Western Democracy is the trojan horse of neo-colonialization. And we brought these "gifts" into our borders, but while we slept out poured the armies of the free market and neo-liberal globalization
	Alik Shahadah

No self-determined people in history have presented the bad side of their face as a representation of who they are. When the Greeks speak of the virtues of a man they speak of the perfect Greek. When the British speak of manners, they speak of the perfect Englishman. When the Arabs speak of poets, they speak of the greatness of Arabic.When the Japanese speak of the honor, they define the perfect Japanese.

Therefore, it is necessary as a first principle for the African, romantic or not, to produce rhetoric which showcases to the world the most beautiful aspects of Africanity.

	I'd rather walk among rattlesnakes, whose constant rattle warns me where they are, than among those Northern snakes who grin and make you forget you're still in a snake pit
	Malcolm X

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mindset African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

From the onset of modern history, Africa has played the devil in every tale the world knows: the savage, the cannibal, the heathen, the immoral, and the mindless sub-human. Africans must come to the human table with the fruit from their diversity and enrich humanity; but there is no diversity if African value systems are all pointing North. And there is no diversity if Africans are made to conform to rainbow rhetoric restricted in expression for fear of offending the 0.0001% of self-proclaimed non-racist Whites. Because the very Europeans that promote the utopia of racial peace and the dismantling of race pride are concurrently busy exploiting and expanding their Eurocentrism via the very same mechanism of race. And it is critical that an intelligent people understand the ambit of tactics used to undermine Pan-African centered ideals. The privileges of Whitenes allows them to jump the gun and suggest pacts or partnerships to redeam Africa. However there can be no pacts between lions and lambs, because the lamb will ultimately end up as food. We will always be slaves in our own revolution because we are inherenting an unequal partnership. Until Africans are able to be agents of their future and think 100% as Africans, complete integration will have Bono representing Africa for another 500 years.

	Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it
	Franz Fanon

To understand the entire discourse on Africa and African people is to indulge in a vivid exercise in the removal of agency. The primary purpose of this study, new and old is the continuous reassertion of Conrad's “Heart of Darkness.” This is the Eurocentric tradition in anti-African scholarship that provides the moral-academic justification for the slave trade; the most successful commercial venture in the history of humanity. In Europe's bid to protect their trade interest the marriage between racist academia and the exploitation of Africa had to be made. Europeans writing African history is less the history of Africa and more  "The history of European contact with Africa", both physically and ideologically; Africa dawned when it was "discovered" by Europe.

The need for the continuation of this tradition is not lost in today's markets, which are heavily dependant on sustaining the impoverishment of Africa . The primary objective, conscious or unconscious, of most European-African relations is to keep Europeans as the primary agent of everything which goes in and out of Africa; may it be intellectual or material. Thus maintaining dominance over African self-determination. The only reason peace and human rights in Africa is so in demand, is because peace equals stability, which equals stable markets for Western goods and services. It just so happens, in our modern era, that the market for weapons of war is less profitable than that other consumable Western goods and services. After all, who will you sell guns to when everyone is dead? Far better to create pro-Western democracies which can be enslaved into consumerism and spend their lives purchasing Western garbage. And the democracy export is part of ideological warfare, naively African bring these so-called gifts into their houses, and at night, out pours the armies of free trade and globalization. The trojan horse of Western Democracy only purpose is to create an African ripe for harvest. In fiscal terms - If 90% of the wealth of this world is controlled by the elite 1%, know that 99% of that 1% do not have dark skin.

	The sad truth is that the 'authentic' African reality is still articulated at the liberal discretion of whiteness. And most Africans depend exclusively on "the other" to inform consciousness of self
	Alik Shahadah

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THE BOAST OF WHITES

	Modernity is not the sole 'invention' of Westernization, but more over, 'modernity' is the accumulated Conquest of the Western world
	Alik Shahadah

Europe also maintains its market superiority and African clientele by constantly telling Africans "what you have is no good."And "in order for you (Africa) to discover modernity you must purchase our products, follow our standards, impose our laissez faire principles on your markets." Europe is also good at making the rest of the world see failure in anything and anyone who beats out a different path. So Africa would never look to Cuba or Islamic Iran for models, and definitely never to solutions from within the African continent.

We hear about the terrible conditions of women's rights in Iran. But they failed to mention Iran has more female graduates at university level than most Western countries. So in the West rights of a woman are expressed via the over sexualized lyrics of Rihanna, in Iran it is via intellectual and economic empowerment. [3] They also failed to mention the booming Islamic fashion industry and film industry which rivals the catwalks of Europe, and a film industry which doesnt take cue from Hollywood.

	In fact the main reason why the plague of European civilisation was able to spread all over the world in the past five hundred years is that the Europeans were just alot more vicious and savage than anyone else, because they'd had alot more practice murdering one another - so when they came to other places, they knew how to do it, and were very good at it.
	Noam Chomsky

 

The dark and damp cities of London are not to be seen in Asia, or even South Africa. But all of this information is hidden to reaffirm Europe's superior position in the minds of the world. Long ago the West lost its "supremacy" and is clinging on to this illusion of strength with nothing more than military might. And they are quick to show you the ruined economies of Zimbabwe, as a reminder that to follow Mugabe's land redistribution and exclude whites equals failure.

They always forget to mention literacy in Zimbabwe is no. 1 in Africa, or that despite an "out dated" criminal system Saudi has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. This is not to discount that real issues are not in these countries, but why the agenda of trying to show how great the West is by tearing down everyone else?

Modernity is not the sole 'invention' of Westernization, but more over, 'modernity' is the sum total of Western conquest of the intellectual and tangible property of other civilizations. Europe will be also slow to tell you of the gifts it owes the Muslim world; medicine, optometry, naval innovations, numerology, pasta, hygiene, sugar cane, and surprisingly the restoration and advancement of Greek philosophy which is the foundation of Europe's intellectual strength.

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AFRICA FOR HARVEST

Africa today is the primary testing bed for new drugs, social experiments, cheap labor and raw materials. A wealthy Africa would create stronger corruption-free government, which in turn would be an antigen to Western imperialist designs. These designs are in the form of the new slave masters—the multinational conglomerates. The reality of Africa on-the-ground is a continent locked into a blind subservient orbit; the junk-yard of the Western World. The function of Africa is thus not for the native Africans, but for the harvesting of materials to construct Western civilizations.

	Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world
	Dictionary

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SELF DETERMINATION

	No longer was reference made to African culture,it became barbarism. Africa was the 'dark continent'. Religious practices and customs were referred to as superstition. The history of of African society was reduced to tribal battles and internecine wars
	Steve Biko

Every people speak from their cultural perspective, this in itself is not a problem, It is a natural aspect of human behavior. When Americans speak of tragedy, they reference the destruction of the world trade center, their 9/11. However, 9/11 is just a date and may have another significance to another culture. In Iraq they have much reason to identify with other dates in their recent history to reference tragedy, like 11/23 [i].

