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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5767
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007 - 07:12 pm: | 
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Afro-Latin Americans: A rising voice
Posted on Sun, Jun. 10, 2007
By AUDRA D.S. BURCH
In hidden fishing villages straddling the wide, muddy Kukra River along the Atlantic Coast, a quiet cultural and civil-rights movement flickers:
Almost six feet and dark-skinned, a 17-year-old whirls in her kitchen, enchanted by the intricate African beading on the gown she will wear in the village's first black beauty pageant.
A 47-year-old reggae artist who chronicles the pain and hope of his people in song makes history as the first black to win his country's highest cultural award.
A 30-year-old activist finally liberates her hair, lets it grow naturally, an act that screams race more than complexion ever could.
These stories are part of a slow but dramatic shift in consciousness among blacks here and throughout Latin America. In something akin to the civil-rights movement in the United States -- without the lynchings, bombings and mass arrests -- blacks are pushing for more rights and reclaiming their cultural identity.
'For years, it was just so much easier to not `be' black, to call yourself something else,'' says Michael Campbell, who grew up 18 miles downriver in Bluefields. ``But the key to our future is to strengthen our identity, to say we are black and we are proud.''
BELATED ATTENTION
Latin American governments are paying attention and have finally begun to address racial inequities that have simmered since slavery.
Just four years ago, Brazil created a Cabinet-level position to deal with race. In Colombia, activists have won legislation legally recognizing blacks and their history. In Cuba, increasing numbers of nonpolitical groups are forming to tackle race issues, including the Martin Luther King Movement for Civil Rights. And in the nearby Dominican Republic, some blacks are fighting state authorities for the right to be identified as ''black'' in their passports.
Statistics show that blacks in the region are more likely to be born into poverty, to die young, to read poorly and to live in substandard housing.
Authorities are only now starting to count the black population, but the World Bank estimates that it numbers anywhere from 80 million to 150 million, compared with 40.2 million in the United States.
The new push for change is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil-rights groups through globalization -- the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.
Just this month, U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., led members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a nationally televised town-hall discussion in Colombia with President Alvaro Uribe about the living conditions of Afro-Colombians.
'[Afro-descendants] can see what the outside world is doing. That's caused a consciousness where they say, `We can do it, too,' '' says Meeks, who is also working with blacks in Peru and Bolivia. ``They can see what the civil-rights movement did in the United States and know that they have the ability to benefit also.''
The movement challenges a widely held belief that Latin America comfortably witnessed the civil-rights movement in the United States from afar because the region was not racist and blacks were already integrated.
''The black movements have been able to get people to question that notion, and to acknowledge that racial democracy is a great idea and kind of wonderful dream, but it really doesn't exist on the ground yet,'' says George Reid Andrews, author of Afro-Latin Americans and a professor of comparative race at the University of Pittsburgh. ``That, I think, is a real achievement.''
DISADVANTAGED GROUP
Nicaragua's black population is the largest in Central America, but there is only one black member in its National Assembly, Raquel Dixon Brautigam, who was elected last year.
Only about one in five residents in Nicaragua's predominantly black neighborhoods have access to clean water, versus the national average of three in five. Between 4 percent and 17 percent have electricity, compared with the national average of 49 percent.
Twenty years ago, the country recognized blacks and indigenous people through autonomy laws, making it possible for them to claim natural resources, demarcate communal lands, govern themselves and reclaim their ancestral identity.
For years, the struggle has been framed largely in regional terms -- the Atlantic Coast, led by towns such as Bluefields and Puerto Cabezas, versus the Pacific Coast -- English versus Spanish, Creole versus Spanish-indigenous mestizo. Creoles, descendants of English masters and their Caribbean slaves, often identify themselves as black.
''Race and region are inextricably linked,'' says Juliet Hooker, a native of Bluefields and assistant professor of government at the University of Texas. ``We have never really been acknowledged in the national narrative about identity. Much of the discrimination has been through the lens of the coast we live on.''
Now, for blacks -- about 477,000, or 9 percent of the 5.3 million Nicaraguans -- the movement is largely about visibility.
Black leaders and activists say they are collectively defining, and redefining, what it means to be black here. They are working on an ambitious agenda that includes redistricting for better political representation, bilingual education and a black-history curriculum for public schools. And in March, the National Assembly passed a reform measure to include race issues in the new penal code.
Before now, there were no anti-discrimination or affirmative-action laws. Still, a bill that would outlaw institutional racism has languished in the assembly for more than two years, with not enough backers to push it through.
This isn't the first time blacks have mobilized.
A black-power movement started along the coast as early as the 1920s through the nationalist message of Marcus Garvey.
In the 1960s, as the civil-rights movement was unfolding in the United States, blacks formed a coalition to negotiate better living conditions. That effort fell apart with the start of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. After the war, the Sandinistas promised to end racial discrimination and promote regional cultures. At the same time, they were accused of precisely the opposite -- oppressing groups already disenfranchised.
It would be almost three decades before meaningful steps were taken under the Sandinista regimes. Now, there is cautious hope with the return of that government.
RACE CONSCIOUSNESS
Although the Atlantic coast has been settled since the 17th century, the first road connecting the coast to the rest of the country opened only 50 years ago. It is still impassable during the rainy season and still doesn't go all the way.
The last leg to Bluefields from Managua is by boat, along the Escondido River. Despite the remoteness, it has not been closed entirely to the outside world. Some residents talk on the telephone, listen to the radio, watch foreign programs on television and a few have access to the Internet. Much of the contemporary movement along the coast came from men who died long ago -- Martin Luther King Jr., and Bob Marley. King's unyielding message of equality and Marley's social lyrics were delivered here starting in the 1970s by kids who got jobs on cruise ships and brought back books and music.
Pearl Lagoon's unofficial leader, William Wesley, a warm guy with an easy smile, lives on the main road with a view of the village. Just inside his living room, a picture of King hangs near the phone.
''The kids came home, and they kept talking about these people,'' says Wesley, a retired teacher. ``I knew a little bit already. But I wanted to know more. I found myself in the teachings of King and Malcolm X. I discovered my Afro heritage. We have to take what they said to help us create a direction that we can all follow.''
In Bluefields, Carmen Joseph, more comfortably ''Miss Carmen,'' a caterer who is said to make the best potato salad in town, quickly steps outside a neighbor's house. She sits on the front porch, this racial business too touchy for inside talk.
''Yes,'' she whispers, never making eye contact. ``Some folks don't say they are what they are. You see, I am black, and I raised my family up knowing they were black.''
With eight children, Joseph has spent a lifetime trudging up and down the hills of Bluefields, establishing her place as one of the town's matriarchs. ``I am not ashamed. I never turned on my color, but some people do.''
To appreciate the story of race here is to understand the kaleidoscopic legacy of slavery, the historic demonization and denial of blackness and the practice of racial mixing.
This portrait is complicated by the lack of reliable census data because of traditional undercounting and because some blacks decline to identify themselves as such.
The dynamic along the coast is a layered quilt of Miskitos, mestizos and blacks. The ancestors of other Afro-Nicaraguans were free blacks who emigrated from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries, lured by the good, steady jobs available for English speakers.
Stories abound about people who have hidden behind ambiguously brown complexions, ''passing'' for Miskito Indians, or mestizo.
''It's hard to mobilize when you are still recouping the identity and just starting to openly use the term black,'' says Hooker, the University of Texas professor whose father was a regional councilman.
A year ago, Shirlene Green Newball, who grew up in Puerto Cabezas, allowed her perm to grow out. ''I really wanted to show and know who I am,'' says Newball, who works for a women's organization.
Newball had thought for a while about what it meant to be black here. She considered all the terms -- morena, coolie, afro, chocolate, la negra. Then she decided that natural hair -- an enduring barometer of ethnicity -- was the purest expression of blackness.
''You are seeing an authentic black movement along the coast, but things are moving slowly,'' says Kwame Dixon, an assistant professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University.
SYMBOL OF CULTURE
In Pearl Lagoon, population 3,000, the dogs sleep on the dock, the main drag is more dusty path than street, the country-western music drifts from open windows and doors, and Koreth Reid McCoy rushes home from school.
She floats the whole way, more than a mile, to behold the lovely lavender gown with beads she is to wear at the beauty pageant. In the last decade, the coast has held annual black beauty pageants, but this is the first one -- along with an African cultural festival -- in Pearl Lagoon.
''I love the way it falls. I love the colors. I love the style,'' Koreth says, her voice falling into a lullaby. ``It reminds me of Africa. I'm so proud of my heritage and my ancestry.''
Leaving her house, Koreth steps into the road, and, carried by the giggles of barefoot little girls, makes her way toward the river and back, as poised and glamorous as she would be on anybody's runway. All of a sudden, and maybe not so suddenly, she is more than a pretty girl in a pretty dress. Koreth is a symbol of cultural possibilities.
``I want people to know where we are from.''
MESSAGE IN MUSIC
For as long as he can remember, and certainly when times were bad, Philip Montalban Ellis -- beautiful dreadlocks to his waist and a guitar that rarely leaves his side -- has been singing about the black experience.
. . . We gotta fight or we will die. . . . Lord knows we need liberation, Lord knows it's the only solution.
Today, Montalban sits on an old rusted chair under a lime tree in his backyard, strumming away.
''I been trying to sing songs that say something and that uplift my people. We have struggled so long,'' he says. ``I have been charged with carrying the message of my people.''
Earlier this year, the Nicaraguan government recognized Montalban's art, awarding him its highest cultural honor. Before now, the idea of an unapologetically black man even being considered was unthinkable.
''I feel like I am accepting the award for a whole race of people,'' Montalban says. ``I hope this means something.''
Miami Herald staff writer Pablo Bachelet and special correspondent Tim Rogers contributed to this report.
© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/579/story/134745.html |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2401
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007 - 07:50 pm: |
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I've been saying this as long as I've been posting here, that is, that there is a legitimate Afro-Latin population that is part of the global black community, and that they identify as black people; and that many of these folk range in color from a Kathleen Cleaver to a Djimon Hounson and that they like African Americans, West Indians, and Africans [especially in South Africa] suffer from colorism. Once African Americans and Africans stop trying to monopolize what it means to be black, then we can have a greater and more inclusive black consciousness. |
Enchanted
Veteran Poster
Username: Enchanted
Post Number: 864
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007 - 09:02 pm: |
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the Africans are the problems not us because I dont see them ever recognizing white as Kathleen Cleaver to be black they just will not. I work with Africans on my last few jobs and the blacks in Peru and Haiti will not accept a 'white' skin as black either its not the blacks in America so get that straight. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2252
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007 - 09:37 pm: |
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"Once African Americans and Africans stop trying to monopolize what it means to be black, then we can have a greater and more inclusive black consciousness."
Well, that won't be happening anytime soon.........
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5771
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - 03:17 am: |
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This article described the Blk experience accurately: (Blks everywhere are still fighting to be liberated), and its depiction of Authentic Blackness was complete and precise and not once did the image of Mrs. Kathleen Cleaver suggest itself. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2405
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - 05:12 pm: |
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Tonya:
Nowhere in the article is there a discussion of an "Authenic Blackness." The "image of Mrs. Kathleen Cleaver," certainly did suggest itself.
Here are a few examples from the article:
1. A 30-year-old activist finally liberates her hair, lets it grow naturally, an act that screams race more than complexion ever could [self-evident].
2.'For years, it was just so much easier to not `be' black, to call yourself something else,'' says Michael Campbell, who grew up 18 miles downriver in Bluefields. ``But the key to our future is to strengthen our identity, to say we are black and we are proud.'[how can one claim that they are not black unless they have the color and features to disguise this? Though, I remember a very darked skinned Domincan sister claim that she wasn't black...]'
3. Black leaders and activists say they are collectively defining, and redefining, what it means to be black here [If blackness was clear and price...or if they were sure of what is and not "Authentic," why would they have to define and redefine what blackness is?].
3. Stories abound about people who have hidden behind ambiguously brown complexions, ''passing'' for Miskito Indians, or mestizo [self-evident].
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2406
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 - 05:31 pm: |
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enchanted: I am sure that you have dozens of stories to prove your point, as do I. Anecdotes, therefore, are not helpful in this case.
A better way to think of it is to look at power. African Americans at the cultural level, have greater power over what is considered "black." We have a certain kind of cultural power that Africans and West Indians and others do not have.
I think it is obvious why Africans have the power to define blackness, so I will leave it there. All I will say is that I disagree with this power.
I will, however, discuss African Americans. While we can't say "duh...I'm African! I know what blackness is," we can say..."duh, our cultural icons--Marcus Gavey[Jamaican but the movement was in the U.S.], MLK, Malcolm X[mother west indian], Muhammad Ali--represent in many ways to the world what it means to be African American, " and to African Americans, we often--wrongly I may add--conflate our experience in the U.S. with that experience of all black people aroudn the world.
In fact, if you read the article closely, it proves my point:
1.In Cuba, increasing numbers of nonpolitical groups are forming to tackle race issues, including the Martin Luther King Movement for Civil Rights.
2. The new push for change is fueled by support from African-American politicians and civil-rights groups through globalization -- the technological ability to share common human experiences. Indeed, once isolated Latin American countries now have access to pop-cultural channels such as MTV and BET, which broadcast social messages worldwide.
3.''The kids came home, and they kept talking about these people,'' says Wesley, a retired teacher. ``I knew a little bit already. But I wanted to know more. I found myself in the teachings of King and Malcolm X. I discovered my Afro heritage. We have to take what they said to help us create a direction that we can all follow.''
This is not unusual. In the late 60s, African Americans model of blackness and revolution was Fanon, Lumumba, Cabral, N'Krumah . . .for revolution...Castro and Mao.
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Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 383
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 12:09 pm: |
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It is true, African Americans monopolise what is and isn't black because they are Americans.
Most Americans live by their own defenitions of social and cultural groups and forget (du to their own arrogance or being a 'super power' I am not sure) that there is a whole world out there. That there are whole groups of people who for YEARS have defined and seen themselves how they wish due to their own cultural ties.
I am glad there is someone who understands that this is wrong and unfair, and quite annoying. I do agree with enchanted, Afticans do it too. People need to be more open minded and start respecting people's cultures a bit more.
Thank you for the article Tonya  |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 258
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 07:32 pm: |
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Black people are everywhere. We'll see if they continue to be. I'm not sure what she has to do with this article but thank the ancestors most Africans refuse to see Kathleen Cleaver as black. We have actual standards....this tends to happen when definitions are crafted by blacks rather than whites. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1045
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 07:52 pm: |
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Dahomey, "most Africans" refuse to see millions and millions of Diasporic Africans as black. I am not surprised. You continental Africans looked the other way when Europeans and Arabs dragged us from the continent, now you have the gumption to judge us according to some asshole standards that were shit even back in the day (and by that I mean Mali and Songhai). You saw us, for the most part, as nobodies and half-castes, the crap only good enough to be sold to the white man. You didn't see our humanity then and I seriously doubt if you see it now. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2411
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 09:04 pm: |
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LOL! As I said, Africans and African American monopolize the meaning of blackness, and as long as that continues then black unity and black consciousness will be null and void.
For decades, West Indians in predominantly African American communities have had to hide their accent or assimilate to African Americans' limited notion of blackness in order to be accepted in to the "black community." That is ridiculous!
Similarly, you have "black" people Cleaver's complexion who are part of African American families that range in color. And these same people have been in the struggle in the U.S. for decades. And then, an African ignorant of African American history and their own continental history, tells this fair skinned "black" person that they are not "black." Thats ridiculous!
The problem is if we accept one standard--the African standard for example--then that would erase the entire history that has socialized people of African descent in the Americas and Europe for centuries.
I guess we need to get rid of Rosa Parks and Adam Clayton Powell.
