In order to put this article into its proper perspective, Chinweizu informs us thus:
“It was miseducation which sought to withold from me the memory of our true African past and to substitute instead an ignorant shame for whatever travesties Europe chose to represent as African Past. It was miseducation which sought to quarantine me from all influences, ancient as well as contemporary, which did not emanate from, or meet with the imperial approval of, western “civilization.” It was a miseducation which, by encouraging me to glorify all things European and by teaching me a low esteem for and negative attitudes towards things African, sought to cultivate in me that kind of inferiority complex which drives a perfectly fine right foot to strive to mutilate itself into a left foot. It was a miseducation full of gaps and misleading pictures: it sought to structure my eyes to see the world in the imperialist way of seeing the world; it sought to internalize in my consciousness the values of the colonizers; it sought to train me to automatically uphold and habitually employ the colonizers’ viewpoint in all matters, in the strange belief that their racist, imperialist, anti-African interest is the universal, humanist interest, and in a strange belief that the view defined by their ruthless greed is the rational, civilized view. And by such terms of supposed praise as “advanced,” “detribalized,” and getting to be quite civilized,” it sought to co-opt my sympathies and make contemptuous of examining what it should have been my duty to change and alleviate. For it was a distracting miseducation which tried in every way to avoid questions that were important to me and to the collective African condition. It tried to maneuver me away from asking them; it tried to keep me from probing them most thoroughly; it tried instead to preoccupy me with other matters. But the had realities of the Black (African) Condition kept insisting that I ask: Where did our poverty, our material backwardness, our cultural inferiority complexes begin and why? And why do they persist in spite of political independence?”
If the reader has read the whole quote up to here, Chinweizu is more than relevant here. He covers all the issues we have raised and tells us what to do in reconstructing African history, all the issues raised herein, affected everything about him and the world and real-reality he lives in day in and day out. What Chinweizu is discussing above, is what has been the Achilles heel of African progress and development in various ways.
Unlearning the Narcotized Colonial Miseducation
Chinweizu, true to form, delves even much deeper into his soliloquy in the following manner:
“When I turned to the official explainers and interpreters, and to the expert and benevolent meliorists of our condition, and asked for a flash of light, they wrapped my head instead with a shroud of double-talk and evasions; they thrust my head into a garbage dump of facts, facts and more bits and pieces of facts which merely confused me the more by their (deliberately?) disorganized abundance; they punctured the membranes of my ears with slogans, distinctions without preferences, smart phrases which brightly and engagingly misled; they offered me tools, supposedly analytic, which mauled what they claimed to explain, and left me constipated with jargon and dazed with confusion. The experience was thoroughly disillusioning. In my pain I began to suspect that my mind had been, over the years, held prisoner in a den where intellectual opiates were served me by official schools, by approved lists of books, by the blatant as well as subliminal propaganda of films, and by an overwhelming assortment of media controlled by interests inimical to, and justifiably scared of a true and thorough-going African Nationalism. Suspecting that the glittering phalanx of experts spoke to my colonizers and their imperial interests, I felt that, even though I was not an “expert” in these fields, I should nevertheless conduct my own investigation into the origins and circumstances of the deplorable African stasis, learning the necessary skills “on the job” as it were.”
The article above has been pointing out to the ‘self-appointed’ experts that have given themselves the task of explaining to the world, and on the internet what they ‘think’ they know about Africans in South Africa. In this article I contended that these so-called pros know nothing about the Africans of South Africa, and proceeded to breakdown these custom and cultures to make the point that African, South African History, culture, customs, tradition and so on are not static nor non-existence, but, as according to the definition I utilized from Hall and Wilson, to gave us a definition of Culture, which it turns out is right down the pike it was with the culture of the Nguni/Bakone I have written about in this article. This was in an effort to aid Africans to begin to unlearn colonial history and learn their history anew and in a much more informed way and manner. After Chinweizu realized and learned that he can teach himself to morph into his own written account, educating himself about himself and his people anew, made him realized that by thinking so, and was ready to unlearn what he called the “narcotic colonized education” he had to overcome the challenges of deconstructing the Master’s history and rewriting and recreating his own history in his own image and people. This is how Chinweizu addresses this part of the discourse I am talking above in the paragraph below:
“My official education was over. The overthrow of the allegiances programmed into me by it was in swift progress; but there were vital things I still had to learn-things they did not and would not teach me in school; things they would, if they could, keep me from coming into contact with even outside school; things in order to appreciate which I had to painfully unlearn much of what they had instilled in me at school. And so I began a journey of the mind; a journey by a mind thoroughly alienated from its imperialized miseducation. And the purpose of this journey was first to seek out the roots of the Black Condition within which my mind suffered. By the way, if any should think inappropriate my discussing colonial education through imagery of opium narcotics, let them consider that the British, from 1839 to 1842, waged war on China in order to force the Chinese to buy opium which her Britannic Christian Majesty’s imperial agents grew in India. Victory in the Opium War earned the British the “right” to addict so many Chinese to opium that much of the population, nodding and half asleep all the time, was supinely amenable to Western cultural aggression and imperialist manipulation. Now, if they could go that far, why should their use of intellectual opium to subdue, for the same ends, some other unlucky victims seem incredible and outlandish?”