However, the dominant culture exports their local perspective as the common world view. This is the crisis with cultural and political dominance where people's experiences, if outside of spheres of Western interest, are marginalize. [4] In But where agency is lacking the "weak" fall prey absorbing others people's realities as their own. Eurocentricity is a specific aspect of racial supremacy expressed along the cultural and intellectual lines of Europe . This definition means that the agent of Eurocentrism doesn’t have to be racially European. The celebration of European culture in itself is healthy and natural, for Europeans. It only becomes and issue when other cultures are footnoted and denied agency; then it becomes racism. Fanon inflects that racism generates harmful psychological constructs that both blind the African to his subjection to a universalized white norm and alienate his consciousness.

It is said that when Europeans arrived in Southern Africa they might have brought the pencil but they also brought the eraser and while they wrote themselves into African history they used to eraser to rub Africans out of civilization. The term pre-colonial Africa speaks to this legacy because since when does 7000 Years of recorded history orbit around the century of occupation by Europeans in Africa? Since when does the entire discussion of African history spin around 80 years of colonial rule? These terms like " Lake Victoria was Discovered by some maleria stricken white man" are a blatent rejection of African agency.

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SYMPTOMS OF ZERO AGENCY

	Lying is done with words and also with silence
	Adrienne Rich

The first sign of agency is the inherent power to define ones terms of reference. Specific words exist for racism against Jewish people and US congress monitors global antisemitism (Global Anti-Semitism Review Act) yet no such policies or terms exist for the greatest victims of racism. The ongoing African Holocaust is denied, ridiculed, mocked, and de-emphasized daily without any global sympathy. How is it possible for 60 Million people to have so many terms which articulate their self-interest yet 1 billion Africans in their own home seem disabled in this capacity?

In order to brainwash Africans to the superiority of the European version of Christianity they first had to be brainwashed to the superiority of the European race and culture. In every instance when that notion of any form of superiority was challenged or debunked Africans, and others, have demonstrated agency and created their own orthodoxies taking elements in the name of self-interest. What we saw in most of Africa was a failure to get to grips with White supremacy, which got more problematic as Europe first demolished the walls of agency that protected African people. In dealing with religion we are really dealing with the symptoms of White supremacy, and hence it is a futile effort because simply getting rid of Christianity does not deal with the reason Jesus is white, and Jesus is white because of 1st the mental conditioning to the superiority of Whiteness taking Africans further away for a cultural homeland.[2]

WHITE LIBERAL:

But where is Home ? Home is where you put your feet up, home is where you are safe and loved, and allowed to recover and grow. In China the Chinese are at home, they are surrounded by images of Chinese people, films by Chinese people, land owned by Chinese people, products made by Chinese people, the Language is Chinese, the food is Chinese, even the images of God are Chinese in China. So where is home where all of these things are true?

Without agency everything will impose on you, democracy, political systems, religion, media, language, culture and even technology. And you will not be able to assert self-interest in any of these spheres. Just declaring democracy as "foreign" and marking it for deletion will not fix the problem. Removing democracy will only create a vacuum for socialism to come in. And now someone else's version of socialism will impose itself. Removing religions as foreign will also create a vacuum and the people will replace it with something else. Even if it is home grown it will still function in the same defeatist mode, as we see in places like Benin. Replacing media without agency will have Hollywood replaced by Nollywood. Just as empty but worst in quality. Once the issue of African agency asserts itself then it will challenge everything that comes its way.

The mechanisms that promote agency can be in creating African religions, African technologies, and African based political systems. But history does not show this as a natural relationship. Japan emerged as a power force, yet none of that technology which made them a force was indigenous to Japan. Yamaha pianos who now own Steinway, has no tradition in the piano making industry. Japan has no cultural history of Pianos, yet they are they control the majority world share as a piano manufacture. If the power of self is strong it will exert itself in Africanizing and absorbing things that service a stronger Africa. In that instance the reactionary need to replace "foreign" with "local" will be replaced with a paradigm of absorption and Africanization. Simultaneously creating and conquering as Africa pushes into a new century.

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MAKING SLAVES

	The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much
	Heart of Darkness

In the analysis of the paradigm “the making of a slave” the removal of agency from Africa was the first instruction needed in the creation of a “cooperative work-force.” Africans taken to the New World had no authority over their life; they were not even allowed to commit suicide. And the reason for adversity to African suicide was not religious or commercially motivated. It was not the fear of losing “merchandise” but moreover the mental domination and removal of all forms of self-ownership from the psyche of the African captives. The re-labeling and amalgamation of the Mandika, Fulani, Igbo, Asante, into one bland color label- black, was part of the greater process of absolute reduction of African identity: A color epithet that Europe believed to be the lowest color on Earth, thus reflecting the social designation of African people in European psyche. But for slavery to work this reality had to be transferred from the European mind to the African mind. Africans had to believe what Europe believed about Africa and Africans. Cultures, ethnicity, legacy, royalty, lineage was now melted down to a single entity—slave. The slave had no past and certainly no future, save for after death when they were allowed to service a white god in an abstract heaven. The genius of White Supremacy, when mastered, is it protects itself by breeding dependency among those it subjugates allow the victims to only know a Eurocentric centre of reality.

	Apart from the doctrine that poverty and the poor were blessed and would get their reward in heaven, the missionary preached the need to obey the powers that be. No matter how morally corrupt Caesar was, the African Christian was told to obey him. Caesar was the Colonial Power
	Ngugi wa Thiong'o

When we traverse the globe today and look at oppressed people, we see that despite their oppression, they are fully conscious of self, they have religion and culture which they proudly use to distinguishes themselves from their oppressors. The Jews in Hitler's death camps knew they were Jewish, they had their Torah, they had the Talmud and they had their history, which was reinforced by a Jewish culture. No amount of “special treatment” could alter the Jewish religion or their historical legacy. However, Africans by a process of the most hideous system in humanity were removed and later denied access to their history. Africans could not be attached to greatness as this would then beg the question, if these people were capable of science, engineering, social structure and kingdoms, how can their function be as beast-of-burden? How can a people who forged Timbuktu , Axsum , Kanem- Bornu , Egypt , Nubia , Great Zimbabwe, Ancient Ghana, Songhay, Sokoto Caliphate, Monomotapa be now mere labor units, movable chattel, branded like cattle, confined, de-robed, whipped, and reduced? It was absolutely essential to institutionalize the myth of a dark and savage Africa occupied by heathen cannibals who were saved by Europeans from absolute misery at the hands of their countrymen and marauding Arabs. History narrates that the European in their mercy did Africans a tremendous favor by bringing them to work in well-nurtured plantations in the West, allowing their lives to be touched by a white god, delivering them from savagery to culture, civilization and industrialization.

Naturally "saving Africa from Arabs" serves as evidence to prove to the African-Arab world that Arab slavery was a longer lasting and more hurtful activity. Thus Africans are skillfully told to take up issue with Arabia before bringing reparations claims to Europe for their brief 400 year stint in slavery. Numbers from the Arab trade and predicted at their highest, numbers from the European trade are published at their lowest watermark. The Greatest Holocaust in the history of the world, the Greatest Slave trade in the history of Humanity was the European Trade in enslaved Africans. They will do everything in their power to make you "look the other way" (it is the Arabs, it is your own Kings that did it to you). They will drop numbers down to 12 million. And finally they will tell you it is over. Europe is the only nation still eating the profits from the African Holocaust. So it is both telling and ironic when an African-American wearing a name like John and Williams takes issue with what Arabs did over the European process that gave them their slave name.