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Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 259
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 9 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - 10:22 pm: |
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Schakspir I'm glad you are acknowledging that black Africans played an active role in the slave trade. This is something many "black" Americans can't seem to do because it doesn't fit into their victimhood categorization of everything white as evil and everything black as oppressed and blameless. Congrats.
Yes Dahomey played an active role in the slave trade. However Dahomeans don't use standards from defunct muslim empires, whatever those may be. You can continue to embrace half-castes, it makes no difference to me as black Americans have little African cultural integrity to speak of and it's just another thing that reminds me of why we have truly so little in common. Don't expect us to bend over backwards to accept what you have been spoon-fed by your masters. You swallowed without looking at what was in the spoon and you continue to lick it up like lapdogs. Enjoy your meal. |
Urban_scribe
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Urban_scribe
Post Number: 437
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 8 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 10:07 am: |
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This ^^^ PUKE coming from a woman who's so proud of being "authentic" Black African - she married a JAP, with whom she has no plans of procreation - because her family is dysfunctional.
Dahomeyahosi, you lost all credibility with your madhatter "revelations" on this PUBLIC forum.
Africans can continue to indulge in the delusion that they're better than Black Americans, but let's bottom line it, shall we?
America is NOT a third world country. America is NOT waiting around for a HAND-OUT from other countries throughout the world to FEED her citizens, educate her citizens, build schools for her citizens, SAVE them from slaughtering ONE ANOTHER, PUT CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS, SHOES ON THEIR FEET, irrigate their land to provide CLEAN DRINKING WATER so you BACKWARD, HELPLESS, HOPELESS, USELESS, WORTHLESS Africans can stop cooking and drinking the same water you PISS and SHIT in - I can go on for another 50 phukin' pages about how PATHETIC you MUDHUTIANS are!
So tell me, who's lapping up shit - LITERALLY! HA!
Not 400 years ago, but here and now in the 21st centu-phukin-ry. Eating and drinking their own piss and shit. You phukin' SAVAGES!
THE AFRICAN CONTINENT IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL. BEHIND ALL OTHER CONTINENTS AND COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD. YOU'RE EVEN BEHIND MEXICO FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!
Here's what you do:
1 - Say "THANK YOU" to Black Americans who marched, fought, boycotted, and died so you Mudhutian lowlives can enjoy privileges, freedoms, luxuries, and rights here in AMERICA that you can't even get in your own piece-of-shit country on the African continent.
2 - STFU. You MUDHUTIANS have NO SAY-SO in the goings-on of Black AMERICANS. You lost that right when you not only allowed, but aided and abedded, YOUR IMAGE, YOUR FELLOW AUTHENTIC BLACKS, YOUR FLESH, YOUR BLOOD, YOUR BONE to be ripped from Africa and loaded aboard SLAVE SHIPS.
Me, personally, I am proud of my slave ancestry. It is that perserverence, that struggle, that suffering, that holocaust - unmatched by any other in history - which molded the loving, passionate, compassionate, stubborn, innovative, groud-breaking, artistic, unstoppable BLACK AMERICANS we are today. NO ONE. NO ONE. NO other race/ethnicity/culture/community has had so many obstacles set in place to oppress them, yet still we RISE.
You Mudhutians, on the other hand, went from sugar to shit! Worry about how your people back home who you couldn't smuggle into AMERICA with you are going to find a rotten fish head so they'll eat TODAY. Focus all your energy and attention in praying for them to be fortunate enough to find a dead carcass to feed off.
While you're at it, PRAY that a 35yo FULL-BLOWN AIDS infested grown-ass man doesn't snatch a THREE YEAR OLD BABY GIRL off the street and BRUTALLY RAPE HER to purify his blood. You phukin' SAVAGES!
3 - Go lick your Jap husband's yellow balls! While you're swallowing his load, keep reminding yourself how proud you are to be "AUTHENTIC BLACK AFRICAN."
Now call me all the lite-brites, half-castes, mulattoes, half-breads, black-wannabes, piss-colored, etc, etc, etc. I've heard it all before. That shit don't phase me. I know who I am and I'm happy and comfortable with myself. And none of that changes the FACTS about you phukin' SAVAGES and your worldwide ROCK-BOTTOM African status.
PHUK AFRICA! Africa USED TO BE the shit. Now Africa IS shit! Centuries have passed and Africa still hasn't regrouped, recuperated, and reclaimed her glory. Whereas the Black Americans you Mudhutians love to look down on - every generation we have more college graduates, more millionaires, more doctors, more lawyers, more professors, more artists, more politicians, - we're taking baby steps and making steady progress slowly but surely. Meanwhile, you Mudhutian phukers keep sinking deeper and deeper into the raw sewage you call home. The whole blasted continent is a disgrace and embarrassment to the Black diaspora. PHUK AFRICA! I wish somebody would drop a goddamn bomb there and wipe it off the map altogether. It's a niggah Antarctica - UNLIVABLE FOR HUMAN BEINGS! PHUK AFRICA!
Don't make me hafta run up in here and tell you all this shit again! Ya heard? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8836
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 11:39 am: |
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Thanks, Urban_Scribe! I'm certainly glad we still have people who come to this board to say something timely and intelligent |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 260
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 12:11 pm: |
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Urban_scribe if it helps you sleep better at night to engage in a lowclass rant full of curse words enjoy arguing with yourself. I don't stoop that low. They say you only look down on someone when you are helping them up. I don't have time to help you up. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2417
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 5 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 01:12 pm: |
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And so we have the African--Dahomeyahosi--the authentic voice--because African equals to some authentically black, and therefore knighted to bestow blackness on the people of African descent. It is funny how you speak of standards when, in fact, the standards that you have now are not the standards that Africans had 400 years ago. The tribes or ethnic groups that you have now were not the same tribes or ethnic groups of Africa 400 years ago....your ahistoricism is incredulous.
I am not a specialist on African history, but anyone who has taken the time to read a little, knows that Africa is comprised of hundreds of ethnic groups, thousands of languages. The logic of the transatlantic slave trade, in fact, was that reality that Africans were motivated by their own group identity not a “racial” identity. Also, because hundreds of years of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern invasion and trade, equatorial and regional differences within Africa, African people comprise a range of colors, shapes, and heights. With that said, who determines whose black? It can not be based on being born in the continent. It can not be color. I can not be ancestry? Who knows how far back one’s ancestry truly? Are there so regions of African more black than others? Is North African less black? What about Ethiopians and Eritreans? Are they black? Do West Africans determine the standard?
And we have the African American--urban_scribe--who wraps himself/herself in the American flag as if African Americans are doing any better than their African cohorts. But really the difference between Africans and African Americans is that hyphen...that passport, that American nationality. But if Africans are savages, so are we....our "ghettoes" are third world communities w/running water, cable, X box, and a liquor store, drug dealers, and immigrant grocery....no difference if you ask me!
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5798
Registered: 07-2006
Rating:
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 01:33 pm: |
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...And don't forget...ain't like we running or own shit.
Dahomeyahosi, many of us Blacks in the U.S. share your standards on color sweetie. And notice, we are not the ones trying desperately to change how other AA's view this issue. That should tell you a lot. (Btw...I LOVE the way you handle yourself...classy. )
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Urban_scribe
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Urban_scribe
Post Number: 438
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 03:10 pm: |
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Yukio, I always look forward to your posts. I don't always agree with your perspective, but you always come across as level-headed and someone who seeks to bridge gaps and spread knowledge in whatever way you're able. Please do me a personal favor, NEVER refer to ME as African-American. I reject that generic, catch-all, meaningless label. I go by Black American, or just plain ol' Black. K?
Further, I do believe we are better off here. I'm far from patriotic, mind you, but the stats speak for themselves. You don't see Black Americans breaking our necks in droves to leave "da hood" to go to Africa. However, Africans are breaking theirs in record numbers to get the hell out of Africa to come to our "hoods." Even with all its faults and shortcomings and undesirabilities, our hoods are paradise in comparison. We have opportunities, which, sadly, many of us don't take advantage of. Many of us, again sadly, choose instead to exploit the faults, shortcomings, and undesirabilities of our communities. Nevertheless, opportunities are available HERE for those of us who want to improve our stations in life. Is it a challenge? Damn right! But we don't need to leave our country and seek those opportunities elsewhere, then have the nerve to turn around and SPIT on the very people who paved the way and sacrificed so very much for us to have such bounty at our disposal. So while I don't drape myself in the American flag, as you put it, I do indeed cocoon myself in the legacy of Black American bloodshed that opened doors for me to enjoy a life and lifestyle HERE in America that my Black American ancestors could only dream of and hope for.
Dahomeyahosi, ooh great comeback! I notice you failed to refute any of my lowclass rant full cusswords about your precious Africa. Fact remains no matter how low I am, I'll ALWAYS be HIGHER than your ILK. Help me up - keep dreaming! First concentrate on helping your perpetually needy countrymen up. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1047
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 03:20 pm: |
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Dahomey: ....it makes no difference to me as black Americans have little African cultural integrity to speak of and it's just another thing that reminds me of why we have truly so little in common. Don't expect us to bend over backwards to accept what you have been spoon-fed by your masters. You swallowed without looking at what was in the spoon and you continue to lick it up like lapdogs. Enjoy your meal.
Schakspir: This is the attitude of an educated, elitist African, who refuses to see WHY so many of her descendants in America lack this cultural integrity. Maybe it's because you so casually sold us into the arms of the devil, without even a moment's thought? What happened to us was the WORST holocaust in history, and you buggers were complicit in it. So now, to just say, "enjoy your meal," when you yourselves helped to prepare that meal, really shows us where your heads are at.
I'm starting to think that many of Africa's problems historically and were brought on by the Africans themselves. The obscene greed of African rulers(especially West Africans), and the refusal of even common Africans to question the actions of their rulers/elders--made Africa vulnerable to attack from all quarters. And today, the African elite, which often imitates the most shallow aspects of African-Americans(even while despising them), has come up with no new ideas whatsoever for rejuvenating Africa. All they can do is either imitate Europeans, white Americans or black Americans. They have about as much cultural "integrity" as any washed-out, right-wing upper-middle-class black American, and as such, they deserve no respect, even when they come to Europe crawling on their hands and knees, begging their former European colonial masters for a crust of bread. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 261
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 04:25 pm: |
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Yukio it no longer amazes me that non-Africans like yourself insist that you know more about African history than Africans. You are simultaneously arrogant and ignorant, a typical American affliction. The first lines in books writtten about Africans usually state that African histories are oral. The writers then go on to completely disreguard these oral histories, continue as if we have thousands of years that equate to a blank slate, and begin with written history. You get your knowledge from these books, perhaps written by Basil Davidson, maybe Chancellor Williams...I'll make no assumptions on the writers. You then turn around and teach to me?
My knowledge comes from elders who painstakenly memorized information that came from their elders. Don't tell me to read a little. I have listened a lot. I wonder if your elders passed down anything to you. I hope you weren't left to find yourself in a book. Here is a standard for you to ponder: the first half caste of my ethnic group, a result of rape, was put to death. And there are many ethnic groups that have existed more than 400 years. Just as my spirituality is thousands of years old, so is the trail of my ancestors. Perhaps you are interested in a hodgepodge of African history because you yourself are an unknown hodgepodge of ancestry. If that is the case it's your issue to resolve. However if you honestly think you are schooling me about who I am you are delusional. |
Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 137
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 04:40 pm: |
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What a fascinating conversation.
I have to direct this to Yukio.
I am Arab Yemenese (white) and married a black man.
I don't consider our children black, I don't raise them black, but I am sure that you would.
Kola Boof is a very close friend of mine and her sons are black by a black man, she raises them as "been-tos" (black Americans direct from Africa), yet her kids and my kids are raised together very close like they were siblings and they are all taught to speak Arabic as well as English (Kola's boys also speak French).
My experience is that North Africans who are Arab, mixed race or white call themselves Africans occasionally, but do not call themselves black.
I do know there's a large population of black people in Southern Egypt and they like to be called 'black', but the people with brown skin in Morocco, Libya and places like that will be highly offended if they're called 'black'.
With Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans, the ones who are 'mixed race' city people are often much lighter than the rest of the country and they do not generally call themselves 'black', they call themselves 'Ethnic Ethiopians' or 'Ethnic Somalis'. They are higher class due to their coloring and you see a lot of these people in the states and over here they will allow you to call them 'black' for the sake of forgoing an argument, but they don't generally feel that they are black people in their own countries. They feel that they are 'African' and 'mixed' or 'half-caste' or 'multi-caste' and they usually are very racist against blacks in Africa who are very dark.
I have observed that there is a general consensus amongst African people that 'blacks' and 'mulattos' are not the same thing.
In the Arab world, we also have thousands of tribes and hundreds of thousands of languages. Yemenese Arabic is different from Egyptian Arabic which is different from South Sudanese Arabic, but the racial standards among the differing tribes and languages are extremely simply in Africa. I'm sure that Kola Boof already told you that if you look black then you are black and if you don't then you're not and to Africans that is how it has always been.
The Africans from any tribe or group will say: "Can I see the ancestors in this person?" and if you dont have good color and African hair then generally the ancestors are being dominated by "outsiders".
Does that make sense?
The "ethnic Ethiopians" do not have African hair for instance but the Ethiopians from the lower class have African hair.
During the various slave trades, East Africans and West Africans alike drowned or suffocated their 'mixed race' offspring. In the west, their slave masters prohibited this and forced them to accept these 'new' breedings.
You should GOOGLE the 'bastars' of Namibia to understand more what the reality is of 'blacks' versus 'mixed' in Africa.
If you reply to this post, I won't have time to respond for several days. Sorry.
Nafisa Goma
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2419
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 05:00 pm: |
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Urban_Scribe:
You are comparing the situations, but you are not showing how our—that is Africans’ and the African Diaspora’s—struggles are both similar and linked. Black Americans [I prefer African American] situation is “better” our comparatively speaking. We have done ok as individuals, but not as a group, and there is a reason. It is not solely a question of some of us not taking advantage of the opportunities. First of all, capitalism is not meant for everyone to succeed. Secondly, in a white supremacist capitalist country, black people of people of color are not meant to succeed.
The articles identified the similarity in condition. It also identifies how they are linked, namely the ways in which African Americans leaders or black American leaders have influenced the Afro-Latin world. You may not be “patriotic,” but in saying “our country,” you are clearly making, though not intentionally, a distinction between the U.S. and the “Black American” legacy that you speak of. That legacy included Du Bois, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Randall Robinson, Harry Belafonte, [even Bill Cosby has made some clandestine efforts], Martin Delany, Jesse Jackson, brother Conyers in Detroit, Amiri Baraka, and others who linked “Black American” politics with African and Caribbean politics.
On the other side, many of our black activists, especially during the Black Power movement were influenced by African nationalists, and if you read about TransAfrica, the Committee of African Affairs, and some other Pan Africanist organizations, it is clear that we have also participated in struggles from a global perspective. Those mentioned above were clear that there was clear distinction between Black Americans life chances and the U.S.’s objectives at it relates us.
Schakspir:
I'm starting to think that many of Africa's problems historically and were brought on by the Africans themselves. The obscene greed of African rulers(especially West Africans), and the refusal of even common Africans to question the actions of their rulers/elders--made Africa vulnerable to attack from all quarters. And today, the African elite, which often imitates the most shallow aspects of African-Americans(even while despising them), has come up with no new ideas whatsoever for rejuvenating Africa. All they can do is either imitate Europeans, white Americans or black Americans. They have about as much cultural "integrity" as any washed-out, right-wing upper-middle-class black American, and as such, they deserve no respect, even when they come to Europe crawling on their hands and knees, begging their former European colonial masters for a crust of bread.
This is just plain ol incorrect. First of all decolonization was only political freedom, that is, they were sovereign and in control over the nations government, BUT not it resources, capital, and labor. Remember, all of this occurred during the Cold War, and African leaders—just like those in the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America—were controlled by Western capital or the USSR [though some countries like China and Cuba tried to establish some autonomy]. In others Africans were the puppets and the Euro-Americans were the masters. Of course, African leaders played their own part, no doubt.