We catch-up with Chinweizu after much articulation as to his transformation out of being ‘narcotically miseducated by the colonizers’, to being influenced by the Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, Pablo Neruda of Chile, Malcolm X, Julius Nyerere, Mbonu Ojike, Aime Cesaire, Hamidou Kane, and so forth, to better understand the origins of the African stasis and to the task of understanding the workings of the system, which maintained the deplorable Black Condition saying that “these have been and remain my teachers and my guides as I continue my efforts to cleanse myself of the pollutions from a colonial miseducation.”
We further learn from Chinweizu who clearly states that:
“Having listened to them, I would heed no more, and would more emphatically reject, the pious, self-serving propaganda given out as official and objective truth by the imperialist party. For I no longer believe the official voices of the West. They do not speak for the interests of the imperialized. I now realize that these “official husbanders of my consciousness” would take incredible pains to hide from me even elementary things, the better to conceal all clues that might lead me to correct answers to questions provoked by the Black condition. I have decided to listen closely to voices from the imperialized world, to share experiences and insights with them. What the voices from the imperialized world say, and some are anti-imperialist voices within the West say, continue to make sense to me as I try to understand our specific conditions.”
Citing Chinweizu at such length is very important for the political/social historical theory for the presently dysfunctional people of South Africa. Learning and reading up on such works such as these presented by Chiweizu and those who are at the front of the African struggle and liberation, they who spin history to be user-friendly for the oppressed, in the process imparting knowledge and ways and means and new ways of learning and thinking about what he calls the “Black Condition”, are important links for Africans to use to manipulate and meander through all the obstacles that are thrown their way, whenever they try to unlearn what Chinweizu calls “narcotized colonized miseducation”. At this juncture, we take some lesson from Chinweizu when he sutures, tightly, his argument and reasons as to why and how we should unlearn this devious form of miseducation of Africans by the West. Chiweizu finally points out that:
“If my experience of it is at all representative, colonial miseducation is something its victims need to cure themselves of. And this is not easy to do. We are all, I believe, rather a little like colonized boy who, we are told, had learned from his colonized milieu to be ashamed of his local Africans weather. In our efforts to wash from our consciousness the harmful pollutants deposited there by our colonial miseducation, we are apt to act like the child who rubs his/her belly endlessly with soap and water, doesn’t touch any other part of his body, and when he tires of it all, runs to his/her mother to announce that he/she has taken a bath. Clearly we need something like a communal metal bath, one which we shall scrub the crud off one another’s backs, and especially from those corners which our hands cannot thoroughly scour. I believe that even a layman ought to share his results with others, so we can move more rapidly to a deeper, more thorough, and more useful appreciation of our collective condition.”
Chinweizu trudges on:
“If we wait for our official experts, who knows when, if ever, they will dare feel free, or find it profitable, to talk candidly and intelligently to us? For there are three sorts of experts: those for our liberation, those against our liberation, and those who contrive to appear to be on our side while they are indeed subtly working against our liberation. Advice from an expert who is not on your side, or from one who is against you, can be far worse than no expert advice at all. The layman, I believe, ought therefore to be very discriminating in choosing what expert to heed. It is, in every situation, very much like choosing a lawyer. For there are some experts, some Africans included, who deeply cherish the privileges that go with defending or furthering the interests of the imperialists. Under the guise of professionalism, of offering objective advice, some will subtly legislate against, or turn the unwary client away, from things that are in the client’s interest; some will gloss over differences that matter; some will conceal facts or omit considerations that are vital. Because of these kinds of experts genuinely on the client’s side are as capable of honest error as anyone, the client ought always to exercise vigilance and common sense in taking advice from experts. For eternal vigilance, in all matters, especially over the minutest details, is still the price of liberty.”