Not only have they kicked the Black but they have also told him how to react to the kick   Steve Biko

 

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DENIAL OF AGENCY

	For far too long, a majority of Africans have been indifferent to misrepresentations about who they are. They have remained 'objects' of the ill-informed caricatures of a once glorious heritage disfigured by colonial and post-colonial predators
	Chido Nwangwu

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mindset African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

Regardless of what is said, the destruction of African civilizations in the physical and now in the historical records is an ongoing enterprise. There is a mental tool kit that the African student needs to engage anytime studying history. Unlike everyone else when an African speaks he is fighting two battles; proving he is valid as a human to contribute and then proving he is right. This double burden is due to the historical disinheritance created by racism. When history is reduced from all the pages to the underlining conclusion, we find regardless of if the author is British liberal, American conservative, or Australian the conclusion is the same: Africa has fostered nothing the Western World considers artifacts of civilization. With few exceptions, this is the underlying summarization on Africa, the pathology of discrediting and take-away. Eurocentric scholarship would rather credit Arabs, Indians, Chinese and even aliens for the pyramids rather than native Africans. The real difference between the liberal and the conservative is that the conservative will control you by external mechanisms (sanctions/war), the liberal will control you by internal mechanism.(charities/missionaries, agenda setters). Both have an adverse reaction every time African agency lifts its head up.

	My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Dominque (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world
	Napoleon Bonaparte

Ethiopia – Not of African Origin
Egypt – Not of African origin
Sudan – Not of African origin
Mali – Not of African origin
The Moorish Empire – Not African
Ancient Zimbabwe – Not of African origin

	When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things
	1 Corinthians 13

There is nothing glorious in Africa that has not been reassigned to “White” ownership. And some are confused about terms like Arab, but Arabs from the perspective of Eurocentric history are a “Middle-Eastern Caucasoid,” so quite happily will they reassign Ancient Egypt or Islamic Spain to Arab people. W. E. B. Du Bois was right when he said:

"We cannot if we are sane, divide the world into whites, yellows, and Blacks, and then call Blacks white."He might have said that it would be equally as strange to call them "Mediterranean," "Hamitic," or a hundred other euphemisms taking authorship outside the racial property of African people."Black" in the North American context.

There is history and then there is politics. History is an account of what happened, politics is explaining away those events to service a specific objective   'Alik Shahadah

The "social "construction of race in America does not rely on skin color. "African Americans," as Asante notes, " constitute the most heterogeneous group in the United States biologically, but perhaps one of the most homogeneous socially.

Karenga notes that it "is . . . playing Europe's racial game to concede that Egyptians are white or Asian if they don't look like a Eurocentric version of a West African." Furthermore, "Ethiopians and Somalis, perhaps, resemble the ancient Egyptians and ancient Nubians more than any other peoples and they are, even by Eurocentric standards, African." Unless we revive the hoary "Hamitic" Myth."

The question for the discerning student of history is; why do all the conclusions always serve to empower Europeans and disempower Africans. It does not matter if they use archeology or genetics, linguistics or reasoning the conclusions always make a deposit towards the greatness of Europe, and a deduction from the glory of Africa.  

• Who ended the slave trade- Europe
• Who stopped the Arab trade – Europe
• Who was the greatest Abolitionist – A European
• The greatest scientist, thinker, architect, composers, inventors – Europeans
• Who invented modern civilization – Europe
• Who invented everything good – Europe
• Who is the most civilized - Europe
• Who knows what is best for Africans? - Europeans

The question that should be put to these historians is “What has indigenous Africa contributed to the world?” Because the history of take-away has reduced Africa to nothing, thus implying the old statement “Africa is of no historical significance.” So how are today’s scholars any different from David Hume and Kant?  If all their conclusions reduced all the nobility of Africa to given, borrowed or stolen.

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PRE-OPINION

	Western civilization is defined by the height of tall buildings, African civilization is defined by the strength of human relations
	' Alik Shahadah

Stuart Hall argues that the power of discourse is created to reinforce Western dominance. The discourses on how Europe described differences between itself and others used European cultural categories, languages and ideas to represent 'the other'. By producing a discourse of difference Europe was able to maintain its dominance over the "other" thereby creating a subaltern by excluding the Other from the production of the discourse. [2]

	Philosophical methods are well suited for unpacking the political, ontological, and epistemological conditions that foster racism and hold white supremacy in place. However, on the whole, philosophy as a discipline has remained relatively untouched by interdisciplinary work on race and whiteness. In its quest for certainty, Western philosophy continues to generate what it imagines to be colorless and genderless accounts of knowledge, reality, morality, and human nature
	Alison Baile

The foundational paradigm that begins with a pre-opinion, are like verdicts that come before the trial, or books that conclude before they start. The Eurocentric discourse on Africa is in error because those foundational paradigms which inspired the study in the first place were rooted in the denial of African agency; political intellectualism bent on its own self-affirmation rather than objective study. It is a dis-service to scholarship when any academic (of any race) sets their personal opinions before valid research and then twist and contort to force illogical agendas out of bad scholarship. Regardless of the arguments presented they find themselves towing the diatribes which blind objectivity.

This denial extended to denial of self-definitions. And in the 18th century, the birth of narrow racial definitions emerged. The “Negro” a creature with thick lips, black skin, flat broad noses, woolly hair, characteristics that became socially accepted by Europeans as “ugly.” This narrow definition of Africans shied from the reality that indigenous African people are physically the most diverse racial family on the planet. In indigenous Africa you can find epicanthal fold eyelid types as found in the San of Southern Africa, flat noses among the Bakongo, straight fine noses as among the Ethiopians, Somalis, Fulani, Tuareg and Wodabee; Short hair, straight hair, curly hair, light skin, dark skin, very tall and very short, from Berber to Bushman all are part of the African race. Not only were a selected set of physical features assigned to Africans considered ugly, but also African traits and African customs became bywords for lazy, barbaric and primitive.

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NOT BLACK AND WHITE

	...when it came to assembling a staff to compile an encyclopedia of Black history, Gates hired a group that was almost exclusively white. Of the up to 40 full-time writers and editors who worked to produce Encarta Africana only three were Black. What's more, Gates and co-editor K. Anthony Appiah rejected several requests from white staffers to hire more Black writers.
	Julian Brookes of Mother Jones

Henry Louis Gates (HNIC) reply:

	It's a disgusting notion that white people can't write on black history--some of the best scholars of Africa are white.
	Skip Gates (HNIC)

The removal of agency is not a “black or white” issue, it is not an issue polarized by Europeans on one-side and Africans on the other: For a long time the house Negro, the white liberal and the white conservative have worked in a tight partnership to secure European control in all African areas.

The color of philosophies, not the color of skin is the greater issue. Many who profess to celebrate pan-Africanism act as agents, mouthpieces by proxy, whose mission is the perpetuation of the removal of agency from Africans.  Some household names such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Appiah are renown for at times selling African history down the nearest toilet. With passionate black such as Stanley Crouch and his cohorts, even White racist have a hard time keeping pace. Because they can say thing which most racist whites cannot, for fear of political incorrectness. These African detractors sustain in the most delicate of ways that the sole authority on Africa is none other than the European, and that all studies of culture, language, are for Europe 's final interpretation.

Still today, pop-history is littered with “the discovery” approach of Africa . Thus, the source of the Nile was “discovered by...” Crediting an African with exploration in the European mindset would be like crediting a mule or a migrating Zebra. Historically Africans are made to sway like leaves on the wind, impervious and indifferent to any form of civilization, a people absent from scientific discovery, philosophy or the higher arts. We are left to believe that almost nothing can come out of Africa , other than raw material. The African cannot discover, he can only be discovered. Every article and aspect of African life must start with "African history according to prof White person..." Which is a direct assault on African agency and humanity.

	Unlike the garden variety of ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism emerged as an ideological project – shaped by Europe's intellectual elites – in the service of Europe's rising expansionist states, starting in the sixteenth century. It makes sweeping claims of European superiority in all spheres of civilization. In this worldview, only Europeans have created history over the past three thousand years, beginning with the ancient Greeks. In various accounts, this centrality is ascribed to race, culture, religion and geography
	M. Shahid Alam

 

With the joy of hindsight and all the history of how this world operates Africans are still looking at convicted serial killers with the glary eyes of a child. Iran is awake, China is awake and India is waking. What about Africa? Are Africans thinking as free Africans or colonial victims? When we let religion divide us. When we let borders divide us. When we absorbed alien notions of human rights/civilization. After the progress made up until independence what was it that allowed the vision of Nkrumah to slide? After the great leaps in the 60's what was it that allowed the introspeactive African consiouness to de-evolve into the likes of 50-cents and Lil Kim? Because in this social mud, African people are not only victims, but criminals.

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Afrocentrism /Afrocentricity

	Demonizing categorically all white people, without careful differentiation between persons of goodwill and those who consciously perpetuate racism. Adopting multiculturalism as a curricular alternative that eliminates, marginalizes, or vilifies European heritage to the point that Europe epitomizes all the evil in the world. Gross over-generalizations and using factually or incorrect material is bad history and bad scholarship.
	Cain Hope Felder

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mindset African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

In a reaction to Eurocentricity Afrocentrism was birthed. However this shift inherited many of the same systemic flaws congenital in Eurocentricity: hand-picking elements of history for promoting the romantic seperatist ideology. Too continually view history through a modern racial lens distorts the historical timeline and creates academic anachronism, this is true regardless of if the author is African or European. Afrocentrity like any concept or ideology designed to react to another flawed system ultimately has a shelf-life. However, it has to be categorically stated that the majority of White critics of Afrocentrism bring arguments, which critique the tools and paradigms of Afrocentrism yet they employ these same tools in their own thesis. Therefore, Eurocentrism is allowed to deny African Civilizations and contributions by bleaching Ancient Egypt, but Afrocentrism is not allowed to do the reverse; a classical case of academic hypocrisy. Politically defending Afrocentrism is critical because those who attack it more often than not are harden racist or in the case of Manning- an apologist. He is however correct in the general observations about Afrocentricity. However, the remarks about "slave culture" are flawed as it is not known if Egypt had a slave culture. And why is the burden on an African historian to include "everything"? It also seems strange that the issues some white academics cite to discrredit Afrocentricity is by calling it "identity politics." The cheek, who started identity politics? What is the "history of Europe" if not a vivid exercise in race history.

	At the level of popular history, the vulgar Afrocentrists glorified in an oversimplistic manner the African heritage of black Americans. In their writings, they rarely related the actual complexities of the local cultures, divergence of languages, religions and political institutions, and tended to homogenize the sharply different social structures found within the African diaspora. They pointed with pride to the dynasties of Egypt as the classical foundation of African civilization, without examining with equal vigor or detail Egypt's slave culture
	Manning Marable

Who created the modern identities and made slaves out of people based on these identities? So arrogant that they accuse Afrocentricity of doing what they do 24/7. And we understand it all has to do with normalized history, that is, history of Europe (white people) is the history of the world, every other history is really "The history of contact with Europe." So African history starts when Europe "discovered" Africans swinging in trees and eating each other. Anyone asserting any differing opinion to Hume and Kant is practising identity politics.

	Populist Afrocentrism was the perfect social theory for the upwardly mobile black petty bourgeoisie. It gave them a sense of ethnic superiority and cultural originality, without requiring the hard, critical study of historical realities. It provided a philosophical blueprint to avoid concrete struggle within the real world.... It was, in short, only the latest theoretical construct of a politics of racial identity, a world-view designed to discuss the world but never really to change it
	Manning Marable

In 1994 the Manhattan Institute, a public policy forum, published Alternatives to Afrocentrism, a collection of highly critical essays by, among others, Lefkowitz (an over celebrated African detractor), Gerald Early, Stanley Crouch (another version of Henry Gates but more vulgar and obnoxious), Wilson Moses, and Frank Yurco. Early, an African American, has been especially vitriolic, dismissing Afrocentrism as just another North American experiment in "group therapy," intellectual fast food for his less sophisticated brethren. In the academic world Afrocentricity has become a dirty word because of the activities of a few pseudo-historians who marred authentic Afrocentric research. This ultimately undermined the seriousness of Afrocentrism. But too much bad research and lazy scholarship has been a global problem and most Afrocentrics are guilt of this. While Eurocentrism seeks to replace African civilizations, it is not the aim of Afrocentricity as Asante stated:

	In seeking to delimit it, he has encouraged its adherents to be autocritical. They must not "promote a static, monolithic and unreal concept of African culture which denies or diminishes its dynamic and diverse character." They must also not "overfocus on the Continental African past at the expense of recognizing the African American past and present as central to and constitutive of African culture and the Afrocentric enterprise
	Asante

But with all due respect to the work of Asante, Afrocentricity has never sat still long enough to be properly described and accurately critiqued. Its like a trying to shoot a moving target. Every time the wind blows it seems to evolve new arms and legs in a fatal attempt to jump out of the way of critique. But the books are testimony to the plethora of fallacies and unfortunately when you construct a elaborate label for yourself you must take the good and bad that come with it, including the pseudo-historians that seek fame under that flag.

AFROCENTRIC DILEMMA

	Despite the fulminations of ethno-chauvinists and other prejudiced persons, it remains a fact that the contributions of white scholars, like Boas, Malinowski, and Herskovits, were fundamental tot hat complex of ideas that we designate to days as Afrocentrism...Students of African and African American history have long appreciated the irony that much of what we now call Afrocentrism was developed during the 1930s by the Jewish American scholar Melville Herskovits
	Wilson J. Moses

In dealing with religion Afrocentrism/Black orientalism reveals its pseudo-intellectual narrow minded foundation. It treats age old historical relationships by superimposing African-American victimhood into ancient African history. Complex relationship in both African Christianity and especially Islam are washed away in monolithic, simplistic, unsubstantiated, un-academic diatribes. In an attempt to forced concepts of "pure" and "foreign," Africa is reduced to "foreign", "invaded", and especially "victim." All wrapped up in fear of anything not "pitch black" and defended not by logic, but by shouting and other stage tricks.

	The most dangerous type of lie is Truth blended with omissions
	'Alik Shahadah

In an attempt to forced concepts of "pure" and "foreign," some African historians make the job of Eurocentrism easy by support the primary thesis that Africa is on the outside of history. Many times some Afrocentrics have no problem speaking of the glorious African past and the universities of Timbuktu and Aksum to score racial points but then on the next page try to totally demonize Islam and Christianity in Africa as destructive. They praise the battles of Kemet but curse the battles of Songhai. And regardless of the segment of African history they try to force agendas of "African purity" ideology of "invasion" " destruction" "conquest" "foreign religion." The question must be asked is something valid or superior just because it is birthed in Africa? What happens when something "foreign" carries more moral or social profit? Because it is impossible to deny that the coming of Islam removed many harmful practises not only from Africa but also from Arabia: Hygiene issues, basic morality which are now considered normal and obvious. And it was the coming of Islam that actually preserved a great deal of West African history because it was absorbed and institutionalized (libraries, fatwahs, etc). As much as Afrocentrics love to claim and praise Egypt , these rulers by today's standard would be considered an oppressive and exploitative aristocracy.

And they fail, in their faulty methodologies, to answer the question, between Islam and Ancient KMT, and Ancient KMT and so-called native faiths, which had more in common? There is no escaping that Islam and Ancient Egypt had far more in common with each other than say the religions of Dahomey. Populous Afrocentricity has done it self a terrible crime because if the ethics of Islam are foreign then so to are those of KMT.

Cheikh Anta Diop, whom Afrocentrics admire has a very interesting review of Jacques Pirenne's History of Ancient Egypt . Diop comments favorably about Pirenne's description of revolutions against the Egyptian rulers by lower-class Egyptians -- something one would expect in an exploitative society. But the Afrocentrics who so admire Diop seldom  mention this aspect of Ancient Egypt. Now balance demands a honest study of history, it cannot be terrible and horrible when Askia raids and pillages non-Islamic villages and be "glorious" when Kemet does it to Nubia. Or "military genius" during the bloody Mfecane of Shaka Zulu as he forcible united the Ngoni people. How are these two standard different to what racist have done with World history?

AGENTS

Africans must be agents of their own history and control the format, agenda, and placement by which African history and culture is taught, disseminated, absorbed and weighted. But this does not mean that it is okay to fictionalize history to react against academic racism. And for this reason the Maafa study is a key sign of the Pan-African paradigm-shift where the legacy of the African Holocaust on African people globally is studied within the framework of the natural history in which the Maafa occurred. The emphasis in the historical narrative is on African agents (African-Centred) but this is very different from using history to force modern-day racial concepts into past to score racial points. As sweet as it is to believe in the Sirius B Dogon myth it serves no historical relevance in the face of hard empirical evidence.

Afrocentrism needs to be commuted, while it's prime principles salvaged, as a new generation sensitive to the politics for its creation must re-look at Africa with more sophisticated eyes. The thirst for a new African reality is not serviced by the populist trend of Afrocentrism. Afrocentricity has slipped from any station of nobility to a fringe theorist playground. The desperate attempts to revive its merits is lost in any serious discourse in Africa studies. While Eurocentricity thrives, it does so because it has been supported the institutions which created it, Afrocentricity tries to survive among the structures it critiques, which in itself is a paradox. Populous Afrocentricity has built next to nothing and is tolerated and humored, while mocked because of inability to do anything but provide superficial therapy. Populist Afrocentric books, (Which is different from proper Afrocentric scholarship) are another mirror of their contradictions because they are just compilation of favorable opinions of Africans by Europeans. While desperte to userp Christianity and Islam's stronghold on African people the alternatives — if any seem to oxidize and rust when hit with the hard wind of reality.

	History makes a poor comfort blanket for racial pride
	'Alik Shahadah

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EUROPE's SOLUTION FOR AFRICA

	We have the frying pan, the oil, the onions, the eggs, the fire and the chef but they are telling us we still need them to help fry an egg.
	'Alik Shahadah

Whites with the wealth are not going to volunteer a solution which disrupts their wealth and opportunities created from that wealth and power. What possible human incentive would Europe, for example, have for doing this?

What they will try to do is assert a "best win" solution which preserves peace but protects profits. Hence race gets taken off the table so we can waste our energy on a supposed other foe of humanity. All the while the race privileges maintains European domination.

	[Whites] are generous without giving justice; personally humane, without an equitable sharing of wealth, power or status.
	Dr. Maulana Karenga

How many times do we see the Tarzan 'power photo' of the White lady with the poor impoverished African child being held? The White parent to the hopeless African child who is dependant on Europeans (not Africans) to act out some "white mans burden." It is hard to believe these degrading images of White vanity are still the posters of many NGOs and so-called charities..

There is a lot of money in finding "problems to solve" in Africa. Every problem gets funded to fix. So if your NGO has 1 year left solving homeless war orphans, and there is no more war. Then you better quickly find another crisis. FGM, for example, is a word constructed by white liberals for shock value. All of them get funded to exterminate what they perceive as some new barbarity in Africa. And we need to ask ourselves if a mortician gets rich from death, he will not want to find the fountain of youth.

The premises behind much of the solutions for Africa are in the ideal that a hurting Africa needs a humanist hand from Europe . NEPAD insist that a richer Africa is in the interest of the entire world, but nothing in World history indicates moral objectives as a reason for action. In South Africa and much of Africa the theory is if you eat enough crumbs from the master's plate you will eventually get full.

	In much of Africa the prevailing theory is if you eat enough crumbs from the master's plate you will eventually get full.
	'Alik Shahadah

One type of sophisticated warfare is to control the opposition, to give the illusion of diversity i.e. liberal and conservative while intellectually having the same agenda. giving people the choice of being eaten by the wolf or the fox. An agreement in the United Nations’ Security Council or other diabolical agencies such as the World Bank is like an agreement among a choir, and such agreements are not agreements at all nor are they meant to provide any succor to the problems of Africa .

When Europe spoke of partnership we thought it was a marriage but it was really a concubiage

There is nothing but capitalism and illusions of democracy, which are alien to the aspirations of African people. From “Feed Africa” to “Make Poverty History” which are mere sloganeering programs with no genuine effect on the population of the continent.

UNICEF:German Ad Campaign Uses White Children in Blackface to Portray "Uneducated Africans"

These campaigns are industries unto themselves that create billions of dollars and generate millions of jobs. They subsidize ailing industries in developed countries. Entire business exists that sustain their products entirely from the poverty of Africa. We are naïve and childish to believe a richer Africa is in the interest of Europe. A richer Africa would be a global competitor how is that good for Europe, A stronger united Africa would cancel the debt, how is that good for Europe?

Do you think the slave master who gets rich from your enslavement is going to give you the keys to your freedom?

We cannot have the oppressors telling the oppressed how to rid themselves of the oppressor.- Kwame Ture

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mindset African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

Poor people do not have the luxury of liberalism and freedom of speech. Poor people have no point of view other than “feed me”, Poor people are absent from the luxury of agency. And a poor Africa will always be a slave to a richer Europe . Today at every major anti-slavery or save Africa project it is Europe deciding and inviting personalities from the African world to sit at “THEIR” table, to discuss Africa ’s problems. The frontline for Make Poverty History is a “museum of rock star” beyond their performance years, probably seeking redemption and revival; Gedolf is the expert on famine, Bono the authority on AIDS. Bob Geldof, the Jesus and Tarzan character all rolled into one. The first name to come to mind when abolition is whispered is William Wilberforce and Granville Sharpe. Walking in the legacy of Dr. Livingston, I presume: A man who single-handedly ended the ENTIRE Arab Slave trade. Again, the agent in Africa's liberation is Europe . Not even dealing with the aspect of how Africa found itself in the continuing hole. What kind of world do we live in when the views of the oppressed are expressed at the convenience of the rich?

Everything in our current world, and in our history, tells us we cannot let our guard down and integrate our revolution for justice. Every time Africans extend their hand in partnership with Europe we always come back with 1/2 a hand. And common sense says we must , at best, be cautious of feeding our hands to wolves.

	Any advice from your oppressor first services your oppression
	Shahadah

There are two stages to any solution: Identify the problem or agent and then bring the cure by doing work. If you do one without the other, we are wasting time. E.g. If your car is leaking fuel, just putting in more fuel will not fix the problem. You must also know why the fuel is leaking. Eurocentric rhetoric planted this notion of "a blameless world" in which the cause is disconnected from the solution. It is a blanket argument used to defend their responsibility for being at the head of most of the ills of the world.

Racism marginalizes authentic African perspectives, it imposes self-serving identities onto intelligent human beings, give them names, defines the African reality, re-assigns history outside of Africa, denies genius and agency, tells Africans what is moral and finally chastise and alienates the oppressed for challenging its systems   'Alik Shahadah

 

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TARZAN AGAIN : Black Story — White Voice

	They will even own your ancestors if you let them
	Abbey Lincoln

Above an image of the new Tarzan responsible for creating a new generation of subservient African leaders. The organization is correctly called MAD.

In the Tarzan paradigm Tarzan is the great white hero who speaks on behalf of the 'primitive' Africans and acts as the parent and leader. During colonialism Europeans established themselves as the primary agents of African destiny; in their superiority they knew what was best and spoke on behalf of Africa. Now what is not understood is when Bono stands up and speaks, or when yet another White person "exposes" the ills of Africa through film this is a direct ideological continuum from the superiority complex of slavery and colonialism. The underlying preemies is Whites are morally and intellectual superiorly and have a burden to save Africans.

	The only skills whites teach Africans is dependency
	Shahadah

Name a "Black film” and look behind the lens; who wrote it, who produced it, who directed it? Amistad , the music by John Williams, the director Mr. Spielberg. Tsosti a story of violence in the African communities, violence is a natural reality of South African people in European perception; it sells and it feeds their image of us of being gang bangers, and semi-noble savages . It is almost impossible to consider a film that does not include a European central figure. War Dance, singing dancing through the horrors of a genocide. The Last King of Scotland reflects this, and is the same legacy as Cry Freedom.

I t would not be sufficient to tell the story of Idi Amin; so infamous enough and surely notorious enough character in his own right. No, they say, this would reduce the value of the project, in comes the European into the storyline. It is actually amazing to see Mel Gibson attempt to make a film of a non-White people without a central European character. Returning to the likes of Richard Attenborough we cannot blame him for his bias in Cry Freedom , he is by nature a European and is simply acting out his European weighted worldview, avoiding Eurocentric as a term, as every healthy race is sensitive to his or her cultural perceptions. It makes no sense to ask Spielberg to give more “Africaness” in his Amistad or The Color Purple (which was an amazing piece of cinema). Even stories of African struggle are without exception made by Europeans: End Game, Invictus [2009](Clint Eastwood), Amandla (Lee Hirsch), Roots (Collection of Whites), War Dance (Sean Fine), Life and Debt (Stephanie Black), Rize ( David LaChapelle ). Who is cashing in again and again on our tears? Why can' Africans be the central authors of their stories? The issue is not for Europeans to become more sensitive in “pretending” to be African, the issue is amazingly simpler; it is for Africans to be agents in their stories and hence removing the problem all together.

The concept that Europe is qualified in bringing out indigenous people's stories is just as arrogant as assuming Africans are and others are a worthless child-race. All nice intentions are welcomed by these are all rooted in the same racist presumption of racial incapability on the part of Africans and other non-European races.

	Name: Maarten Brouwer Function: Director "This is Africa" City/country: Amsterdam, E-mail: maarten@thisisafrica.me
	To change the world's outdated perceptions of Africa via its popular culture - If sincere create it and pass ownership to an African.

Doesnt it break your heart that when you go to a site "this is Africa" or " Africa this Africa that" or see a shop selling African art, and then you click the about page and all you see is White people smiling at you? Doesn't it tell us something powerful? How is it possible that in 21st century that 99% of our news agencies, cultural sites, history books, films and everything to do with Africa is directed by European people, and if Africans are lucky they get to work for them. Only in Africa, Not with Asian, not with Jews, and certainly not Chinese. But anytime you see a site on Africa and their face on the about page be sure the agenda (however well meaning) will not deal with African holistic liberation. They will talk to death about Music, about how nice Victoria falls is, how human Nelson Mandela is but never will they self-implicate Europe in the ongoing removal and denial of African agency.

A journey to the local media outlet see Michael Palin in Africa, or a PBS special on Africa produced by an all European cast called Tigress productions. This is the interface, which we need to challenge; many of us are caught-up in incidentals of our struggle. Being seen on a screen is not self-determination, especially when the gatekeepers, decision makers who determining the validity of our work are all European. African stories are attempts to explain Africans to Europeans as opposed to Africans explaining themselves to each other. These mere fact renders the whole concept of “Black cinema” and “Black perspective” redundant.

When It comes to the Jewish story, regardless of if it is a historical piece ( Schindler's  List), a Comedy (Meet the Fockers) or a Sci-fi (X-Men), a social drama (Freedom Writers) every single opportunity reinforces the Jewish story. Only Africans think consciousness is a genre.

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PRODUCTS NOT PRODUCERS

Capitalist Nigger: Dr. Chika Onyeani In the controversial book by Dr. Chika Onyeani a connection between inferiority complex and poor economic agency is well made. Critics, those who set agendas for Africa, naturally are critical over this content because it hits true to the core issue which the West feeds of-- Africa's lack of economic independence. Africa serves as a supplier of raw material and not finished good. And the few manufacture business in Africa are owned and controlled by non-Africans. Critics claim the book uses out dated stereotypes while failing to praise the core thesis. But a book on AID or AIDS would find more praise as it keeps African markets securely in their grasp.

Globalization is not only an imposition of products but also of ideas and ideals- at the expense of broader human diversity   ' Alik Shahadah

Once there was a web site called Africana which explored African history and generally empowering topics, where is that site today? It has been taken over by the commercial giants AOL and is now blackvoices, a collection of trite and pointless garbage that celebrates the emptiest aspects of African-American culture; the singers and the dancers, the entertainers and the clowns. Make no mistake, the world is happy and delighted to promote another African singer and dancer. That is the Africa they are comfortable with; Jumping around on stage with a microphone, spinning hips - base and tribal -only expression is from emotion. Not that we shouldn't love our music which is key to our identity. But we need to know the difference. Nation builders, business ownership, strong political leadership, teachers, researchers, historians, medical doctors. You will meet far less opposition in the world when you satisfy these stereotypical roles. Music and dance have a serious place in our culture, but unless we have nation structure all this dancing and singing will service everyone else but us.