If any group is imitating white Americans and Europeans, it is African Americans, Schakspir. Now, of course, we did not have a choice, which is why we are the most assimilated of Africa’s lost tribe. This is due to demographics, mostly.
Nation building is hard work. If we look at Ghana, it has been “independent” since 1957. That is only 50 years ago. It was colonized since the 19th c., with the Asante one of the last ethnic groups to lose to the British. Thereafter, Nkrumah’s main protagonists after independence was who? The Asante again….over cocoa [economics], the failure of the dam, the difficulty to industrialize a country [like most colonized countries], whose infrastructure was based on exporting resources out of the country instead of inside the country, and I can go on, and on….
Finally, “common” Africans have always question their “leaders” or “rulers.” Part of the problem is, we in the U.S., unless we are affiliated with certain resources, only know what we read in U.S. newspapers. There are both African newspapers and websites that illustrate what “common” Africans really think. Part of the problem to me, is that many “common” Africans are so critical of their leaders that they believe that it is a matter of putting responsible African leaders in place, and galvanizing their nation to do the work. Now, I believe Africans and black people need to lead their own struggles, but if we do not put the light on the hypocrisy of white nations, then we will be left by our selves.
What African nation is truly self-sufficient? Shit…the U.S. is not self-sufficient. The point is that we need to establish equitable economic, social, and political trade relations. If we look at Mexico, for example, can we say that the majority of Mexicans benefit…hell no!
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Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 262
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 07:47 pm: |
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Tonya,
I work in New York so I know that vulgarity is a part of a lot of people's daily discourse but I have never been comfortable with it. I still think it comes from intense anger and urban_scribe just doesn't interest me enough to elicit such anger.
I hope the number of people you refer to, who have standards when it comes to blackness, is larger than I think it is. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 263
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 07:53 pm: |
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Schakspir I agree that many of Africa's problems are caused by Africans. Because of just the elites you describe....people who mimic Europeans and/or Arabs. Some of these elites continued to do assinine things after colonization ended just to mimic the French such as importing tinned seafood when the ocean is right outside. However you are 100% wrong when you assert that the average African is doing nothing. Many Africans I know live their lives as separate from the formal channels of government as possible. They place no trust in it and navigate around it as smoothly as possible. They understand that government leaders are out to serve themselves and have no delusions that they seriously support their populace. I don't honestly think you'll listen so I'll make this recommendation so I can save some typing time... George Ayittey has written excellent books along these lines, accessible to Westerners like yourself.
I hope it won't burst your bubble but many Beninese don't even know of the existence of a significant population of black Americans. For that reason, we don't make serious attempts to mimic you. An American is an American and if you visit Benin with a white person you will be called by the same name. As far as cultural integrity, most West Africans still live in villages with ideas of right and wrong based firmly within indigenous African traditions. We speak our own languages, often several in order to communicate with numerous other ethnic groups. We make the same food our ancestors made. In Benin even those who call themselves Christians and muslims honor the voudun. In nearby Ghana and Nigeria this is not the case. I think it is shameful. However I assert, most assuredly, that African customs are in no danger of dying anytime soon. I believe the biggest threat to our cultures is Arabization (sp) rather than Europeans. If you really want to make an argument for lack of cultural integrity perhaps you should use that one next time.
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1048
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 09:16 pm: |
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Dahomey: As far as cultural integrity, most West Africans still live in villages with ideas of right and wrong based firmly within indigenous African traditions. We speak our own languages, often several in order to communicate with numerous other ethnic groups. We make the same food our ancestors made. In Benin even those who call themselves Christians and muslims honor the voudun. In nearby Ghana and Nigeria this is not the case. I think it is shameful. However I assert, most assuredly, that African customs are in no danger of dying anytime soon. I believe the biggest threat to our cultures is Arabization (sp) rather than Europeans. If you really want to make an argument for lack of cultural integrity perhaps you should use that one next time.
Schakspir: As an African-American, a descendant of slaves who were sold away by Africans to predatory European slavers, I resent the very idea that we have no cultural integrity whatsoever. If we didn't have any cultural integrity, we would not exist. Our languages were stripped from us, as well as our religions, our values, and in many cases our ethnic lineage(through rape). We here in the West had to start entirely from scratch. The more our cultural identity was denied us by our respective slavemasters, the more we had to reinvent an identity here to ensure our survival. And honestly, if you are in the kind of oppressive situation we have been in over here for five centirues, and if you cannot fashion any kind of cultural integrity for yourself, you will not make it.
It's not difficult to read between the lines of what you say when you speak of West Africans still living in their villages with their moral concepts of right and wrong--the implication is that we, in the Diaspora, lack these moral concepts. Unfortunately, many of us do. But this is what a HOLOCAUST does to a group of people. It damages them, some of them irreparably.
Remember, we were the ones many of you sold to the Europeans. Beninese, particularly, were deep into the slave trade with Europeans. Of course, I'm not absolving Europeans and/or Arabs in their role in slavery--their role was the biggest role--but it DOES take two to tango. The Africans could have resisted or at least tempered the slave trade if they wanted to. I am not convinced that Africans were as weak as Western historians make them out to be(as late as the 1820s, the Ashanti soundly defeated the most powerful nation on earth, the British, after the latter attempted to invade and colonize their state). Perhaps the Angolan state was one of the few exceptions of an African state/empire overwhelmed by superior European military technology, but careful reading of that situation would show that the Angolans/Congolese of the 1500s were outdone by Portuguese political intrigue/duplicity rather than by military might.
That brings me to Yukio's statement about Africans not questioning their leaders. Yes, Yukio, common Africans doquestion them--today, that is. 500 years ago, however, they didn't dare do so. That was my whole point. They should have questioned the sanity of some of their leaders a few centuries ago. And yes, Dahomey, it's obvious (because I have seen it myself) that the average African has little faith in the formal channels of their respective governments, but(like elsewhere)these formal channels are not being challenged.
BTW, Nafisa-goma (aka Kola Boof) keep your stupid blacker-than-thou bullshit to yourself. By your admission, all REAL black people look alike, have the same charcoal color, dance the same way, cook the same way, •••• the same way....there is no variety, no gradations--everything is supposedly the same. Kola's version of Black Africa is like a sexed up version of Friz Freleng's, without cannibals and missionaries boiling in pots. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2421
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 01:23 am: |
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Nafisa_goma: I don't know your children, but what I think and what you think may certainly be different. I believe people should define themselves. And there it is. But who is "right" is another question...it depends on time and place.
Concerning your lay out of African, black, and Arabic identification, I have been told this before. Consider that I took care not to equate being black with African [as best as I could at least]. And, I purposely selected the countries...it was not by mistake.
Dahomeyahosi:
My knowledge comes from elders who painstakenly memorized information that came from their elders. Don't tell me to read a little. I have listened a lot. . . . And there are many ethnic groups that have existed more than 400 years. Just as my spirituality is thousands of years old, so is the trail of my ancestors.
I have not said that I know more African history than you. This is not a competition. I am neither unaware of the existence of very old ethnic groups nor unaware of Africa's oral history and the passage of these histories across many, many generations.
None of this, however, changes the fact that if you embrace the shibboleth, to quote Nafisa_goma, that "if you look black then you are black and if you don't then you're not," there is a range of colors, facial features, etc . . . among continental Africans, and that this range is on account of "hundreds of years of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern invasion and trade, equatorial AND regional differences within Africa."
African Americans too have oral histories, as do the Irish, and Irish-Americans, and Italians, and Italian Americans, and many other histories.
There is a point here. It is not about who knows “more,” but a conversation. What I said doesn’t preclude what you have written at all. Nor does it even try to. In my opinion, being born in Africa doesn’t make one an expert on Africa. Being part of an ethnic group does not make one an expert on all of Africa. Similarly, a person born in the U.S. does not make him an expert on the U.S.
Believe it or not, African Americans have ethnic groups among them. If you get to know us, we have old black families and all black towns and communities that do not describe themselves as an ethnic group, but that is what they are…and they are not 400 years old, but maybe 100 or 80 years old, but they have oral histories. Nevertheless, beyond their family and community history….they are not experts on the larger African American community or so-called nation, which spans many states, rural and urban areas.
I’m saying all of this out of a sense of respect for you, Africa, and myself. If I am ignorant then teach me. But I will not swallow your ideas, beliefs, etc… whole. I must think for myself as you do. For example, when you say “An American is an American and if you visit Benin with a white person you will be called by the same name,” that is a smack in the face of African American [or what you can black American] culture. Another example, when you say that “many Beninese don't even know of the existence of a significant population of black Americans.” I know this—not Beninese specifically—to be true for some Africans. I have my own anecdotes, as do many of us. But a Kenya brother said to me—maybe ten years ago—that I wasn’t black or African. He could have lost his life that night . . . what is my point?
I am not a continental African, and have never been to Africa. I am nowhere near Kathleen Cleaver’s complexion either. I am unmistakably “black.” When you say “As far as cultural integrity, most West Africans still live in villages with ideas of right and wrong based firmly within indigenous African traditions.” So it is in African American communities, and in my community—Harlem—the notion of blackness is considerably strong at least when I was growing up. And this culture was passed on to us from since the turn of the century, that is, this culture of blackness. And it was celebrated during Harlem week, various community parades, speakers, politicians, etc….for a very long time. This is my culture. It is in the U.S. but it is neither European nor white American. And part of this included a love for Africa, but also images of the rape of Africans and “black American” women and yes men. The slaughter of my people. The hanging of my people. The dismembering of my people. This is my cultural integrity. And of course, there is police brutality in the past and the present. I went to school with one of the brothers who had allegedly raped the Central Park jogger. We all have anecdotes about these things… So when this Kenyan brother who knew nothing of all this history and my present told me that I wasn’t black I almost flipped.
I took it personal. It wasn’t. I have a history, and he quickly dismissed 400 years of my history because I do not speak an African language, eat African foods, or know my African ancestry. I didn’t even claim to be African just African American and black. But for him….I was just an American. So understand me, I am not dismissing your culture and your oral history at all! But within my ethnic group or community, our knowledge of our selves was legitimate. In my own world—that is as old a the turn of the twentieth century and a memory that is longer than 400 years old—I was African American and black. How dare he come to this country, and tell me that African Americans were not black people.
I’m not a little man either, and the rum did not help. But fortunately, an Ghanaian brother who isn’t little either grabbed me and explained things to me…and I understood, and my romanticism went away that night…but I understand why, and understand that as long as I continued to embrace my limited notion of blackness I could break bread with Africans and that as long as Africans embrace their limited notion of blackness they could not break bread with me. Now some of my African friends still disagree with me, but listen and I listen, and we exchange, and we know that it is not about who knows more, but that we exchange knowledge and share love of black people.
Schakspir: You are wrong. We did not start from scratch. We were enslaved, but cultural imperialism took some time. African American culture is mostly African, I believe, with a twist of Euro-America…we use their tools and language mostly. And you know this, or at least you should. It is not African…consider that most of our ancestors come from West Africa, the majority central Africa. But this is over is three hundred years of trade in African bodies. Some of the words have found their way into English through us. The music and dance is most obvious. We are mostly Christian, but our spirituality, according to some scholars, is essentially African.
On the question of “common” Africans condemning their leaders 500 yrs. ago. . . . again, you are wrong. It is documented that many African fought against their other Africans, and many within the same ethnic groups refused to participate in the trade. People do a disservice to Africa when they make the claim that “Africans” sold us. Some of them did…they sold other Africans, and many African lost their lives defending our ancestors. It was a serious business, and contributed to the consolidation of African empires. It required: kidnappers, trades men both in the interior and the coast, and soldiers to protect the transporters. The African empires benefited from this by protecting the transporters, providing the soldiers, and taxing both African and European traders. Thus, this created bonds of blood, but it also broke up families, villages, and slaughtered entire ethnic groups. And many of the ethnic groups defended themselves and many others migrated away.
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1050
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 02:15 am: |
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Yukio: On the question of “common” Africans condemning their leaders 500 yrs. ago. . . . again, you are wrong. It is documented that many African fought against their other Africans, and many within the same ethnic groups refused to participate in the trade. People do a disservice to Africa when they make the claim that “Africans” sold us.
Schakspir: Africans WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE NATIONS normally did not criticize or challenge their respective leaders. Neither did Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners, or South Americans. That was the way things were(for the most part). You say Africans fought against other Africans, which was not the gist of my arguement. And for those who refused to participate in the slave trade, what was their punishment? Besides the period I'm referring to (c. 1300s-1500s) is at the very start of the transatlantic trade, and the height of West African civilization. It was also a time in which the common man (anywhere in the world) normally did NOT criticize leadership OUT LOUD or else he might lose his head.
You say African-American culture is mostly African. That is debatable. What SPECIFIC reigions of West Africa does our culture resemble, then?
BTW, when we came from Africa, we came from several parts of Africa--we did not share a like African culture. There's more than one African culture--we came from amongst Yorubas, Fantis, Wolofs, Mandinkas, Mende(maybe Mende and Mandinka are related or actually the same), Dogon, etc. Some of us even came from as far over as Madagascar. We arrived on American shores hardly being able to communicate with one another for this very reason. That was my point. We HAD to start over, and if it wasn't entirely from scratch, it might as well have been. A Mandinka slave arriving on a plantation in Virginia in 1764, surrounded by other slaves who were not only not of his caste background, but also did not speak his language, have his diet, listen to his music(not all African music is the same)....how was he going to go about communicating with the other slaves? How would he communicate (or how would she communicate) with his or her spouse, if that spouse happened to be, for example, a Yoruba or Ibo? Everything had to change. The various African cultures that the slaves brought with them had to be radically reassembled into a new coherent whole, and that whole gradually took on(of course) elements from the cultures of the various slave masters. This is definitely more true of black people from the United States, rather than Brazil, where black people obviously held onto much more of their respective African cultures(especially Yoruba). |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4968
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 4 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 02:38 am: |
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What dumb motherfukcer adds their pix everytime they make a post other than a puppetmaster who is trying to have us believe they are someone else. Stop the madness, lame ass Kola Spoof. Your tired Goma bullshit is played the fukc out. Just like the rest of your antics.
Schak - Perhaps you should consider writing a book about the real history of Blacks in America, because the points you made about the slaves not being able to communicate with each other never really occurred to me, probably because I never thought about it. On Roots, all the slaves spoke American
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2424
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 03:29 am: |
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Schakspir: Africans WITHIN their nations did criticize their "leaders." The period you are talking about (1300s-1500s) was the Arab or Muslim trade not the transatlantic trade.
The transatlantic slave trade only began the 16th c., first of all. Secondly, slaves, during this period, moved from Central Africa then to the Canaries, San Thome, and then to the Ghana, where there was still they continued to mine for Gold.
But what is your argument? Our own people sold us? And that they really aren't "our" people in the first place?
Of course, it is debatable. And we can debate. First of all, the ol shibboleth that Africans were so diverse that they could not communicate is ol hat! No one embraces that idea anymore. More recent research shows that Europeans participated in cluster slave trading, in other words...they generally obtained Africans from the same sources. It was too dangerous and too time consuming for them to trust Africans, as well as other Europeans, with whom they had not done business with. In other words, there was communication, there was the replenishing of African culture, especially in the deep South, where rice plantations gave slaves greater autonomy than slaves working with tobacco.
Furthermore, just because Africans belonged to different tribes doesn't mean that they could not speak with eachother; there were cross ethnic relations, both in trade, and often a trade lingua franca.
In other words, those that went to Virginia were different from those going to S. Carolina, but generally those going to S. Carolina were generally from one or two groups. Don't make me pull out my books now...LOL!