Given the psychic and ideological foundation of our subjugation, of both the colonial subjugation from which we thought we had escaped and the neocolonial form that has manacled us, any spirited drive for genuine freedom must begin with a thorough critique of the bourgeoise culture that has made us captives; of the process and content of the modernization that has lured us into captivity; and of the relation, if any, between technological modernization and the Christian bourgeois culture. It is precisely the existence of such a milieu that is retarding African progress today, because these petty-bourgeois elite who kowtow and pander to the West and are flinging themselves pell-mell into its orb, disregarding any protestations nor opposition that stems from its African voting polity, as in the case of Africans in South Africa.
According to Chinweizu, we should be circumspect of experts, all of those pretenders and false analysts who make out as if they have African people’s interests at heart, meanwhile, behind the scenes (mentally or otherwise) scurrilously fleece you to the marrow of your soul by denouncing every little thing about one, in order to dominate and confuse you. This is how Chinweizu concludes this matter:
“In exercising our rights as citizens, and in meeting our obligations to examine, discuss and pronounce upon all matters that affect our general welfare, we are bound to come up against the resistance of that kind of expert who rises up in arms whenever a layman “trespasses” on his “jargon-fenced bailiwick”. Such experts, while misinterpreting facts and gerrymandering arguments, are prone to mount some high pedestal of laurels and reputation, and from there demand the “intruder’s” credentials, in hopes or overawing him into irresponsible silence,or intimidating him/her into acquiescing in arrant nonsense.”
Chinweizu concludes thusly:
“In such situations, it is perhaps prudent to remind oneself that the loftiest credentials have never been a barrier to uttering nonsense; nor is a total lack of credentials a barrier to talking sense. A decolonized and re-educated African ought always to demand that matters be explained from an Afro-centric viewpoint, with scientific tools, and that the results be translated into intelligible common sense. By so insisting, we enable ourselves to spot and avoid ideologies, open as well as hidden, by which we are liable to be confused and misled, and attractive myths by which we are liable to be tricked and lynched en masse.”
We need to raise our level of vigilance, read and know our history, find ways and means to get it from FB to the man in the street who has no such knowledge or awareness and expounded upon by Chinweizu; be able to break down these advices to be in tandem with the understand, needs and relevance to the the poor Africans of South Africa. This is the job of all those who are reading this posted piece now to take it from here and make it reach the people, or print it to give it to the ordinary and poor people in community who do not have access to computers. We need to begin to use FB to inform and form positive dialogues with our poor masses who are denied such knowledge; we should not only boast about the fact that we are the only one who know this type of information, we should make it possible for the children, youth and elderly to have access to this information, whatever it takes. We, as Africans of South Africa, are much more better than what we are now experiencing and facing as a people.
Oh-h-h-h, Brother Asa…This is exactly what I needed to read at this particular moment in my life (so you know I’ll be linking and quoting! :-)) ! I know personally, what Chinweizu has shared with us here, through you, is true — no matter where we are in the Diaspora.
There are too many pieces I can pick out right now (maybe later, after I’ve processed the post I’m writing, to which I will have to link so-o-o many points) — that it’d take up way more space than I should here.
Thank you for this…
Sis. Deb, I was getting short of breath as I was reading this essay. Sooo much truth and clarity and sooo afro-eloquently put by both Chinweizu and SkhoKho SaTlou. I look forward as usual to piece you will be posting. Wisdom built upon wisdom is formidable!
Blessings!
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“Sooo much truth and clarity and sooo afro-eloquently put…”
Yes sir-r-r! And thanks for that word, “afro-eloquently.” It just smoothly rolls off the tongue in its description of how ALL of us can tell our stories our own damned selves!
Now you know how busy it gets up in this damned head! But know that I’m feverishly clearing out space to finish that post! 🙂
Bro. Asa, thanx always for your support, in not only reading what I write, but inspiring plenty of it with the formidable “wisdom” you always share!
