RBG Street Scholars Think Tank Multi-Media E-Zine

RBG BLAKADEMICS DEFINED and Leadership / Education / Reparation / Dr. Maulana Karenga

2009-09-23T03:26:00.027-05:00

DPZ MY WORKS INSPIRATION
With RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta,
M-1 and sticman inspired me to develop this College

Healing is work, not gambling. It is the work of inspiration, not manipulation. If we the healers are to do the work of helping bring our whole people together again, we need to know such work is the work of a community. It cannot be done by an individual. It should not depend on people who do not understand the healing vocation….The work of healing is work for inspirers working long and steadily in a group that grows over generations, until there are inspirers, healers wherever our people are scattered, able to bring us together again.

--Ayi Kwei Armah—

RBG DEFINED:

No matter if one relates R.B.G. with
Red Black and Green,
Revolutionary But Gangstas,
Redeemed By God,
Read Bout Garvey,
Revolutionary Black Gangstas,
Real Black Girls,
Ready 2 Bust Gats or
Riders Basic Guidelines, etc
We must know that the principles and guidelines were passed down from great leaders like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton. They must know that the RBG Family consists of real leaders that will forever ride for our Black and Brown People worldwide.

You are presently in one of the communiversity's primary websites/ portals.
The product is very intelligent so as you continue to play with it more will be revealed. It gets as smart as the person driving (from GED to PhD). Multi-Tab Learning is how one integrates the audio with their photo surveying and reading for rapid concentrated overstanding. The group blogs/articles in the portal are where the meat is. Presently, we have 20 websites comprising over 5000 RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) and media assets all concentrically integrated and linked to hundreds of robust Afrikan-centered websites. The portal pilot enable you to access and navigate everything seamlessly.

In the words of Sekou Toure “to us, Revolution means the collective movement initiated by a group of men or by a whole people, and supported by their conscious determination to change an old degrading order into a new, progressive order in view of ensuring the safeguard and development of collective and individual interests, without any discrimination whatsoever. The People’s Revolution, to us, remains thus a collective consciousness in motion, and a collective movement guided by conscience and whose ultimate aim is the continued progress of man and the People.”

(From: SEKOU TOURE Revolution and Religion—Excerpts from Enhancing the People’s Power )

THE MAIN GOAL OF THIS SCHOOL IS NOT MASTERY OVER OPPRESSION. SUCH A GOAL, EVEN IF ACCOMPLISHED TO ITS FULLEST EXTENT, WOULD ONLY LAND AFRIKAN PEOPLE IN A VACUUM. RATHER, THE PREEMINENT GOAL OF THE RBG STREET SCHOLARS THINK TANK'S CORE CURRICULUM IS SELF-MASTERY BY WAY OF AFRIKAN-CENTERED CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF SECURING BLACK POWER. NONETHELESS, THIS GOAL MANDATES THE ACTIVE NEUTRALIZATION OF ALL OPPRESSIVE YOKES WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE AFRIKAN SELF AND COLLECTIVE. GIVEN THAT WE ALL ARE DECENDENTS OF A PEOPLE THAT WERE TAKEN THROUGH THE EUROPEAN'S EVIL GENIUS THREE STEP PROCESS OF DERACINATION, I.E. DEAFRIKANIZATION, DEHUMANIZATION AND INFERIORTIZATION, THE INDIVIDUAL SEARCH FOR SECURITY UNDER OUR PRESENT CONDITION AND THE QUEST FOR PERSONAL HARMONY AND PRIVATE SUCCESS AT THE COST OF BETRAYING OUR COLLECTIVE ASPIRATIONS FOR SELF-DETERMINATION REQUIRES LITTLE COURAGE, VISION OR RISK. SUCH EFFORTS ACCEPT THE SOCIAL ORDER (DISORDER) AS IMMUTABLE. BUT, IN ORDER FOR AFRIKAN PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO DEFEND, DEFINE AND DEVELOP IN OUR OWN IMAGE AND INTEREST; A NEW COURAGE, NEW VISION, NEW CONSCIOUSNESS, COMMITMENT AND CONDUCT IS REQUIRED. THE DEHUMANIZING ENEMY WITHOUT MUST BE NEUTRALIZED—AT LEAST PSYCHO-CULTURALLY AND SOCIO-MATERIALLY,JUST AS THE ENEMY WITHIN MUST BE EJECTED. NEITHER CAN OCCUR WITHOUT SERIOUS STUDY AND WORK THROUGH OUR OWN AFRIKAN EYES AND ORGANIZED TECHNOLOGICALLY SOPHISTICATED INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT. BOTH ENTAIL RISKING A SOCIAL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, EDUCATIONAL AND SPIRITUAL CRISIS; AND EVEN PHYSICAL DEATH. FOR THEM AND ONLY THEN CAN A NEW AFRIKAN WORLD UNION BE ESTABLISHED?

Brotha Praylu is RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Master Video Educator.
He,the others listed below and myself started this project together five years ago.

We thank RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's premier Video Educator, my good friend and colleague Praylu. We started out together about five years ago teaching on You Tube. There were only about seven of us on You Tube at that time doing Re-education of Afrikan people work. The others were-ParadigmShift , Akeem, Dadieshak, Antihostile , Rootsymali and SynQ....READ MORE IN OUR HIP HOP AND CONSCIOUS RAP MUSIC WIKIZINE

RBG CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT DEFINED

2009-09-23T03:17:00.002-05:00

RBG's WORKING DEFINITION OF CULTURE:

RBG BLAKADEMICS WORKING DEFINITION AND INSIGHT INTO AFRIKAN CULTURE

RBG Blakademics reflects the cultural continuity and recurring spiritual and pedagogical themes of Afrikan peoples education and socialization across space and time; from ancient classic Nile Valley Civilizations to West Africa (from which we most directly come from) North , Central and East Africa and throughout the Diaspora, right on up to our present day experience here in the hells of north America. So the process does not put in as much as it draws out what is already pre... Read Full Lesson

Culture is not one of life’s luxuries: it is life itself.

“Culture” may be defined as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour… language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989).

At times,“culture” and “civilization” have been regarded as synonymous; at others, culture has been regarded as the end and civilization the means. In anthropological terms, culture encompasses a broad range of material objects, behavior patterns and thoughts. In western society, culture is commonly regarded as something highbrow, a luxury rather than a necessity. Certain activities are deemed to constitute culture, while others are excluded. This paper argues that a democratic culture where there is access, respect, coherence and/or relevance in the public interest is not elitist, but a basis for human and social development.

Senegal’s former president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, once stated in an interview: “At intellectual conferences in the Third World culture is made an instrument for politics, although Marx was of the opinion that politics should be the instrument for culture. To Marx the purpose of politics is to make man free in order to be able to ‘create works of beauty’. Culture, not politics is the weave that keeps a society together. But industrialized countries in East and West do not accept the notion that cultures be equal although different. They do not take African culture and philosophy seriously as long as we have no economic power.” 4

“Is ‘culture’ an aspect or a means of ‘development’, the latter understood as material progress; or is ‘culture’ the end and aim of ‘development’, the latter understood as the flourishing of human existence in its several forms and as a whole?” 5

These quotations reflect a longstanding and ongoing discussion of two viewpoints. These can, however, be combined without one overshadowing the other. They are interdependent and nurture one another.

On the one hand, the importance of culture is thought to lie in its function as a medium of messages for educational or other social purposes. Here, the sharpness of the instrument depends on the dedication, skills and depth of the conveyor.

The other viewpoint emphasizes culture as a means of paving the way for creativity and showing experience that can be neither measured nor weighed. The artist’s imagination, or the world it builds, is a laboratory of the not-yet-experienced.

In the words of John Gardner, the American novelist, “Art is as original and important as it is precisely because it does not start out with a clear knowledge of what it means to say.”

To stimulate our imagination and nourish our dreams, we seek art, literature, film, music and theatre for a varied range of aesthetic experience. This applies to people all over the world, of all social classes and ages, women and men alike. What we cannot dream about cannot be realized either.

Culture helps us transgress limits, self-imposed or otherwise; to challenge ourselves; and to discover talents we were unaware of – talents that are valuable in every kind of situation in life. Without imagination and creativity, we are prisoners of the structures and thoughts of others.
Four aspects of the role of culture in development may be discerned. There is no competition between the four: rather, they empower one another.
They are:
* using culture to illustrate or clarify a medical, political, educational, agricultural or family problem = culture for development
* strengthening the cultural sector = cultural development
* the importance of analysing the consequences of development cooperation on the culture of a country, community or group.
* mainstreaming culture in all development work.

Modified from: The Power of Culture

Companion Article: African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence Dialog, Principles, Practice by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D.

RBG AFRIKAN CENTERED EDUCATION DEFINED

2009-09-23T03:05:00.004-05:00

Dedicated educator and educational theorist Dr. Barbara Sizemore applied the expertise she acquired at premiere institutions to work on behalf of disadvantaged students. Sizemore was born on December 17, 1927, in Chicago. Upon completing a B.A. in classical languages at Northwestern University, she began teaching in the Chicago public school system. Sizemore returned to Northwestern and received an M.A. in elementary education in 1954. Twenty-five years later, she graduated from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in educational administration. In 1963, Sizemore was among the first African American women to serve as principal of a Chicago school. Six years after switching from elementary to high school administration, she was the first African American woman elected superintendent of a major city's school system in 1972. For two years Sizemore served as the top official of the District of Columbia's public schools. She then accepted a position at the University of Pittsburgh, which she retained until 1992. At Pitt, Sizemore studied schools located in low-income, high-crime areas whose students were predominately African American. She incorporated her findings into an innovative educational strategy called School Achievement Structure (SAS), which she championed as dean of DePaul University's School of Education from 1992 to 1998. Schools that followed her routines had tremendous success raising their students' test scores, increasing these individuals' chances for success in system that often works against them. A former member of the board of directors of The Journal of Negro Education, Sizemore participated in the dialogue of how to empower students as a prolific writer and member of the National Alliance of Black School Educators. She has received numerous awards and honors recognizing her contribution to educational theory. Sizemore's children, Kymara Chase and Furman G. Sizemore, are also professors. She passed away on July 24, 2004. Sizemore was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on April 9, 2003 .

Ten Vital Principles for Black Education and Socialization

We are not new to the study of and practice of education and socialization that is rooted in deep thought.

We will not accept a dependent status in the approach and solution to our problems.

Chapter 2 (excerpt)

Ten Vital Principles for Black Education and Socialization

1. We exist as African people, an ethnic family. Our perspective must be centered in that reality.

2. The priority is on the African ethnic Family over the Individual. Because we live in a world where expertness in alien cultural traditions (that we also share) have gained hegemony, our collective survival and enhancement must be our highest priorities.

3. Some solutions to problems that we will identify will involve differential use of three modes of response to domination and hegemony: a) Adaptation—adopting what is deemed useful, b) Improvisation—substituting or improvising alternatives that are more sensitive to our culture and c) Resistance—resisting that which is destructive and not in the best interests of our people.

4. The “ways of knowing” provided by the arts and humanities are often more useful in informing our understanding of our lives and experiences and those of other oppressed people than the knowledge and methodologies of the sciences that have been privileged by the research establishment despite the often distorted or circumscribed knowledge and understanding this way of knowing produces.

5. Paradoxically, from the perspective of the education research establishment, knowledge production is viewed as the search for facts and (universal) truth, while the circumstances of our social and existential condition require the search for meaning and understanding.

6. The priority is on research validity over “inclusion.” For research validity highest priority must be placed on studies of: a) African tradition (history, culture and language), b) Hegemony (e.g., uses of schooling/socialization and incarceration), c) Equity (funding, teacher quality, content and access to technology) and d) Beneficial practice (at all levels of education, from childhood to elderhood).

7. Research informs practice and practice informs research in the production and utilization of knowledge; therefore, context is essential in research: a) Cultural/ historical context, b) Political/economic context and c) Professional context, including the history of AERA and African people.

8. We require power and influence over our common destiny. Rapid globalization of the economy and cyber-technology are transforming teaching, learning and work itself. Therefore, we require access to education that serves our collective interests, including assessments that address cultural excellence and a comprehensive approach to the interrelated health, learning and economic needs of African people.

9. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims, and the UNESCO World Education 2000 Report, issued in Dakar, Senegal, affirms that “education is a fundamental human right” and “an indispensable means for effective participation in the societies and economies of the twenty-first century.” We are morally obligated to “create safe, healthy, inclusive and equitably resourced educational environments” conducive to excellence in learning and socialization with clearly defined levels of achievement for all. Such learning environments must include appropriate curricula and teachers who are appropriately educated and rewarded.

10. African people are not empty vessels. We are not new to the study of and practice of education and socialization that is rooted in deep thought. We will not accept a dependent status in the approach and solution to our problems...

RBG Who, What, Why and How: Background & Significance and A Review of the Afrikan Centered Education Literature

2009-09-18T06:37:00.012-05:00

Liberation is impossible if we fail to see ourselves in more positive terms. For without a change of vision, we are slaves to the oppressor’s ideas and values—ideas and values that finally attack the very core of our existence. Therefore, we must see the world in terms of our own realities.”
Larry Neal, “Black Art and Black Liberation,” 1969

The time is ripe to heed the long-standing, and most often overlooked, calls for Afrikan Unity, Cultural Development, Education and Social Transformation. Such is what RBG most fundamentally represents. Contrary to the prevailing, misinformed assumptions, RBG (Black Nationalism / PanAfrikanism ) as an ideology, interaction and academic process is not a rabid assertion of Black supremacy. Unlike white Nationalism and American patriotism, RBG (Black Nationalism / PanAfrikanism ) and its proponents do not seek to humiliate, exploit, or oppress any person or people. Rather, RBG / (Black Nationalism / PanAfrikanism ) is a positive affirmation of the cultural, political, social, economic and moral identity and concerns of African people. In its most rudimentary forms, it reacts to the brutally violent and repressive conditions under which African people have and continue to live. White supremacy / racism creates an environment where whites are necessarily viewed with suspicion, but we are not anti-white. We are Afrikan/ Black on purpose and Black folks must first and foremost be beholden to each other. The most basic expression of RBG (Black Nationalism/ PanAfrikanism ) thought is that Black / Afrikan people in America and throughout the diaspora are bound by the common history and experience of historical chattel and present day mental slavery, suffering and death under the boot heel of white supremacy / racism. Most importantly, RBG is about self-reliance, self- respect and self-defense toward the total liberation and unification of all Afrikan people that desire to defend, define and develop in our own image and interest.

