Hi-Tech Nationalists

“Unlike the nationalistic activists of the 1960s, high-tech nationalists of today are do-nothing nationists and mainly just talk and talk and talk about white supremacy and the glories of ancient African civilization before the coming of the white man. Mostly their militancy is verbal, symbolic and ceremonial. Instead of confronting the system of oppression, they rationalize, justify, and make apologies for the black male’s demise and, often as not, the bullheaded obstinance of white domination. Typically employed by some white institution, and seeking ways to move up within its hierarchy in some way, they may harp relentlessly against the established order during informal gatherings in the sanctity of somebody’s living room or parlor: ‘the man’s got his foot on my back’….Though he customarily wears Pan-African attire costumed to exceed his commitment, as soon as somebody proposes a plan of action for black uplift, he darts for the door, scrambles for the history books, or hops a plane to the Pyramids on the continent of Africa, or somewhere in the Diaspora. I mean this brother can boast all day long of knowing the names of every African king in 400 D.C. or of sailing on the Nile, and he’s forever fashioning some African ceremony or ritual. He may even take trips to Las Vegas to stay inits Luxor Egyptian Hotel, with its simulation Nile river and touristic Egyptian replicas, including the likes of Sphinx sandwiches, Hatshepsut hamburgers, Dynasty hot dogs, Pyramid pickles, Kushite coffee, camel cakes, Nefertari nibbles, and assorted Imhotep edibles. Let me say that, as I see it, there are two categories of Afronationalists — the formally educated and the informally educated. Here, we’re talking of course about the formally educated, the degreed nationalist, who works frequently at or around a university and its community, where his African attire is more socially acceptable and can be employed to pump him up in his militant posturing strategy to hide his aversion for activism. Unsuspecting students frequently are persuaded to equate and measure his militancy by the amount of mud cloth and kinte he owns. This brother believes that black males in suits and ties (who in fact in some cases may be doing more to change black conditions for the better than he is) can’t be anything but ‘bourgies’ (pretentious members or would-be members of the black bourgeoisie). At the same time, it allows him to exploit the suspect militancy of mass media-made black intellectuals such as Shelby Steele and Cornel West.  Many times the high-tech Afronationalist will condemn the Shelby Steeles, the Cornel Wests or some other well-hyped Eurocentric nationalist while snuggling up to them anytime they come to town.”

Julia Hare
How to Find and Keep a BMW: Black Man Working

A Day of Mourning

“While Christopher Columbus still prevails as a major hero to the Western world, sometime in the not too distant future, if African and Indian scholars who are descendants of those who were murdered, start writing books about the opening-up of the New World, and start using new and old documents, especially the work of Bartolomeo de las Casas, Christopher Columbus will emerge as one of the great villians of human history, which, indeed, he was. When this revelation becomes apparent to most of the world, I still think there will be a need for Columbus Day but it will be a justifiable day of mourning for the millions of Africans and so-called ‘Indians’ who died to accommodate the spread of European control over the Americas and Caribbean Islands.”

 
John Henrik Clarke
Christopher Columbus & the Afrikan Holocaust

Free Your Mind

If you wish to know who I am,
If you wish me to teach you what I know,
Cease for a while to be what you are
And forget what you know.

Tierno Bokar

Nationbuilding

Nationbuilding- the conscious and focused application of our people’s collective resources, energies, and knowledge to the task of liberating and developing the psychic and physical space that we identify as ours.Nationbuilding involves the development of behaviors, values, languages, institutions, and physical structures that elucidate our history and culture, concretize and protect the present and insure the future identity and independence of the nation. Nationbuilding is the deliberate, keenly directed and focused, and energetic projection of the national culture, and the collective identity.

-Kwame Agyei Akoto
Nationbuilding: Theory & Practice in Afrikan Center Education. Washingtion, D.C.: Pan Afrikan World Institute, 1992, p.3

The Educator

  “…an educator is a learning, growing person who has a responsibility to continuing her own growth, those she is entrusted to teach and the development of her society. All this is placed within the context of her mission to transmit the skills that can support the continuation of her culture.”

-Nah Dove
“Understanding Education for Cultural Affirmation”

Jegna

Jegna is an Ethiopian (Amharic) word that means “a very brave person who is a protector of a culture, the rights of his or her people and their land.”

A jegna is more than a “leader.” She or he is someone who is not afraid to speak truth to power, is uncompromised, full of integrity and at the very core of his or her being sees the welfare and protection of their people as paramount. They are literally prepared to die for the community they represent.

It refers to those who are altruistically commited, out of an unqualified duty to their people and nation, to teach our children the art an science of a politically concscious adulthood.

Jegna (Jenoch, plural form) are those special people who have (1) been tested in struggle or battle (2) demonstrated extraordinary and unusual fearlessness, (3) shown determination and courage in protecting her/her peoples, land and culture, (4) shown diligence and dedication to our people, (5) produced an exceptionally high quality of work, and (6) have dedicated themselves to the protection, defense, nurturance and developement of our young by advancing our people. place, and culture.