I said above already, in fact, that African Americans are the most assimilated of people of African descent. But, African Americans are not black Americans, as some like to call us. We are not "Americans" with black skin.
I agree we used Euro-American culture, and cultivated our own. In fact, we have been able to do this precisely because we have more or less been able to control our music, dance, and language culture because segregation provided us a semblance of cultural autonomy. Furthermore, if you take Ellison seriously, our culture--at its heart--is primarily a rural culture, that has been modernized as we have migrated throughout the 20th c. to the North during the first and second Great Migrations. But if we consider, for example, this book called AlabamaNorth, by Kimberley Phillips, then, according to her, Alabama culture was revamped in Cleveland, and therefore, location did not eradicate southern folkways.
Finally, we had been cultivators of land in Africa and then here since around the 1670s..., and we did not leave the South and rural life in any significant way until the WWI...thus, we have been urban for how long? Less than 100 yrs, and rural almost 300 yrs.....
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 140
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 5 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 08:39 am: |
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Schakspir, in the book "Long Train to the Redeeming Sin" by Kola Boof there were about 40 tribes and cultures essayed in that one short story collection. A whopping 100 were covered throughout "Flesh and the Devil".
My point is that you prove your lack of credibility each time you diss this woman because it's obvious that you know nothing about her or her work. You're not very complex as an artist as she is and your contempt highlights that.
Mzuri it's been established that I am not Kola Boof, in fact I'm sure several people from this board will be meeting me in N.Y. when Kola appears there this fall. You continue to demonstrate what a crass and non-intellectual person you are. There's no way I could get up in the morning and spew such vile ugliness as you do every day on these boards and it's obvious you're an unhappy, bitter person.
Yukio, I posted my photograph so that you can see what a WHITE Arab Yemenese looks like, though someone like yourself would claim that I am a "woman of color". I respect your very intelligent posts and I like your perspective a great deal because you actually want us to be a family, to be united as a people and I think that's very noble and should be taken seriously. What I have to agree with Kola on is that African Americans seem to disregard the identity of black people as casually and as disrespectfully as the white people who once owned them. There is just no denying it. When you feel absolutely nothing in calling Kathleen Cleever a 'black woman' in the face of a continent where black women are invisible and have been chattel for centuries, I as an Arab person can absolutely understand the rage that African women like Kola and Dahomeyhosi (sp) feel. Their identity is being usurped, as Kola puts it, as you reiterate your slave master's standards and ignore the standards that all African tribes and cultures have always held for themselves. You and Schakspir can rattle off hundreds of tribes and languages, but it won't change the fact that Dogon, Fulani, Yoruba and all these people have the same exact standards for equating who is 'black' and for them it is decided by who appears to be black in color, features and hair texture. Though there are a very few yellow colored people in these tribes, it is also known that race mixing has occured in all of these tribes over the last several hundred years and these people acknowledge that fact, they don't try to paint everyone with one identity as African Americans do.
Kola says blacks in this country were brainwashed on slave plantations and after so many hundreds of years on plantations now believe that they came here having these beliefs and I tend to agree with her.
I happen to know for a fact that none of the West African tribes Schakspir mentioned came her believing that there is any such thing as a 'light skinned' black person. Those labels are the result of colonialism and slavery, they are not indigenous.
My children are more than just 'black' and I think it would be very damaging to limit them to only one portion of their racial identity. My children look very East Indian and it's clear they are mixed so that is more healthy to acknowledge it. At the same time, it's important not to take away black people's identity as so many mulatto people are being encouraged to stand in for both groups. As Kola has asked, when will the 'blacks' be allowed to represent themselves if mulattos can be both black and mulatto when it's convenient to serve white supremacist purposes of extolling lightness?
She makes a very powerful point. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4970
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:27 am: |
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Nafisa_goma Kola Spoof - What's been established is that you are a chronic LIAR who lies about EVERYTHING! Look at your Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 04:40 pm post above - didn't you say that you wouldn't respond for "several days." But like the obsessed clingy lying lunatic that you are, you haven't gone anywhere. You're like algae, only worse.
And speaking of Kola being in New York, she's supposedly there right now, huh?
http://www.thumperscorner.com/cgi/discus/show.cgi?tpc=1&post=79972#POST79972
Waiting for your lame excuse on that one.
Like I said, you're a L-I-A-R!!!
You lie about E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G!!!
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 143
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 6 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:43 am: |
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Mzuri you're a pathetic woman and I suppose these boards are your life.
Like any other woman, I can change my mind at will and often do so.
Kola doesn't come to New York until Sunday, September 16th.
No one has lied about anything, but as usual, you twist things to serve your own deluded desperation. You're so jealous of this woman that you can't even breathe. If I felt the way about someone that you claim to feel about me and my posts, I wouldn't even acknowledge that person.
Has that ever crossed your pea-brain? You're a hateful truly ugly person, Mzuri. Just plain nasty.
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 144
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:58 am: |
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Mzuri:
Schak - Perhaps you should consider writing a book about the real history of Blacks in America, because the points you made about the slaves not being able to communicate with each other never really occurred to me, probably because I never thought about it. On Roots, all the slaves spoke American
That book's already been written. It's called "Flesh and the Devil by Kola Boof" and it shows how the Africans were brought to this country in the 1600's and all spoke different languages and were forced to "pair up" with enemy tribes.
The couple Shango and Night are forced to marry and can't even speak to or understand each other.
The book also shows how the original Africans were lynched off to keep them from passing their languages and customs to their "spawned offspring".
This is too hilarious!
Mzuri, forgive me, but I imagine you to have crooked teeth and spit in the corners of your mouth. That's how vapid and hateful you come off.
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4971
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:00 am: |
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Why are you hurling accusations against me? I'm simply pointing out your lies.
Why would you state that you wouldn't be back for several days anyway? What causes you to say those things? It's not like anyone misses you when you're not here.
And why would you have this "Nafisa_goma" person, who is supposedly Kola Spoof's personal public relations, agent and publicist, come to this forum and post things such as
http://www.thumperscorner.com/cgi/discus/show.cgi?tpc=1&post=79972#POST79972
but now you've "changed your mind"? You publicly announce future events but you're not really committed to make those appearances??? Don't you realize that these types of actions are why you lack credibility. Your constant episodes of charades and lies is why no one believes anything that Nafisa_goma Kola Spoof says.
Why don't you simply cut the crap???
And by the way dimwit, all those times that I don't respond to you, that's me not acknowledging you and your played out antics.
Have a NICE day!
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 145
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:05 am: |
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Mzuri you're a pathetic woman and I suppose these boards are your life.
Like any other woman, I can change my mind at will and often do so.
Kola doesn't come to New York until Sunday, September 16th.
No one has lied about anything, but as usual, you twist things to serve your own deluded desperation. You're so jealous of this woman that you can't even breathe. If I felt the way about someone that you claim to feel about me and my posts, I wouldn't even acknowledge that person.
Has that ever crossed your pea-brain? You're a hateful truly ugly person, Mzuri.
Just plain nasty.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8849
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 5 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:26 am: |
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I wonder has it ever occurred to nafisa boof that her deceitful, duplicituous, self-serving, egocentric BS is very nasty, itself, as well as disgusting and insulting to people's intelligence. barf |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2425
Registered: 01-2004
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:46 am: |
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Nafisa_goma: Let me explain to you my point. I know what Kola thinks, and she knows what I think. We disagree.
Also, I know what a white arab looks like. But you are missing my point. I point is that standards depends on time and place. And earlier I said African Americans and Africans monopolize these notions of blackness.
So in the U.S., you aint white! In fact as late as the early 1970s in Canton, MS...you'd be call a yellow nigga, and be lynched and shot with the rest of us...this is a real history for some of us. You couldn't say that I'm a white Arab, and think they would care, engage in a discourse, and listen to what Kola thinks about these issues...you would be another undocumented statistic....No joke!
I also know in Brasil, the color situation is different; in south Africa, the color situation is different, etc...I am not saying anyone is right, but that we need to stop and look around and acknowledge that there are other perspectives, and agree to acknowledge them. This doesn't require one to change their standards of blackness, but it helps for people to understand the particulars of people's history and the dynamics of their own movements....this is what the article was about....I'm still engaging this article.
To take me seriously is to respect that I believe we can agree to disagree. That means in a nutshell that you or an African or a black American or an African American can tell me what they think is blackness and I can choose to disagree.
Put another way, you claim that I "you feel absolutely nothing in calling Kathleen Cleever a 'black woman' in the face of a continent where black women are invisible and have been chattel for centuries, I as an Arab person can absolutely understand the rage that African women like Kola and Dahomeyhosi (sp) feel."
First, I embrace a range. KC is not the standard, first of all. I never said that. But I can both respect what Africans understand. And at the same time respect my own history in the U.S. of hundreds of years of black women being chattel. Do you see my point. Much of what you, Kola, and others have said erases my history, so that my people's notions of life have no significance.
The fact of the matter is this, regardless of what some African Americans want to think, when African women were raped in this country or when they commingled with white men because they chose to [though being a slave doesn't give one really too much choice], they produced what some of you call "half-castes." These children were loved however, by their mothers, embraced within African families here. Centuries of this and the variety of hues of Africans themselves produced this range of colors.
In ONE black family here, in the Caribbean, Latin America, you will find that range, that variety, and while there may be colorism, skirmishes, etc...and they are legendary, to these families these individuals are not "half-castes" they redboned...LOL! They are yellow...LOL! They are family.
I know what some African standards are...and I have mine, and I understand both...and thats what I'm interested in.
Finally, Schakspir and I are talkin about more than standards of blackness.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8854
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 12:39 pm: |
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I guess kola is dictating to nafishy gomez, the response to Yukio's post. Or at least this is what kola expects us to believe. watta psychopath. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1051
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 02:07 pm: |
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Yukio: Schakspir, Africans WITHIN their nations did criticize their "leaders." The period you are talking about (1300s-1500s) was the Arab or Muslim trade not the transatlantic trade.
Schakspir: Is this criticism documented? Besides, I still believe Africans did not do enough to bring a halt to the Transatlantic trade. I believe that they could have at least tempered it, but for various reasons chose not to. My point there is that were it not for the cooperation of a certain group of greedy, backstabbing Africans, the Transatlantic Trade would not have gone on the way it had. And my point in bringing up West African states of the 1300s-1500s is that some of those states still existed when the Transatlantic trade began, including Songhai(which fell in 1591), or the Yoruba states, with the same institutions/social structures. However, is it documented that a commoner within the Kingdom of Dahomey, for example, dissented and called out the royalty/rulers/bureaucracy within that kingdom for its heavy involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade?
Yukio: First of all, the ol shibboleth that Africans were so diverse that they could not communicate is ol hat! No one embraces that idea anymore.
Schakspir: true. West Africans (like you said) involved in slave trading with Europeans developed a lingua franca in order to work with them. But the slaves taken from the interior developed a lingua franca IN THE UNITED STATES that later became known as African-American English.
Yukio: ...there was communication, there was the replenishing of African culture, especially in the deep South, where rice plantations gave slaves greater autonomy than slaves working with tobacco.
Schakspir: Here, in America, in order for us to communicate, in the end we had to use the pidgin English lingua franca. African languages died out here in the U.S. If this is not so, then point to where native-born African-Americans are still speaking 17th or 18th century Mandinka. At best only a few words survive. Compare this with Cuba or Haiti, where vodoun/lucumi rituals are still conducted in the original Yoruba.
Have you been to Bahia, or Haiti? There you will see stronger survivals of West African cultures than even the Georgia Sea Islands. Even the Georgia Sea Islands, or Louisiana, is an anomaly within the United States, culturally speaking. Our culture (Afro-American) is obviously rooted in West Africa, and here and there some strong African traits survive, but if you really want to see how much Southern black culture differs from that of West Africans you need only visit Haiti, where(in slavery times) the high mortality rate amongst the slaves necessitated a constant replenishing directly from West Africa. (Actually, a lot of the slaves brought to the American South in the 1700s came from the West Indies and not directly from Africa.)
I have several close friends from Nigeria, of Ibo ethnicity. One of them told me that in the village that he is from, people speak a certain language that is almost completely different from the language spoken in another village less than half a mile away, in the same country, in the same vicinity.
BTW, thanks for handing Dahomeyahosi's ass back to her. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2426
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 05:41 pm: |
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Schakspir: Is this criticism documented? Besides, I still believe Africans did not do enough to bring a halt to the Transatlantic trade. I believe that they could have at least tempered it, but for various reasons chose not to. My point there is that were it not for the cooperation of a certain group of greedy, backstabbing Africans, the Transatlantic Trade would not have gone on the way it had.
Schakspir, I get you but you are overstating your point. First of all, Africans during that period, as they do now, viewed each other first in terms of ethnic group, but also kinships groups, religious groups, language groups, etc… So to call them “backstabbing Africans,” presumes some kind of basis of solidarity that was not there. In other words, they identified themselves not as Africans or a “racial” identity but by their ethnicity. Also, the transatlantic slave trade was so profitable and so transformative of some regions of African society that some African traders sold some of their own ethnic group.
Schakspir:
And my point in bringing up West African states of the 1300s-1500s is that some of those states still existed when the Transatlantic trade began, including Songhai(which fell in 1591), or the Yoruba states, with the same institutions/social structures. However, is it documented that a commoner within the Kingdom of Dahomey, for example, dissented and called out the royalty/rulers/bureaucracy within that kingdom for its heavy involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade?
The Songhai empire may have fell in 1591, but it really declined with the in 1530s. With that said, and what I stated above and before, this empire was primarily concerned with its own expansion. And being an empire meant that it included various ethnic groups of various languages who retained much of their own culture, values, and folkways as well as assimilated to the empire. These prisoners of war were often slaves, who became administrators, soldiers or workers, and of course they participated in the Muslim North African slave trade. . Thus, the empire was never fully behind Sonni Ali and Askia Mohammed.
In the case of the Yoruba people, they actually participated in the trade. And, the Dahomey, initially, abstained from the trade during the 17th c. But by the late 18th c., the Dahomey had joined the trade, becoming a “key West African center for exporting slaves,” according to John Hope Franklin. I hope Dahomeyahoi will shed more light on this.
Schakspir: Here, in America, in order for us to communicate, in the end we had to use the pidgin English lingua franca. African languages died out here in the U.S. If this is not so, then point to where native-born African-Americans are still speaking 17th or 18th century Mandinka. At best only a few words survive. Compare this with Cuba or Haiti, where vodoun/lucumi rituals are still conducted in the original Yoruba.
I do not think we disagree. I’m responding to your earlier extremism. I am speaking in degrees. Of course African languages died out. And yes, we do not hold the same customs or perform the same rituals. When I say that African American culture is mostly African, I am talking about the intangibles… the lyrical nature of our music and language, the rhythm of our music, the performance in our dance, our embrace of colors. Again, my point is that we are not what I call “black Americans,” an American with black skin but bereft of a culture that is comprised of African culture. And no, I haven’t been to Brasil, and yes they—as a group—are more African than we are. But if you socialize among black folk in different parts of the South, those parts less assimilated to urban life….you will see an essentially African people. Again, you are a writer, so I expect you to appreciate nuance. LOL!
I am Dahomeyahoi’s brother, that is, from my side. I do not know how she views me. In other words, I must respectfully reject your assertion “thanks for handing Dahomeyahosi's ass back to her.” And I reject that assertion, Schakspir, similarly as your brother.
Finally, regarding documentation, I have been sporadically reading African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame by Anne Bailey.
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 146
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 7 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 07:55 pm: |
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Mr. Yukio,
I have been all over this country for many years and even when I was in the company of my black husband (who is from Columbus, Ohio btw) no one ever mistook me for 'yellow nigga' or 'black'.
You can look at my photo again. The closest I have been mistook for is 'Latina', but mainly 'East Indian'.
Most people look at me and think I am 'Arab/middle eastern' (which is correct) and if not that, then 'East Indian'.
So there is no where in the United States that African Americans have mistaken me for a 'yellow nigga' even when I was with my black husband.
Additionally, my views do not come from Kola, and in fact, Cynique and yourself should both take note--Kola's views do not even come from Kola.
We are expressing the views of our region just as you are expressing the views of your region. Are you aware of where Yemen is?
When Kola appears in New York this fall she will be introduced on stage by a famous white blond blue eyed Arab woman who is from our part of the world and also shares the views of Kola and myself, so please, this is not Kola speaking, this is North Africa and the middle east speaking.
I have never challenged or disagreed with the way that African Americans view color or race, but I definitely believe that they should be respectful of the fact that most of the blacks in the rest of the world do not share their standards and in fact see them as insulting and that includes the West Indies, Brazil and everywhere else. Although I do feel that mixed blacks and blacks are proud to share 'African descent' universally, I have never encountered black people who embrace the 'one drop' rule outside the U.S. and since African people do not dictate to African Americans how to view their families it would be nice if African Americans could respect the standards of the world's original people without demonizing them. Keep in mind that before being enslaved, you and Cynique thought the way they did.
The reason that Africans do not generally challenge the standards of African Americans is because they fully understand these views come from being slaves and taught by Europeans to think this way and as an Arab I know that Arabs forced continental Africans to believe in the ritual of female circumcision so that after hundreds of years most Africans now believe they were always Muslim and always circumcised female children.
Last up, you are wrong in asserting that 'black slave women' of America embraced their half-caste children with love. There is much documentation in books by Mary Bethune Mcloud, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and others that these women had to be beaten and lynched in the beginning as they in fact were horrified to produce non-black children. Over time and slave conditioning, they were removed from their original cultural concepts and took on their 'slave thinking'. Many whites have documented the original reaction that black men had to these children (whites often kept them in the house originally so they wouldn't be killed by black slave men).
Cynique, I'm flattered that you think I'm Kola. She's been an inspiration for years. Thank you.
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2429
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:01 pm: |
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Nafisa_goma:
I have been all over this country for many years and even when I was in the company of my black husband (who is from Columbus, Ohio btw) no one ever mistook me for 'yellow nigga' or 'black'.
I wrote "So in the U.S., you aint white! In fact as late as the early 1970s in Canton, MS...you'd be call a yellow nigga, and be lynched and shot with the rest of us...this is a real history for some of us. You couldn't say that I'm a white Arab, and think they would care, engage in a discourse, and listen to what Kola thinks about these issues...you would be another undocumented statistic....No joke!"
Key terms: EARLY 1970s [not 2007, not 1990s, not 1980s]; canton, mississippi--one of the racist town in the Deep South at the time.
My point: to take African American history[including the violence of black bodies from the beginning to the present] seriously is not to confuse the one drop rule WITH how a)the lived experience of racism and b) how "black" families comprised a range of hues, and finally c)culture is a living, ever-changing, and ddynamic, and few nations or ethnic groups hold on to all of their culture as it was in the past. It is did so, it would die, that is unless is it not affected by TIME.
In other words, as you put it, I am expressing the views, as I interpret them, of my region. Notice that I am expressing my own views, and that I am interpreting, so that I am not trying to speak for "my region," but myself.
Nafisa_Goma:
I definitely believe that they should be respectful of the fact that most of the blacks in the rest of the world do not share their standards and in fact see them as insulting and that includes the West Indies, Brazil and everywhere else.
Careful now, I said this already. And suggested, in fact, that Africans "should be respectful of the fact that most of the blacks in the rest of the world do not share their standards and in fact see them as insulting and that includes the West Indies, Brazil and everywhere else."
In fact, in many parts of the Caribbean, especially the British Caribbean, the standard of blackness is closer to that of the U.S. than Africa. In the French, Spanish, and Portuguese Caribbean and Brasil, however, there is a range of identifications that some folk continue to embrace.
But, from the article above, if you take it seriously, it is clear that things are "a-changing."
Nafisa_Goma: Additionally, my views do not come from Kola, and in fact, Cynique and yourself should both take note--Kola's views do not even come from Kola.
I mention her because you keep telling me what she thinks, as if I did not know.
Nafisa_Goma:
The reason that Africans do not generally challenge the standards of African Americans is because they fully understand these views come from being slaves and taught by Europeans to think this way and as an Arab I know that Arabs forced continental Africans to believe in the ritual of female circumcision so that after hundreds of years most Africans now believe they were always Muslim and always circumcised female children.
People can not live in the past. Culture, as I stated above, is a living thing. People live in their moment as best as they can, and they change accordingly. And as they change they adopt new values, new ways of seeing themselves, and how that reflects their present and their survival. One of those ways was to embrace a different notion of blackness than that of their ancestors. Among African Americans, this “embrace” was not complete. Primarily because of colorism, that is, the preference fair or lighter skinned people of African descent people received than the darker skinned people of African descent. And, of course, the embrace of this colorism among the fairer or lightered skinned people. But it should be kept in mind, to be fair, that not all lighted skinned embrace this privileging by white people. And to be fair, these lighter skinned people often exploited and even became planters and slave-owners.
Nafisa_Goma:
Last up, you are wrong in asserting that 'black slave women' of America embraced their half-caste children with love. There is much documentation in books by Mary Bethune Mcloud, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and others that these women had to be beaten and lynched in the beginning as they in fact were horrified to produce non-black children. Over time and slave conditioning, they were removed from their original cultural concepts and took on their 'slave thinking'. Many whites have documented the original reaction that black men had to these children (whites often kept them in the house originally so they wouldn't be killed by black slave men).
Again, you misrepresent what I have written. I wrote:
The fact of the matter is this, regardless of what some African Americans want to think, when African women were RAPED in this country or when they commingled with white men because they chose to [THOUGH BEING A SLAVE DOESN’T GIVE ONE REALLY TOO MUCH CHOICE], they produced what some of you call "half-castes."
Furthermore, I have many times, and even in this thread indicated that black people, as well as women, were physical exploited. But one should make a difference between, on the one hand, being horrified because of being raped, AND on the other hand being “horrified to produce non-black children.” This doesn’t mean that they were excited to birth the children of their masters, but please quote for me a source that says that the majority of these women were horrified and did not except their own children because they were not black. My point, is that the horror that you speak of, was on account of the rape not the children being a “half-caste.”
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 149
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:40 pm: |
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Yukio:
In fact, in many parts of the Caribbean, especially the British Caribbean, the standard of blackness is closer to that of the U.S. than Africa.
No, sir.
The standard is closer to SOUTH AFRICA.
The blacks and mulattos are designated with separate racial categories unlike the U.S.
In the British Carribean, for the most part,
blacks and mulattos even lived in separated
neighborhoods just as in Africa blacks and
mulattos do not generally live together.
BUT--everywhere in the world, we are aware
that in the U.S. blacks and mulattos live
together and were considered 'black', which
is widely understood and not challenged by
blacks from outside the U.S. I don't see
Africans asking African Americans to change
their standard, but I do see African Americans
not understanding from an 'intellectual standpoint' that they insult 'original blacks'
when they try to force their slave standard
onto those people, and African Americans are
very pushy and certainly do this more than they
realize.
QUOTING SOURCE--it's been years since college and I had the book in front of me, but Angela Y. Davis did a book about black feminists of the 18th century and there was a speech by Ida. B. Wells in which Ms. Wells stated something to the effect of:
"When black slave women first saw their WHITE slave master's child come out of their wombs, they felt obliterated by the children's lack of Africaness, hair and general lightness of skin that West Africans were unaccustomed to. They complained these children were 'ugly' (by their standards) and many women drowned the newborns claiming they were 'deformed' or 'possessed'".
She noted that most had never even seen a 'half-caste' before, so to them, it was deformity.
Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth's autobiographies have similar accounts of early black slave women refusing to claim these children.
In the movie "BELOVED" there is a scene where an African woman explains to a child that her mother was raped by dozens of white men but the only one whose children she 'named' were the children she had by a black man slave--she refused to name the other children.
Did anyone else see that movie?
Mr. Yukio, I am not black, but I am a woman.
I don't see how in the world you can claim that women from the other side of the planet who are black skinned, kinky haired and most of whom had never seen mulattos before would not be initially repulsed to give birth to children who don't look like their own people, especially considering the dynamic in PRE-colonial African culture between African men and African women.
Many of these 'slave women' would committ suicide rather than have African men see them birthing non-black babies. You don't seem to acknowledge all these factors.
You have got to be absolutely insane to think that a woman in 1700's Norway or Sweden wouldn't be horrified to face her society holding a black baby.
We're not talking about the modern world here and African people are generally just as nationalistic as Europeans are.
I was married to a black man who I love very much and I myself struggled with these feelings of having a child that was not exactly from 'my people' and our range of looks.
I had to get used to my children being substantially dark looking in comparison to me and the family that I come from.
At no time did I not love my children, I certainly did, but there was a 'novelty' feeling of breast-feeding a child with a brown face and there were times when my children were nursing and I questioned whether they were really mines or not.
My husband expressed similar feelings because his hair texture is so drastically different from our children's and it bothers him when the kids ask him why his hair is not like theirs.
How can we pretend that these differences are not there?
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Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 264
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 4 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:50 pm: |
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Yukio,
Sure western cultures have oral histories but they are not valued. Written history is the only history that is treasured and taken as having true worth in the West. In the absences of written histories you find Western researchers digging up bones and painfully trying to piece together stories of the past throughout Africa. Westerners do this because they don't consider our oral histories to be reliable. They dig all around us rather than listen and then write their fairytales. For Westerners, written lies are preferred to spoken truths. I do not take their stories of us to be of any more value than they find my words. And certainly being born of a particular ethnic group doesn't make you an expert unless you take the time to listen to the stories that have been cradled just for the purpose of meeting your ears. There is a reason why they say an elder dying in Africa is like a library burning down. I am the link, my nephews and nieces will be the links. Those libraries are under constant construction.
Any thinking person refuses to swallow ideas whole and so it is good that you refuse. But there is a disconnect when black people began to swallow the ideas of whites. I hope I have never asserted that I know the inner workings of African minds, or to speak for all Africans. I can only speak for myself and the proud people who raised me....all my Beninese aunties and uncles (whose names I still can't say because it would be disrespectful, as they are my elders) when I say that mixed race people are not considered black. And for us it doesn't matter if the race mixing is recent or historic. You are your ancestors...all of them. You are not the 1/4th you admire, the 3/8th's that gave you your almond eyes, the three-fourths that sheltered you when the other fourth didn't, or the one-eigth that white people say you are because whites refuse to accept you. You are all of them, the good and the bad. So when mixed people say they are black, I am deeply confused. Where I'm from we are our ancestors and we call on them constantly. Let me repeat....I am my ancestors. People with mixed ancestry are understood to be in limbo because their ancestors themselves can not unite to guide them. Their ancestors themselves are fighting, of separate minds and values. To invite mixed ancestry is to invite discord and endless confusion.
We got to this point because you insist that a person like Kathleen Cleaver is black and I insist that she is not. You will not change my mind on this. I refused to be grouped with such a person without putting up a fight. I put Ellen Sirleaf Johnson and Bob Marley and all of mixed white and black ancestry, in the same bucket but when the subject is so clearly unblack as Kathleen or Clayton Powell it is like a kick in the face to see that she has spent a lifetime masquerading. You say that your legitimate knowledge of self allows for this masquerading. Ok then it is clear that the values that you subscribe to and the ones the I subscribe to have a very small intersection if they are not entirely disjoint sets. And I will not challenge you to change because it is not my place. But when I walk into a thread where Africans are being lambasted for refusing to kowtow to white definitions I will speak up for our integrity to not be grouped with such people. I will speak up for the integrity of my ancestors out of respect for myself. |
Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 152
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:10 pm: |
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Dahomeyahosi:
But when I walk into a thread where Africans are being lambasted for refusing to kowtow to white definitions I will speak up for our integrity to not be grouped with such people. I will speak up for the integrity of my ancestors out of respect for myself.
That is what I was referring to when I said that I understand the rage that Africans often feel on this issue.
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Nafisa_goma
Regular Poster
Username: Nafisa_goma
Post Number: 153
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:17 pm: |
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Mr. Yukio,
I have to go, but you are now my favorite poster on this board.
I love the way you think and I hope it spreads.
We need to find common ground, love and acceptance throughout the diaspora, and I would like your vision to be more commonplace, because I do believe that the world is changing and that we could benefit if people of color united via our cultures which all lead back to the old world.
Kola disagrees with me on this, but I think it would be better to form a 'colored coalition'.
I do, however, feel that blacks should have their own designation and that everyone's perspective mixtures should be acknowledged, because it's unhealthy when a person is only allowed to celebrate one part of who they are. Mixed people should not be limited to one of their bloods.
Great debating with you!
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Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 265
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:21 pm: |
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Schakspir,
I never said you don't have cultural integrity. I said you have little AFRICAN cultural integrity. If you did you I'm guessing you wouldn't join the depths of Urbanscribe and congratulate your fellow poster for handing my backside back to me. What does that mean anyway? Please explain to an ignorant African, relatively fresh off the boat.
But I digress. Black Americans do have cultural integrity. You speak English, overwhelmingly practice Islam and Christianity (and some even Judaism). You are materialistic to the core. That makes you American, and we both know where the roots of American culture comes from...rhymes with Western Europe. Collard greens and being able to keep a beat do not constitute African culture. When whites keep you out of their institutions you make your own to mimic them and therefore black Santa Claus, Miss Black America, and the Jack and Jill club spring up.
Kola chastised me before for not understanding the slave experience that stripped your languages. I am sure your experience was horrific but if you admit that you started from scratch you admit that your Africanness currently means nothing to you and nothing is left of it then I don't have to say anything....for you have succesfully argued for me. As the Kikuyu say there is no need for a sock, the shoe fits without one. But sweetheart it's not necessary to invent an identity when your slavemasters commands and even their blood define you. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on the perspective of the individual half-caste, those rapists are in your family and you wouldn't exist without them.
FYI our oppressive situation bears little resemblance to yours. The civil rights movement was all about drinking at the same water fountain, going to school next to, and eating lunch with Becky and Billy. As an added bonus you now have your own authentic Miss Americas. West African independence was about political and economic control of African lands. West Africans have never lived with large populations of whites nor do we yearn to paint Santa Claus black to feel better about ourselves. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8856
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:21 pm: |
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Here's a short break from the heavy stuff. Nafisa boof is flattered to be compared to the person who she admires, which is to say that kola admires herself. So what else is new? LOL. OK, folks. Carry on with the discussion. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 266
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:52 pm: |
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Yukio,
Dahomey as the "kingdom" is a direct result of the slave trade. If it weren't for the slave trade Dahomey wouldn't have existed. Several Dahomean kings were notorious for inventing wars to fuel the supply of slaves. Benin has apologized for its role in the trans-atlantic slave trade but I don't think the apology was sincere. Beninese are known as "human traffickers" to this very day. Unfortunately the border between Nigeria and Benin has been closed because of human and oil smuggling.
Am I personally proud or even ambivalent about Dahomey's role? No, I am not so I take responsibility for it and deserve the lashings that come my way. This is because I am my ancestors and unlike whites who absolve themselves from the situation by saying that they were not alive during the time (and Arabs who frankly don't give a damn), I was alive then just as I am now. There are many slaves who have returned to Benin, mostly from Brazil and Haiti. They are called aggoudah and we have celebrated their return and performed the rituals to welcome them back. We have also performed rituals for those who never made it back.
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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4981
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 10:57 pm: |
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Well. She claims she's not Kola and that she's not really Black. But she dictates about how Blacks and African Americans should classify themselves and she knows all about the diaspora. She has verbal peculiarities that are distinct to Kola like using "mines" and now she has a "favorite poster" and continues in her favorite activity of taunting her imaginary adversaries. And of course she had to mention that her Black "offsprings" are obsessed with hair texture.