Our Professors and Teachers are Our Elders, Ancestors, Scholars and Revolutionaries...

cultural workers, raptivists, poets, artists and playwrights and grassroots community folk; including the likes of DPZ and Family, UNO The Prophet, Paris, KRS-1, PE/Chuck D, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal, Dr. Amiri Baraka, Bro. J of X-Klan, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad, Dr. Martin Luther Jr., Minister Malcolm X, Imam Jamal Al-Amin, Dr. Huey P. Newton, Dr. Kwame Toure , Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Na’im Akbar, Dr Ben, Dr Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Jackson, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. Mulana Karenga, Dr. Oba T’ Shaka, Rev. Khandi Paasewe, Dr. Molefi Asante and many, many more.

How We Provoke Thought, Discussion & Learning:

Please keep in mind that RBG is a Think Tank. A center of higher learning organized for intensive study, research, critical thinking and problem solving; focused in the areas of the use of technology in Afrikan-centered cultural development and education for the purpose of individually and collectively learning the social, political , economic and moral strategies to secure Black Power in the 21st century.

More frequently than not, we initiate our teaching / learning process by presenting audio and visual resources that pose semalies, parables, metaphors, analogies and oxymorons--that's what makes you think (we hope)...

...Then we have lively and well informed group discussions revolving around the various messages put forth in the learning objects and media assets. Next we research the facts overlaying our discussions using the voluminous number of resources available in the communiversity's web portals and learning environments.
Finally, each learner has the opportunity to fill our evaluation instruments on most of the 5,000+ RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) and media assets that comprise the core curriculum. It is out of following this methodology that we devise position papers and community policy recommendations and initiatives...
Learn More

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: I use a teaching theory called Overlearning. Just like one more frequently than not under learns a topic/subject by not appreciating all the relationships; presenting previous data along with new data solidifies relational overstanding. So if you have seen or heard or read something in another context--please--don't skip over it in the new application, if you want to catch on to the program faster.

IN CLASSICAL AFRIKAN (KEMETIC) PHILOSOPHY THE HUMAN BEING AND HUMAN REALITY WERE GOVERNED BY THE BASIC DIVINE LAW OF “TO BE A SPIRIT”. THE MORAL MANDATE OF AFRIKAN HUMANITY WAS “TO BECOME AND IN BECOMING”---THE PURSUIT OF SUCH DIVINE LAW AND MORAL MANDATE WAS REFLECTIVE OF ONES PURSUIT OF GODLINESS. EDUCATION WAS KEY TO THIS PROCESS--TO BECOME AND IN BECOMING A MORE PERFECT BEING. FOR OUR AFRIKAN ANCESTORS EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING WAS ULTIMATELY ABOUT A PERSON BEING TRANSFORMED FROM A LESSER MATERIAL BEING TO A GREATER SPIRITUAL BEING.

See: AFRICOLOGY: A NEW AFRIKAN GUIDING SYNOPSIS OF RBG COMMUNIVERSITY EDUCATION

"WHAT WE BELIEVE"

1) We Believe that Along Side Every Real Black Man
There Should Be A Conscious Black Women

See: The Lost and Stolen History of the African Women

2) We Believe in the Power, Knowledge,
Wisdom and Resurrection of the Ancestors

3) We Believe it is Our Responsibility to Educate
Our Children, Youth and the Masses of the People

RBG Who, What, Why and How:

RBG STREET SCHOLARS THINK TANK is a web-based-face to face hybrid, not -for-profit research, cultural development, education, and socialization community project. It epitomizes New Afrikan consciousness raising in the Web 2.0 environment. We are an academic-action plan community dedicated to fostering progressive social, political, economic and educational change in oppressed / “ghettoized” communities throughout the United States. Our main goal is to stomp out mentacide by intellectually uplifting our youth and young adults caught-up in the many facets of systematic oppression ( including Black-on-Black violence, poverty, ignorance, death and disease). We are about preserving our rich history of scholarship combined with activism and grass-root struggle for civil and human rights and our pursuits of ultimate national liberation and self-determination. We do this by educating and providing African American youth and young adults of the hip-hop generation and their children with the information, tools and skills necessary for them to lead a productive life in a 21st century America being driven by technology. At the core of our methods is an emphasis on history’s (OUR-STORY not His-tory) power as a weapon in fighting against national oppression and its continued relevance to our current plights and struggles for a good life. By equipping our learners (student-teachers) with proper knowledge and technical skills we inspire them to become confident and committed to creating programs, projects and products that will assist in their financially supporting themselves, and at the same time encourage their practicing ongoing progressive change through activism.

This CommuniVersity's target audience is the Hip Hop Generation (Blacks / New Afrikans born between 1965 and 1984) and their children.

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank seeks to educate and empower all Black (New Afrikan) people, but we are especially committed to teaching (and learning from) urban Black youth / hip-hop headz how to be builders of a true African World Union.

4) We Believe in Mental Liberation
Through Proper Education

The education of any people should begin with the people themselves.... The chief difficulty with the education of the Negro is that it has been largely imitation resulting in the enslavement of his mind.
Dr. Carter G. Woodson,
The Miseducation of the Negro(1933)

5) We believe that the Afrikan American experience in the United States is an integral part of the "American" experience

For the past forty five, plus years scholars and students in the “Black Studies Movement” have worked to include courses on the African American experience in the curricula of American colleges and universities. Beginning in the late 1960s, they began one of the most important endeavors in mainstream American education, i.e. the creation of departments, programs and courses in African American studies. In their efforts they have continued the work begun eighty years ago by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of African American History.” In 1915, Dr. Woodson organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. A year later, he began publishing the Journal of Negro History. Dr. Woodson’s goal was to encourage the “scientific study of the Negro” and to dispel the ideas and notions prevalent in his time that African Americans had no history and had never contributed to the development of world civilization. An important part of Woodson’s mission in popularizing the study of African American history was to ensure that young people learned the history and culture of African Americans.

Link to the full essay
Back To School: RBG (Redeemed By God) Style,Feat.Brothas Keepa

The 1960s and 1970s were times of social and political ferment which gave rise in the U.S. to the Black Nationalist, Black Power and Black Arts Movements, all driven to some degree by a rejection of Western values and an identification with "Mother Africa." Afrocentric scholars and Black youth also challenged Eurocentric ideas in academia. 1968 signaled a new era in student unrest in the U.S. when Howard University became the first major university to be shut down by student protests, in part over demands for a more Afrocentric orientation of the institution.

The work of Cheikh Anta Diop became very influential. In the following decades, histories related to Africa and the diaspora gradually would incorporate a more African perspective. Since that time, Afrocentrists have increasingly seen Afrikan peoples as the makers and shapers of their own histories. RBG Street Scholars Think Tank is a continuation of that academic, socio-political and cultural process.

See:

RBG Blakademics ACTI- Afrikan Centered Thematic Inventory / Curriculum National Standards

“A PRESENTATION OF THE STUDY DOMAINS OUR VARIOUS CURRICULA EXECUTE IN A WEB 2.0 ENVIRONMENT” http://www.zimbio.com/RBG+Afrikan-+Centered+Cultural+Development+and+Education In NATIONBUILDING, Agyei Akoto has produced a volume that challenges all Afrikan people, particularly those of us in the United States, to confront with seriousness the responsibilities of educating for liberation, and the reality that the goal of liberation must be Nationhood. This book is a masterpiece of vision. More... Access Full Lesson

RBG Street Scholar On Afrikan Centered Education:The Historical Background

Afrocentric education is education targeted towards African people. The premise behind it is the notion that human beings can be subjugated and made servile by limiting their consciousness of themselves and by imposing certain selective aspects of alien knowledge on others.[1] To control a peoples culture is to control their tools of self-determination in relationship to others.[2] Afrocentrists argue that what educates one group of people does not necessarily educate and empower... Read Full Essay

6) We Believe that We Are An Afrikan People

"We Are Afrikan People Wherever We Were Born No matter where we were born in the world. Afrikan (Black) People are historically and culturally linked. Our history, identity, and culture are rooted in the many thousands of years of development of Afrikan civilization on the Afrikan continent. This is a consequence of the ever forward movement and motion of the New Afrikan masses. It is from this historical march of our people (Afrikan [Black] People) that we derive our African culture, the sum total of material and spiritual values created by our people. It is this invincible weapon, Afrikan culture, that has always served to fight against all forms of oppression and exploitation, to move forward New Afrikan People and Afrikan civilization. Modified with "k for c" from Ayize Atiba. 8 March, 1995 / Link to Full Lesson

A Definition of African Centered Education

African Centered Education is a system of sequentially planned educational opportunities provided for African heritage children, youth and young adults to develop the necessary and required skills to participate in the global marketplace with specific interest on the upliftment and empowerment of their African-American communities and the total development and growth of the African continent.
Dr. E. Curtis Alexander
Link to more essential RBG definitions of Afrikan Centered Education

Tony Brown's Afrocentric Education Conference
(See menu for relate videos)

RBG Reference Resource Center and Review of the Literature

Click the link for synoptic reviews of the main resources / book concepts that I have called upon to build "The RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's Educational Foundation" from a scholarly / academic perspective. The reviews are very important reading for learners as well as teachers, as they are rich with knowledge of the issues and solutions. I have also embedded video education assets throughout to enhance the reading.

RBG Blueprint For Black Power Textbook Extracts and Video Education Primer

2009-09-13T07:25:00.005-05:00

Extracts from Our Blueprint Textbook

"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."

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank 2009 EduBlog Lessons and Learning / Teaching Tools

2009-09-08T22:13:00.009-05:00

RBG Blakademics PDF Learners Manuals and Booklets

RBG Street Scholars Think Tank Core Curriculum/21 Sequenced EduBlogs

RBG STREET SCHOLAR PRESENTS: "The Deepest Academic EduBlog in the World"

LINK 2 THE ACTUAL FULLY INTERACTIVE POST ALL IMAGES ARE HOT AND EXPANDABLE /RIGHT CLICK AND VIEW /OPEN IN NEW TAB B aba Del Jones Classroom ENHANCED WITH INTE LLIGENT IMAGERY / MSE R BG Blakademics PDF Learners Manuals and Booklets RBG Street Scholars Think Tank Core Curriculum EduBlog Our Professors are Our Scholars ...cultural workers, raptivists, revolutionaries and grassroots communty folk; including the likes of DPZ and Family, UNO The Prophet, Paris, KRS-1, PE/Chuck D, Dr. Mutulu... Study the Full Lesson

Imhotep Virtual Medical School and It's Physician Tutors' Profile: In Pursuit of Academic Excellence

Marc Imhotep Cray is a Physician (UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School),Pharmacy School trained Pharmacologist / Analytical Chemist, Addiction Medicine Specialist, Basic Medical Sciences (BMS) & Black Studies Master Teacher, Medical Infomatics Expert, Webmaster, Medical & Afrikan-Centered Educatio n Researcher and RBG Street Scholar in Evolution. ·He is formerly Director of Office of Medical Education American International School of Medicine-Georgetown, Guyana. ·Formerly Associate Professor of... Study the Full Lesson

RBG CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, A WORKING DEFINITION

R B G CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT DEFINED RBGz WORKING DEFINITION OF CULTURE: RBGz WORKING DEFINITION AND INSIGHT INTO AFRIKAN CULTURE RBG Blakademics reflects the cultural continuity and recurring spiritual and pedagogical themes of Afrikan peoples education and socialization across space and time; from ancient classic Nile Valley Civilizations to West Africa (from which we most directly come from) North , Central and East Africa and throughout the Diaspora, right on up to our present day... Study the Full Lesson

The RBG Choice: Freedom or Death-Oppression or Liberation

play Slagerij van Kampen — Tribal African Percussions play Paris, Chuck D, Kam and DPZ — Rebirth of a Nation play Dr. kambon- Opperssion of Liberation GLOBAL WHITE SUPRAMACY AND PRO-RACIST NEGROS: ADDICTIVE STEPS The global white supremacy is a psycho-pathology of European cultures. It is founded upon the notion of solipsism, that is to say, “the only valid yardstick to measure normal against is the 75 kilogram white –upper middle class, heterosexual white male. Global white... Study the Full Lesson

RBG Frolinan: Liberation Through Education and Revolutionary Action

The time is ripe to heed the long-standing, and most often overlooked, calls for New Afrikan Unity, Cultural Development, Education and Social Transformation. Such is what RBG most fundamentally represents. Contrary to the prevailing, misinformed assumptions,RBG (Black Nationalism / PanAfrikanism ) as an ideology, interaction and academic process is not a rabid assertion of Black supremacy. Unlike white Nationalism and American patriotism, RBG(Black Nationalism / Pan -Afrikanism ) and its... Study the Full Series

Dee Lee, a white man says "THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES" /and RBG SS Agrees

NEW RBG ICE BREAKER VIDEO Pictorial and Video Education Embellishments by RBG Street Scholar NEW RBG VIDEO EDUCATION SERIES RBG Blakademics 2009 Core: 50ShotsBACK / OUR-STORY THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES Why: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS. "THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES" We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS. Their IGNORANCE is the... Study the Full Lesson

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Two Types of Scholars in The Global African Community and Profile of a RBG Street Scholar

PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR PUBLISHING ON THIS LILLY WHITE SITE. ITS STARTING TO MAKE ME SICK. JUST GOES TO SHOW, AIN'T NOTHING FREE IN AMERIKKKA. ICEBREAKER VIDEO "There are two types of fundamental scholars within the world of African people. There are those scholars who have internalized the value system of white supremacy. They, generally, never question any theories, models, perceptions, assumptions or concepts that come from the minds of White males in the world. They then proceed to write... Study the Full Lesson

The 20th Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference: Concept, Praxis, and Legacy...