-Wade W. Nobles (“From Na Ezaleli to the Jenoch”)

 …

Note:  When honoring these Afrikan individuals, jegna should be used instead of mentor because Mentor is derived from the mythical Greek character Mentor who Odysseus left to care for and educate his son Telemachus in his absence. As with every other “mentor” in ancient Greek society, a significant part of his role as a teacher and guardian was to personally introduce his ward to a homosexual sexstyle.

-Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti

Can African People Save Themselves?

Can African People Save Themselves?
By John Henrik Clarke

The question can be answered in many ways, in both the negative and the positive. I have chosen to answer it in the positive, because I am an African person and I have hope for a commitment to every African on the face of the earth. My commitment to mankind comes through African people. If African people are to save themselves, they must first know themselves. They must first know where they have been and what they have been, where they are, and the significance of what they are.By knowing this, they will get some idea of what they still must be. African people must stop being the market and the dumping ground for shoddy consumer goods of other people. We must, on an international basis, begin to produce the things we wear, the food we eat, the cars we drive, and then train our children to follow our footsteps and complete the mission. The mission will be to be a self-sustained and contained people. At least a third of the Africans in the world can be employed providing goods and services for other Africans.

Once we create an internal economic system, we can relate to any external economic system in the world. No African State can be truly independent when it does not produce the bread it eats nor the safety pin that holds a child’s diaper together. No nation can call itself free and self-sustaining when it must order its toilet paper from another nation. Africans must begin to produce every item essential to their survival.

Education must be geared to produce the large number of technically trained Africans needed for this task, and the trained must in turn produce other Africans to replace them. No African nation in the world should beg for the skills of another nation or people to sustain itself.Africans can save themselves by having the will to do so until the job of self-protection and true independence has been achieved. The salvation of Africa by African people will contribute to the peace and the salvation of the world. This salvation should be the mission of every African on the face of the earth. The completion of the mission and the benefits that will accrue from it will be the legacy that African people can leave for the whole world.
…(emphasis added)

Medase pa to Dr. Clarke for the plan.

A better question…  Will Afrikan People Save Themselves?

-Lazarus

Trust

Yes, us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must trust us discuss trusting us
Us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must trust us discuss thus trusting us
Trusting us, us must trust discuss
Discuss not trusting us must not fuss
Us with us means us discussing trusting us
Us must trust us, who? Us must trust
not fuss with us, us must discuss trusting us

-  KRS-One

Obenyn

Here are some related terms. Asafo Nyansafo(Akan) means “wise person who is also a warrior.” Obenyn means “warriorhood”.

Medase pa to Obadele Kambon for these concepts.

I’ve listed some characteristic/behaviors that I’ve learned about Obenyn.

Medase pa to Mwalimu Baruti for teaching this in his book, Asafo: A Warrior’s Guide to Manhood

Please consider the following(at least) before self-appointing yourself as a member of the warrior-class.

• An Afrikan warrior scholar refuses to be at peace with anything less than the total liberation of his people.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar daily affirms that “I am an Afrikan warrior, a warrior scholar. I refuse to be at peace with anything less.”
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is culturally and politically a PanAfrikan nationalist.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar an educator, not a teacher.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a doer, a nationbulider, a maker of his people’s way.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a nonintellectual in that he practically applies his knowledge. He does not see war waged in some debate, whether great of small.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar does not pass on his miseducation. He corrects it. He educates himself so that he can teach an ancient Afrikan truth.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar unconditionally respects Afrikan women. He is their defender, their lover, their divine complement.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is an entrepereneur. He distngusihes wealth from income and power from influence.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar pursues empowerment, not subintegration.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is a perimeter defender. He is the first line of defense for our people, for our most valuable resourses, our elders, women and children.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar words cut deep and clean. No one leaves with doubt as to his intent.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar protects his daughters from misguided sons and sons from confused peers.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar is determined to challenge any and every hostile affront to his culture, ourstory and people, no matter the consequences.
• An Afrikan warrior scholar understands that we are at war and acts accordingly.

….

Peace and Medase,
Lazarus

What is your Purpose?

Life is an important function. It was given for the purpose of expression. The flower expresses itself through the beauty of its bloom. The vine expresses itself through its rambling search in settling its own peculiar nature. The tree expresses itself in its smiling green leaves, shaking branches and sometimes hanging fruit. The lark expresses itself in its laughter and song. The river expresses itself in its gentle meandering unto the sea and man expreses himself according to the idealistic visions of his nature. There is a scope for each life. Let yours find its scope and fully express itself.

Man should have a purpose and that purpose he should always keep in view, with the hope of achieving it in the fullest satisfaction to himself. Be not aimless, drifting and floating with the tide that doesn’t go your way. To find your purpose, you must search yourself and with the knowledge of what is good and what is bad, select your course, steering towards the particular object of your dream or desire.

Never enter upon life’s journey without a program. Simpleton as you may be, you can have a program. No ship ever reaches port without a positive destination beforehand, otherwise it will drift on the mighty ocean to be overtaken by the storm or the ill wind that blows. The sensible captain goes to sea with a chart to map out his course so as to reach his harbor of safety. Your program is your chart through life. Everything you do, do it by method. Nothing succeeds continuously or repeatedly by chance.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy