African prisoners of war (POWs) were subjected to a vicious, European-orchestrated, three to four years of seasoning during which the most important expressions of their African heritage were brutally stripped away from them and brutally replaced with the European colonizer-slave master-oppressor’s cultural practices and beliefs.

Africans enslaved in the North American British colonies, for example, were forbidden to use their original African names, languages and religions. They were forced to use their European colonizer-slave master-oppressor’s names, language and religion. This is why most Africans born in the United States have European surnames, speak English and practice some form of Christianity. Slavery imposed these European cultural practices on their African ancestors and their descendants blindly continue them unless they take steps to open their eyes to and free their minds of all remnants of European slavery.

Both Boateng (1990) and Spring (1997) identified the public school as a major agent of African American deculturalization (brain-washing). I agree; however, I would add that nearly all American educational institutions – Black, White, public, private, day care to college – must be placed along side the public schools as agents of deculturalization. In fact, no aspect of American education is free of this curse except the African centered independent school whose sole mission if it is functioning properly is to decolonize or re-Africanize Black students and their families.

Mis-Education and Black America: 1933 to Present

The major 20th century instrument of deculturalization was and remains mis-education. Mis-education is the term coined by historian Carter G. Woodson (1933) to describe the destructive effects on the Black mind by schools that use a pedagogy and curriculum that deliberately omits, distorts or trivializes the role of African people in and their seminal contributions to world history and culture.

The American public school, as we previously noted, is a major mis-educator (brain-washer) of African people, and has been since its inception in the 1890s. But it is only one of three agents of mass mis-education used by the White ruling elite to manipulate and control African Americans over the past century. The other two carry equal weight. They are the popular media (print and electronic) and the traditional, mainstream Christian church that proclaims non-Africans as “God’s chosen people” and a White Jesus as its “personal savior."

The end goal of mis-education is three-fold: First, to produce African people who identify with and embrace as their own European history, traditions and culture, but who are ambivalent or indifferent toward African history, traditions and culture. Second, to produce Black people who have been what political scientist Jacob Carruthers (1994) calls diseducated, meaning people who have had their intellectual development arrested by the public schools. And, the third and ultimate goal of mis-education is mentacide, a term linked to genocide and diseducation coined in 1984 by Bobby Wright as a label for the European-orchestrated campaign to destroy the African mind as a prelude to destroying African people.

Literally from birth to death, African Americans are awash in a sea of European-designed, mass media disseminated disinformation, misinformation, half-truths and whole lies about the people, history, culture and significance of Africa. This, of course, is no accident. It is part of a finely crafted, century-long campaign to stop African Americans from connecting with their rich ancestral homeland and developing a Pan African worldview. While at the same time, it serves as a cloak under which Europeans can hide from African Americans their plunder of Africa’s mineral and biological wealth. Our White rulers and their Black supporters clearly understand that Black mis-education is the backbone of White domination.

Careful analysis of Black institutions that uphold mis-education and Africans who have been crippled by it reveal a number of highly identifiable features. First, these institutions will favor and their patrons will embrace what psychologist Wade Nobles (1986) calls conceptual incarceration. Conceptual incarceration is the term for Black imprisonment in White belief systems and knowledge bases.

When it comes to defining themselves and the world, mis-educated Blacks restrict their range of thought (and action) by their habit of drawing exclusively from their European background. By limiting themselves to this one, small facet of their vast, tricultural heritage, they confine themselves to a tiny, narrow corner of the world where they sit locked in a mental prison (colony) with only one set of lenses (European) to see the world.

By embracing European perspectives exclusively, Africans cut themselves off from self-knowledge. And when that occurs, deculturalization claims another victim. Fortunately, Black conceptual incarceration in large measure is self-imposed. Africans in America can choose to expand their cultural frames of reference and consciously embrace their African and Native American heritages. And when this happens, their conceptual incarceration ends.

Another feature of Black institutions that mis-educate and mis-educated Blacks is what Mwata X (1996) calls learned indifference, which is a pervasive and self-destructive psychological disorder marked by disinterest in issues, causes and organizations that promote the political and economic liberation of African people. By this measure, most of our established Black churches and prestigious Black schools mis-educate, and nearly all of our multi-millionaire Black athletes and super-star Black entertainers are mis-educated, (right along with nine out of ten Black Americans). As causalities in a war they don’t even know is being waged, the Black elite have been captured with wealth and fame by the forces of deculturalization.

A third feature of Black mis-education is what I call utengano. Utengano is a Swahili word meaning “disunity” and refers to the deeply entrenched, intergenerational predisposition among Africans to accept dysfunctional divisions in the African family and community as normal. Utengano afflicts Black people who expect and tolerate teen pregnancy, absent fathers, inferior schools, run-down buildings, ineffective leaders and dirty, unsafe streets filled with illicit drugs, alcohol and x-rated music as normal and thus acceptable. But if they were truly educated, they would be outraged by these perversions and committed to changing these wretched conditions or die trying.

Part II

Decolonizing the African Mind: Action Steps

In the American context, decolonizing the African mind means reversing the seasoning process. For those millions of African POWs who survived the horrors of the middle passage, seasoning was a three to four year period of intense and often brutal slave making at the hands and feet of their European captors and their agents. Because it capitalized on our innate, human fear of pain and death, seasoning was so effective as a pacification method that North American slave owners gladly paid a premium for “seasoned” Africans from the Caribbean. For enslaved Africans, seasoning, when successful, laid the foundation for a lifetime of faithful, obedient service to their master and his children.

Effective seasoning, therefore, was the key that opened the door for 350 years of mental colonization of the African American people. Moreover, it allows for present-day Black pacification, manipulation and control by the European ruling elite and their agents. But, if African POWs were taught to be Negro slaves, it is reasonable to believe (like Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) that a fair number can be re-taught to be free African women and men. Reversing the seasoning process is a constructive way to frame a psychoeducational approach for cleansing African minds of European or Arab cultural infestation

Toward this end, beginning in the late 1960s, perhaps the first African Americans to initiate systematic decolonization were small groups of youth, awakened by the Maroon spirit resounding in the voices of Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Maulana Karenga, Amiri Baraka and host of others. These decolonizing youth initiated projects of self-discovery intended to remove the European mind set (colony) implanted in their psyches as a result of living in a European dominated society.

To effect sweeping change in their value and belief systems, these young truth-seekers practiced self-definition, self-determination and self-defense. As a way of liberating themselves and others from the shackles of mis-education and diseducation, many established independent schools dedicated to developing African centered curriculum and pedagogy while others established research organizations dedicated to recovering traditional African knowledge bases.

The Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) established in 1972 (www.cibi.org) and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization (ASCAC) established in 1984 (www.ascac.org) are prime examples, indeed symbols, of this search for the deeper meaning of being African in the late 20th century. CIBI is an educational association and ASCAC is a research association. Both were established by this community of freedom seeking, culturally conscious, African men and women.

As CIBI and ASCAC founders quickly discovered, the first step toward decolonizing the African mind is to identify a re-placement worldview on which to frame a liberated African future. In other words, once the forces of mental colonization are defeated and their colonial government expelled, its infrastructure razed and the battle site cleansed, what type of structures do we install in this newly liberated space to unleash genius and thwart re-colonization efforts? The remainder of this essay will begin to answer this question.

Decolonization is a journey of self-discovery culminating in a reawakening and a reorientation. It involves a conscious decision to first uncover, uproot and remove all vestiges of slavery imposed European or Arab values and beliefs ingested over centuries of mis-education that are detrimental to present-day African family stability and African community empowerment. Next, as the colony is being dismantled, Africans must fill the liberated spaces with those life-sustaining social values, beliefs and customs that enabled their ancestors to establish stable, autonomous families and communities prior to the Arab or European invasions and conquest of their societies.

Like all transforming, liberatory states, decolonization is actually a protracted process demanding constant vigilance and intense dedication to task. It cannot be achieved in a single evening by reading a single book or by attending a single lecture or even by taking a single course. However, reading, lectures, courses (along with study groups and conferences), are critical to the success of any decolonization project. Because it is an effort to recover and reconnect with the best of traditional African culture as a means of ending European dominance of the African psyche, for Africans in the Americas, decolonization is Re-Africanization.

Re-Africanization is a term popularized by President Ahmed Sekou Toure (1922-1984) of Guinea and PAIGC-founder Amilcar Cabral (1931-1973) of Guinea-Bissau to promote a return to traditional African values and institutions among their citizens. In the American context, reAfrikanization (Akoto & Akoto, 2000) is a long-term, transgenerational, family project. Among other things, it demands family-wide embrace of select African centered values, beliefs and practices regarding the family and how it organizes and allocates its financial and human resources. To pull all of this together takes years of immersion in traditional African cultural values and daily living in an African centered mental space practicing traditional and liberatory African values, beliefs, orientations and perspectives.

Over the past 30 years, CIBI and ASCAC activists and others seeking to reAfrikanize have found Maulana Karenga’s seven-part value system, the Nguzo Saba, to be a highly effectively decolonization tool. Other useful tools are Mukasa Afrika’s, five pillars of Afrikan spirituality, the Miamba Tano and my six jewels of African centered leadership, the Johari Sita.

Constant reAfrikanization undermines the colony’s legitimacy and weakens its infrastructure to the point where frontal attacks can be launched against its outposts and command centers. If successful, all external European trappings are discarded and the once deculturated Negro reemerges with an African name, speaking an African language, wearing African fashions and praying to an African God. Once this occurs, the lost child has found his/her way back home.

On a deeper, internal level, however, extreme individualism along with sexism, classism, racism, geocide and other European social practices and cultural orientations that give rise to aberrations like conceptual incarceration, learned indifference and utengano must be expunged from the value and belief systems. Selfish and divisive Europeancentric perspectives and behaviors must give way to wholesome, life affirming, Africancentric, communal values like community service, cooperation, and sharing.

The second step in the battle to decolonize the African mind requires dismantling the instrument of deculturalization and neutralizing the agents of mis-education previously discussed in this paper. In essence, this means rejecting the pro-European/anti-African teachings of the Christian church or Islamic mosque, disregarding the pro-European/anti-African messages conveyed by the popular media and deconstructing the pro-European/anti-African indoctrination of the public schools. It also means implementing the first of three five-year, comprehensive, African centered, self-education program designed to end one’s conceptual incarceration, learned indifference, and utengano. A starting point perhaps is the ideas presented in this paper and the books listed as Sources and Essential Readings.

Furthermore, African youth in the United States can rid themselves of time-squandering, resource-draining behaviors like conspicuous consumption of European produced goods and services, over reliance on TV, video games, sporting events and night clubs as entertainment and the other debilitating orientations discussed in this paper with sankofa. Sankofa is a philosophical principle and social custom among the Akan-speaking people of Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire that holds that wisdom is learning from the past to both understand the present and shape the future. Implicit in sankofa is the deep study/reading of African history and the application of its lessons from 2 million BCE to the present. For 21st century Africans, sankofa is the first step on the road to mental freedom.

Sankofa practitioners understand that Black deculturalization is essentially Black mis-education. And the cure for Black mis-education is to read, discuss, study, learn and then use the lessons of African history along with the best of African culture as offensive weapons in the war against the European or Arab colonial outpost implanted in the African psyche.

To decolonize the African mind, African freedom-seekers must destroy their deeply rooted, interconnecting networks of internalized European or Arab values and beliefs. These are the invisible chains of mental slavery that for centuries have allowed Europeans and Arabs to manipulate and control them, first as slaves and religious converts, and now as pseudo-citizens. Sankofa practice is an indispensable weapon in the war to decolonize or re-Africanize the African mind.

Another powerful weapon against deculturalization-mis-education is to embrace through daily practice the Kemetic principle of ma’at. In ancient African metaphysics, ma’at was synonymous with righteousness. And, it was considered the most important spiritual principle because it sustains the cosmos. Righteousness was thought to permeate the universe as truth, justice, order, harmony and balance.

In the view of ancient Africans of the Nile River Valley, God’s will is that human society, as a microcosm of the universe, function in accordance with ma’at. Hence, to do ma’at is to wisely align oneself with the Divine Order. Because the European world order is rooted in isfet or lies, injustice, deception and manipulation, to do ma’at, (always speaking the truth, demanding justice, and bringing order, harmony and balance) eats away the soft underbelly of this wicked global system like steady rain eats away drought.

A fourth weapon in the struggle to reverse the seasoning process is what I call intellectual disobedience, which is the soul-deep belief that Africans have a moral imperative to resist all attempts by the dominant social order to constrict, restrict or regulate the content of their education. In other words, Africans have the divine right to resist all European efforts at mind control. Implicit in intellectual disobedience, which is the 21st century corollary to philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s (1860) notion of civil disobedience, is decolonization.

In the late 1950 and early 1960s, it was the notion of civil disobedience that emboldened Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) and others to defy the White political establishment’s immoral effort to constrict, restrict and regulate African citizenship rights in this country. Similarly, in the 21st century, intellectual disobedience demands that freedom-seeking Africans defy the White educational establishment’s immoral effort to constrict, restrict and regulate our right to resist the imposition of Europeancentric worldviews as the norm. Intellectual disobedience is the ultimate act of decolonization. Moreover, it is the hallmark of a liberated mind.

The ultimate weapon, however, in the African liberatory arsenal is by far the simplest, but the most lethal. Its power lies in its demand that Africans financially support organizations that build African centered independent schools like CIBI and organizations that promotes African centered research like ASCAC. Each organization is a powerful ally in the collective struggle to decolonize the African mind.

Conclusion

Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which freed millions of Africans from chattel slavery, perhaps more than any other presidential act, guaranteed the Union’s victory in 1865. By the end of the Civil War, the White ruling elite clearly understood that the time had come to end chattel slavery in the United States and assimilate African people into the lowest level of the American social order. So Congress passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which on paper ended chattel slavery, made Africans citizens, and gave Black men the right to vote.

During the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) following the Civil War in the south, newly freed Africans used their newly won franchise as their saddle and the Republican Party as their horse to ride into to political office in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and other southern states. These Black elected officials improved southern life for all people. One example: they wrote and then enacted legislation that paved the way for the south’s first public school systems. This was the heyday of Black American political participation until the 1970s ushered in what historians call the “Second Reconstruction.”

Reconstruction One came to a violent, bloody end when President Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893) withdrew Union troops from Louisiana and South Carolina in 1877-78. This set the stage for the rise of White terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. And over the course of the next 20 years, they literally drove southern Blacks at gunpoint out of American politics and back into the cotton fields, thereby sparking a Black exodus from the rural south that continued until the 1970s. The U.S. Supreme Court drove the final nail into the coffin of Reconstruction in 1896. Its decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case to uphold racial segregation provided the legal rationale underpinning the American system of apartheid, 1896-1966.

Today, freedom-seeking Black youth must keep in mind that the brain-washing (deculturalization) of their people in this country has been in progress for the past 350 years. But, it has never been completely successful. There have always existed liberated minds within the African American intelligentsia. Jacob Carruthers (1999) calls these scholar-warriors “intellectual maroons.” Men like David Walker (1785-1830) and Martin Delany (1812-1885) in the 19th century and Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) and Malcolm X (1925-1965) in the 20th century are sterling examples of Africans who emancipated themselves from European mental bondage by decolonizing their minds.

It brings clarity (and inspiration) to know that Africans in the United States have a 350-year tradition of resistance to European domination and that deculturalization was only one dimension of a larger cycle of European and Arab aggression against African people. African centered historians call this larger cycle of Black destruction “The Maafa.” And for Africans in the United States, it includes 263 years of chattel slavery followed by 140 years of mental slavery.

More important, freedom-seeking African youth must stand up and declare total war on their own colonial thinking. They must attack mercilessly its instruments and agents, deconstruct its intellectual base, and thereby break out of conceptual incarceration. Jacob Carruthers (1999) calls this “intellectual warfare.” To win the war for their own minds, African youth must immerse themselves in the knowledge bases that gave rise to Kemet, Nubia and Axum as well as ancient Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. This will provide them with a solid foundation on which to construct a historically accurate and healthy sense of themselves as modern, 21st century people connected to the world’s first and finest civilizations.

Predictably, African Americans under 25 years of age living in reAfrikanizing households and attending African centered schools are prime candidates to achieve permanent decolonization. From amongst their ranks will come the intellectual maroons of the 21st century. Regrettably, millions of African American teenagers and adults from all social classes and economic backgrounds have been so thoroughly and completely colonized (brain-washed) that nothing short of institutionalize deprogramming would pry loose the bars of their conceptual incarceration, learned indifference and utengano.

For our thoroughly seasoned African leadership class, only a long-term, intensive, decolonization procedure would cleanse them sufficiently to begin preliminary restructuring of their African personalities. And only precision weapons like sankofa, ma’at, reAfrikanization and intellectual disobedience will allow them to victoriously engage their internal enemy and decolonize their African minds.

Glossary of Terms

Aryans (Sanskrit) – Fair-skinned, nomadic, war-like people from southern Russia and Iran (Persia) who invaded much of Europe, southwest Asia and India, 2000-1500 BCE. In the 20th century, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis claimed descent from the ancient Aryans and embraced their passion for war and conquest. The White Arabs of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran as well as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morroco are the Semitic branch of the Aryan-Caucasian-European family (Rajshekar, 1987).

Deculturalization – Three-part process designed and perfected by Europeans that: (1) denigrates to alienate Blacks from their African cultural heritage, i.e., African languages, religions, customs, etc., (2) teaches them to value only the cultural orientations, i.e., languages, religions, customs, etc., of Europeans or Arabs, and (3) assimilates them into a European or Arab dominated social order as their faithful supporters and defenders. The public educational system, the Christian church and the mass media are the prime instruments of American deculturalization, And the Qur’an, the mosque, and Qur’anic school are the chief instruments of Arab deculturalization (Boateng, 1990; Spring, 1997).

European Colonization (1440 CE – Present) – 500-year-long competition among the Europeans (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, U.S. Americans, Germans, and Italians) to set up and maintain African bases of operations to better steal the human, minerals and biological wealth of the world’s richest continent for the development of European civilization. The Europeans have colonized successfully African land, institutions and minds.

Maafa (Swahili) – Term popularized by Marimba Ani to signify the 1300-year-long period (652 CE – Present) of African conquest, enslavement, domination, oppression, exploitation and genocide at the hands of Europeans and Arabs (Ani, 1994).

Goals of Mis-Education

Conceptual Incarceration (CI) – State of African intellectual imprisonment in European value and belief systems occasioned by ignorance of African and Native American philosophical, cultural and historical truths. CI is the goal of miseducation, the end result of deculturalization, and the major obstacle to innovative, creative and liberatory African thought and practice (Nobles, 1986).

Diseducation – Public school practice of arresting and undermining the intellectual development of African students resulting in “pervasive, persistent and disproportionate” academic under achievement. Diseducation is a strategy of deculturalization, the maafa and the source of the Black-White student achievement gap (Carruthers, 1994).

Education For All – Termed coined at a 1990 World Bank conference in Thailand to promote western-style primary education in Africa, which serves to “rob Africans of their indigenous knowledge and language” promoting what Dr. Birgit Brock-Utne calls the “recolonization of the African mind” (Brock-Utne, 2000)

Learned Indifference (LI) – Pervasive and debilitating African psychological state characterized by disinterest in issues, causes and organizations that promote the advancement of African people. LI is a function of conceptual incarceration and the end goal of deculturalizaton and miseducation (X, 1996).

Mentacide – Deliberate and systematic European-orchestrated process terminating in the destruction of the African mind with the ultimate objective the extirpation of African people. End goal of deculturalization, miseducation and the maafa (Wright, 1984).

Utengano (Swahili) – Deeply entrenched, intergenerational African American predisposition to accept disunity, division and disorder in the African community as normal. Utengano is an expression of learned indifference, an outgrowth of deculturalization, and a strategy of the maafa (Hotep, 2002).

Liberatory Practices

Decolonization – Process of overthrowing and then removing the Europeancentric or Arabcentric value and belief systems (colonies) implanted in our minds by our public school mis-education, our Christian or Islamic indoctrination and mass media manipulation that keep us psychologically, emotionally, materially and spiritually tied to Europeans or Arabs as their victims or servants. To decolonize the African mind is to cleanse and liberate by re-Africanizing the African mind (Chinweizu, 1987).

Intellectual Disobedience – Twenty-first century corollary to Henry David Thoreau’s (1860) notion of civil disobedience that holds that African people have a moral imperative to resist all attempts by the European dominated educational hegemony to constrict, restrict or regulate the content of their education (Hotep, 2000).

Ma’at (Mdw Ntr) – Seven thousand-year-old Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) term for the divine law of truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, in short, righteousness. The restoration, maintenance and preservation of ma’at was considered the highest social ideal by the ancient Africans of the Nile River Valley civilizations. Today, it is the motive and goal of all conscious, African freedom fighters (Karenga, 1986;Hilliard, 1994; Carruthers, 1995; Ashby, 1996).

Re-Africanization – Intergenerational, family-based process of reclamation, revivification and reincorporation of African cultural knowledge and values as the prerequisite for establishing a 21st century African social order rooted in the traditional wisdom of African people (Akoto & Akoto, 2000).

Sankofa (Twi) – Akan concept, symbol and social practice adopted by late 20th century Pan African nationalist scholars and activists, which refers to the practice of learning from the past to build for the future. For African people, this means having the desire to not only to understand the worldview of our ancient African ancestors, but also the wisdom to adopt or adapt their social practices and philosophical beliefs when they will help us establish financially independent, emotionally wholesome and nurturing families and autonomous, sovereign, self-sufficient communities. Sankofa practice demands confronting the Maafa by respecting life, nature and the wisdom of our African ancestors, establishing viable extended families, supporting African centered institutions and organizations, and creating social and economic ties throughout the African World Community (Wase, 1998; Akoto & Akoto, 2000).

Sources and Essential Readings

Afrika, M. (2002). The redemption of African spirituality: An African-centered historical critique of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Philadelphia: Afrika Publications.

Ajamu, A. (1997). From tef tef to medew nefer: The importance of using African terminologies and concepts in the rescue, restoration, reconstruction, and reconnection of African ancestral memory. In J. Carruthers & L. Harris. (Eds.), African world history project: The preliminary challenge. Los Angeles: ASCAC.

Akoto, K. & Akoto, A. (2000). The sankofa movement: ReAfrikanization and the reality of war. Washington: Oyoko InfoCom.

Ani, M. (1994). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.

Asante, M. & Abarry, A. (Eds.) African intellectual heritage: A book of sources. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bennett, L. (1984). Before the Mayflower: A history of Black America. New York: Penguin Books.

Boateng, F. (1990). Combating the deculturalization of the African American child in the public school system. In Lomotey, K. (Ed.). Going to school: The African-American experience. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Brishade, A. (1996). Re-aligning African heads: Yoruba curatives for maafa-related ailments. Jacksonville, FL: Sankofa Productions.

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Copyright © 2003

Kwame Ture Youth Leadership Institute

Uhuru Hotep, Ed.D., is the creator of the Johari Sita: The Six Jewels of African Centered Leadership and the co-founder of the Kwame Ture Youth Leadership Institute. He currently serves as the associate director of the Spiritan Division of Academic Programs and the Michael P. Weber Learning Skills Center at Duquesne University. He can be reached at hotep@duq.edu