Greetings (Ras Tyehimba)!
Thanks for the info contained in your post. I tried to figure out and interpret myself through your words, to reflect myself and my own personal situation and experiences (so far), as an Afrikan. And so this reply is me from my own -- limited -- perspective as an Afrikan (who has --
allow me to say -- luckily grown up both in Afrika and in Europe).
Q: How important is race today and why?
HOTEP: Race issues are very important today. World powers have never addressed the perceptions of people after the direct colonial experience and its legacy, 'the colonization of information and the education system'.
I agree with you and your line of thought in its entirety. I agree with you that addressing -- (or should we j call it
redressing) -- issues to do with
Race & History, inevitably entwined with each other through history as they are, is a very essential task indeed. Interestingly, many people -- white, yellow or even black/dark -- shy away from such (sensitive but sensible) discussions. The result is that, at least in these modern societies where we live, people are forced to intermingle who
don’t really understand each other, who can’t stomach each other, who may actually loathe each other, with many failing to understand even themselves, or exactly why they hate!
Black sports figures are presented as role models and most Blacks already know they would never become 'Like Mike'.
True! It is indeed a ploy to make people forget “the weights of the past” (as some might call it). Almost the whole education system (at least ours in Afrika, but even the European one, I think …) is rife with corrupted agendas; and Afrikan universities end up churning out half-baked intellectual dwarfs: brainwashed graduates! Without tending to seem harsh, I can honestly say most Afrikans are raised to believe they had better been white! … Or that they better end up running (to achieve a few pieces of silver!) in a crooked
steeplechase for the white man!!
As an Afrikan, I hope I can say my discovery has been that racism is abundant
everywhere you find an intermingling of the races on a large social scale; perhaps not at a private Reggae party, but surely in the city, in Babylon's corridors of power!
Some people hide it, other people see it. I think one finds ‘modern racism’ in the form of a "latent class-conflict" most times, whereby the colour of one's skin pre-determines not only one's fate -- (being born, growing up, living and dying in the System), -- but also one's social class: how “civilised”, “educated” or “smart” certain people will assume one to be, or treat one as being.
Mistaken, some people have used education
alone as a tool in "proving" to someone (else) that one is actually not racially “inferior”, that one is “smart”. But of course we know that education alone
can’t be the key to eradicating racism. Education can actually be a very dangerous thing, as we now know … What is “education”, anyway? What education? Education in what? … As an Afrikan, I hope I am qualified to say the worst brainwashed Afrikans may well be the “educated” ones with their
string of degrees … who gained a
chain of Ph.D's
and then lost their voice (after selling their heart to the devil!). They get educated to later serve the interests of their masters, contributing to the cycle of exploitation of oppressed peoples.
And not laws alone are enough to eradicate racism. What eradicates racism are attitudes, understanding, humility, a vestige of love, social consciousness, a sense of justice, humanity. Not laws! Laws can end up resembling empty talk … and talk is cheap! Laws may also be inhumane. Laws are made by men, who are raised with all sorts of prejudices in this world. Laws may also be obeyed or not obeyed!
In the same vein, democracy by the ballot does not guarantee justice and fairness in a society (inasmuch as this may concern protecting the interests of [so-called] minorities). In 1933, the brutal nazis in Germany came to power via the ballot. One can even add that the
System of Racial Slavery in Europe and the Americas was sustained through public consent (almost like the ballot!) for over 300 years, until around the time of Lincoln in the mid-nineteenth century. Whites went to war over the issue of Emancipation, as we all know. Yet, even one hundred years after the American Civil War was won by the Union troops, America's blacks were still being ritualistically lynched by whites (most times “for fun”), castrated, burnt at the stake, called “boy” (for nothing) and so on ... And all white America was (still) looking …
The colonization of education and the general media have left most people falsely stereotypical and with other negative attitudes that need addressing with a proper presentation of facts. Most people do not realize they harbor very distorted views and beliefs about themselves and other people. Many Black people have an unwarranted admiration for people of lighter shades.
But time runs and we now live in a more modern world, and times are
a-changing (even when others alive may still walk back to sleep in the horrid past!).
Today, racism is fought mainly in the media, in a war of pictures and one of words!! It is a new type of war, mainly psychological. A propaganda war. Its impact {on anyone!} is devastating and should not be underestimated. The Dragon has grown more heads! This new propaganda war is not really about who owns the biggest guns, but about who has the most powerful lenses ... whether on news-camera, photo-camera, spy-camera, telescope or satellite … Though the guns are getting bigger, they are only used when the war with the cameras proves futile, lost against a defiant people who refuse to be pushed around like little children … or when they resist and rebel!On a slightly other note, I think we all know that the great Nelson Mandela, who didn't fear those crazy
Baldheads in South Afrika and faced them man-to-man, was -- until the early 1980's -- referred to as a “terrorist” or “dangerous” or a “commie” in many a renowned Western paper, part and parcel of
The propaganda News Machinery. Mugabe was called a “kaffir”, “bastard”, “terrorist”, too (even in those days!), and the British were always on the side of Ian Smith's unilateral "Rhodesia", now (rightly) called Zimbabwe (which means
*House Of Stone* in the language of the Ma-Shona people of Zimbabwe). Today, more than two decades later, Mugabe is
still a “vampire” or is “evil”, when he is simply serving and answering to the democratic interests of his people …
More scholars need to study the classification of people in India, where people are killed annually for stepping out of their caste. India is the best case study of the effects of institutionalized racism.
Racial attitudes in this world haven't changed much, though the chains and shackles are no longer there. Of all forms of racism, the one I see as being most dangerous is of course institutional racism, which later results in state racism and engulfs whole societies and even ‘programs’ the way they "think". We find this racism in all the "civilised" world! That’s just how far and lost we are in the modern world …
Nevertheless,
I feel Education -- whether motivated by selfish academic or inter-social, inter-personal demands -- is a complex and subjective issue ...Nevertheless, I would still pose the questions:
What is "education"? What education? ... & ... Education in what? I will even add:
Education for whom? … or … *Whose* education? Let's face it: most of us are really
mis-schooled, or we don't school ourselves well enough. To most people, I think education only means what one finds on a school syllabus (and they shouldn't be wrong!). But that is exactly where they may be wrong, where the problem may lie: One need only pick a book, say a text-book, say about "Anthropology", say from the 1920's or (especially) before World War II, to know what I mean …
Europeans always nosily ask young Afrikans studying and/or living on their European continent why they came here, what they are doing here, why they live here; sometimes even:
“Why didn’t you study in Afrika? Are there no universities in Afrika?” …
… really almost childish! Nazi screw-heads all over Europe even accuse foreigners of "taking over" their land!!! But I ask such a Nazi: how many whites live in Afrika? Why do they live in Afrika, Afrika that is full of Aids, snakes, disease and of naked Negro cannibals who run around eating each other in the jungle
? ... Their ancestors went to other
peoples’ continents, without being invited, stole their land, destroyed their cultures through weird, barbaric acts, and now they are surprised that Afrikans are paying them a visit[?]. Afrikans got their visas before travelling there, but which of those greedy, grey and old European men of the past asked anyone for a visa?! Afrika has a long way to go, and it’s just the beginning, if they don’t know: Our people shall climb the heights of greatness, after the heavy past they shouldered through the earthly greed of an alien people which thought it was *wise* to sell other men little cattle …
They see little value in personal reflection and as such they block themselves from progressing by repeating errors. Their mental enslavement is of a unique nature.
Very true! It looks like most of us have been
defeated, or how else shall we coin it? So much and so many under pressure from the cruel world, from the cruel man, which wishes us pure Hell, it seems! … In my opinion, many “racist expressions/projections” were streamed into the West's education systems and self-righteous social lifestyle particularly due to the effects/aftermath of Darwinism, peaking mid- to late 19th century. Darwinism taught (and teaches) whites [and also blacks!] that
"the darker ones are more closely related to the apes, that’s why they are dark!" (or something nutty like that!) …. People still believe all that intellectual crap of fantastic imaginations known as Darwinism. Well, I don’t; because I never did! In part, such thinking and the brutal *wars* that followed are the sociological and historical consequences of Darwinism as regards race-relations {= Land Squabbles!!!}, though Darwin himself (as he later explained) didn't mean his theories to be so miscontrued.
Darwin's theories are interesting! They caused an upheaval in those Victorian times, were heatedly debated, challenged and contested by many thinkers at the time. There was much noise and debate about his famous monumental work on those "Laws of the Origin of Species and Natural Selection" (I kinda forgot what it’s really called, but some bored European “race philosophers” later equated it to
"Survival of the Fittest"). Such were the ideas engulfing the grey and dusty European Empire of the mid-19th century … Many of their machines and inventions had not yet been made! In the earlier years that Darwinism began to get “threateningly” popular in intellectual circles (circa 1871 to the early 1900's), it was, I think, a
serious crime to teach Darwin's theories in almost all schools in the “industrial” countries of those days … (I think at least in public ones); I'm sure many guys were guillotined for not heeding that warning … Such was the heat over this very weighty “moral” issue, weighing on the morality of Blessed Europe!
But Europe -- and America, the whole world, in fact… -- finally conceded and embraced Darwinism and I think it became a "comfort" to whites at the time, an excuse, an explanation, almost a “revelation”
(after their endless Scripture consultations, searching for an excuse in the Bible to explain just why they were so evil to other races, had proved fruitless!). It became an explanation for why, after all, they were “superior”; superior fire-power! Plus all those rosy future promises in the “accident” called Science!!! I think it became an excuse, meaning: for the first time, someone felt they had a handy “scientific licence ordained by Nature” to do whatever they pleased with blacks and the wretched dark Afrikans: milk Dark Afrika further, harder, or as hard as they pleased! … Darwinism *fuelled* all such racial sentiments. That is when colonization even started on a grand, “official” scale, with much pomp and splendour (to show who owned the keys to the doors of Universal Destiny)! … All that proves to have been a
House of Cards, now crumbling to the ground!
Today, all the kids swallow such theories hook, line and sinker! …
Once these people are not exposed to a different world-view, one that elevates their own situation, they pass these poor values to their children. We are speaking here of the nurturing of low self-esteem being passed from one generation to the next.
But Darwinism is not even the problem! The problem are *attitudes*, or (especially) attitudes in
The System! Of course education is controlled: that is why it is planned! My own imagination is that such education -- let’s imagine in England -- is planned (or controlled) by certain greyish, oldish, old-fashioned, bald-headed, "bookish" noble gentlemen, who wear
spectacles when they sit down with their peers and plan; I know that one will find nothing “deep” about Afrikan history on the syllabi of most basic schools in Europe, or America, for example. [Yet ‘thirsty’, ‘dirty’, ‘hungry’, ‘ugly’ -- whatever! -- Afrikans are very welcome material to be paraded on TV almost everyday in some western countries!] … Promulgation of negative propaganda(?) You will hardly come across anything *analytical* of debacles/obstacles of the past, which white people effected upon other races, such as
the Slavery, for example. You will find only *cosmetic after-effects* (like "cosmetic surgery") to the main damage (already) done …
They also say the color of 'Christ' is of no importance.
I think these kind of men, as the prototype I mentioned above, want it so. In so doing, and by so omitting, they seem to be performing some self-healing therapy for themselves, or their race, a *societal ritual* to forget the “weights” of the past and “look ahead” (for, after all, they were “not there” when it happened!).
This attitude of low personal worth is kept intact by the popular so-called religions with their White idols.
In Afrika, it is almost the same education Afrikans receive. The results are, of course, more disastrous there! Most (schooled) Afrikans may pride themselves in knowing a lot about European history or the English language, for example, but are as good as raised to believe Black people -- or Afrikans -- have no history! The books they read (not only books about Medicine, Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Maths … but also books on Law, History, Humanities & Social Sciences, Afrikan Studies) are most times imported brand-new from the West. Made in the U.K., or in the U.S.A. [The West is the Best, they
still say!] … This is the education I find dangerous. But of course it depends on the person involved, taking the education, to make their own wise/st decisions/interpretations about certain things we learn or don't learn sometimes … [which is not an easy thing to do].
Two years ago someone painted a statue of a White Christ with black paint and this was big news. They called this “defaming the statue.” Need I say more?
I think the best education is one achieved not for money, but through sheer curiosity, personal spiritual and intellectual commitment, imagination and a fair judgement. Peace & One Love!
PatriotWarrior.
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