Editors Note: Upon clicking on a panel or an individual person within a panel, you will be taken to the source document. Once you land, you may click the person or hot-linked title of their presentation for immediate streaming. For best playback results you can download the video to your hard drive. I have embed the Welcome streams / downloads here as to demonstrate. WMP set as your default media player is recommended as the file types are WMV. ICE BREAKER VIDEO (3 Clips/see menu for 2... Study the Full Lesson

OUR STORY IN BRIEF! The Relationship Between America, Blacks, Health and Medicine

By: Marc Imhotep Cray, M.D. (bna RBG Street Scholar) (Last Updated March 2008) Founding Director: Office of Medical Education Institute for Minority Physicians of the Future (IMPF) Health disparities across racial and ethnic groups in the United States have been well documented for over a century. These disparities have remained remarkably persistent in spite of the changes in many facets of the society over that period. Despite dramatic improvements in overall health status for the U.S... Study the Full Lesson

SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind / By Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III

(Images,video, links and text embellishment is mines) May "Dr. Asa Grant Hilliard III" Rest In Uhuru Amankwatia Baffour II 22 August 1933 - 12 August 2007 Dedication to Asa G. Hilliard III http://www.youtube.com/NatUrbanAlliance "SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind is a key. It is a roadmap. It is a call to destiny…. With SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind, Dr. Hilliard…helps us to comprehend why education is so critical to African liberation and advancement. Within his opening... Study the Full Lesson

2009 (76)

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RBG FORMAL METHODS, FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE ASSESS...

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“People must love their Leader!” – Portrait of Gen. Idi Amin Dada-A Documentary Film

2009-09-08T21:41:00.008-05:00

RBG STUDENT-TEACHER BODY
CLICK HERE FOR FULL SIZE PRESENTATION

ONE MANS TERRORIST IS ANOTHER MANS FREEDOM FIGHTER, THE CULTURAL VIGOR OF EUROPE GAVE RISE TO THE CULTURAL MUMMIFICATION OF AFRIKA, THE HISTORICAL INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS OF WHITE PEOPLE WAS PREDICATED UPON THE INTELLECTUAL INCARCERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE AND TODAY THE BRAIN GAIN OF THE AXIS OF EVIL (U.S-BRITAIN-ISRAEL) REVOLVES AROUND THE BRAIN DRAIN OF AFRIKANS WORLDWIDE. THUS, WE MUST NEVER ALLOW THEIR WHITE SUPREMACY/ZIONIST MEDIA PROPAGANDA MACHINE TO CHOOSE OUR LEADERS FOR US. CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF VIA WESTERN PROPAGANDA GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA WAS A STRONG, WISE AND UNCOMPROMISING LEADER FOR AFRIKAN PEOPLE---WE WOULD DO WELL TO STUDY HIM WITH CLOSE ATTENTION..."HE WAS A RBG GENERAL"

RBG STREET SCHOLAR

IN RESPECT FOR RBG
MEMBER JAFFAR AMIN

http://www.idiamindada.com/

RBG INTERGENERATIONAL KEEPING OF THE CULTURE, f. RBG INTELLIGENT IMAGERY / MOUSE OVER SNAP VIDEO

2009-09-05T23:42:00.017-05:00

RBG CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT DEFINED

RBG's WORKING DEFINITION OF CULTURE:

RBG's WORKING DEFINITION AND INSIGHT INTO AFRIKAN CULTURE

Culture is not one of life’s luxuries: it is life itself.

“Culture” may be defined as “the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour… language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1989).

At times,“culture” and “civilization” have been regarded as synonymous; at others, culture has been regarded as the end and civilization the means. In anthropological terms, culture encompasses a broad range of material objects, behavior patterns and thoughts. In western society, culture is commonly regarded as something highbrow, a luxury rather than a necessity. Certain activities are deemed to constitute culture, while others are excluded. This paper argues that a democratic culture where there is access, respect, coherence and/or relevance in the public interest is not elitist, but a basis for human and social development.

Senegal’s former president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, once stated in an interview: “At intellectual conferences in the Third World culture is made an instrument for politics, although Marx was of the opinion that politics should be the instrument for culture. To Marx the purpose of politics is to make man free in order to be able to ‘create works of beauty’. Culture, not politics is the weave that keeps a society together. But industrialized countries in East and West do not accept the notion that cultures be equal although different. They do not take African culture and philosophy seriously as long as we have no economic power.” 4

“Is ‘culture’ an aspect or a means of ‘development’, the latter understood as material progress; or is ‘culture’ the end and aim of ‘development’, the latter understood as the flourishing of human existence in its several forms and as a whole?” 5

These quotations reflect a longstanding and ongoing discussion of two viewpoints. These can, however, be combined without one overshadowing the other. They are interdependent and nurture one another.

On the one hand, the importance of culture is thought to lie in its function as a medium of messages for educational or other social purposes. Here, the sharpness of the instrument depends on the dedication, skills and depth of the conveyor.

The other viewpoint emphasizes culture as a means of paving the way for creativity and showing experience that can be neither measured nor weighed. The artist’s imagination, or the world it builds, is a laboratory of the not-yet-experienced.

In the words of John Gardner, the American novelist, “Art is as original and important as it is precisely because it does not start out with a clear knowledge of what it means to say.”

To stimulate our imagination and nourish our dreams, we seek art, literature, film, music and theatre for a varied range of aesthetic experience. This applies to people all over the world, of all social classes and ages, women and men alike. What we cannot dream about cannot be realized either.

Culture helps us transgress limits, self-imposed or otherwise; to challenge ourselves; and to discover talents we were unaware of – talents that are valuable in every kind of situation in life. Without imagination and creativity, we are prisoners of the structures and thoughts of others.
Four aspects of the role of culture in development may be discerned. There is no competition between the four: rather, they empower one another.
They are:
* using culture to illustrate or clarify a medical, political, educational, agricultural or family problem = culture for development
* strengthening the cultural sector = cultural development
* the importance of analysing the consequences of development cooperation on the culture of a country, community or group.
* mainstreaming culture in all development work.

Modified from: The Power of Culture

Companion Article: African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence Dialog, Principles, Practice by Maulana Karenga, Ph.D.

Our Professors are Our Scholars...cultural workers, raptivists, revolutionaries and grassroots communty folk; including the likes of DPZ and Family, UNO The Prophet, Paris, KRS-1, PE/Chuck D, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu Jamal, Dr. Amiri Baraka, Bro. J of X-Klan, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad, Dr. Martin Luther Jr., Minister Malcolm X, Imam Jamal Al-Amin, Dr. Huey P. Newton, Dr. Kwame Toure , Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Na’im Akbar, Dr Ben, Dr Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Jackson, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. Mulana Karenga, Dr. Oba T’ Shaka, Rev. Khandi Paasewe, Dr. Molefi Asante and many, many more...and of course RBG Street Scholar (Me)

RBG Street Scholars A-V Study Guide-

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Carter Beauford Drum Solos a Brief Biography and Drum Lessons

2009-09-05T23:21:00.006-05:00

FULL VIDEO VERSION @ RBG MULTI-MEDIA E-ZINE

Carter Beauford Drum Solo

Carter Anthony Beauford (born November 2, 1957 in Charlottesville, Virginia) is a drummer, percussionist, and founding member of the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). He is known for his ability to mix together countless percussion styles, his ambidextrous approach to playing, and is highly regarded for his open hand drumming style, where his left hand leads on the hi-hat and ride cymbal in a conventional right-handed drumset set-up.

Carter Beauford Reggae

Background

Beauford was exposed to drumming at the age of three. At the time, his father had bought tickets to a Buddy Rich concert and could not find someone to watch his son, so he took young Carter along to the show. Carter was mesmerized by Buddy Rich on stage. After that show, Carter's father bought his son a tin drum set with paper heads since Carter showed much interest in learning the instrument. Carter began playing his first professional gigs when he was nine. He earned a degree in music from the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music.

Secrets, Dave Matthews Band

Eventually, he joined Secrets, a Richmond-based jazz fusion band. Other members included saxophonist LeRoi Moore, trumpeter John D'earth, vocalist Dawn Thompson, keyboardist Butch Taylor, and guitarist Tim Reynolds. Secrets would perform throughout Virginia, often at Miller's, the bar in Charlottesville where Dave Matthews worked as a bartender. Carter also played in Blue Indigo with LeRoi Moore, Sal Soghoian, and George Melvin. A driving Jazz band, Blue Indigo performed regularly at Tokyo Rose and Miller's, and was featured at the Delaware Water Gap Jazz Festival. Eventually, Dave approached both Carter and LeRoi regarding some music he had written that he wished to record. Upon listening, Beauford agreed, thus establishing his permanent status as DMB drummer.

Beauford uses a Yamaha Drums drum set, Zildjian cymbals, Remo drumheads, Promark sticks and mallets, Yamaha and Drum Workshop hardware, and various Latin Percussion cowbells, woodblocks and other assorted percussion equipment.

Resources:
Carter Beauford at Drummerworld
Carter's drum kit and equipment list.
Official Dave Matthews Band website

Frantz Fanon: Psychiatrist, Philosopher, Revolutionary and Author f. Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression

2009-08-31T09:48:00.000-05:00

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1. To be strong and irreverent in the face of oppression, and to be fearless in our opposition to it

2. To encourage and support efforts by those individuals and/or groups adopting a conscious stance, who reflect positivity in an ongoing climate of ever-increasing intolerance and suppression of counter-establishment thought;

3. To reject and cause others to reject information, products, entertainment, popular media and music that are damaging to our communities, and that further support and reinforce negative stereotyping;

4. To routinely question authority and the legitimacy of those in positions of influence (politicians, media, pundits, entertainers, etc.), to examine and/or counteract their official assessments of events as they occur, and to recognize and dispel negative propaganda when we see it;

5. To share and encourage others to share needed and relevant information as much as possible;

6. To respect others and live by example in private and public life;

7. To stand up for truth, freedom, justice and equality for all people.

Frantz Fanon (July 20, 1925 – December 6, 1961) was a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique. He was influential in the field of post-colonial studies and was perhaps the pre-eminent thinker of the 20th century on the issue of decolonization and the psychopathology of colonization.[1] His works have inspired anti-colonial liberation movements for more than four decades.[2]

BEST BOOK ON OPPRESSION I HAVE EVER STUDIED

Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression‎

by Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan - Psychology - 2004 - 320 pages

Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression ... Bulhan ...

Limited preview

Franz Fanon Say:

"Racism is one of the most sick and twisted manifestations of White/European people’s oppression, exploitation and domination of humanity...although not all White/European people are racist, they benefit from it in one way or another and knowingly allow racism to exist…its reach is international in scope and transcends economic, political, social and spiritual belief systems...it is an evil and violent social construct used to justify White/European people’s crimes against humanity and to breed inferiority, fear and disunity among Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people...It has been the cause of untold pain and suffering to People of Color around the world…it is the single greatest problem humanity faces today…if we are ever to rise as the HUMAN RACE every one of us must defeat racism in all its shapes and forms (individual, institutional and cultural)…the struggle to end racism must be a collective one that begins in our hearts and minds…we must rise above our dependency on White/European systems and societies and connect with the creator and each other…our struggle against racism will be measured by how we think, feel and act towards ourselves, our marriages, our families and our communities in Africa and around the world...independent of White/European ideas, values, morals and paradigms."

Frantz Fanon

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Fanon.html

Frantz Fanon's relatively short life yielded two potent and influential statements of anti-colonial revolutionary thought, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), works which have made Fanon a prominent contributor to postcolonial studies.

Fanon was born in 1925, to a middle-class family in the French colony of Martinique. He left Martinique in 1943, when he volunteered to fight with the Free French in World War II, and he remained in France after the war to study medicine and psychiatry on scholarship in Lyon. Here he began writing political essays and plays, and he married a Frenchwoman, Jose Duble. Before he left France, Fanon had already published his first analysis of the effects of racism and colonization, Black Skin, White Masks (BSWM), originally titled "An Essay for the Disalienation of Blacks," in part based on his lectures and experiences in Lyon.

BSWM is part manifesto, part analysis; it both presents Fanon's personal experience as a black intellectual in a whitened world and elaborates the ways in which the colonizer/colonized relationship is normalized as psychology. Because of his schooling and cultural background, the young Fanon conceived of himself as French, and the disorientation he felt after his initial encounter with French racism decisively shaped his psychological theories about culture. Fanon inflects his medical and psychological practice with the understanding that racism generates harmful psychological constructs that both blind the black man to his subjection to a universalized white norm and alienate his consciousness. A racist culture prohibits psychological health in the black man.

For Fanon, being colonized by a language has larger implications for one's consciousness: "To speak . . . means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization" (17-18). Speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French, which identifies blackness with evil and sin. In an attempt to escape the association of blackness with evil, the black man dons a white mask, or thinks of himself as a universal subject equally participating in a society that advocates an equality supposedly abstracted from personal appearance. Cultural values are internalized, or "epidermalized" into consciousness, creating a fundamental disjuncture between the black man's consciousness and his body. Under these conditions, the black man is necessarily alienated from himself.

Fanon insists, however, that the category "white" depends for its stability on its negation, "black." Neither exists without the other, and both come into being at the moment of imperial conquest. Thus, Fanon locates the historical point at which certain psychological formations became possible, and he provides an important analysis of how historically-bound cultural systems, such as the Orientalist discourse Edward Said describes, can perpetuate themselves as psychology. While Fanon charts the psychological oppression of black men, his book should not be taken as an accurate portrait of the oppression of black women under similar conditions. The work of feminists in postcolonial studies undercuts Fanon's simplistic and unsympathetic portrait of the black woman's complicity in colonization.