Meanwhile we're still waiting for an answer as to why Kola's entire summer itinerary of speaking engagements has been cancelled. I mean, as Kola's publicist shouldn't she have made a special thread announcing this cancellation or retracted her original announcements? Isn't that what professional PR people are supposed to do?
Kola bicth, get on your fukcing job! You're slippin!!!
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1052
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:41 pm: |
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Another Kola Boof fantasy, brought to you by Nafisagoma-Seaburn, Inc. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2432
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:52 pm: |
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Nafisa_Goma:
No, sir.
The standard is closer to SOUTH AFRICA.
The blacks and mulattos are designated with separate racial categories unlike the U.S.
In the British Carribean, for the most part,
blacks and mulattos even lived in separated
neighborhoods just as in Africa blacks and
mulattos do not generally live together.
The British Caribbean does not have nor had a long legal policy differentiating the so-called “Bantu” from the coloreds as was the case in S. Africa [and I’m not talking about Indians either].
People from the British Caribbean may differentiate these people verbally but not through a formal legal structure, as was the case in the “latin” Caribbean.
BUT--everywhere in the world, we are aware
that in the U.S. blacks and mulattos live
together and were considered 'black', which
is widely understood and not challenged by
blacks from outside the U.S. I don't see
Africans asking African Americans to change
their standard, but I do see African Americans
not understanding from an 'intellectual standpoint' that they insult 'original blacks'
when they try to force their slave standard
onto those people, and African Americans are
very pushy and certainly do this more than they
realize.
I think it goes BOTH ways, it is not just African Americans.
"When black slave women first saw their WHITE slave master's child come out of their wombs, they felt obliterated by the children's lack of Africaness, hair and general lightness of skin that West Africans were unaccustomed to. They complained these children were 'ugly' (by their standards) and many women drowned the newborns claiming they were 'deformed' or 'possessed'".
I need the source. Wells has written much. And, to be fair, this prose does not sound like the kind Wells would have used in the 19th nor early 20th c. But, I await the source.
So, according to these accounts, the majority of these children were not accepted in the slave community? I doubt that! Besides, as you say due to the slave conditionally, obvious these children were eventually accepted to the community.
You wrote:
You have got to be absolutely insane to think that a woman in 1700's Norway or Sweden wouldn't be horrified to face her society holding a black baby.
Again, you misrepresent what I say. I am saying that a) the rape was the main horror and that b) that these children were eventually accepted into the slave community. In fact, I said “This doesn’t mean that they were excited to birth the children of their masters.”
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1053
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 11:53 pm: |
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Dahomey: But I digress. Black Americans do have cultural integrity. You speak English, overwhelmingly practice Islam and Christianity (and some even Judaism). You are materialistic to the core. That makes you American, and we both know where the roots of American culture comes from...rhymes with Western Europe. Collard greens and being able to keep a beat do not constitute African culture. When whites keep you out of their institutions you make your own to mimic them and therefore black Santa Claus, Miss Black America, and the Jack and Jill club spring up.
Schakspir: Please, don't patronize us. When you Beninese can run a country that Mother France can't barge her way into at will, and when you stop using the Franc(!!!!), then maybe you can afford to get on your high horse. And typically in your smug, holier-than-thou, blacker-than-thou "Africanness" you very conveniently forget why we are here, which is why I got into this convoluted hair-splitting arguement with Yukio: you guys BASICALLY sold us away to European slavers, who then completely screwed us up the following four centuries. But of course, you can't stand us because we have white and Asiatic(Native American)blood in our veins. If I wasn't mistaken, you sound almost like a more sophisticated and articulate Kola Boof.
Yukio is a nice guy, and considers you family. I, on the other hand, am not so nice. Africans like you are a deep part of the problem. Every time you say something about our history or our culture it is always full of condescension. I have known plenty of Africans like yourself(if you are African), and it's as amusing as it is irritating to see you so smug about your heritage when France still has you in its back pocket. |
Brownbeauty123
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 2016
Registered: 03-2006
Rating:
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 12:14 am: |
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"you can't stand us because we have white and Asiatic(Native American)blood in our veins"
Speak for yourself. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2433
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 12:33 am: |
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Dahomeyahosi: Thank you for the information about Benin.
Here is my response to your previous post:
We definitely disagree. And I have always respected that. But I never “lambasted [Africans] for refusing to kowtow to white definitions.”
In fact, I have been stating that there need to be respect for differences in standards. And that these differences do not mean that we have to be combative, disrespectful, or arrogant. And again, I apologize for my tone!
I mentioned K. Cleaver not as the standard, but indeed part of the range of what is considered “black” among African Americans, and that this notion was beginning to be engaged in Latin America. Remember, I was talking about the article, which referenced questions not only of being black but color and the re-defining of blackness in Latin America. Again, I never said she was the standard nor did I lambast Africans for refusing to kowtow to white definitions.
You wrote:
Sure western cultures have oral histories but they are not valued.
When I mentioned oral cultures, I was primarily talking about African American oral culture. And part of my point, specifically as I engaged Schakspir, is that we are not solely Americans with black skin, but that our culture is derivative of Africa and Europeans. And within African American culture, oral culture is respected [one can see this debate in the 1920s between DuBois and Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance, for example].
Our music is our history, in fact. From work songs on the plantations, to spirituals, to the blues, to hip hop, we have always valued orality, and within this music we have discussed not only our emotion feelings but our emotional and political history over time.
What I am suggesting is that while many Africans see African Americans as Americans, over many centuries African Americans have used their ancestors culture to recreate a culture that is a fusion of their history here in the U.S. And that this history is not solely limited to white definitions, but to how African Americans see themselves. This is on account of African Americans own self-definition and that good or bad this includes the embrace of people K. Cleaver's color, but without saying that she is the standard, nor claiming that all African Americans embrace folk her complexion. And that this tension too is on account of our history and culture, here. This, I believe, in on account of being physically separated from what but at the same time always among them. And more importantly, that we are a numerally a minority, and so their ideas not only held sway because of their power but also because they were/are every where we turn.
As you know and have said, if I recall correctly, or at least suggested, European colonialism did not eradicate African culture. I think this had to do both with the resilience of Africans, but also that Africans were exploited on their own territory, and therefore remained the numerical majority. And in the case of settler colonialism, such as Kenya and South Africa, for example, white remained the numerical minority...[excuse the long comment].
Also, that while clearly racism and slavery forced certain notions of blackness upon African people and their ancestors in British America and then the U.S., that these same Africans and their ancestors established a distinct culture that is derivative of all of its ancestors, but distinct from white Americans. And I call this African American culture.
Respectfully,
y. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2434
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 12:41 am: |
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Let me make a quick point. I disagree and agree with both Dahomeyahois and Schakspir. I do think both of you can [and perhaps should] make a distinction between your comments about each other and their respective groups that you are talking about. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1054
Registered: 12-2005
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 01:09 am: |
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BB123, shut up. You're not even black, just some dumb white boy. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2438
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 06:03 am: |
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Not to take sides, BB123...but if I understand Dahomeyahosi correctly very few of us--African Americans--are "black."
As she says:
"for us it doesn't matter if the race mixing is recent or historic. You are your ancestors...all of them. You are not the 1/4th you admire, the 3/8th's that gave you your almond eyes, the three-fourths that sheltered you when the other fourth didn't, or the one-eigth that white people say you are because whites refuse to accept you. You are all of them, the good and the bad. So when mixed people say they are black, I am deeply confused. Where I'm from we are our ancestors and we call on them constantly."
I think very few of us ancestors of slaves in the U.S. can say that our blood is with out the European and Native American.
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Misty
Veteran Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 913
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 08:49 am: |
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FYI our oppressive situation bears little resemblance to yours. The civil rights movement was all about drinking at the same water fountain, going to school next to, and eating lunch with Becky and Billy. As an added bonus you now have your own authentic Miss Americas. West African independence was about political and economic control of African lands. West Africans have never lived with large populations of whites nor do we yearn to paint Santa Claus black to feel better about ourselves.
and so was the civil rights movement....it wasnt about being around whites...blacks felt the need to integrate because we were living separate but unequal. meaning white institutuins would give blacks schools their hand-me-downs....of course the black community wasnt nearly as financially powerful as the white community. so the civil rights movement was more about having access to better schools and better facilities.
yes it can also be argued that we were in some ways better off without integration but im simply stating the mindset of the blacks who faught for integration. |
Misty
Veteran Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 914
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 08:57 am: |
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West Africans have never lived with large populations of whites nor do we yearn to paint Santa Claus black to feel better about ourselves.
no but many west africans yearn to paint themselves white to feel better about themselves. if this wasnt thew case then africa wouldnt surpass america in its consumption of bleaching cream.
i seriously dont think todays africans (the groups that have been exposed to western culture)are any closer to their culture than black americans. not only that but most africans ive met personally tend to prefer to hang around whites than they do black americans. so really what does that say ? especially being that it was whites (and other afriocans) who wreaked havoc on their continent, not american blacks and its still happening to this day |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 268
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 09:58 am: |
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Misty when you say that Africans are no closer to their cultures simply because they prefer to hang out with white Americans you are implying that to hang out with black Americans is consistent with African culture. Black Americans are not seen by Africans as being culturally African for many reasons so this idea is absurd. I don't have any black American friends and I'd love to hear your argument for why that makes me less African. My closest American friends are native (Tuscarora) and Asian. But, like most Africans, I live in an area which is heavily West African and those are the black people I congregate with. Given that we don't have the race based identity that black Americans live under, can you give me a logical reason why Africans should want to be around black Americans?
I can't say that I personally like white Americans or any whites but I understand why Africans choose to be around them over black Americans. Africans come here largely for economic success, not to make friends. Our relationships are driven by that so of course the relationships formed tend to be with those who have control of economic resources, i.e. whites.
Africa surpasses America in its use of bleaching creams because Africa surpasses America in its percentage of black citizens. I find whole aisles dedicated to bleaching creams in Harlem beauty shops. African fools who use bleaching creams or just that - fools. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 269
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 10:13 am: |
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Misty the American civil rights movement was not about political or economic control of African lands.
Wouldn't you rather live separate from people who despise you? It seems that you (plural) were brainwashed to want a piece of the pie they were eating? Native Americans never agitated for integration because they knew it would lead to the destruction of their cultures. In fact they were forced to integrate with whites and many children were adopted out or sent to boarding schools to complete their mental deaths. It doesn't make logical sense to beg people who despise you to teach your children unless you hate yourself so much that you long for any chance to be accepted by them. So now among black Americans there are 50% dropout rates in large urban centers like New York and St. Louis. Mission accomplished?
In Benin a small percentage of people were and have been converted into fools through Christianity and Islam. Some were kidnapped and forced to go to mission schools were they learned about their (French) ancestors, I kid you not. Only the culturally intact African can afford to be educated by whites because you must constantly be on the lookout for lies and deception. When not culturally intact, European or Arabic education is mental suicide. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 270
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 10:30 am: |
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Schakspir,
At the end of the day the question is what is your identity? I know who I am and you know who I am. I don't need to patronize you with my "Africanness" because its evident. It emanates from every pore. I can't hide it, would never want to hide it.
You, on the other hand, name yourself after the English bard and lament because you feel you have been wronged as the descendant of slaves. What are you going to do about it? Nestle back into the identity that whites gave you and cavort with Kathleen Cleaver and her ilk or find someway back to the ancestors that are erased from your memory? I think the answer is clear. Do you expect me to do something about it? I'm really confused as to the purpose of your rants.
If it helps you sleep better at night knowing that France/Europe still has a degree of economic control over Benin then I wish you sweet dreams. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2440
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 12:46 pm: |
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Dahomeyahosi: Interesting responses to Misty and Schakspir.
To be fair to my history and my understanding of it not the February McDonald's version, African Americans [or black Americans] did not want "integration." Since enslavement they have been fighting for freedom in the U.S., and part of that ambiguous movement [for freedom] including the civil rights movement [which is not the same as segregation].
What you call brainwashing is part that but also demographic differences and based on lack of economic and political power and cultural change.
Also, what would you call the black American who immersed herself in African culture, history, and people? |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1055
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 01:04 pm: |
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Dahomey: At the end of the day the question is what is your identity? I know who I am and you know who I am.
Schakspir: I know who I am, too.
Dahomey: You, on the other hand, name yourself after the English bard and lament because you feel you have been wronged as the descendant of slaves....
Schakspir: It's only a screen name, lady. Don't be so goddamned pompous.
Dahomey: I don't need to patronize you with my "Africanness" because its evident. It emanates from every pore. I can't hide it, would never want to hide it.
Schakspir: Oh? How evident is it, really, when all I can see is a bunch of words on a computer screen? How do I know that you aren't really an undercover white racist asshole, or one of Kola's multiple personalities?
Dahomeyahosi: What are you going to do about it? Nestle back into the identity that whites gave you...
Schakspir: That's rich, coming from a descendant of slave-dealing scumbags. At the end of the day, I am a descendant of African slaves and Native Americans who had it the worst, yet made something of myself in a world that wished me nothing but death. You, on the other hand, get on your high horse because you know you are just a descendant of scum who proudly participated in HUMANITY'S WORST HOLOCAUST. And not only that, but takes pride in that knowledge. I'm assuming, of course, that you are African, which I am seriously starting to doubt. I've known hundreds of Africans from all over the continent(North, South, East, West, and Central), and exceedingly few have your extremist way of thinking--INCLUDING those who think they are superior to African-Americans.
BTW, I strongly doubt if most Beninese can 1)write fluent English like you do 2)afford access to a computer, let alone actually own one 3) are married to a Japanese 4) live the kind of priveleged lifestyle I presume you lead. You African elites are the bitterest enemies of the African people, and I don't need to read all of Ngugi Wa Thiongo or Ayi Kwei Armah or Chinua Achebe or Ousmane Sembene to realize that fact. You present yourselves as Africa's salvation when really, you are Africa's death.
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1056
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 01:15 pm: |
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And BTW Kathleen Cleaver actually fought for human rights for black people. What the hell did you do, except come on some message board, boasting about your "Uber-Africanness," like some black Nazi? |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5815
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 01:37 pm: |
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One of my most memorable scenes in the movie Lean on Me was when Morgan Freeman "Principal Joe Clark" gathered all the of his students in the auditorium, Blacks, poor whites, Hispanics, all poor, and he told the Black students in the audience to look at the people around them. He said if they didn't HAVE TO be here, they wouldn't. And he was right. That didn't make them Black, it made them poor. However, many generations of wealthy Black folks, then and now, manage to maintain a lot of soul...and it's certainly not because they HAVE TO.
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2441
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 02:26 pm: |
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and what does soul mean to you? |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 271
Registered: 01-2006
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 03:27 pm: |
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Schakspir
Now you have called my ancestors scum. Again if it helps you sleep better at night then more power to you. But I now have no regard for you as a living organism, no matter what you are. If Kathleen Cleaver fights for "blacks" like you it was a worthless fight.
Most Beninese don't live in the U.S. Is your logic and common sense in such short supply? You are no one to judge what or who is good for Africa, as you have no connection to Africa nor do you have any real concern for Africans. I have never presented myself as Africa's salvation nor do I take pride in the slave trade. You are quite a storyteller.
Let's agree that you and I have nothing in common and can learn nothing from one another. This can be our last conversation. Cheers. |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 272
Registered: 01-2006
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Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 03:36 pm: |
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Yukio black Americans who immerse themselves in African culture, history, and people have made the choice to reconnect with their African ancestors and I have immense respect for them. There are some Africans who extend their hands to Americans who make this choice, especially here in New York. Some of those Africans are authentically and unselfishly involved, some are just trying to make a buck. It is my hope that Americans with the hope to reconnect encounter the former because it can be devastating to stumble across the latter. |
Latina_wi
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Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 385
Registered: 08-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 04:37 pm: |
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YUKIO: For decades, West Indians in predominantly African American communities have had to hide their accent or assimilate to African Americans' limited notion of blackness in order to be accepted in to the "black community." That is ridiculous!
Latina_WI: Very true words, you obviously know your stuff.\I know quite a few west indians who have had this experience.
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Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 386
Registered: 08-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 04:44 pm: |
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Urban_Scribe:Me, personally, I am proud of my slave ancestry. It is that perserverence, that struggle, that suffering, that holocaust - unmatched by any other in history - which molded the loving, passionate, compassionate, stubborn, innovative, groud-breaking, artistic, unstoppable BLACK AMERICANS we are today. NO ONE. NO ONE. NO other race/ethnicity/culture/community has had so many obstacles set in place to oppress them, yet still we RISE.
Latina_WI: I thought some of this (complete) post was too harsh. I know it was said out of frustration and anger but still. But this part hit home to me as a west indian. I don't care what my black blood line is mixed with, that makes me a 'lowly', ungenuine black - I am PROUD of my ancestors.
We went through all that deep shite and look how much we have over come. And I am equally proud of my afro-american counterparts who did the same. We were sold out of Africa because we were the 'inferior ethnic tribes' but look at us now. It is so ironic.
Though yukio is right, we do suffer some sort of different levels of poverty like africans as blacks in western soceity. Ghettos, poor education and an uncaring government in America. But still they over come (look at how many other countries took the lead from Civil Rights movement - niff said). I don't NEED an African's reassurance or acceptance about who or what I am - I know already, my history makes me a Caribbean We have influenced the world so much, us inferior tribes. |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 387
Registered: 08-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 04:54 pm: |
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Naisa_Goma: not all Africans are the proud blacks you paint them to be. I know many a black african who went to south africa and were OFFENDED that the mixed people of south africa dared called themselves mixed.
I have mixed african friends who call themselves black at the insistence of their black fathers. I have had mixed african friends; be it Somali mix, Ethiopian mix and half-Yemini who get offended when they AREN'T called black. I have seen the bluest black africans claim that mixed 'high yella' looking blacks they have met look 'just like west africans'.
Obviously I am not claiming they are ALL like this, but unlike you I am not claiming that all Africans AREN'T like this.
So judging by my own experience it isn't always the case that black Africans are extremely finnicky about who is a true black and who isn't; some are like the african-americans who are so heavily criticised. Some africans are just as colour struck and wish to embrace mixed raced people as their own to lighten and whiten, and make their race more acceptable, in the eyes of the white man. |
Schakspir
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Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1057
Registered: 12-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 05:59 pm: |
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Intellectual Bankruptcy of the African Elite
By
Chika Onyeani
Afrstime@aol.com
In a highly provocative piece culled from his book, Capitalist N.igger: The Road to Success, pp. 97-119, Chika Onyeani concludes that the African educated elite is a failure, an individual who is not useful to the society, either in Africa or even as migrants. "The African elite has been a total failure; they cannot raise their heads in the community of scholars or the intelligentsia. They want to continue to sit at the head of the totem pole, being spoon-fed, rather than at the head of the battle line leading the masses of Black people throughout the world. That they have not been able to understand that the total Black race is under economic slavery is a testament to their half-education and illiteracy.
A community cannot survive when its so-called educated citizens are morally and intellectually bankrupt and decrepit. You cannot have a community whose intelligentsia are mere parasites of other cultures." Africans are not a forceful people, neither are they aggressive to the point of a fight to the finish. We are not resolute in our commitment to a goal and lack the devil-may-care doggedness needed to scale a Mount Everest or the Himalayas. We are easily influenced and distracted in pursuit of a quest to reach a set goal and to be the best that are destined for us. Intellectually, we are bankrupt and decrepit. We have a very short attention span, and have a very short burst of energy which easily extinguishes in the face of impediment.
We prefer to be parasites of a culture which we had no hand in creating, a Caucasion culture which took them years to perfect, and which we cannot easily emulate in its basic tenets - a predisposition to make wars not only on themselves but more so on others for intimidation and supremacy. Unlike his Caucasian counterpart, the African is a compassionate fool, easily influenced to hospitality of known enemies because of their acts of deceitful intentions.
The balkanization of Africa by the six Caucasian nations, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany, resulted in the creation of disparate and at best, baseless boundaries, countries without geographic significance. The fig ht to gain independence, was not so much the aggressive pursuit of the goal of independence by African leaders, as the realization by the Europeans that they had looted all that they needed to loot from Africa. The leaders of Africa who benefited from the handout of independence to African countries had no concept of the ideals of rulership they were inheriting other than their desire to displace the Europeans in their oppression of masses of the people and their opulent lifestyles with the resources of the people. These leaders' vision was in stark contrast to that of Nelson Mandela and Kenyatta, the Kenyan Mau Mau leader, Kwame Nkrumah, Mwalimu Nyerere, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, all of whom were ready to give up their lives in pursuit of the freedom of their people. They understood what it was to be independent and free and were ready to give their lives to attain that goal. The lack of commitment to the real meaning of freedom and independence by those African leaders who "won" independence for their respective countries from their former colonial masters has done more to impugn the intelligence of the Blackman and raise more questions about his ability to govern himself. Today, Africa is worse off than when it gained independence from the former colonial masters. The standard of living of the masses has decreased steadily since gaining independence to the extent that now there is more malnutrition, more diseases, less provision of essential services, such as good roads, clean drinking water, good health care provision and less freedom to express one's views. The promise of independence has hardly been fulfilled.
Africa has incurred more debt, yet has nothing to show for it. The debts incurred were used more for grandiose projects than for services to benefit the people, such as the late Houphuet-Boigny's $1 billion to build the so-called biggest and best known Cathedral in his remote village in Yarmousoukro in the Ivory Coast. That is $1 billion to build a Cathedral that is now not being utilized by the people, a large amount of money gone down the drain. Was it necessary to build such a Cathedral and deny the people essential services? The issue in this portion of the book is not so much to show that the leaders have not provided the leadership which would make us proud and show that we can stand on equal footing with the rest of the world, but rather to show the intellectual bankruptcy of the so-called African elite. The elite, rather than the majority of the crude African leadership, stand out as the single group which has damaged Africa most because of their quest for an easy life of luxury. This is the group that took over the baton from the former colonial rulers. They took over the opulent life lived by the oppressors. Rather than eliminate the excesses of the Caucasian masters, the elite saw their takeover as an opportunity to double the pain of the masses of the people. Their claim to the throne vacated by the Caucasians was that they had gone to school, an education in which practical learning was not a requirement.
The elite inherited the European's position; he inherited his huge offices; he inherited his more than 10 messengers; he inherited his sex on demand from his numerous secretaries; he inherited his disrespect of his subordinates; he inherited more than three cars; he inherited his huge houses with several servants and drivers. He inherited his demand for unquestioned authority and obedience. He was pampered beyond human endurance by the masses who expected to see a difference from Caucasian behavior. Instead they found that their behavior, in most cases, was more tyrannical than their Caucasian predecessors. But the elite's excesses would not be allowed to go on forever unchallenged; unfortunately, the challenge came from the wrong quarters - the military. One by one, African governments were taken over by military men of questionable character - immoral and illiterates such as Idi Amin of Uganda, Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Sergeant Doe of Liberia, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Sani Abacha of Nigeria. Jammeh of the Gambia is the latest in a line of idiots who seized power because they possessed the gun, and then quickly seized the ballot box in a corrupt election to declare themselves democractically elected.
The greatest sin of the African elite is not opening their mouths to challenge these despots. They feared for their opulent lifestyles. They feared losing their presents of money stolen from the masses for their prostitutes; they feared being deprived of air conditioned homes when the masses are out in the streets without electricity; they feared their swimming pools not being filled with water when the average man could not even get a clean drinking water and had to depend on polluted and infected streams to get his water; they did not want to be deprived of attending Clubs and drinking free drinks at the expense of the masses; they did not want to be deprived of trotting around the globe. The Europeans, on the other hand, decided to let these buffoons be perceived as having taken over, and they exercised, and continue to exercise, power over these puppets in any major decision making. Unfortunately for the African elite, the buffoonery called the African military had their own ideas of personal enrichment and aggrandizement.
The elite was the first to congratulate any military idiot who seized power and protest how their predecessors had corrupted the country and looted its treasury. They danced to the tune of the new dictator in the hope that they would be spared their opulent lifestyle. But the military being who they are, preferred to spend the country's largess and money on their string of loose women rather than on the comfort of the elite and the provision of essential services to the masses of the people. They cut off their privileges and curtailed their attempts to question why their lifestyles were being scrapped. Those who attempted to question the military, were quickly jailed or executed to send a message of intimidation to others never to attempt such a "disrespect of constituted authority."
At the first sign of a contraction of their lifestyle, most of the elite packed up and fled Africa, to the United States and Canada, and others to European nations. Today, there are about 2.5 million Africans in the United States of America. The majority are the elites who fled and the new elites who are planning to return to an extravagant life of abundance. Hence, the African immigrant group has been declared by the U.S. Census Bureau as the most educated immigrant group in America. But beyond the fact that he is highly educated, the African immigrant, unlike his Inidan, Chinese and other immigrant counterparts, has not had any visible impact on America.
Most are still caught up in their loss of opulent lifestyles in Africa, and have not been able to assimilate into a society which does not recognize whether you are a "prince," a "chief," a "commoner," son or daughter of wealthy parents, but only recognizes what you have accomplished by yourself. There is this nauseating nostalgia about "life back home, where I had seven servants, who washed and ironed my clothes, where I did not know where the kitchen was situated in my own house, where I had five drivers for my five cars, where I could have as many women as I wanted, where I rubbed shoulders with powers that be, where everybody called me Sir/Madam, where people understood that I was a very important person (v.i.p.), where I took 30% of all contracts I awarded.
Now I am just a number in America SS: 123456789. In America, nobody knows who I am and hardly cares; they don't recognize that I am a prince or chief who is a security guard, right? .... on and on, ad infinitum ad nauseam. The so-called educated African in America is tragically damaged psychologically between his concept of his own importance and the reality of American life. Many have been living in a dream world of returning home to granduer, and avoid being assimilated in the American society until their coffin has to be sent back to their homeland, without accomplishing anything: avoidance of participation in the American way of life, which is looked on as inferior, and the reality of not having made any contributions to a continent which is beckoning for people with ideas to return to contribute to the economic development of the area. Africans talk incessantly about their homelands - they know everything that happens there. They criticize everything.
They will sit and talk a whole day about the leaders who are creating one problem or another, without ever offering solutions. They have all kinds of organizations - compounds, villages, towns, counties, provinces, states, countries - the missions of which is the betterment of the area back in Africa, but which in actual fact is used for displaying the same self-importance which the American society had denied them. Saturday after Saturday, Sunday after Sunday, there is this meeting or that meeting. People come there, list all their degrees, the schools they attended, the positions they occupied back home, their parents standings in society. By the time they finish reciting all their accolades, the time for the meeting has more than elapsed and the same happens the next meeting. In Africa, we have a saying that "You don't chase after a mouse when your house is on fire." But it seems that Africans in America have perfected the science of chasing after a mouse when their house is on fire. With the meetings, all the boastings, Africans in America cannot claim to have made an impact in America in matters concerning Africa, or in Africa with all the wars, diseases, famine and all kinds of problems going on there.
More than 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were killed in Rwanda; Africans in America did not lift a finger of help even in just expressing their sympathies, gathering blankets, foods, medical supplies and drugs or even toys for the children. It is the same story all over the continent. Even now when there is a pandemic of AIDS, Africans in America seem unconcerned. There is the war in Sierra Leone, where thousands of children and women have been raped, decapitated and murdered. Africans in America have not lifted a finger of protest against these genocides. The African in America does not understand what it means to be committed to a principle of alleviating the sufferings of their people. They are much more concerned with their stupid importance, where everybody is a "chief and," as they say in America, "no Indians." I have yet to find a group of Africans in America who have decided to volunteer to go to Africa for any relief work. Yet, they express all kinds of anger when they see a Caucasian man or woman carrying an African child, or leading a group of wounded children or women, in any war torn area in Africa. They will spend an eternity discussing the pros and cons of that Caucasian man or woman carrying that child, rather than do something about it themselves. I repeat that the African in America is intellectually bankrupt and decrepit. Here is a group which is regarded as the most educated immigrant group in america, they are yet to accomplish even one twentieth what their Indian, Chinese, and Korean counterparts have been able to accomplish in America. In America, Indians are one of the best shining examples of success in so many categories of American business that they can no longer be discounted politically, economically or socially.
In New York City, the Indians control all the newsstands, they control all the taxis, and over 90% of the limousine car services; they control all the motels and all the gas stations including all the convenience stores attached to the stations. In fact, the Indian Yellow cab driver is the one most likely to refuse picking up a Black passenger in New York City than any other cab driver. The Indians have built major companies, especially in the computer and internet fields. Some of their companies are major players in these fields and have taken their companies public. Even with our preponderance of the "educateds." no African in America has started a computer or internet company from scratch and taken that company public. Africans cannot boast of controlling this or that area of business in America. The Chinese on the other hand, control how America eats. Even in the movies, you always see the actors or actresses, ordering one form of Chinese food or another. Africans spend a lot of money eating or ordering Chinese foods, Our African missions to the United Nations, Embassies in Washington and all the African Consulates-General spend millions of dollars eating Chinese food a year. I have never seen an Chinese going to an African restaurant to reciprocate our patronage. The Chinese also control how America keeps its wardrobe clearn. Keeping in mind that we are the most educated immigrant group in America, Africans can be found in thousands in Universities and Colleges throughout the United States as administrators, professors, senior lecturers, adjunct lecturers.
There are thousands of African medical practitioners throughout the medical learning establishments and practice in America. But, the most puzzling issue is the nonexistence of any research on the part of our so-called intellectual establishments in matters affecting the continent. Recently, I read two articles which I thought would ignite the anger of the African elite in the universities - one was an article which a Caucasian woman of Jewish descent had written arguing that civilization did not emanate from Africa, but rather from Greece; and the other article was about the new attempt to foist the origin of AIDS on Africa. Well, I said to myself, these two articles would certainly excite the response of our intellectual effete-snobs. I even challenged the so-called African Studies Association, the African university teachers group, and told one of their leaders that I was appalled at the lack of meaningful research undertaken by our so-called "learneds" to respond to critical and detrimental assertions affecting Africa. And that these two articles presented a challenge to them to refute these patently meritless articles, produced by Caucasians to continue to demean the supremacy of the Black man.
I was assured that they would respond, but true to their nature, it is one thing to get a degree and quite another to exercise the use of that degree. African scholars are the same the world over. They get their degrees to the highest level; they get a teaching position or job at a company. That is the end of it. You cannot point to any research that they have come up with which has elicited comment which could be regarded as controversial. No African scholar in America is called upon as an expert on matters affecting Africa in all the major television networks. (That was true when I wrote this book, but not now when I see people like George Ayittey on CNN; I have been on ABC-TV, NBC-TV, UPN-TV, CBS-TV). With the exception of the literary icon, Chinua Achebe, whose book "Things Fall Apart," is a staple for teaching in almost all universities throughout America, no other African can boast of a book they have written being utilized (in such a wide manner) as a teaching mateial in the universities. The problem of African scholars is the same problem I had talked about at the beginning of this part of the book: a lack of aggressiveness, a lack of commitment to the goal of later rather than immediate gratification; and of course, being easily influenced by the pursuit for money. The African scholar is intellectually dishonest. At a time when thousands of Chinese scholars and researchers are swarming American research laboratories, African scholars are nowhere to be found in those intellectually challenging positions.