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mind-set African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

All the adverts centered on the “Black” people are relating to sex, the commodification of the African body is an industry to itself. Inter-racial dating, meet black singles, black gays, find black love, this is what African people have come to represent in the global world. These are problems created and nurtured by the Europeans. And they fail to understand it is also adversely affecting the very sociocultural existence of Europe itself. Europe has relegated the position of women to the doldrums; they see their women as object of amusement, just mere flesh for quenching their thirst. Who needs any “meet single” if women are respected and given the right position? And certainly it is not a problem in Africa . So why, is it that it is sent down our throats and now our people entering the bandwagon? The commercial exploiters of African people have riding a very a low tide in human culture, again the issue is this is what Africans have chosen to identify with.

Returning us to Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the reason is that as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz said: “we stand for nothing, fall for everything.” Agency is the natural actions of a self-determined people; lack thereof is testimony to the shallow position Diasporian-Africans occupy.

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EVERY STARTS AND ENDS WITH EUROPE

	"white" depends for its stability on its negation, "black." Neither exists without the other, and both come into being at the moment of imperial conquest
	Franz Fanon

According to popular information; African history began with the arrival of the Portuguese. Before that time Africa   was of no significance. The only names seen in the abolishment movement are William Wilberforce, Granvel Sharp et al. Africa enters history when Europe arrived. Everything seen by Europeans was "discovered" and thus made real. People swimming in so-called Lake Victoria, yet a malaria stricken white man still claims it as discovered.

The liberation is a Europeans enterprise, the countless revolts and revolutions are a footnote in the annals of history. A few names by sheer power like Nat Turner could not be washed out of history but many fought for liberation over the centuries of enslavement and colonial rule. Failing to see who is writing history, our admitting it and then being part of inheriting Eurocentric agency is denial of self-determination. And while culturally Africa is not a monolith our response to oppression has been monolithic. The consequences of our oppression have taken similar patterns independent of our ethnicity, religiosity and geography (see 500 Years Later).

	The combination of the European centuries gives us about four to five hundred years of solid European domination of intellectual concepts and philosophical ideas. Africa and Asia were subsumed under various headings of the European hierarchy. If a war between the European powers occurred it was called a World War and the Asians and Africans found their way on the side of one European power or the other
	Molefi Asante

African people are not even allowed to choose their own leaders. The African continent today continues to be a nesting bed for Europe’s choices for Africa ’s leadership. The heroes like Mary Seacole are not heroes of African people but heroes of Europe . The most treacherous and hateful “blacks” are celebrated outside of Africa ’s interest. African heroes are nominated by all white communities during “Black history” month in the UK , so that singers like Alicia Keys gets postered with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. Not understanding African people, has never been a restraint for Europe dictates. So Black History Month is absent from a memory of Africa because European memory is not comfortable with that history which they had the power to destroy but not the moral restraint not to. (Karenga) The error again and again is the acceptance and trust Africa people have seemingly placed on the opinions and values of Europeans. Authorship and authority, if not from Europe , is not valid.

	Eurocentrism is so arrogant it writes a book about itself, denies it still exist, while imposing its "orthodoxy" as the standard for the world
	'Alik Shahadah

African scholarship is thus alight to a circus show, for the same motives of giving a monkey a suit and a law degree---entertainment. To state an opinion not supported by European or to speak favorable about Africa is to be an Afrocentric, which in the European vocabulary simply means a desperate childish pseudo-historian.

African history began with the arrival of the Portuguese. Before that time Africa was of no significance. The only names seen in the abolishment movement are William Wilberforce, Granvel Sharp et al. The liberation is a Europeans enterprise, the countless revolts and revolutions are a footnote in the annals of history. A few names by sheer power like Nat Turner could not be washed out of history but many fought for liberation over the centuries of enslavement and colonial rule. Failing to see who is writing history, our admitting it and then being part of inheriting Eurocentric agency is denial of self-determination.

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CULTURAL DISOWNERSHIP

One measure of the level of destruction on Africans globally is the mass dis-ownership of culture. From domain names to grocery stores in African dominated communities, it doesn’t matter if you are in New York or Nairobi, Bridgetown or Bamako. For example the domain Africaunite.com is not owned by Africans or any single thing that relates to Africa remains in the hands of our former/current oppressors.

Maybe we are asleep or late of the starting block to recognize new opportunities and move into our own cultural niches before they become dominated and controlled by others. Almost every major organization rooted in “doing” something for Africans or “saving” Africans is European dominated. And some of us think we are free.

Music

The beboppers' attitude was summed up in a famous quotation attributed to Monk: "We wanted a music that they couldn't play" – "they" being the (white) bandleaders who had taken over and profited from swing music.

African-Americas are very famous for hip-hop, the world sees the African stamp on this genre. Some individual rappers get rich from it (0.00001%) but who gets wealthy from it (according to Chris Rock). Who shoots the videos and owns the labels? Or the record shops? The clothes they wear? The cars they drive? The greatest Jazz artist is Norah Jones, the greatest rap artist is Emenim, while the greatest rock ‘n roll artist is Elvis Prestly; the current greatest reggae artist is Sean Paul. The pattern may be eluding us. Black music is now urban music, step-by-step the little agency we had is being eroded away. An independent African run site did a survey “are we better off today, compared to yesterday” 70% of the people recognized “we are worst off today but richer.” The glorious efforts in America in the 60’s, under segregations, had more elements of self-determination and agency that today. More business ownership and more importantly a do-for-self attitude, something the Farrakhan has constantly stressed.

Search the internet, and this is just one small example, and look at popular sites to do with African people and see who and what is in control of it.

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AGENTS OF ACADEMIC RACISM

	You can not measure an African success with a European ruler
	Owen 'Alik Shahadah

 

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mind-set African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

Academic racism was and is a necessary bed partner with all other forms of colonialization, imperialism and neo-liberal globalization. It notably came into service as a means of removing any noble claim from the victims of systemic persecution; this served to rationalize their plight as "natural" and a continuation of a pre-existing historical status. In order to eschew moral responsibility for destroying societies and undermining indigenous social and political systems it was necessary to formulate a discourse, which proved that slavery, and subsequently colonialism was by comparison to the pre-existing condition a blessing. The first expressions of this academic trend appeared in the claim that Slavery was a natural feature of Africa, and that Africans sold each other every day. In addition, that Africa was a savage place, a moral hell compared to the plantations of the Americas and thus an improvement from the prevailing conditions in Africa. This contention sought to justify the commercial exploitation while denying and escaping the moral question. It therefore became critical to remove Africa from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Ethiopia and anything that could challenge the notion of a savage black Africa. The legacy of slavery and colonialism gives Africans a profound disinheritance in areas of social-economic, and thus directly and indirectly a disinheritance in academics. We are playing on a chessboard where all the pieces are white.