Blessings to you and the family…
“…For I no longer believe the official voices of the West. They do not speak for the interests of the imperialized. I now realize that these “official husbanders of my consciousness” would take incredible pains to hide from me even elementary things, the better to conceal all clues that might lead me to correct answers to questions provoked by the Black condition. I have decided to listen closely to voices from the imperialized world, to share experiences and insights with them. What the voices from the imperialized world say, and some are anti-imperialist voices within the West say, continue to make sense to me as I try to understand our specific conditions.”
I so agree with Chinweizu and with Deb here “…ALL of us can tell our stories our own damned selves!”
Thus I ask; Why do we continue to cling to a Trans Atlantic Slave story, that when examined does not make sense?
Peace to the AfroSpear!
Brother Amenta…“Thus I ask; Why do we continue to cling to a Trans Atlantic Slave story, that when examined does not make sense?”
You know my thoughts on the above from our conversations over on the Herero and Nama post. And while the links you provided educate us mightily about Africans in the Americas before Columbus, which I do not dispute (due in large part to Drs. Clarke, Ben and Van Sertima’s work, here’s a YouTube link corresponding to his book: http://youtu.be/x1ZeK4ecHKU) — they do not say the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was merely a “story.” Rather, they all acknowledge its actuality, though they dispute the number of slaves.
As I mentioned when we talked before — “I have to go back to where I’ve been (inside those dark dungeons on James Island (now Kunta Kinte Island in the Gambia) and where I’m from (the “pest houses” of Sullivan’s Island and James Island, SC where nearly half of African slaves brought to these shores were held, from 30-60 days to ensure they brought no contagious diseases and then “washed down and oiled up” — to the “Old Slave Mart” in downtown Charleston where they were auctioned off to surrounding plantations). There’s plenty documentation there, from ship’s manifests (which include those slaves who died on the journey and were thrown overboard, as well as those who died in the “pest houses” — written off as mere “losses”), to bills of sale.”
While our historic African origins of greatness are indisputable today, it seems that the inclusion of those who suffered through slavery, more often than not, are somehow a scar on that historic greatness, something of which we should be ashamed. Given my own, Deep South, lived experience and all I continue to learn about it up to this day, I’m not separating it out for neither scorn, nor shame primarily because, white folk spent plenty time teaching us to do just that my whole life — I won’t humor them by agreeing.
“Thus I ask; Why do we continue to cling to a Trans Atlantic Slave story, that when examined does not make sense?”
Bro. Amenta, please drop us some links and/or resources. Each one, teach one.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120722/cleisure/cleisure4.html
http://rense.com/general43/before.htm
http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/washitaw.htm
Peace Asa! Keep it coming sir!
Thanks for the links! Informative and interesting reads!
All along we have known, and instinctively felt that there was something wrong. Wrong with the way see, and feel about ourselves, and wrong with heaping praises on the hand that torments us. It has all been made clear. Every reality has its place, space and time. The African reality is in Africa, and no where else in the whole world will the African have as good a chance to make it to the top as in Africa. Its time for African to own Africa. Come back home and lets do it together best way we know how.
I would truly like to be clear here (Deb like you have said we did talk and we are not far apart in this), that I do believe a Trans Atlantic Slave trade took place. My contention to the story is that it is not our story, but one we have adopted, which on the outset appears plausible. I do not believe in the numbers that are posted in those manifests as they are surly not our story, it is based on “their” manifests. As most of us accept the story of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade, how many of us know of and speak of the first slaves to make that voyage? Where did they come from and where did they go?,
I do understand that there are dungeons in West Africa, yet why do we determine those dungeons were for the enslaved making a voyage across the Atlantic every time a ship pulled out? Could they not be for taking the enslaved into Spain, Portugal, France, England, or other parts of Africa? I do not deny that over 2/3rds of the enslaved coming into the Colonies entered through Charleston, but do we know and speak of the over 10,000 per year of black people living in what would be called the United States being shipped into the Caribbean as slaves from the early 1600s until the 1800’s from Charleston? We never think of the original people of the Americas as black people, which IMO, is a mistake on our part (I will post a link and it will say blacks and Indians as if there is a difference. I would prefer, at a minimum, Africans and Indians.)
Rasta sings in many songs that half the story has never been told. I am beginning to see that three quarters of the story has never been told. I deny the amount of people the “white man” transported from Africa to the Americas. They had not the skill to do this. Since insurance companies became so heavily involved with insuring the slave cargo, there is no doubt in my mind these thieving people as we know them to be, inflated their numbers in order to claim greater insurance payouts. Slavery was/is a business. It is not far fetched in my mind that the selling of the slave story could create business for Africans and African Americans to sell to people that want to come “home” to see where their ancestors could have come from. And there are enterprising people selling tours to Africa for just this purpose. People coming to Goree island for instance, bring money into the country, tourist dollars spent for people to stay over night on the island, cost for taking the ferry and so on. This is not a dis, but a reality for people to try and feed their families and there is nothing wrong with this. But, I don’t take the reality of a dungeon’s existence as proof positive that hundreds of thousands of Africans were shipped across the ocean.
Again, this is not to say that a Trans Atlantic Slave Trade did not exist. It is to say that the largest numbers of people enslaved in this American (includes South America and the Caribbean) slavery were the black people the European found already living here as attested to by various authors mentioned before. I believe when the first Africans came here they found black people here like them. This is to also say that, IMO, the European is/was not special enough to be able to transport humans across the Atlantic, ill treat them in the manner noted by Deb and myself on her blog, and still have a marketable human being to be sold. This is to say that we black people are the original people of all lands on this Earth. This is to say, we can no longer accept their story about us and we should really look at this slavery story from another view point.
We are most likely prisoners of war. A long standing war between the ruling blacks of Europe against the rebelling whites of Europe, ending with the expulsion and out right hunting of blacks and the overthrow of black power in Scotland (including Ireland and Britain) with the defeat of the Black Douglas’ in 1455. The final blow coming with the defeat and ouster of the blacks in Spain in 1492. I would like to ask this as food for thought. Since we know Africans had been coming to the Americas for thousands of years, had been fighting wars against white incursion into Africa, why didn’t the Africans send ships with soldiers to the Americas to fight to free their brothers and sisters? Since West Africans controlled the sea lanes from the Mediterranean Sea through to the Atlantic why did they not stop all of the ships carrying their brothers and sisters into slavery and a tortuous life?
http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-18-1-a-the-united-states-and-the-barbary-pirates.html
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-585
Note how they paint the Indians dark skinned but androgynous looking and weird. Looks like they are trying to hide something.
http://ixwa.hubpages.com/hub/The-History-And-the-Age-of-The-Moors-in-Spain-How-The-Moors-In-Spain-Helped-To-Civilize-Europe
http://hal_macgregor.tripod.com/gregor/Douglas.html
Check the movie Hidden Colors part 1 and part 2 coming out December 6, 2012.
Get the must read book Ancient and Modern Britons, by David MacRitchie.
Peace!
Amenta…Thanks for expanding some on what we’ve talked about before. I have a little more clarity on your thoughts now. And as I don’t believe in coincidences, it seems perfectly fitting that I was sitting here, working on my family tree when your comment came in!
Part 1.
” My contention to the story is that it is not our story, but one we have adopted, which on the outset appears plausible. I do not believe in the numbers that are posted in those manifests as they are surly not our story, it is based on “their” manifests. As most of us accept the story of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade, how many of us know of and speak of the first slaves to make that voyage? Where did they come from and where did they go?”
That, based on “their manifests,” it is “not our story,” is a point on which we both can agree. However I’d say, the documented existence (and the passed-down stories) of — living, breathing parents (born “free”: 1909 and 1911 respectively) — some of which I shared: 45 and 22 years respectively; who raised my born “free” Mama (1931) on one of the Sea Islands of SC; parents who raised her Mama (born “free”: 1874 and 1876 respectively); who raised her Mama (both born into slavery: 1840 and 1856 respectively); who raised her Mama (both born into slavery: 1810 and 1817 respectively) — is at least “my story,” if not “ours.”
Yes, so far, there’s a chronological gap between Africa and SC, but I’m working on it. Part of the hiccup is due to the fact that one of the original eight “Lords Proprietors” from England, who’d secured a charter for land in SC (that, as usual, was already occupied by indigenous people, some of whom, certainly could have been us), brought slaves from their sugar cane fields in Barbados when they settled our Sea Island (I remember “cuttin’ cane as a child, and sucking the sugar out right there in the field, however, there are no more cane fields on the island today). After several machinations and incarnations from 1670 -1800, the county where my grandparents’ families were born, became what it remains today. So at most, my gap’s been narrowed (in America at least), down to 17 years. So you see, “their manifests,” rigged as they most probably are, have become important to me. Should I find the littlest slip, the smallest clue, it would bring me closer to narrowing the gap. Of course then, that’d require a “digging trip” to Barbados!
My recently received DNA results point me to West Africa, but I didn’t need it to tell me that. My “digging trips” to The Gambia over the last three years told me I am “culturally,” on the right track. Going in the rice fields, and being a very small part of the “Women’s Wuk” of cutting rice, digging sweet potatoes, and yes “cuttin’ cane!” — along with listening to their explanation of the “heel-toe” process of planting seeds, was eerily familiar to my Grandmama’s way of planting and harvesting on her own land (not 40 acres and a mule — but not too bad. All of our SC family ate well from the vegetables she “jarred” and pigs she and my aunt smoked over the winter), as well as selling her vegetables to the white folk from her “stand” in front of her house on the main road (that became my job when I was little, because I couldn’t “pick enough bushels” on the white guy’s land to make any money to think of — and she was the banker, collecting all the money everybody made in the fields, and then portioning it out according to age).
I say all this to say that, in answer to your, “…how many of us know of and speak of the first slaves to make that voyage? Where did they come from and where did they go?” questions — I don’t know how many, but I, and my family are diligently working to find out the whys and wherefores of “whence we came” — and I know we’re not alone.
“I do understand that there are dungeons in West Africa, yet why do we determine those dungeons were for the enslaved making a voyage across the Atlantic every time a ship pulled out? Could they not be for taking the enslaved into Spain, Portugal, France, England, or other parts of Africa? I do not deny that over 2/3rds of the enslaved coming into the Colonies entered through Charleston, but do we know and speak of the over 10,000 per year of black people living in what would be called the United States being shipped into the Caribbean as slaves from the early 1600s until the 1800′s from Charleston? We never think of the original people of the Americas as black people, which IMO, is a mistake on our part (I will post a link and it will say blacks and Indians as if there is a difference. I would prefer, at a minimum, Africans and Indians.)”
Don’t remember if we talked about Joseph Opala’s research on the Gullah in the Sea Islands of SC and GA (http://www.africanaheritage.com/Sierra_Leone_and_America.asp), but it has been very helpful to me. Yes, what I know for sure is, not only were there Black Cherokee (for a time dicked out of their rightful citizenship in the Nation — http://www.theroot.com/buzz/black-cherokees-regain-tribal-citizenship), but there were also Black Seminoles (escaped Gullah slaves from SC and GA to FL). and yes, without a doubt, those ships did take enslaved to the countries you mentioned, but as I said earlier, while there may have been a trade from Charleston to the Caribbean — I am 100% certain that trade also occurred the other way around.
One more link
Amenta…Part 2 (Sorry for the pause, Sunday dinner with the family) — “I am beginning to see that three quarters of the story has never been told. I deny the amount of people the “white man” transported from Africa to the Americas. They had not the skill to do this. Since insurance companies became so heavily involved with insuring the slave cargo, there is no doubt in my mind these thieving people as we know them to be, inflated their numbers in order to claim greater insurance payouts. Slavery was/is a business.”
I agree about how much of the story has not been told, and why. I also agree that slavery was/is a business. Eric Williams’, “Capitalism and Slavery” bore that out most succinctly for me.
“It is not far fetched in my mind that the selling of the slave story could create business for Africans and African Americans to sell to people that want to come “home” to see where their ancestors could have come from. And there are enterprising people selling tours to Africa for just this purpose. People coming to Goree island for instance, bring money into the country, tourist dollars spent for people to stay over night on the island, cost for taking the ferry and so on. This is not a dis, but a reality for people to try and feed their families and there is nothing wrong with this. But, I don’t take the reality of a dungeon’s existence as proof positive that hundreds of thousands of Africans were shipped across the ocean.”