In fact, one Chinese research, in responding to America's accusation that a Chinese had sold secrets to mainland China, intoned that he couldn't understand what the fuss was all about: "after-all," he said, "Mandarin (Chinese language) had become the lingua franca in most research establishments throughout the United States." Today, China can boast of possessing and being able to build nuclear weapons through the efforts of Chinese citizens in America. India and Pakistan have been able to detonate atomic bombs through the disciplined research of Indians and Pakistanis in America in helping their counterparts in their respective homelands to acquire the techonology. The question really is how could Africa have millions of educated men and women, yet have to import experts in all fields to manage areas of economic development, engineering and others for which Africans had gone to the same school. All this is due to the shallowness of our "education," a non-commitment to the study of knowledge for the benefits of the people, rather than a study on how we can make money the fastest way without putting out much effort. In the early days when Africans came to the United States for studies, there used to be quite a few of them enrolled in engineering and science-related studies. Now, that is passe. Now, go to any university; Africans are enrolled in business administration, sociology, accounting, finance, prelaw, pre-medicine: you hardly get people in engineering and physics. It is no wonder that when we come out with some of these worthless degrees, we are herded into jobs with the Human Resources Administration - people with masters degrees, who after the last day of getting their degrees is the day they stop reading anything on paper. The African elite, as a mirror image of the larger Black society, is a consumer group rather than a productive group.
A people which regards itself as independent should be able to produce independent thought. Yet, Africans still depend on Europeans, 40 years after "gaining" their independence from their former colonial masters and at a new millennium, to furnish us with books on any subject. Our so-called eltes cannot devote enough time to research to duplicate the same research already conducted and articulate it in a language Africans can understand. It is any wonder then that we go to school and still come out illiterates. It is no wonder that despite our years of schooling, if we need our roads built, we have to contract them out to European engineering firms to build for us; if we need electricity, we get Caucasians or the Japanese to build them for us; if we need drinking water, we have to import European or American experts to do them for us. We are "highly educated," yet we cannot even assemble a bicycle - we have to import it; we cannot assemble a radio - we have to import it; we cannot assemble a fan - we have to import it; we cannot assemble a television - we have to import it. According to the United Nations, Africa constitutes the world's poorest land mass. There is poverty everywhere and the pay of the average man is the lowest in the world.
Yet you could hardly see the industrial powers rushing to Africa to open factories, which would produce goods which would then be resold in their markets. Africans go to school so that they can acquire half-educated knowledge to terrorize the masses in the same way that the colonial masters had done; other immigrant groups like the Indians and Chinese have been able to use their education to acquire knowledge beneficial to their people all over the world. It is quite amazing that even in the field of history, our African elite has failed us in not producing well-researched publications on the history of the African continent. The saddest part is that we have to be taught African history through the eyes of the Caucasian. But thanks to Africa's children who were sold into slavery, the history of Africa has started to be known through our own eyes. The tenets of a Capitalist •••••• is a love of money and what money can do to uplift the masses and not terrorize them or steal them blind. The African elite has been a total failure; they cannot raise their heads in the community of scholars or the intelligentsia. They want to continue to sit at the head of the totem pole, being spoon-fed, rather than at the head of the battle line leading the masses of Black people throughout the world. That they have not been able to understand that the total Black race is under economic slavery is a testament to their half-education and illiteracy. A community cannot survive when its so-called educated citizens are morally and intellectually bankrupt and decrepit. You cannot have a community whose intelligentsia are mere parasites of other cultures.
Chika Onyeani is the author of "Capitalist ••••••: The Road to Success - A Spider Web Doctrine," which stayed on the South African bestseller list for 4 months and is still one of the most sought after books in southern Africa, as well as Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the African Sun Times. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2445
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 06:03 pm: |
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Latina_wi:
We were sold out of Africa because we were the 'inferior ethnic tribes' but look at us now.
This is incorrect. It was ethnic group against ethnic group, as well as intra-ethnic group enslavement and trading.
Dahomeyahosi:
Some of those Africans are authentically and unselfishly involved, some are just trying to make a buck. It is my hope that Americans with the hope to reconnect encounter the former because it can be devastating to stumble across the latter.
I am aware of this, and I have heard too many stories from Africans and African Americans, and white folk too.
So, let me ask you 1 questions:
To you, are what I call African Americans are no different from white Americans?
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5833
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 11:41 pm: |
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They must be doing something right. They're doing better in education and employment than any other group in America, Black, white, other.
African Immigrants a Successful Bunch, But Not Overall
Edwin Okong'o, Mshale Senior Correspondent
Published 06/11/2007 - 5:57 p.m.
Slide Show
An analysis of U.S Census showing that African immigrants are more successful than the general U.S. population.
Country of Origin a Major Factor
African immigrants in the United States are generally more educated and earn larger salaries compared to people from other continents, but their success depends on what country they come from, according to a new report.
The study was conducted by Kefa M. Otiso, a professor of Geography at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Otiso said the project, which draws data from the 2000 U.S. Census, began “just out of curiosity” by comparing Kenya and Ghana. During the Kenyan Diaspora investment forum in Atlanta, Ga., in March, Otiso presented his findings in a report on how Kenyan immigrants were doing economically. They did surprisingly better when compared to the general U.S. population, the report showed then.
It was out of that realization that Otiso decided to examine immigrants from other African countries to see how they compared against each other and the U.S. general population, he said. The data showed that 75 percent of African immigrants come from 12 of 54 countries namely, Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Somalia, Morocco, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
“The more I learned, the more I realized that although we come from the same continent and have a lot of similarities, we are very different,” Otiso said.
Overall, Africans immigrants performed better than the rest of the U.S. population in education and employment, the report shows. For instance, the rate of Africans with an undergraduate degree and above was 43 percent, compared to 24 percent among general U.S. population.
The average annual personal income of African immigrants was about $26,000, nearly $2,000 higher than that of American-born workers. This factor might be attributed to the fact that a larger percentage of Africans (71) aged 16 years and older were in the work force. In contrast, 64 percent of Americans were employed, the study showed.
The high educational and professional success of Africans could become beneficial to illegal immigrants from the continent in their efforts to become lawful. One key area is in overcoming the huddles set by a bipartisan comprehensive Senate immigration bill agreed upon in May.
The bill, which President George W. Bush said he would sign, lists education, knowledge of the English language and job skills as some of the requirements that illegal immigrants would have to meet to be considered for legalization. There is no data on the specific number of Africans living in the United States illegally, but most of them are students and visitors who overstayed their visas.
The success of African immigrants is not uniform across all communities, however. Those who come from countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt, where English is spoken, rank among the highest income earners because it is easier for them to deal with the transition they have to make to resettle, the report shows.
On the other hand, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Somalis, who mostly immigrate as refugees, do not do as well as their counterparts from English speaking African countries. Otiso said that the reason was because most people from the three countries immigrate to the United States as refugees and asylum seekers, following crises in their home countries.
“The decision to immigrate is mostly an economic one,” Otiso said. “Those who do so willingly are likely to choose where to go based on how easy it will be for them to resettle and be successful.”
Otiso said he hoped the diversity of the African immigrant population shown in his study would help policymakers and social service agencies to tailor services to specific communities. That is something Jillian Middlebrooks, a manager in the Office of Multi-Cultural Services in Hennepin County, Minn., said would be important as her office strives to effectively serve a diverse population that is often grouped together.
“Understanding the communities we serve is very critical,” Middlebrooks said.
Middlebrooks said that by looking at the countries of origin of African immigrants who receive services from her office, the county had already seen the differences highlighted in Otiso’s study. Somalis and Oromos were the African communities that frequent the office. The Minneapolis metropolitan area, where Hennepin County falls, is home to the largest Somali population in the United States. As new non-English speaking immigrants struggle to resettle, the county government’s challenge is to make that transition easier for them, Middlebrooks said.
“Our system is already difficult enough for people born in the Midwest to navigate,” she said. “We have to make it easy for people coming from cultures where filling paperwork is not the norm.”
Middlebrooks’ office provides job skills training and legal services to new immigrants. The office also accepts volunteers who do not speak English as a first language to assist in mentoring and helping others.
http://mshale.com/article.cfm?articleID=1464
Diverse influx of Africans finds opportunities and some wariness in U.S.
2007-06-17 02:33:00
http://www.pr-inside.com/print155690.htm
African Immigrants Finds Opportunity
Saturday, June 16, 2007 3:12:40 PM
http://www.cfnews13.com/News/National/2007/6/16/african_immigrants_finds_opportu nity.html |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8870
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 01:13 pm: |
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Seems to me that for the most part, the Africans who immigrate to America are from the uppercrust and are not typical examples of the underclasses in their countries. They arrive here and are better equipped to compete with the black American population at large. The same with the immigrants from India who dominate the fields of medicine and engineerying science in America. These professionals come from the upper caste in India as opposed to the vast uneducated poverty stricken lower castes. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 2271
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 01:32 pm: |
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"Seems to me that for the most part, the Africans who immigrate to America are from the uppercrust and are not typical examples of the underclasses in their countries. They arrive.......science in America. These professionals come from the upper caste in India as opposed to the vast uneducated poverty stricken lower castes."
Excellent point. The Indians, unlike the Africans, are the most sought after group in out sourcing to fill the so-called dearth in the American high tech industry because of their excelling in mathematics, medicine, science and computers (programming, network security, IT technology, etc). But as you have stated, those who do make it to our shores are not the downtrodden underclass.
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Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 274
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 08:52 pm: |
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Yukio: To you, are what I call African Americans are no different from white Americans?
Black Americans seem to be very similar to white Americans within a given class. I think most Americans differ much more by class than by race. I wouldn't say black and white Americans are no different. Regardless of class, white people are incredibly boring, dishonest (blacks are more blunt), and lack a certain "spark" that I see in black people around the world. However I think any black American is capable of reconnecting to their African ancestors. 400 years is a heartbeat in the long history that we have. Many just don't know how to or are not interested. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5841
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 09:46 pm: |
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"Seems to me that for the most part, the Africans who immigrate to America are from the uppercrust and are not typical examples of the underclasses in their countries. They arrive here and are better equipped to compete with the black American population at large."
Kola’s been saying this for years. But...yeah...they are the "African Elites" that Schakspir's article cites as "total failures" that "cannot raise their heads in the community of scholars or the intelligentsia". And they are doing better than all Americans--whites & Asians included--not just "the black American population". |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1062
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 10:38 pm: |
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The article states emphatically that they are not "economic" failures--they are moral, intellectual, cultural and spiritual failures, who can't seem to do anything else but make shitloads of money. They can't make any significant cultural contributions(for the most part). I have to agree with the article even though I feel it somewhat overstates its case. |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5845
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, June 17, 2007 - 11:12 pm: |
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"Overall, Africans immigrants performed better than the rest of the U.S. population in education and employment, the report shows. For instance, the rate of Africans with an undergraduate degree and above was 43 percent, compared to 24 percent among general U.S. population."
---Edwin Okong'o, Mshale Senior Correspondent posted by Tonya
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Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1063
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 11:59 am: |
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They do exceedingly well in education while in school....and once out, do little or nothing with that education to benefit society at large, particularly where that education is most needed--back in Africa. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8878
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 02:04 pm: |
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You don't have to echo kola to reach the conclusion that people from any foreign country who immigrate to America wouldn't pull up stakes and come to this country if they weren't ambitious and motivated. When you have that mindset you increase your chances of succeeding once you settle here. But as far as these aliens giving back to their adopted country once they make it, forget about it. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2452
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 05:16 pm: |
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these reports are incomplete. Some do well, and many others do not. Also, some find it difficult to obtain jobs . . . racism continues to rear its ugly head . . . as I have said many, many times . . . as more African come, many of them will be of the poorer ones . . . and factor is, many of the Africans here are from the elite classes, and so they are already considerably on arrival. The fact that they are here as more to do with the expectations of the family, who depend on them to do well and send money back home . . . there will be, as they always are, a intra-African conflict ensuing, as the African population gets larger, and the lower classes get tired of the elitism of the upper class folk.... |
Dahomeyahosi
Regular Poster
Username: Dahomeyahosi
Post Number: 277
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 18, 2007 - 10:13 pm: |
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Behold, the ‘cheetahs’ are taking over Africa Print
E-mail
Written by James Shikwati
Mr. Shikwati
13-June-2007: George Ayittey, a Ghanian born Economist refers to an
emerging vibrant breed of young Africans as the “Cheetah generation;”
they don’t talk about colonialism and they do not read the G8 script,
they simply want to take charge of Africa! In contrast George laments
about the “Hippo Generation,” this is the generation that is stuck in
the mud and is oversize after draining the continents resources through
corruption; this is a group that believes in entitlement. The Hippo
group will advance an argument as follows: “The Whiteman enslaved us,
America and Europe developed on our resources, and they must give us
aid.” This generation hangs around G8 summits quite often.
While the most powerful nations on earth were meeting in Heiligendamm
Germany to discuss among other issues aid to Africa, over 50 “Cheetahs”
were in Arusha at a TED event to show case Africa’s new chapter. Bono a
famous proponent for aid to Africa must have left this meeting with a
quest to reorganize his belief in aid as a fixer to Africa’s
predicament. A number of Western participants confessed to me that they
were witnessing an Africa they had never known…because the Western media
deliberately ignores to highlight success stories in the continent.
Some highlights; Alieu Conteh established one of the fastest growing
mobile phone services in central Africa. Alieu recounted how in the
midst of civil war, he put up his cell phone network using scrap to weld
a tower together because no foreign manufacturer would ship a cell phone
tower to the airport with rebels pounding cities. His ingenuity led to
the present day Vodafone Congo. Kenya’s Moses Makayoto talked about his
inventions including the famous “mama safi” detergent produced using
local resources. He urged young scientists to take over and help move
science to industrialization. Salim Amin a media entrepreneur from Kenya
discussed the upcoming 24 hour pan-African news and current affairs
channel. In Salim’s words, “We have to educate the rest of the world as
to the power of this wonderful continent.”
A man came to me and asked, “Why are all of you talking about Africa as
if it were one country?” It had escaped my notice that the Cheetahs have
their ears and eyes focused on a totally new Africa different from the
Hippo’s nationalism. The market incentive is driving the new generation
to view Africa as a place of opportunities. Mr. Bond Emeruwa best
illustrates this when he brags about Nigeria’s film industry drawing in
over $200 million from outside Nigeria. “Nollywood would never have
succeeded if Western donors developed interest in it, we would not be
producing films that mirror and resonate with the Africans intrinsic
lifestyles.”
My presentation centred on how to commercialize African
entrepreneurship; a Ugandan producer of “lubugo” cloth came to me and
asked, “Man, how can we commercialize our innovations, foods, etc, when
some of the Western values condemn our products?” He pointed out that
Christian believers are discouraged to use bark cloth from “Mutuba” tree
because it’s believed to be part of “witchcraft.” Value addition to
“Lubugo” might give a new meaning to the quest for cotton in Africa.
If one is wondering, where will the Cheetahs get the money anyway, the
founder of Vodafone Congo (DRC), took the initiative that later
attracted an investor – Vodafone to partner with him. Venture
capitalists are out there looking for brilliant ideas that are taking
off the ground, and partnership restores African dignity compared to the
much hyped G8 aid that leaves Africans questioning their own abilities.
Let us do business fixing all the challenges facing Africa.
James Shikwati is the Director Inter Region Economic Network
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Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 390
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 23, 2007 - 09:20 am: |
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Latina_wi:
We were sold out of Africa because we were the 'inferior ethnic tribes' but look at us now.
This is incorrect. It was ethnic group against ethnic group, as well as intra-ethnic group enslavement and trading.
Sorry, but what you just said was just a differently worded version of what you disagreed with.
Ethnic tribe against tribe, one group feeling their more superior than other and using their size and wealth to prove that `fact.
It is an African thing, take a look at Rwanda. |
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