In 1953, Fanon became Head of the Psychiatry Department at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria, where he instituted reform in patient care and desegregated the wards. During his tenure in Blida, the war for Algerian independence broke out, and Fanon was horrified by the stories of torture his patients -- both French torturers and Algerian torture victims -- told him. The Algerian War consolidated Fanon's alienation from the French imperial viewpoint, and in 1956 he formally resigned his post with the French government to work for the Algerian cause. His letter of resignation encapsulates his theory of the psychology of colonial domination, and pronounces the colonial mission incompatible with ethical psychiatric practice: "If psychiatry is the medical technique that aims to enable man no longer to be a stranger to his environment, I owe it to myself to affirm that the Arab, permanently an alien in his own country, lives in a state of absolute depersonalization. . . . The events in Algeria are the logical consequence of an abortive attempt to decerebralize a people" (Toward the African Revolution 53).

Following his resignation, Fanon fled to Tunisia and began working openly with the Algerian independence movement. In addition to seeing patients, Fanon wrote about the movement for a number of publications, including Sartre's Les Temps Modernes, Presence Africaine, and the FLN newspaper el Moudjahid; some of his work from this period was collected posthumously as Toward the African Revolution (1964). But Fanon's work for Algerian independence was not confined to writing. During his tenure as Ambassador to Ghana for the Provisional Algerian Government, he worked to establish a southern supply route for the Algerian army.

While in Ghana, Fanon developed leukemia, and though encouraged by friends to rest, he refused. He completed his final and most fiery indictment of the colonial condition, The Wretched of the Earth, in 10 months, and the book was published by Jean-Paul Sartre in the year of his death. Fanon died at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where he had sought treatment for his cancer, on December 6, 1961. At his request, his body was returned to Algeria and buried with honors by the Algerian National Army of Liberation.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon develops the Manichean perspective implicit in BSWM. To overcome the binary system in which black is bad and white is good, Fanon argues that an entirely new world must come into being. This utopian desire, to be absolutely free of the past, requires total revolution, "absolute violence" (37). Violence purifies, destroying not only the category of white, but that of black too. According to Fanon, true revolution in Africa can only come from the peasants, or "fellaheen." Putting peasants at the vanguard of the revolution reveals the influence of the FLN, who based their operations in the countryside, on Fanon's thinking. Furthermore, this emphasis on the rural underclass highlights Fanon's disgust with the greed and politicking of the comprador bourgeoisie in new African nations. The brand of nationalism espoused by these classes, and even by the urban proletariat, is insufficient for total revolution because such classes benefit from the economic structures of imperialism. Fanon claims that non-agrarian revolutions end when urban classes consolidate their own power, without remaking the entire system. In his faith in the African peasantry as well as his emphasis on language, Fanon anticipates the work of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, who finds revolutionary artistic power among the peasants.

Given Fanon's importance to postcolonial studies, the obituaries marking his death were small; the two inches of type offered by The New York Times and Le Monde inadequately describe his achievements and role. He has been influential in both leftist and anti-racist political movements, and all of his works were translated into English in the decade following his death. His work stands as an important influence on current postcolonial theorists, notably Homi Bhabha and Edward Said.

British director Isaac Julien's Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996) has recently been released by California Newsreel. Weaving together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work, and dramatizations of crucial moments in his life, the film reveals not just the facts of Fanon's brief and remarkably eventful life but his long and tortuous journey as well. In the course of the film, critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own.

Works by Frantz Fanon

Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967. Reprint of Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris, 1952.

Studies in a Dying Colonialism, or A Dying Colonialism. New York, 1965. Reprint of L'an cinq de la revolution algerienne. Paris, 1959.

The Wretched of the Earth. New York, 1965. Reprint of Les damnes de la terre. Paris, 1961.

Toward the African Revolution. New York, 1967. Reprint of Pour la revolution africaine. Paris, 1964.

Selected Criticism

Abel, Lionel. "Seven Heroes of the New Left." The New York Times Magazine 5 may 1968.

Bhabha, Homi. "Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative." The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 40-66.

de Beauvoir, Simone. Force of Circumstance. New York: Putnam, 1964.

Bergner, Gwen. "Who Is That Masked Woman? or, The Role of Gender in Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks." PMLA 110.1 (January 1995): 75-88.

Caute, David. Frantz Fanon. New York: The Viking Press, 1970.

Fuss, Diana. "Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of Identification." Diacritics (Summer-Fall 1994): 20-42.

Gates, Henry Louis. "Critical Fanonism." Critical Inquiry 17 (1992): 457-470.

Geismar, Peter. Fanon. New York: The Dial Press, 1971.

Gendzier, Irene L. Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study. New York: Pantheon Books-Random House, 1973.

Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Routledge, 1995.

"Homage to Frantz Fanon." Presence Africaine 12 (1962): 130-152. Ten writers, politicians and scholars contributed to this special section, including Aime Césaire and Nkrumah.

Memmi, Albert. "The Impossible Life of Frantz Fanon." Massachusetts Review (Winter 1973): 9-39.

Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books-Random House, 1993.

Seigel, J. E. "On Frantz Fanon." American Scholar (Winter 1968): 84-96.

"Remembering Fanon." New Formations 1 (Spring 1987): 118-135. Homi Bhabha, Stephan Feuchtwang and Barbara Harlow contributed to a special section remembering Fanon on the 25th anniversary of his death.

RBGz Fanon Bibliography

Fanon's writings

"The Fact of Blackness"(1952)
Black Skin, White Masks, transl. Charles Lam Markmann (1967 translation of the 1952 book: New York, Grove Press)
A Dying Colonialism
The Wretched of the Earth, transl. Constance Farrington (1963 translation of the 1961 book: New York, Grove Weidenfeld)
Toward the African Revolution, transl. Haakon Chavalier (1969: New York, Grove Press)

Addditinal Books on Fanon

Alice Cherki, "Frantz Fanon. Portrait" (2000: Paris, Seuil)
Patrick Ehlen, Frantz Fanon: A Spiritual Biography (2001: New York, NY, Crossroad 8th Avenue) ISBN 0-8245-2354-7
Nigel C. Gibson [ed.], Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue (1999: Amherst, New York, Humanity Books)
Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (2003: Oxford, Polity Press)
Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (1995: New York, Routledge)
Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, & Renee T. White [eds.] Fanon: A Critical Reader (1996: Oxford, Blackwell)
Azzedine Haddour [Ed. and introduced], "The Fanon Reader" (2006: London, Pluto Press)
David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography (2000: New York, NY, Picador Press) ISBN 0-312-27550-1
Ato Sekyi-Otu, Fanon's Dialectic of Experience (1996: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1998: Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.)

Films on Fanon

Isaac Julien, "Frantz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask" (a documentary) (1996: San Francisco, California Newsreel)
Christian Filostrat Interviews Frantz Fanon's Wife Josie, November 16, 1978, Howard University’s African-American Center.

References Resources:

Jennifer Poulos. "Frantz Fanon". Emory University. Archived from the original on 17 June 2008. http://www.webcitation.org/5YeIdZauE. Retrieved on 17 June 2008.
Benjamin Graves. "Frantz Fanon: an Introduction". Political Discourse - Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism. National University of Singapore. Archived from the original on 17 June 2008. http://www.webcitation.org/5YeJPpD1u. Retrieved on 14 February 2007.
Petri Liukkonen (2002). "Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)". Archived from the original on 17 June 2008. http://www.webcitation.org/5YeKOT6P7. Retrieved on 17 June 2008.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Preface". Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks, transl. Charles Lam Markmann (1967: New York, Grove Press)
"Extraits de la préface de Jean-Paul Sartre au «Les Damnés de la Terre» (Extracts from the preface by Jean-Paul Sartre to The Wretched of the Eeath)" (in French). Tambour Journal. http://www.tanbou.com/1996/SatreExtraits.htm. Retrieved on 14 February 2007.
Lewis R. Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, & Renee T. White [edd] Fanon: A Critical Reader (1996: Oxford, Blackwell) p 163 & Bianchi, Eugene C. The Religious Experience of Revolutionaries (1972 Doubleday) p 206
See the paper in the C.L.R. James journal by Richard Pithouse at: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/C.L.R.%20James%20Journal.pdf

Link Outs:

Dr. Marimba Ani on Yurugu and Afrikan Rebirth/ Full Video Workshop and link to her RBG Classroom

2009-08-29T16:09:00.004-05:00

Dr Ani Marimba — African Worldview

Yurugu is one of RBG Street Scholars Think Tank's
Two Required Textbooks

(The other being Dr. Amos Wilson's Blue Print for Black Power)

Following is a Audio Clip
and Textbook Extracts:

Chapter 1, Utamawazo: The Cultural Structuring of Thought

Archaic European Epistemology: Substitution of Object for Symbol

The African world-view, and the world-views of other people who are not of European origin, all appear to have certain themes in common. The universe to which they relate is sacred in origin, is organic, and is a true “cosmos.” Human beings are part of the cosmos, and, as such, relate intimately with other cosmic beings. Knowledge of the universe comes through relationship with it and through perception of spirit in matter. The universe is one; spheres are joined because of a single unifying force that pervades all being. Meaningful reality issues from this force. These world-views are “reasonable” but not rationalistic: complex yet lived. They tend to be expressed through a logic of metaphor and complex symbolism.

Rob the universe of its richness, deny the significance of the symbolic, simplify phenomena until it becomes mere object, and you have a knowable quantity. Here begins and ends the European epistemological mode. What happened within embryonic Europe that was to eventually generate such a radically different world-view? What part did Platonic thought play in this process? Whether or not all of Western philosophy is “but a footnote to Plato,” certainly his influence on the European style of speculative thought and ultimately on the utamawazo—the general premises and assumptions of the culture—has been formulative and seminal. Any discussion of the nature and origin of European epistemology must focus on, if not begin with Plato. This is not to say that he was not influenced by the pre-Socratic African philosophies that preceded him. But what Plato seems to have done is to have laid a rigorously constructed foundation for the repudiation of the symbolic sense—the denial of cosmic, intuitive knowledge. It is this process that we need to trace, this development in formative European thought which was eventually to have had such a devastating effect on the nontechnical aspects of the culture. It led to the materialization of the universe as conceived by the European mind—a materialization that complemented and supported the intense psycho-cultural need for control of the self and others.

Contrary to our image of the philosopher as being otherworldly and remote, even irrelevant (Aristophanes, The Clouds), Plato appears to have been very much aware of himself as a social and ideological architect. His success was eventually overwhelming. The power of his ideas is evidenced by the way in which they have contributed to the growth and persistence of a new order. This is precisely the power of the Euro-Caucasian order; its ability to sustain and perpetuate itself. Plato’s innovations were ultimately incorporated into the culture because they were demanded by the asili.

—Marimba Ani, Yurugu, Africa World Press, New Jersey, 1994, pages 29-30.

Dr. Marimba Ani - Yurugu Video Education

Dr. Marimba Ani - On Afrikan Rebirth

Professor Marimba Ani's Bio

"Without the African connection, we are a disjointed people ...begging for entry into somebody else's house."

Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Notes for an African World Revolution Trenton: Africa World Press, 1991, P.418. Marimba Ani was brought to the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies by Dr. John Henrik Clarke in 1974 as she was completing her PhD dissertation at the Graduate Faculty of New School University. She had worked as a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi from 1963 to 1966, and had acted as Director of Freedom Registration for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 which challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City that summer.

Dr. Clarke became her Jegna ("warrior- teacher, intellectual father, ideological influence") as she moved back to New York and into graduate school. It was through his influence that she became committed to Pan Afrikan liberation. After having traveled in Afrika, Marimba Ani (born "Dona Richards") began formal study of the nature of Afrikan Civilization, focusing on the "deep thought" which underlies its fundamental common cultural themes and the varying constructs of Afrikan social organization. She has done extensive work on Afrikan spiritual conceptions and systems.

She is using her articulation of the Afrikan world view as a frame of reference from which to critique European cultural thought, and to construct paradigms for Pan-Afrikan reconstruction. Marimba Ani has developed the concepts of Maafa, Asili, Utamawazo, and Utamaroho as part of the on-going process of Afrikan-centered reconceptualization in which several Pan-Afrikan scholars are involved.

She has helped to initiate an intellectual and ideological movement, the purpose of which is to construct a theoretical framework which will allow people of Afrikan descent to explain the universe as it reflects their collective interests, values and vision.

Her most recent work has been the development of the Maat/Maafa/Sankofa paradigm SANKOFA BIRD (sang-ko-fah) GO BACK TO FETCH IT Symbol of the wisdom of learning from the past to build for the future.as an analytical tool for understanding and explaining the Afrikan experience in the Diaspora and to suggest modalities for cultural reconstruction. Dr. Ani has been lecturing throughout the United States, the Caribbean and Afrika on this new theoretical construct which is part of her endeavor to develop a pragmatic Afrikan Cultural Science. This new science becomes the basis for the creation of Afrikan institutions and Nation-Building in the Diaspora. Having taught at Hunter College for the past 25 years, Dr. Marimba Ani has had the opportunity to develop a number of courses on various aspects of the Pan-Afrikan experience. She teaches Afrikan Civilization, Afrikan Spirituality in the Diaspora, The Afrikan World View, Theories of White Racism, Afrikan Traditional Healing Systems, Nile Valley Civilization, Afrikan-centered theory, Women in Afrika, Men in the Afrikan Diaspora, and a number of other courses.

The following are some of the scholarly writings which have resulted from her work:
* "The Ideology of European Dominance," The Western Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 3, No. 4, Winter, 1979, and Presence Africaine, No. 111, 3rd Quarterly, 1979.

* "European Mythology: The Ideology of Progress," Contemporary Black Thought, eds. M. Asante and A. Vandi, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980, (59-79).

* Let The Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of Afrikan Spirituality in the Diaspora. New York: Nkonimfo Publications, 1988 (orig. 1980).

* "The Nyama of the Blacksmith: The Metaphysical Significance of Metallurgy in Afrika," Journal of Black Studies. Vol. 12, No. 2, December, 1981.

* Yurugu: An Afrikan-centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1994.

* "The Afrikan Asili," Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the Conference on Ethics, Higher Education and Social Responsibility, Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996.

* "The Afrikan 'Aesthetic' and National Consciousness," The African Aesthetic, ed. Kariamu Welsh-Asante. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1993. (63-82) and To Heal a People, ed. Erriel Kofi Addae, Columbia, MD.: Kujichagulia Press, 1996 (91-125).

* "Writing as a means of enabling Afrikan Self-determination," Defining Ourselves; Black Writers in the 90's, ed. Elizabeth Nuñez and Brenda M. Greene. New York: Peter Lang, 1999 (209-211).

Marimba Ani is an active organizer in the Afrikan Community. She has conducted Rites of Passage programs for Afrikan youth and young adults. She travels frequently to Ghana, West Afrika, where she is continuing her study and support of Afrikan traditional healing concept and practices. She is part of a "think tank" of Afrikan-centered scholars currently spear-heading the socially and politically dynamic "To Be Afrikan" campaign. She is Director of the Afrikan Heritage Afterschool Program, a voluntary effort which has been operating in the Harlem Community for the past 14 years. Marimba Ani holds a BA degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and the MA and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University. She is Professor of Afrikan Studies in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. Her daughter Dzifa graduated in May of 1999 from Howard University with a BS degree in biology.

Source of Bio:

Modified from:http://africawithin.com/ani/ani_bio.htm

Yurugu Dr. Marimba Ani - DVD - $20.00

Link to Dr. Marimba Ani's RBG Classroom

RBGz New Afrikan Education Course Link Table:

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

A RBG Street Scholar Educational Design

RBG "IF WE MUST DIE!!!", Feat., Great White Lies and Slave Ships Video Free Download...More

2009-08-24T08:13:00.004-05:00

http://www.divshare.com/download/8273516-860

RBG "IF WE MUST DIE!!!", Feat., Great White Lies and Slave Ships

RBG Blakademics ACTI-Afrikan Centered Thematic Inventory

http://api.ning.com/files/OI4Be2n93O8j8Z4TUkE*2tpKU-Ecc6Gr34OOOO4pdFSuXJGcEt0f3Tnb3BCM9w79HuvuOraXhgNGxsYTE6duX9X2mvE2f6wI/RBGBlakademicsACTIAfrikanCenteredThematicInventory.pdf

Racism: A History / 3 Part Video and RBG Notes on the Topic

2009-08-17T10:38:00.002-05:00

Racism: A History - Part One, The Colour of Money

An Historical Analysis of the Campaign of Confusion on "Racism"

1. Reverse racism is a form of racism.

Reverse racism is supposedly something nasty that people of color do to white people. The term was first coined during the 1968 presidential campaign of arch— segregationist George Wallace. In order to win white working class support in the South, Wallace asserted that government programs that supported Black people were deliberately victimizing white people. He called this governmental action reverse racism.

In my 35 years of doing anti—racist organizing, I have actually witnessed only one example of “reverse racism.” That was when the lawyers defending the white cops who beat Rodney King played the tape of that beating backwards during the trial!

But in spite of the bogus nature of “reverse racism,” it was brilliant as a campaign strategy. Dubbed the “Southern Strategy” by electoral analysts, its aim was to win white working and middle class voters away from the Democratic Party by consciously catering to their racism. The strategy bore bitter fruit. Wallace’s American Independent Party garnered 10 million white voters, who became the foundation for the New Right organizations of the Republican Party which now control Congress and the “bi—partisan” national dialogue on virtually all social and economic issues.

2. Racism is personified by the TV character Archie Bunker.

Pop culture did its bit to confuse the white populace. TV created the image of Archie Bunker, the loud mouth, verbally racist, white working class man who was funny (to some viewers) as well as obnoxious. The image of Archie the racist promoted several false concepts of racism: it’s the result of individual, not institutional, behavior; it’s carried out only by white working class men, not white working class women or white middle class men and women; and it is overt language that may be sickening and offensive, but is really just “harmless talk.”

3. Racism is the same as prejudice or discrimination.

This definition of “racism” has been widely disseminated in public schools and universities, so that many people use these terms as synonyms. But they are not.

Prejudice is a prejudgment, which can be either positive or negative, about a person, group, event or thing, for or against. Discrimination is action based on that prejudice. A negative prejudice about a group of people is often called a stereotype. An action based on a stereotype is usually called bigotry.

What distinguishes all these terms from racism is that none of them necessarily involve a power relationship as a condition of their existence. For example, a person of color can be prejudiced against another person of color or a white person, but that doesn't make her a racist because she has little or no access to the institutional power that could back up her actions.

Why has the misconception of “racism” as “prejudice” or “discrimination” been so widely used in educational settings? Educational institutions have been a major political battleground against racism and for community of color self—determination since the mid 1960’s. Activists have challenged racist school curricula, teaching staff, disciplinary procedures against children of color, tracking systems, limitations of access to higher education, and lack of accountability of schools to the community. My belief is that popularizing “racism” as “prejudice” is consciously used to take all white professionals working in any capacity in any school systems off the hook. They are not implementing institutional racism, because there is no such thing! A six year old child who acts out can be blamed for ‘~racism just as much as the principal responsible for the school that has failed to educate him. It’s not an issue of power but merely of prejudice.

4. Racism is the same as race relations.

This definition is, I think, a creation of sociologists. Racism isn’t just about the Archie Bunkers. It’s about how groups of different “races” treat each other. What’s left out of this “group dynamics” explanation of racism is any analysis of the differential power of the participating groups. Perhaps this is because the (mostly) white sociologists using this analysis do not choose to recognize how mainstream white institutions demonstrate preferential treatment to all white groups as compared to all groups of people of color.

5. Anti-racism Is the same as diversity or multi-culturalism.

Progressives have added to the campaign of confusion. This particular mis— definition of “racism” has been perpetuated by social justice educators and trainers. Diversity refers to different kinds of people: gay, straight, old, young, white, different communities of color, able, physically challenged, etc. When white folks use the term diversity, they usually mean a few folks who are not white in a predominantly white group. The term diversity achieved popularity among anti—racist trainers when many Fortune 500 companies hired these trainers to run ‘diversity’ workshops for their multi- racial work forces. Corporate CEO’s knew that they needed to ensure good relations among their workers to keep out unions, maintain production, and increase profits.

Multi—cultural at its best celebrates different forms of culture; it has nothing necessarily to do with “races” of people, nor with “diversity” of people. A group or institution that endorses multi—culturalism can support racism or anti—racism. The issue is not one/two/many cultures but who has the power?

As People’s Institute trainers ask in their Undoing Racism Workshop, “If you want to have a ‘multi—cultural table,’ what does white culture bring to that table?” The table.

6. Racism is an oppression like other isms: sexism, classism, or heterosexism.

In the mid 1980’s, many white progressives began organizing themselves through consciousness of their own oppression as individuals and as part of a group, instead of around “issues.” This method of organizing became known as identity—based politics. It was a very powerful form of consciousness—raising for thousands of people, and became the basis for many of the social justice movements against sexism and homophobia and anti—semitism.

But identity—based politics also has had some negative effects, such as:

1. Oppression olympics (a term coined by Elizabeth Martinez): endless arguments that begin with “my pain is worse than your pain;”
2. Fruitless debates about the “hierarchies~~ or “equalities” of oppression, all of which ignore the historical and institutional interrelationships among oppressions;
3. False analogies between racism (usually referring to the experience of African Americans) and other “isms,” especially sexism, heterosexism and anti—semitism. Although all these are forms of oppression, there is no historical similarity between the slavery experienced by people of African descent, the genocide experienced by Native Americans, the colonial wars of conquest experienced by Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos —— and any forms of discrimination faced by European immigrants once they came to the United States.

These false analogies also paper over the distinct history of racism that has pervaded white progressive movements of electoral reformers, women, workers, farmers, environmentalists, anti—war and queer activists for the last 250 years.

Finally, false analogies marginalize the issues of activists of color within these social justice movements, and prevent these activists from exercising their leadership potential in building bridges among different identity—based social movements.

History of Racism 2

A Working Definition of Racism

If you take apart the term racism, you get an “ism” —— an oppression —— based on race. The People’s Institute uses this working definition:

Racism equals race prejudice plus power.

We’ve already defined prejudice. Let’s examine race and power.

Race

The Human Race: Born and Bred in Africa

Have you ever heard a well—meaning white person say, “I'm not a member of any race except the human race?” What she usually means by this statement is that she doesn't want to perpetuate racial categories by acknowledging that she is white. This is an evasion of responsibility for her participation in a system based on supremacy for white people.

But anthropologically speaking, her point is well taken. Taking the term “race” to mean “species,” there is only one species of human. All of us belong to the human race. And the human race was born, raised and bred in Africa. Africa is the motherland of human civilization: religion, philosophy, art, language, architecture, science, medicine, agriculture and urban planning.

People indigenous to Africa and the Americas have always celebrated the diversity of the human species. You can see that celebration in paintings of peoples on the tomb of Ramses III (1200 BC) of Kemet (Egypt) and the four directions of the world celebrated by Native Americans. What makes these representations so different from those introduced by Europeans is that the former bear no witness to any hierarchy of value of humans based on ethnicity or skin color.

Europeans: Seeing the Human Race through ‘Race—colored’ glasses

Beginning in the fifteenth century, Europeans began to see the world through race—colored glasses. At first, their priests and Popes justified the new worldview as God’s law revealed to Christians. By the 18th century their scientists used their racial lenses to construct racial categories for human beings, with distinct hierarchies based on religion, ethnicity and skin color. European slave—owners in the colonies created a whole legal system based on race. And by the 19th century, politicians asserted that ‘race’ was the reason Europeans and European—Americans deserved to run the world.

To understand why and how this happened, we need to examine elements of the history of Europe and the United States. But first, let’s start with a working definition of race, created by The People’s Institute:

Race is “a specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites) which assigns human worth and social status using “white” as the model of humanity and the height of human achievement for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power.” (Ronald Chisom and Michael Washington, Undoing Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change. People’s Institute Press: The People’s Institute, 1444 North Johnson St., New Orleans, LA. 70116. Second Edition, 1997. pp. 30—31.)

History of racism 3

European Race—Colored Glasses

Biology: the blood lens

Race as a biological concept was created in 15th century Spain by the Spanish Inquisition, in 1492, just as Columbus was sailing the ocean blue —— and getting lost —— the Christian kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella succeeded in driving out the Moors (African and Arab Muslims) who had ruled the Iberian Peninsula since 721 A.D.

Under Moorish rule, Spain had been the center of European culture. The Moors built 11 universities, thousands of book stores, hot and cold running water perfumed with roses, and a system of public baths for poor as well as rich. Moorish cities were centers of trade with Africa and Asia. Jewish people flourished during the Moorish empire; they had major roles in education and commerce, and were treated more justly than at any other time in European history.

But the Christian conquest changed all that. The Inquisition demanded that all Muslims and Jews convert to Christianity or face expulsion from Spain. Many converted but practiced their religions in secret. So the Inquisition established the infamous practice of "limpieza de sangra" testing the blood as well as the family tree of Moors and Jews to ferret out non—Christians. One drop of “dark” blood and you were out!

The tradition of one drop of dark blood lived on in the apartheid South. Until very recently, If you lived in South Carolina and had 1/16 Black ancestry, you were legally classified as Black. If you lived in Louisiana, the percentage was 1/32. So crossing state lines could change your ancestry!

Is it a coincidence that Inquisitors did their “racial blood tests” wearing long white robes and pointed white hoods?

“infidels and Savages:” the Christianity lens

In the 16th and 17th centuries, European conquistadors needed to create a theological justification for their conquest of the Americas and Africa. How could they steal the land inhabited and cherished by millions of indigenous people and not be considered thieves? How could they kidnap and enslave and murder millions of African peoples and still be good Christians? How could they annihilate whole nations of indigenous people and not go to hell?

Spain and Portugal, good Catholic countries, sought out the wisdom of the Pope who clarified their Christian duty for them. It’s OK to take the land of an “infidel” (one who does not practice Christianity) because an “infidel,” by definition has violated Christian law. If the ‘infidel’ protests, it’s appropriate to kill him. It’s important to enslave someone who is a “savage” (one who does not practice European culture) to teach the enslaved person the virtues of “civilization.” As a matter of fact, you’re doing him or her a Christian favor, by removing his/her sinful ways.

African slavery could also be justified by Christian symbolism that pre—dated any European contact with African peoples. In Christianity, the color black is associated with death or evil; the color white with life, goodness and purity. So when the light skin Englishmen met dark skin Africans, the Englishmen justified their brutal treatment of Africans by the notion that white ‘good’ was conquering black ‘evil.’ Check out the terms “black” and “white” in the dictionary; these absurd connotations still exist.

The “Scientific” lens

The 18th and 19th centuries were the height of European colonialism of Africa. By this period, Christianity’s hegemony over European values and ideology was being seriously challenged by the scientific revolution. European Intellectuals had to come up with a new world view to justify their nations’ conquest of Africa. So, ‘scientists’ created the racial categories of Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid and assigned them to a hierarchy in the human family: (1) Caucasoid (2) Mongoloid (3) Negroid. These categories are still taught in some U.S. schools today.

Mongolia was presumably the historical home of “mongoloids” or people of Asian descent. If you check the dictionary you’ll find that an “obsolete” meaning of “mongoloid” is an idiot. (A far cry from today’s stereotype of “the model minority.”)

The Caucuses, the steppes of Russia, was the ostensible homeland of Caucasoids or Caucasians. Conveniently, a skull was found there with a larger cranium than others discovered, indicating to the scientific racists that people of European descent had more brain power than darker folks did! But what about Negroids? Where is Negro land? And if “negroids” came from Africa, how come they weren’t called “africoids?” The answer, I think, lies in the ideological justification for slavery. White people had to dehumanize people of African descent in order to convince themselves that Africans could do nothing useful except perform enslaved labor.

If a people has no homeland, they have no history, no culture, no civilization. They are not really “a people.u Hence, their “racial category” is not named after their continent, but after their ‘race,’ - “Negro.” (‘Negro’ is the English term for the Spanish word “negro,” which means “black.” Spain was the first European country to institute the trans-Atlantic slave trade.)

U.S. Race-colored glasses

The worldview based on ‘race’ was created by Europeans in the 15th century to justify and legitimize European conquest of Africa and the Americas, and the genocide and system of slavery which resulted from this conquest. European Americans added some key aspects to the ‘race’ lens as they colonized and conquered the lands that were once called “Turtle Island.”

A human being is renamed a ‘slave:’ the economic lens of race

As Elizabeth Martinez pointed out in her essay, “What is White Supremacy?,” the wealth that initially made the United States possible as an independent nation—state was created when European colonialists stole the land of Native Americans, kidnaped people from Africa and forced both Africans and Native Americans into a system of enslaved labor. Stolen land, genocide and enslaved labor provided the initial capital of capitalism.

Few U.S. history textbooks describe the origins of the U.S. economic system in this way. Nor do they describe in great detail how Europeans created the world’s first system of racially—based slavery. The Africans who were brought to Virginia in 1619 were ‘captives’ but they were not yet ‘slaves.’ Their economic status was ambiguous: some remained in bondage to an English colonialist for a lifetime, while others were freed.

Yet by 1662, the colonists passed a law stating that the status of a child born to an African woman, but fathered by an Englishman, would be ‘bond or free’ depending on the status of the mother. This was the beginning of racialized slavery. In another few generations, colonizers used the terms ‘Negro’ and ‘slave’ interchangeably, if an African was not enslaved, she or he would be specifically identified as “a free Negro.” The implication of this usage was clear: the colonizers assumed that all enslaved people were of African descent, and that the only status appropriate to people of African descent was that of a slave.

Race: the lens of ‘subhumanity’

A corollary of viewing race through an economic lens is viewing ‘racialized’ people as subhumans. If the only possible status for a person of African descent is as a slave, how do you account f or the thousands of free Africans in the colonial and post independence period? Reduce their humanity, culturally and legally, until it is as close as possible to the status of “slave.”

In colonial South Carolina, an enslaved African who was manumitted (freed from slavery) by a white owner had to leave the colony within a few months, or else be liable to legal re—enslavement. During the era of Jacksonian “democracy,” the right to vote was taken away from Pennsylvania free people of African descent at the same time as voting restrictions were lifted on all new Irish immigrants. Visual images of African Americans often resembled animals more than humans (see Marvin Riggs’ superb film, Ethnic Notions).

The notion of indigenous people as more akin to animals than human beings is at the basis of U.S. policy toward Native Americans. In 1784 George Washington, famous Indian fighter, large landholder and slave owner, advised the Continental Congress that it would be cheaper for the new nation to buy up Indian land than to make war on Indian people for the land. If you make war, Washington cautioned, “the savage as the wolf” — both wild beasts of the forest —— will retreat for awhile and then come back to attack you. Washington’s metaphor stuck. The young U.S. nation—state, and all sectors of European— American; began to view the Native American as a wild animal.

(For more on this analysis, see Robert Williams, “Sovereignty, Racism and Human Rights: the case for Indian self—determination.” From a speech given at the University of Montana, in April, 1994. Robert Williams is a professor of Law and American Studies at the University of Arizona. Speech on tape is distributed by Alternative Radio Project. 2129 Mapleton. Boulder, Colorado, 80304.)

Race through the legal lens

Race was created as the law of the land in the late 1600’s. The governing class of the colonies developed an intricate legal system to institutionalize the means by which they had created their own wealth from stolen land and enslaved labor. The Virginia “Slaves Codes, “ written from 1680 to 1705, defined a slave as either an African or an Indian, a servant as a “white” person; banned racial intermarriage, stipulated specific forms of punishment for Blacks or whites who defied the system of racialized slavery, and even curtailed non—brutal behavior of owners toward their “property.”

(For a detailed study of racial laws in the colonial period, see A. Leon Higgin— botham, ~Jr., In the Matter of Color: Race & The American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. pp. 19—60.)

(For an analysis of how European colonialists justified theft of indigenous land and extermination of indigenous people, see Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. NY: Norton & Company, 1975.)

The Invention of the ‘White Race’

In the colonial period, colonial rulers referred to Europeans who came to the colonies as indentured servants in a variety of ways which differentiated them from African or indigenous people. They were called “Christians” to distinguish them from indigenous and African “heathens” or “savages.” They were called “servants” to distinguish them from “slaves.” They were also referred to by their country of origin (English, Scottish, etc.) to distinguish them from Africans. In early 17th century Virginia, legal codes relating to the regulation of the working poor of all nationalities, an African was usually called “a Negro,” followed by a name, while Europeans were simply called by their first and last names.

Note that these distinctions were made by the rich about the poor. The land owning law makers, who got their ‘right’ to own land and make laws for the Virginia colony by buying stock in the Virginia Company, had no need to describe themselves. These stockholders knew who they were.

But in 1691, the colonial legislators created a new legal category: “whatsoever English or other white man or woman, bond or free, shall intermarry with a Negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman, bond or free, he shall within three months be banished from this dominion forever.” (Higginbotham, op. cit., p. 44 Italics added.)

Up until this point, the term “white” may have been used in dialogue, but never in law. And when it was used, it referred only to indentured servants. The 1691 law set several legal precedents that have profoundly effected the concept of race to this day:

* The first legal use of “white” was used to ban racial intermarriage;
* The law focused the punishment on the “white” lover;
* The law created a racial category, in that it covered all white people, men and women, bond or free;
* The law distinguished “white” from all other inhabitants of the colonies: “Negro,” “mulatto,” and “Indian;”
* The law created a new synonym: English equals white. By implication, when other European immigrants came to the colonies, they could be included in the new legal category of “white.”

Thus, a small group of colonial slave owners invented the "white race".

(For more info, see Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Racial Oppression and Social Control. Vol. 1 and Ii. New York: Verso Books, 1994 and 1997.)

The creation of a ‘white’ nation

The U.S. Constitution established the new nation as a white republic. indigenous and African peoples were excluded from participation in the republic. The first law of the first (white) congress in 1790 banned all non-white immigrants from becoming citizens of this white republic. This law meant that first generation immigrants from any continent except Europe could not own land -- the main means of earning a living in the new republic -- because state and territorial constitutions prohibited non-citizens from owning land.

In the 19th century, European Americans ran over the remaining lands of indigenous nations in the West, made war on Mexico and took half her land as war booty —— now called the Southwest or “Occupied America,” depending on your viewpoint of these historical events. These acts of expansion of the white republic were called “Manifest Destiny,” the god—given right of the white U.S. to conquer nations of color and establish them as colonial territories.

Today we still call the U.S. “America,” a linguistic expression of white nationalism (a term coined by the famous African American scholar John Henrik Clarke). Using the term “America” to refer to the U.S. ignores the existence of both Canada and all the nations south of the Rio Grande which are also part of the American continent.

Under the banner of white nationalism, “America” has brought “democracy” — under the barrel of a gun ——to nations of color around the world.

Sexual violence through the lens of ‘race’

One of the most pervasive, destructive and hypocritical myths to come from the concept of “race” has been the belief that Indigenous and African-American men are sexual predators on white women; and that all women of color are sexual vampires luring white men.

This mythology comes, I believe, from a white psychological projection which legitimates as well as covers up the socially sanctioned sexual violence by white men against men and women of color. White men have raped African American women as a matter of racial prerogative; then fantasized that Black men are raping white women. The punishment meted out to Black men, In particular, for this crime committed by white men has been barbaric: lynching, burning and castration. And white women have bought this barbarity as the price they pay for “safety.”

(For more on this complex topic, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Mind that Burns in Each Body,” in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology. Edited by Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins. Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1992. pp. 397—412.)

Another interpretation of the barbarity and pervasiveness of racially motivated sexual violence by whites against people of color, and especially against peoples of African descent, is the theory of the pre—eminent African American psychiatrist, lecturer and anti-racist activist, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. In her “Cress Theory of Color -- Confrontation and Racism/White Supremacy,” Dr. Welsing analyzes the root causes of white supremacy. She demonstrates that the genes of white people are recessive as compared to those of people of African descent. Thus, if whites and African-descended people mate and create children, the family tree will have more darker skin offspring.

Dr. Welsing concludes the the virulence of white supremacy stems from white fear of genetic annihilation. In other words, if white/African sexual interrelationships become the norm rather than the statistical exception, in a few generations there will be no more white people. An historical analysis of the pervasiveness of white fear of intermarriage, from 1691 to the present, lends much credence to this perspective.

Dr. Cress Welsing further asserts that white people keep this fear in their white closets. I agree. For over two decades, Dr. Cress Welsing has been a featured speaker at African American gatherings, and her book, The Isis Papers, is a best seller in Black book stores. But I have yet to see her name mentioned by any white writers on race, or any reference, supportive or critical, to her theories. It is as if white writers want to white her out of the discussion on race!

(For more info, see Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, “The Cress Theory of Color— Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy) in The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors. Chicago: Third World Press, 1991.)

“Race” is just like ethnicity: the sociologist’s lens

In the aftermath of the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960’s, liberal racists had to develop subtler race lenses in order to gain white mainstream credibility. Chief among them was Nathan Glazer, the well known sociologist of patterns of European immigration. After studying the experiences of European immigrants who “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,” Glazer then compared them with the experiences of African Americans in the same time period who did not climb the ladder of success. Instead of analyzing who gave the Europeans their boots, and kept the people of African descent without shoes, Glazer concluded that Europeans were enterprising, while Blacks were lazy.

Glazer confounded the terms “race” and “ethnicity.” Ethnicity comes from the Greek word ‘ethnikos’ meaning “a people, with a common language, culture, historical and geographical land base.” But more Important, Glazer’s theory laid the foundation for the “Blame the Victim” racist ideology, as well as the white backlash against affirmative action programs. in Glazer’s view, people of African descent were responsible for their own poverty and oppression. White America was off the hook.

Talking about ‘race’ perpetuates racism: the liberal lens

Our historical analysis has brought us full circle back to the well-meaning white person who says, “I'm not a member of any race except the human race.” All this talk about race is painful to her. Talking about race just perpetuates racial categories, she asserts. If we all forget about ‘race,’ it will go away. Returning to the original metaphor of this essay, I'd suggest that the young woman remove her race-colored glasses.

Anti-Racist Concepts of Race

Up to this point we have been talking about racist concepts of race, concepts created and perpetuated by Europeans and European-Americans. But there are also anti-racist concepts of race, most of which have been created by people of color in resistance to this racism. Most of these anti-racist concepts of race employ what I call “creating a culture of resistance,” that is, taking the oppressor’s language (their power to define reality and to convince other people that it is their definition) and redefining it so that the language becomes an expression of self-determination. A few examples:

Since the 19th century, African American people have used the term “a race man” or “a race woman” to describe any African American who has devoted her/his life to the self-determination of her/his people.

In the early 19th century, Richard Allen and other founders formed the first all Black church. They proudly called it “The African Methodist Episcopal Church” at a time when the white U.S. population equated “Africa” with “barbarism.” Indigenous leaders refer to their people as “nations” instead of “tribes” with whom the U.S. government negotiated treaties as it would England or France.

Indigenous scholars and activists remind U.S. “historians” that the first great democratic document in what is now the U.S. of A. was the “Great Law of Peace” of the Iroquois Confederacy, not the Declaration of Independence. So much for “Indians” being “savages.”

In the 1960’s and early 70’s, revolutionary movements within communities of color used terms like “Black is Beautiful,” “Black Pride,” “Black Power,” “Red Power,” “Brown Power” and “Yellow Power.” The color—coded language of degradation was turned into a language of pride and community affirmation.

In response to the white nationalism of “Manifest Destiny,” and its current derivative, “illegal alien,” contemporary Chicano/a activists proudly wear T—shirts with a map of “Occupied America,” over the motto, “We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us.”

These are but a tiny sampling. I'm sure you can think of many many more.

Power

Race may be a specious category, but racism is very real. And it is deadly, because it is race backed up by power. The People’s Institute defines power as “having legitimate access to systems sanctioned by the authority of the state.” (Chisom and Washington, op. cit., p. 36.) Other definitions which you might find useful are: 000 Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it/s their definition. (Definition by Dr. Wade Nobles) Power is ownership and control of the major resources of a state, and the capacity to make and enforce decisions based on this ownership and control.

When these forms of power are exercised against people based solely on the specious and arbitrary concept called “race,” the result is a system of racial oppression. In the United States, the most significant manifestations of racial oppression are:

* Individual racism
* Institutional racism
* Cultural and linguistic racism
* Environmental racism
* Militarism as applied racism
* Economic racism
* Health system of racism

(Thanks to The People’s Institute for this material.)

While our actions to challenge racism will always focus on some aspect of the manifestations of racism, we should not forget that these manifestations are the visible indications of an entire system that is built on the oppression of some peoples, based on the concept of “race,” for the benefit of other people, also based on the concept of “race.”

Racism and White Supremacy

Let’s go back to The People’s Institute’s definition of racism: racism equals race prejudice plus power. Next, let’s take a look at the “manifestations of racial oppression,” mentioned above. Pick your favorite mainstream institution, and do a little power structure research. (See exercise on Manifestations of Racism.) In a race— constructed system, who owns or controls the institution? Who are the most privileged workers within it? Whom do the policies and practices of that institution primarily benefit?

Now, let’s review the CWS Workshop definition of white supremacy:

White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples of European origin; for the purpose of establishing and maintaining wealth, power and privilege.

I think it will be obvious that, if you’re talking about the United States, racism and white supremacy are synonyms.

For More Reading

Here’s an incomplete list of books I've found useful in developing these thoughts:

Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. NY: Harper Collins, 1988. Third Edition.

Karin Aguilar—San Juan, Editor. The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990’s. Boston: South End Press, 1994.

Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Robert Allen, Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1983.

Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Racial Oppression and Social Control. Vol. I and II. New York: Verso Books, 1994 and 1997.

Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African—Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. New Jersey: African World Press, 1994.

Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Social Justice. NY: Basic Books, 1987.

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. NY: Henry HoIt, 1970.

Thomas Byrne and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics. NY: Norton, 1992.

Farai Chideya, Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation about African—Americans. NY: Penguin Books, 1995.

Ronald Chisom & Michael Washington, Undoing Racism: A Philosophy of International Social Change. New Orleans, People’s Institute Press, 2nd ed., 1997.

Dr. John Henrik Clarke, “White Nationalism,” (a tape aired on KPFA during African Mental Liberation Weekend, early 1990’s.

Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1974.

St. Clair Drake, Black Folk Here and There. Vol. 1 & 2. UCLA Center for Afro— American Studies, 1990.

Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.

Donald A. Grinde, Jr. The Iroquois and the Founding of the American Nation. Indian Historical Press, 1977.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Mind that Burns in Each Body,” in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology. Edited by Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins. Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1992.

Laura Head, lectures on “African Americans and Western Racism,” Black Studies Department, San Francisco State University, Fall, 1990.

A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., In the Matter of Color: Race & the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995.

M. Annette Jaimes, editor, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. NY: Norton & Company, 1975.

Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550 — 1812. New York: Norton & Company, 1965.

Elizabeth Martinez, editor, 500 Años del Pueblo Chicano; 500 Years of Chicano History in pictures. New Mexico: South West Organizing Project, 1991.

Devon A. Mihesuah, American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 1996.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960’s to the 1980’s. New York: Routledge, 1986.

People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, Undoing Racism Workshop. (For information, contact 1444 North Johnson Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70116. Phone: 504—944—2354.)

Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

Ivan Van Sertima, editor. Golden Age of the Moor. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1992.

Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, “The Cress Theory of Color—Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy) in The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors. Chicago: Third World Press, 1991.

Professor Robert Williams, “Sovereignty, Racism and Human Rights: the case for Indian Self—determination.” Tape from a speech at University of Montana, April, 1994. Distributed by Alternative Radio Project. 2129 Mapleton. Boulder, Colorado, 80304.

Dr. Bobby E. Wright on Proper Black Student Education, the Psychopathic Racial Personality and more

2009-08-16T11:39:00.003-05:00

"Dr. Bobby E. Wright was a "Black" Afrikan psychologist, so labeled not just because he was both "Black" Afrikan and a psychologist, but because he used his education, training, intellectual knowledge and skills always in the best interest of "Black" Afrikan people all over the world."

Dr. Wright tells us that the answer to Blacks’ problems can be found in the works and lives of people like Shaka Zulu, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Chancellor Williams and others. As those of you who frequent RBG Street Scholars Think Tank know, such an approach is at the core of our academic content and methods.

Dr. Bobby Wright was one of the greatest analytical thinkers of the 20th Century. He not only skillfully identified the problems that face Afrikan people today but also had a clear solution to help solve our problem. Dr. Bobby Wright developed a Black Social Theory that would combat white supremacy. Dr. Bobby Wright said, "The Black Social Theory determines the destiny of a people by establishing guidelines of life. It defines their relationship with other living things, It defines values and rituals, methods of education, and how enemies are dealt with, etc." Also, Dr. Wright concept of Mentacide explains some of the self destructive behavior exhibited by African people worldwide. Unfortunately for us, Dr. Wright made the transition to our ancestors in 1982, but his spirit and wisdom will be with us forever as he has resurrected in this RBG EduBlog/ Classroom.

Recognized for his activism, he was a special guest on the Committee of Science and Technology at the Sixth Pan-African Congress held at Tanzania in 1974. As a social scientist, he sought an all-encompassing social theory for Black people and formulated the concept of mentacide. To paraphrase, he defined mentacide as "the planned and systematic destruction of a group's mentality aimed at the destruction of the group." Thus, Black folk alienated from their culture and history eventually lose their sense of purpose and direction, the symptoms of mentacide. Well aware of the implications of technical advances such as behavior modification and genetic engineering, he presented science as a tool serving greater ends (such as controlling the outcasts of white society), neither objective nor neutral. Being an uncompromising critic of Western society, he wrote the following on the relation of religion to prejudice from "The Psychopathic Racial Personality" in the Fall 1974 issue of Black Books Bulletin: Because of their lack of ethical or moral development, there is no conflict between the white's religion and racial oppression. The white race had historically oppressed, exploited, and killed black people, all in the name of their god Jesus Christ and with the sanction of their churches. For example, it is generally overlooked that the Ku Klux Klan is primarily a religious organization. Also, blacks should never forget the Pope [Pius XI] blessing the Italian planes and pilots on their way to bombing Ethiopian men, women, and children who only had spears to defend themselves...Get Audio CDs from House of Nubian

The Psychopathic Racial Personality and Other Essays by Bobby E. Wright Ph.D. (44 pages)
Published by Haki R. Madhubuti
(Third World Press)
1984

Haki Madhubuti describes esteemed ancestor Dr. Bobby Wright as "one of the few Black people who dared to ask the penetrating questions and demand answers and corrective actions to the racial situation in the United States and the world." In these essays, psychologist Dr. Bobby Wright coins the term "mentacide" which he defines as the "deliberate and systematic destruction of a group’s minds with the ultimate objective being the extirpation of the group." "Mentacide," says Dr. Wright, is a worldwide phenomena being implemented against the entire Black race. "Therefore," he says, "Blacks in Africa will begin to manifest the behavior of Blacks in the United States. Dr. Wright "was a thorn in the brain of Black men and women posing as leaders." And his last words were a warning to his friends and associates, "Watch the leadership, especially those proclaiming their God-given answer to the problems of Black people." "Dr. Bobby E. Wright was a "Black" psychologist, so labeled not just because he was both Black and a psychologist, but because he used his education, training, intellectual knowledge and skills always in the best interest of Black people all over the world." Just as Brother Haki considered it an honor to publish Dr. Wright, it was an honor for me to study and draw lessons from this revolutionary and thought provoking work.
Modified from:
http://www.cultural-expressions.com/diaspora/wright.htm

Dr. Wright poignantly begins the title essay, The Psychopathic Racial Personality, with the following narrative;

"In a bullfight, after being brutalized while making innumerable charges at the movement of a cape, there comes a time when the bull finally turns and faces his adversary with the only movement being his heaving bloody sides. It is believed that for the first time he really sees the matador. This final confrontation is known as "the moment of truth." For the bull, this moment comes too late." According to Dr. Wright, the experience of Black people all over the world presents an analogous situation. For hundreds of years, our European (white) matadors have been holding up the capes of democracy, capitalism, Marxism, religion and education and for hundreds of years we have been charging at the movement of these "capes." Like the bull, we too are suffering from near fatal wounds and "indeed have arrived at our "moment of truth."

Sisters and brothers, it is time for us to look at the matador and Dr. Wright tries to sharpen our vision. He defines a psychopath as "an individual who is constantly in conflict with other persons or groups. He is unable to experience guilt, he is completely selfish and callous, and he has a total disregard for the rights of others." Dr. Wright says Black leaders are reluctant to measure psychopathic traits of the White race in their dealings with Blacks when there is a threat involved. "For example", says Dr. Wright, "everywhere one finds Whites and Blacks in close proximity to each other, Whites are in control, whether it is Chicago or Zimbabwe." And our leaders rarely question this "extraordinary universal phenomenon" which Dr. Wright says "defies every known statistical law of probability." He also analyzes some of our so-called intellectual leaders and comments that, "Black intellectual enlightenment does not always lead to genuine insight and it can be very damaging to the intellect as reflected by the behavior and attitudes of many eminent Black scientists." As a result of the confusion, Dr. Wright concludes that Blacks have become disoriented and the result is various inadequate and dangerous behavioral patterns. "Some have become catatonic and do not move at all but wait for divine intervention; others place their faith and energies in charismatic guides who are just as lost as they." Dr. Wright tells us that the answer to Blacks’ problems can be found in the works and lives of people like Shaka Zulu, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Chancellor Williams and others. For they all looked at the matador or psychopath for what he was and is and moved against him." The "other essays", deal with Black Suicide, Educating the Black Child and The Black Child: A Destiny in Jeopardy. These excellent essays reinforce the notions discussed in the title essay. Dr. Wright quotes the Afrikan proverb that warns the traveler of life, "if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there." He says a social theory determines the destiny of a people by establishing guidelines of life and Blacks should therefore develop a "Black Social Theory." He warns, however, the ultimate achievement of a Black social theory would be the recreation of Black culture and that is a very difficult task. Professor Jacob Carruthers (RIU), who reviewed the book said, "brainwashed Blacks who are awestruck by European theory and theorists cannot accomplish this task……and Bobby Wright’s concepts of the ‘psychopathic racial personality’ and ‘mentacide’ are major contributions to this culture recreation process." Since its publication in 1984, The Psychopathic Racial Personality has proved to be a revolutionary, groundbreaking work on race relations. It is one of the works that should be read by serious minded Africans everywhere who are dedicated and committed to rebuilding the Afrikan world order.

A RBGStreetScholar Post Script
"AND THE BEAT GOES ON"

Wise Intelligent's Globe Holders

The more things change, the more things stay the same. Dr. Wright teaches / warned us well with deep cut analysis and razor sharp intelligence. And Wise Intelligent in the video / track below articulates the psychopath's work and manifestations in our present day and time. The problem is that the elders and ancestors of respect keep teaching us but we don't respond adequately by implementing their lessons, so we keep dying off. Its like we are moving on Ministers Malcolm's proverbial revolving wheel, he says that "the wheel just moves faster, but we never leave the spot we are in."
More so today then in the past, we suffer from that same double consciousness that Dr. DuBois taught on all the way back in 1903. A twoness of mind that I call humanist-integrationist inbetweenity with a Black tongue. We talk Black (Afrikan) but are more committed to living White (European). This is the root cause of our ongoing mental, physical and cultural genocide.
Certainly if we don't take the necessary risk and make the obligatory sacrifices required to be truly free it won't be long before we to as Afrikan people will become museum displays--as in extinct. Something well on its way and in dynamic motion as we speak with the Black / New Afrikan male in Amerikkka.

"KEEPAS OF THE CULTURE"

Finally, to end on a more positive note and with a charge, we must remember that Afrikan education is rooted in the Afrikan worldview and conceptual framework (THAT MEANS CULTURE). The lifeblood of our pedagogy from man's East Afrikan origins to Cush, Nubia, Nile Valley Civilizations to West Afrika is its maintenance of a cultural continuity rooted in the same Afrikan worldview (See Diop's Cultural Unity of Black Africa). This cultural continuity has been maintained only because of Afrikan education's foundational spirituality / Maatian Principles and Laws.
Never forget and allow the following caveat to be your motivating guide, "All history is current events and all current events are history." It is We who are the present carriers of Afrikan culture and history, and nobody else is or will be responsible for making the "blue prints, floor plans and road maps" our elders and ancestors have blessed us with a continuation of this intergenerational propagation of the Afrikan worldview but us. Keeping the culture means advancing the culture in all its agencies and manifestations, the most of which is through education.

For those that would like to get deeper into and interact with the science behind RBG Blakademics (Afrikan pedagogy) please spend some quality study time with

AFRICOLOGY: A NEW AFRIKAN GUIDING SYNOPSIS OF RBG COMMUNIVERSITY EDUCATION

The Irritated Genie of Soufeese - Afrikan Liberators

2009-08-15T11:27:00.003-05:00

PART I
Ana Nzinga ( bna Queen Nzinga) : Queen of Ndongo

In 1624, Ana Nzinga inherited rule of Ndongo, a state to the east of Luanda populated primarily by Mbundu peoples. At that moment, the kingdom was under attack from both

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, states on the Central African coast found their economic power and territorial control threatened by Portuguese attempts to establish a colony at Luanda (in present-day Angola). Many of these states had become regional powers through trade in African slaves. It was the growing demand for this human labor in New World colonies such as Brazil that ultimately led Portugal to seek military and economic control of this region. Old trading partners came under military attack by Portuguese soldiers and indigenous African raiders in search of captives for the slave trade, and rulers were forced to adapt to these new circumstances or face certain destruction. One leader who proved to be adept at overcoming these difficulties was the queen of Ndongo, Ana Nzinga.

Portuguese as well as neighboring African aggressors. Nzinga realized that, to remain viable, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than a supply zone in the slave trade. To achieve this, she allied Ndongo with Portugal, simultaneously acquiring a partner in its fight against its African enemies and ending Portuguese slave raiding in the kingdom. Ana Nzinga's baptism, with the Portuguese colonial governor serving as godfather, sealed this relationship. By 1626, however, Portugal had betrayed Ndongo, and Nzinga was forced to flee with her people further west, where they founded a new state at Matamba, well beyond the reach of the Portuguese. To bolster Matamba's martial power, Nzinga offered sanctuary to runaway slaves and Portuguese-trained African soldiers and adopted a form of military organization known as kilombo, in which youths renounced family ties and were raised communally in militias. She also fomented rebellion within Ndongo itself, which was now governed indirectly by the Portuguese through a puppet ruler. Nzinga found an ally in the Netherlands, which seized Luanda for its own mercantile purposes in 1641. Their combined forces were insufficient to drive the Portuguese out of Angola, however, and after Luanda was reclaimed by the Portuguese, Nzinga was again forced to retreat to Matamba. From this point on, Nzinga focused on developing Matamba as a trading power by capitalizing on its position as the gateway to the Central African interior. By the time of her death in 1661, Matamba was a formidable commercial state that dealt with the Portuguese colony on an equal footing. Nzinga, who reconverted to Christianity before her death at the age of eighty-one, became a sensation in Europe following the 1769 publication of Jean-Louis Castilhon's colorful "biography," Zingha, Reine d'Angola, in Paris.

Source of Text:
Alexander Ives Bortolot
Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm

PART II

Slave Rebellions

ICE BREAKER VIDEO

From: The African Diaspora, By Richard Hooker and Washington State University

Very few, if any, African-Americans accepted their status as slaves. Most, if not all, slaveowneres were completely aware of this and, in general, they lived in fear of the African-Americans under the control. Not only did slaveowners expect slaves to run away, letters and diaries give strong evidence that slaveowners (and even non-slaveowners) in the south believed that rebellion was imminent. They had lived with this fear since 1792 when the Haitian Revolution proved unambiguously that slaves were ready to revolt and could do so with a passion that was awe-inspiring. Added to this mix was the fiery rhetoric of abolitionists, both black and white. The most frightening, to the slaveowners, of these abolitionists was Henry Highland Garnet who had escaped from slavery at the age of ten. In 1843 he called for a slave strike and suggested that it escalate to a slave revolt. By this point, the south had been rocked by three slave revolts which had struck fear to the very hearts of slaveowners.

Gabriel Prosser

Further study link out: Gabriel's Conspiracy 1799 - 1800

The first major slave revolt in the south was led by a twenty-four year old slave named Gabriel Prosser. All of the major slave revolts in the south were led by people like Prosser, who were deeply Christian and were fired by religious indignation against slavery. Prosser was the first. In 1800, he began to lay plans to take the city of Richmond, Virginia, by force. He planned to invade Richmond, attack the armory, and arm his rebel slaves. By August of 1800, he had thousands of slaves enlisted and had stored up an armory of weapons, including guns. He was betrayed by two followers and, on the day of his revolt, with over a thousand followers ready to attack Richmond, the bridges into Richmod had been destroyed in a flood. The state militia attacked him the next day and he and his followers were hanged.

Althought Prosser's revolt ended in defeat, it terrified slaveowners throughout the south. Prosser had come very close to taking Richmond. If he had not been betrayed and if the bridges had not washed out, it is almost certain that he would have successfully taken the city of Richmond with his slave followers. Prosser's revolt was the closest America came to a revolution on the same scale as that in Haiti.

Denmark Vesey

Futher study link out:http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/denmark_vesey.html

Denmark Vesey, like so many other African-American leaders of the nineteenth century, came from the "upper class" of slaves: the engineers and craftspeople who were given a high degree of independence and self-actualization, as opposed to field workers or house slaves. He purchased his own freedom and settled down as a carpenter in Charleseton, South Carolina.

Despite the surface placidity of his free life, he was fired with anger over slavery and the situation of black slaves. Throughout his entire free existence, he planned and thought about freeing his fellow slaves. He was so full of anger that companions say that he could not even remain in the presence of a European-American.

Like Prosser, Vesey was also deeply inspired by Christianity, in particular, the Old Testament. An integral aspect of slave and free Christianity was its emphasis on the delivery of the "children of Israel" from bondage in Egypt. This story was perhaps the most powerful religious and cultural influence on the world view of nineteenth century Americans. While most historians stress the passive nature of the Israelite deliverance, that deliverance was also yoked to the Israelite invasion of the land of Canaan. While this invasion was barely successful, the Old Testament books telling the history of the Canaan occupation and its aftermath are ruthlessly violent and present a warrior god with no mercy towards non-Israelites. All evidence we have suggests that slaves understood that these two events were connected and that deliverance along Israelite lines would be bought with human blood. Vesey, who went around quoting biblical texts to slaves to inspire them to revolt, particularly loved to quote Yahweh's instructions to Joshua when he demands that Joshua kill every occupant of the cities of Canaan including women and children.

His task, as he saw it, was to incite slaves into revolt. In 1821, that focus changed dramatically and he began to organize his own revolt. He organized a working group of lieutenants that included Gullah Jack, a sorceror considered absolutely invulnerable and Peter Poyas who was one of the great military and organizational geniuses of the early nineteenth century. Poyas organized the revolt into separate cells under individual leaders. Only the leaders knew the plot; if any slave betrayed the plot, they would only betray their one cell. By 1822, almost all the slaves in the plantations surrounding Charleston had joined the revolt. His and Poyas's plan was brilliantly simple. The rebels would all station themselves at the doors of European-Americans and, late at night, a group of rebels would start a major fire. When the men came out their doors, the rebels would kill them with axes, picks, or guns. They would then enter the houses and kill all the occupants. Like Prosser's revolt, they almost won. They were betrayed early in the game, but the cell structure prevented officials from finding out the plot itself or identifying any of the leaders. It was only the day before that a slave, who knew the entire plot, betrayed Vesey. He and his co-leaders were hung, but only one confessed.

Nat Turner

Further study link out: http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/turner/menu.html

Vesey's revolt was immensely frightening to southern slave-owners. Not only was it difficult to crack the plot, despite the fact that thousands of slaves were involved, but the sheer thoroughness of the violence planned chilled the hearts of even the most confident slaveowners. That so many slaves would be willing to exterminate any and all European Americans regardless of gender or age brought home the depth of feeling, anger, and resistance that surrounded slaveowners all day long.

Neither Prosser's nor Vesey's rebellions actually succeeded; despite their fear, European-Americans believed that, in the end, God had protected them. This would all change, however, when a man that slaves simply called Prophet, Nat Turner, led a short revolt in which God did not protect slaveowners.

Turner, like Vesey, was from the "upper class" of slaves. He had grown up deeply hating slavery; his mother, an African, so hated slavery that she tried to kill him when he was born in 1800 to prevent him from living the life of a slave. He, too, was religious, in fact, far more than Vesey and Prosser. His Christianity was a religion of visions and mystical experience. By the time he was a young man, Turner had become unofficially the major religious leader in Southampton county in Virginia. Unlike Vesey, Turner's Christianity emphasized not the Israelite deliverance, but the latter days of Christ in Jerusalem and the apocalyptic promise of a New Jerusalem. His rhetoric had a place as well as a spiritual meaning: Jerusalem, Virginia, which lay nearby.

All his disciples, seven of them, were fired by anger and religious passion. One, Will, had been so abused by his master that he was covered with scars. On the appointed night on Sunday, they left Turner's house and entered the house of his master where, with only one hatchet and one broadax between them, they executed all the members, including two teens, with the exception of an infant. They then moved from house to house throughout the night and executed every European-American they could find with the exception of a white family that owned no slaves; Will chopped up his master and his wife so passionately that Turner called him "Will the Executioner." As they went from house to house they gathered slaves and weapons. By Monday, they were approaching Jerusalem but were turned back by a regiment of European-Americans. Turner dug a cave and went into hiding, but when troops arrived they scoured the countryside and executed slaves by the hundred. Turner, however, was never caught for over two months; during all this time, Virginians were seized with panic. Hundred fled the county and many left the state for good. Turner, however, was eventually captured and hung. This was the last straw; from this point onwards, no slaveowner lived comfortably with slavery now that they understood the anger, the resistance, and the vengeance that boiled beneath the burden of slavery.

The Amistad

Cinque, Leader of the Amistad Captives

Further study link out : Famous American Trials /Amistad Trials
1839 - 1840)

Although no significant revolt occurred after Turner's death, his passion and success escalated the conflict between the states over slavery. One more revolt, however, would seriously change the entire issue of slavery and slave revolts: the Amistad incident. In general, Amistad is overlooked by historians in favor of the more lurid and more deliberate revolts in Haiti and in the southern United States. The Amistad incident, however, dramatically changed the European-American idea of slave revolt and the moral constitution of slave revolts.

The year is 1839. Slave traffic is officially illegal in every country in the world. Despite this, a Cuban boat, the Amistad, is still trading in human lives kidnapped from Western Africa. On this trip, however, led by a powerful African, who speaks no European language, named Cinque, leads a revolt against the crew and kills everyone except the captain and first mate. He demands that the Africans be returned to Africa but instead the captain sails to New York. Claiming that the Africans are Cuban slaves rather than Africans, the United States put them on trial for murder and revolt. The result, however, was a stunning reversal in European ideas of slave revolts. Defended by no less than John Quincy Adams, the court declares the African revolutionaries to be justified in their murder of the crew. For the first time, Americans applied to slaves the same right to revolt as they believed they had. The southern revolts, from Haiti to Turner, suddenly shifted in the minds of many Americans as representing what they really were: freedom wars. To many Americans, it was becoming increasingly evident that the answer to slavery in the south had to be violent.

Haiti, 1789 to 1806, f. The Haitian Revolution Revisted - Dr. Edward Scobie

2009-08-14T19:01:00.007-05:00

About Dr. Edward Scobie

Haiti: A Slave Revolution 200 years after 1804
http://www.iacenter.org/haiti/

In the richest of the French colonies, St. Domingue, whites had been fathering the children of slave women, and by the time of the French Revolution some sons of mixed race had become owners of the colony's sugar plantations, and others of mixed race were at least free men. The people of mixed race numbered around 30,000, while the colony's slaves numbered around 500,000, about four-fifths of them field hands. In the mountains were small villages of descendants of slave runaways, who lived from subsistence farming, maintained their African culture, occasionally raided a plantation, and banded together to resist planter attempts to re-enslave them. The whites in the colony numbered around 20,000. In addition to the plantation owners and their families, these included shopkeepers, merchants, doctors, craftsmen, wives, teachers, sailors and soldiers.

Following the proclamation of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789, a delegation of men of mixed race, called gens de couleur, arrived in Paris to ask whether this included them, and they won assurance that it did. Opposing recognition of equality of the gens de couleur were the lower class whites (the petits blancs) lower at any rate than the highly born more wealthy whites (the grands blancs). The lower class whites wanted to hold onto what ranking was theirs by race, but also they feared that if the gens de couleur were considered equal, soon the blacks would also want to be equal and free.

A leader of the gens de couleur, Vincent Ogé, brought back from Paris the message that all taxpayers were to be allowed to vote in elections for colonial legislatures. He petitioned the colony's governor for recognition of this, but failed. White vigilantes tried to disarm a small army of his supporters, and a small war erupted. By early 1791, the whites on the island crushed the small army of gens de couleur. Twenty-two of an army of about 300, including Ogé and a French priest who had joined his group, were hanged. And slaves saw Ogé die proclaiming liberty.

Some slaves decided to fight for their freedom, and in August, 1791, plantations on the plain around Cape François (cap Haitien), in the north of the colony, burned and around a thousand whites were slaughtered. Paris sent soldiers to the colony to restore order, and in early 1792 the French government decreed that free gens de couleur were to have full citizenship. The French authorities wanted unity between the whites and the gens de couleur for the sake of containing rebellion by the blacks. In Paris there was also concern about the illegal trade that plantation owners were conducting with U.S. merchants and fear that the plantation owners would try to break with France and tie themselves commercially with the U.S.

After war broke out in 1793, people on St. Domingue anticipated the arrival of the British. A former slave and leader of a coalition of gens de couleur and slaves, Toussaint L'Ouverture, in August 1793, decreed all slaves emancipated, and many slaves joined his rebel army. It was the first society-wide emancipation of slavery in history. The British landed on September 19, 1793, in the south of the colony. The white plantation owners welcomed them, expecting the British to reinstate slavery, make St. Domingue a British colony and strip the gens de couleur of their citizenship.

By June 4, 1794, the British in St. Domingue had moved northward, taking Port-au-Prince and other towns. Toussaint L'Ouverture fought a guerrilla war while allied with the French against the British. The British left, and on July 26, 1801, Toussaint L'Ouverture published a constitution, which recognized the centrality of sugar plantations in St. Domingue's economy and he accepted Roman Catholicism as the state religion. The plantations were to be worked voluntarily by free people, to be imported if necessary. According to the constitution, Toussaint L'Ouverture was to be governor-general for life and all men from 14 to 55 years of age were to be in the state militia. The constitution proclaimed loyalty and subservience to France.

Unfortunately for Toussaint L'Ouverture, he had not received approval from France's new head of state, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. On February 2, 1802, a French army of 12,000, sent by Napoleon arrived at Cape François, and Toussaint L'Ouverture's military retreated to the interior to fight another guerilla war. On June 7, Toussaint received a message from a French General, Brunet, to meet for negotiations. Brunet assured Toussaint that he would be perfectly safe with the French, whom he said were gentlemen. When Toussaint showed up for the meeting, the French took him and shipped him to France, to a cold and damp prison near the Swiss border, where Toussaint withered and died on April 7, 1803.

While fighting in St. Domingue, the French were decimated by yellow fever. The ex-slaves were now led by a former lieutenant of Toussaint: Jean Jacques Dessalines, a man without Toussaint's moderation concerning bloodshed. Dessalines commanded the heights above Port-Au-Prince and gave the French troops eight days to evacuate on condition that they leave the city's fortifications intact. Some civilian whites fled with them, taking what wealth they could carry. To the north, at the Battle of Vertières, near Cape François, battalions of blacks defeated the French, and the rest of the French forces in St. Domingue left the island. Perhaps as many as 27,000 of the civilians who fled with them went to eastern Cuba, where they were to take up coffee and sugar planting.

On January 1, 1804, Dessalines proclaimed independence and renamed the land Haiti. He and close associates swore to die rather than submit again to French control, and they pledged support for each other. Dessalines took the title of Governor-General for Life. He took the white out of the red, white and blue of the French revolutionary flag, leaving the red and blue for Haiti's flag. And he began purging Haiti of white people as vengeance against France and to purify Haiti of French taint - with the exception of a few he saw as having been kind to blacks: medical doctors, a few useful merchants and an American. The butchering of whites lasted from January to mid-March. Dessalines proclaimed an end to his vengeance, knowing some of the French had survived. And after they emerged from hiding he had them killed.

When Dessalines learned that Napoleon had been crowned emperor, he arranged for his own coronation as Emperor Jacques I. Dessalines tried to extend control to the eastern side of the island, against Spaniards and French. When his troops reached the city of Santo Domingo, French ships arrived, and the Haitians retreated, killing and raping their way back to their side of the island.

In May, 1805, shortly after returning to his side of the island, Emperor Dessalines put his signature on Haiti's first constitution although he and his close associates could not read). All power rested with the emperor, none with any independent judiciary or body of legislators. The nation's colors were changed from red and blue to red and black. The gens de couleur were henceforth not recognized: all were to be known as noirs (blacks). Dessalines considered the gens de couleur as bastard offspring - while he surrounded himself with mistresses of various shades of skin.

By 1806, Dessalines' generals were looking upon him as a ridiculous figure, and Dessalines was regarding his generals with suspicion. Dessalines made his home and headquarters in the north. In the south, where the gens de couleur were concentrated, people hated and feared him. Dessalines announced his plans to march with troops into the south, and the south exploded in rebellion. Dessalines' generals prepared a trap for him along the way. His horse was shot from under him. Pinned to the ground, his head was blown off and his body hacked to pieces with machetes.

General Henri Christophe called an election for an assembly that would write a new constitution. Christophe was chosen leader in the north. Another general, Alexander Pétion, a gen de couleur
, became the leader in the south. The two halves split into hostile camps, and military skirmishes followed.

Source:

http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h34-np2.html

HAITI TODAY/UNDER SEIZE

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