Absolutely, the “selling of the slave story” creates business for Africans (don’t know about the African-American end, because I went at the invitation of my friend, a Black German, whose birth mother gave him up to the nuns in Curacao and was subsequently adopted by a German family. Nor do I know about those selling tours, as I didn’t buy any – I went across The Gambia and to Senegal with a young man and his friend who had a cab/truck). And not only do I not see this as a dis, I see it as what I, or any other Black folk “going home” should do. We can agree to disagree about the “dungeon’s existence as proof positive” of whatever one chooses (or not). All I know is, I was there and I believed it.
“It is to say that the largest numbers of people enslaved in this American (includes South America and the Caribbean) slavery were the black people the European found already living here as attested to by various authors mentioned before. I believe when the first Africans came here they found black people here like them. This is to also say that, IMO, the European is/was not special enough to be able to transport humans across the Atlantic, ill treat them in the manner noted by Deb and myself on her blog, and still have a marketable human being to be sold. This is to say that we black people are the original people of all lands on this Earth. This is to say, we can no longer accept their story about us and we should really look at this slavery story from another view point.”
Again, we can agree to disagree, because whether they were here, or brought, they were still eventually enslaved, and there is “proof-positive” of that. And based on that, I do agree we should “look at the story from another view point” — one of pride, not of shame. Because whether we were here or brought, we’re STILL HERE — with a culture often imitated, endlessly (mis)appropriated, but never able to be truly duplicated — no matter where you find us. To my mind, if we could all just get through our heads how powerful those facts are, we’d really be the shit!
“The final blow coming with the defeat and ouster of the blacks in Spain in 1492. I would like to ask this as food for thought. Since we know Africans had been coming to the Americas for thousands of years, had been fighting wars against white incursion into Africa, why didn’t the Africans send ships with soldiers to the Americas to fight to free their brothers and sisters? Since West Africans controlled the sea lanes from the Mediterranean Sea through to the Atlantic why did they not stop all of the ships carrying their brothers and sisters into slavery and a tortuous life?”
As to the ouster of Blacks in Spain and the whys and wherefores about not stopping ships, I humbly, defer to the esteemed, Dr. Clarke, particularly the last two parts (wish he’d been my damned History teacher!):
Pt. 1 – http://youtu.be/gDUd86dCtgc
Pt. 2 – http://youtu.be/fueOUm8poFc
Pt. 3 – http://youtu.be/P70_yF1bcvM
Pt. 4 -http://youtu.be/i8a955ZD3i4
Pt. 2. (of another series) – http://youtu.be/K_Vw4LtbyGM
Peace Deb. Speaking of Barbados here is a link.
http://www.research.ucsb.edu/cbs/xsite/lectures/legacy/Hilden.html
I will say, because of my contention with the numbers on the manifests, it is not a denial that slavery was a real thing. It does not deny the thousands of stories of we people that originate in slavery.
DNA, Henry Louis Gates Jr’s DNA pointed him back to Ireland. He couldn’t believe and so he begged and begged the techs to find DNA in Africa for him. Guess, what? They did. They located his DNA in East Africa and West Africa. I wondered about that. I think all humans will find their DNA in Africa East and West.
Peace right back atcha, Brother and thanks much for the link! More crumbs to foliow as “Sir John Colleton” plays prominently in the history I’ve been chasing, as well as her mention of the “mustee,” often called “Brass Ankles” in SC.
On our Sea Island alone, there has been evidence found of many small tribes, Pre-European arrival. They are collectively called the Cusabo (because they could understand each other’s dialects) but included the Yamasee; Coosah; Etiwan; Combahee;Wimbee; Westo; Stono; Edisto; Kiawah and Escamacu.
Their numbers, however declined rapidly as soon as the English settled Charleston in 1670 (no surprise there! Some were enslaved, some were victims of settler violence, most were ravaged by newly introduced diseases for which they had no natural immunity like small pox, “the fevers,” VD, etc. So no, as you said above, “we are not far apart” in our dicussions. I’m just obsessed about answering Malcolm’s, “Who are you?” question for posterity — so they will know, and be able to tell, their own damned stories.” 🙂
As for DNA and Gates well, what can I say except I used to respect him a lot more at one time. “I think all humans will find their DNA in Africa East and West.” As well they should, even though our alabaster brethren refused to even consider that, “blowing-that-whole-white-supremacy-bullshit-to-hell,” thought — until paleontologists told them so.
Ssalongo Ssennoga…“Come back home and lets do it together best way we know how.” You can’t imagine how often I think about that, hough I know it would be a daunting task, given how much we’ve been re-programmed all across the Diaspora from colonialism up to this day. But wouldn’t that be something?? Especially before it’s stripped clean by the greedy! One can hope though…
hough=though
Deb and the AfroSpear, I must say that I am not so sure we disagree. We just may be at different places in our search and research of our story. Our beginning point was the same I studied words that would have come from the African shores to the Americas and found tote and cooter and many many more. Also I read the works Cheik Anta Diop’s, Chancellor Williams, Dr. Richard King, George G.M. James’ Stolen Legacy, Dr. Ben Jochannan, Dr. Francis Cress Welsing and many more. I believed so strongly that I was African that I ventured out to meet Africans from different countries, frequented African restaurants (I love palm butter from Liberia), and went to clubs and dances of many of my friends from Senegal, Nigeria and Ethiopia. Yet, they knew and I knew that there were subtle differences.
One evening I met Rev. Dr. Radine Amen Ra and this meeting helped to re-shape my viewpoingt. I went to a lecture she gave on black people being the aboriginal people of the Americas. I was in utter disbelief. So as she ended her lecture and opended the floor for questions I jumped right in to try and utilize all I had studied for years, to dispute her claim. Since I was new to Atlanta, and no one actually new me I felt emboldended to speak right up. There were professors there from the AU center that houses Morehouse, Spellman, Clark Atlanta and Morris Brown. Reporters from the local black news paper were there as well, but no one spoke up right away. So, boom, I statred to “hit her with powerful joints” to dispell her theory.
I asked questions from the Atlantic Slave Trade to Lucumi. She had answers. She said, throughout the whole lecture to not beleive her and go and do some research from her perspective. Full of doubt, I did just that. It became clear to me that there was another story that was not being told by anyone black or white. Or was not being broadcast as widely as the Maafa was being broadcast. So I will leave with this, which answers one of the questions I posed earlier. The first people to be enslaved and sent across the Atlantic were the 500-1500 (I am skeptical of thes amout of people being transported across the ocean) aboriginal Americans that were taken by Senor Colon from the island of Ayiti back to Seville, Spain that were sold into slavery when the reached. Jack Forbes posits many of these Aboriginal Americans were transported into West Africa (along with Maize that may have been resposible for a boom in the West African birthrate.) Many of these people married with the West Africans and were later transported back to the Americas during the Atlantic Slave Trade (again I believe the slave trade was real, just not the numbers.)
Here is a video of a painting commissioned after hitman Columbus died and is said to be the first and most accurate painting of Aboriginal Americans.
Peace my people!
Amenta…I am familiar with most of those on the list of learned people you gave (though probably not as intimately as you), and they, along with Black writers during the Harlem Renaissance to whom my Black, English teacher in the public high school to which we had to transfer after “the divorce,” helped me to not only believe, but be proud of, what I already knew — that I was definitely of African descent (as is the world, except, IMHO, that particular “inconvenient truth,” chafes their ass because of the damned constructs they created).
“Yet, they knew and I knew that there were subtle differences.”
Actually I found the differences wa-a-ay less subtle than the similarities, during my sojourns to West Africa (which I chalk up to the non-stop programming we have, and continue to be subjected to, in these “civilized, developed nations” (and I use those 3 words VERY loosely). Big Bill Broonzy’s lyrics capture that still-held reality here:
We are in agreement in being suspicious about “Sr. Colon” (Dr. John Henrik Clarke posits that he was, a slave trader all along — and not necessarily of Spanish descent either! Bro. Amenta (and e’erbody else too, please do watch this video) it feels to me, that it ties in with your offered theory, as to whom the “true culprits” may, or may not have truly been): http://youtu.be/4qkN2VOe0w8?t=2m51s
I respect your contention of the numbers my Brother; after all, as we agreed before — the manifests are, “their story” of “our story.” We can agree to disagree about whom, and how many were brought, or brought back, but at the end of the day, all who looked like my Black as were enslaved. And to some degree, still are.
Peace, Family. I so appreciate that the AfroSpear allows us all to critically think — and discuss.
“…all who looked like my Black as were enslaved.” (as=ass)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6IrMjfbh6E