The volumes of publish works by the Hitler's of the African Holocaust is impossible for Africans to gain any foothold and authorities stance in their history. Year after year, the bookshelves are filled with one opinion. The most “popular” Africans are those singing from this music score.  Some of the most racist and pejorative material today is taught in schools in an attempt to vindicate the continuation of academic racism. The self-referencing of the “old boys” like Hume and Kant is valid today because it is old, white, and used many, many times. It is thus impossible for the frustrated African to gain any ground because he/she is in a battle whose parameters are set by foes on a battlefield tipped economically, socially, in favor of the opposition. We often hear “so and so is acknowledged by everyone to be one of the most prominent scholars of …” so and so is always white. To go against the white grain is to be "controversial" another racist way of boxing in African opinions as on the fringe of scholarship. But scholarship is a white only seat, academic apartheid with no room for debate. Aspects of academia which are dead and buried, but still in use.

It seems that White scholarship believes that if you repeat a lie,  it evolves into the truth on the 1 thousandth occurrence

In factual cannot become factual by virtue of volume or consistent use.

Any African academic discussing or having a positive take on Africa that contradicts their assertion is called Afrocentric, as if this form of opinion is a cultural slant loaded with the bias of pseudo-history. They say with one breath that Eurocentric academics were “men of their time” but still keep saying these people were the definitive guide to Africa. How can you say something is wrong but keep using it as a definitive source? The complete dismantlement (deconstruction) of the academic paradigm of authority needs to be a first step in a pure analysis, and it is for Africans to adopt this approach as bases for articulating and imposing a new identify. And in this we cannot overlook the significance of linguistics as a function of oppression.

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SUBTLE LANGUAGE OF RACISM

To highlight the academic dilemma against Africans it is necessarily to just site one of Europe ’s key historians on slavery. The age of the work and the period it was written in seem to make little impression in universities today, who seem to neglect the social status of Africans in the time these so-called scholarly books were being written in. It also neglects to highlight the mind-set of the authors of these works and their contribution to the obscuring and footnoting of African history and African contributions to civilization. Men who would be labeled by a self-determined African today are referenced and cited with little challenge. Despite all the new research and development, this dead racist scholarship is still held high as the authentic source on Africa . Almost as if the more you reference a bad source the more authentic it becomes. The foundation of history of Africa cannot be studied outside of the dynamics of race and racism in the writings of African conquers. This is not to dismiss their entire work, but surely to raise the red flag of sincerity, and subsequently expose the agendas behind these scribbling. J.D. Fage sits high on this throne of Anti-African rhetoric [ii]

“Today, however, some scholars assert that slavery did not have a wholly disastrous effect on those left behind in Africa .” [iii]

Imagine begging the question and stating that some scholars believed the Jewish Holocaust was not entirely disastrous. We must assume there is again some degree of salvation in the actions of the Europeans who saved Africa from savagery. It is like saying the Jewish Holocaust was beneficial because some Jews got senior position in the Nazi army, or slavery was good because Africans got free Caribbean cruises.

“At its peak, the Atlantic slave trade took about 90,000 slaves per year out of a total population of around 25 million in just Guinea , where the vast majority originated. This number was significant, yet only a moderate annual growth rate in population was enough to sustain it by replacement. Therefore, the slave trade is unlikely to have caused a decrease in the population of West Africa , though it may have reduced or even halted population growth in some regions.” [iv]

Again, we see the apology and denial of the consequences of enslavement [v] . What this is saying is the harvesting of African people was done sustainable and that it had no demographic consequences on birth rate, it would be worth mentioning that the most viral and healthiest members where been exported overseas so it is inconceivable that it would not affect population demographics not to mention settlement patterns and human social potential.

"The Nok civilization is argued by some to prove that Africa had a civilization prior to the arrival of Europe . "

This kind of tone appears to vindicate Africa but it actually introduces reasonable doubt. Its references again the false notion of a primitive Africa as a half-valid hypothesis for it shows by implication that anything or everything in Africa has to be articulated by juxtaposition. African civilization does not require any proof or revolutionary rethink. This kind of reasoning follows from “he seems very educated for a black” or “you see they are not all savages.” What needs to be done is exposed the motives behind those removing African agency from the annals of world cultural contributions.

“For those left behind in Africa the standard of living increased substantially and the region became divided into highly centralized and powerful nation states, such as Dahomey and the Ashanti Confederacy. It also created a class of very wealthy and highly Europeanized traders who began to send their children to European Universities. [vi]

Jewish historian William Rubinstein:

"Of these 10 million estimated dead blacks [sic], possibly 6 million were killed by other blacks in African tribal wars and raiding parties aimed at securing slaves for transport to America "

This is the tone taken to discuss the African Holocaust, the same Rubistein takes a completely different objection to any tone which diminishes or subtracts from the reality or the humanity of the victims of the Holocaust of Jews. Jew are White humans, Africans are blacks.

The contempt in Eurocentrism is so self-evident it almost needs no commentary to identify either intention or fallacies. It is be restated the source of this material comes from a respected seminal academic and authority on Africa . Before Europe , we know the Kanka Musa had gold reserves that made Ancient Mali one of the riches economies in the Ancient world. It is also a fact that Sankore was an African university so notable that Arabs and others came to study there. All of these non-direct facts retort the claims that contact with Europe brought power and education. Also the statement about Europeanized traders is intended by the author as a compliment a kind of accession of the African from savage beast to Europeanized. Fage trips and stabs himself with his own pen and exposes and implements himself as one of the historical agents of academic racism that has distorted the African historical time line.

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So What is Racism

Racism at its core is the supremacy of one race over another. This can be expressed in the classical way seen by the Ku Klux Klan or by suppressing development an African agency, as seen by the World Bank. Racism also requires a power element for its impact to be felt, therefore real racism disrupts another persons life.

The power to deny jobs, the power to block media, the power to enslave. Racism requires, at one level, for the person applying the racism to also have power to affect the target of racism. Harm, or at least perceived harm, is therefore a consequence of racism. Therefore any race can practice racism but especially when the have the power to inflict harm. Bigotry is in all forms of racism, but racism is not always in all forms of bigotry, if we understand the power dynamic.

Racism is also the belief that one race is incapable of mature processes and thus requires help to solve their problems to successful live productively in modernity. The constant impositions of what is good for Africa by Western voices is racism. To suggest that Africans should culturally become more like Europeans is racism. To suggest that aspects of African culture are regressive in the face of Western culture is racist. Racism is domination of one race images and ideas and ideals even in territories where Africans are the majority. Racism also takes away the tools of self-determination by making the dominant race the source of all orthodoxy and standards. So the experts on Africa are always White, and any African opinion outside of white approval is decried as ahistorical. And in this we see the constant "call to authority" which has the facade of being "mainstream" study but is really a re-stating of politically correct form of Eurocentrism.

In academia racism seeks to control all areas of people activity and access to information about self. It sets up notions of "Neutrality" which are monitored and controlled institutions of the dominant race class. And demands that oppressed people use these tools to access information. White racism fails to see the arrogance in itself and often repeats the same methodologies which are today decried. The constant attitude of qualification to speak to, write about Africans as if they were primates incapable of opinion of self. Structures of study are set-up at all junctions to exclude or reduce any form of challenge to the white status quo. Work is challenged for reliability when it is self-published or comes from publications not run by Whites. So the entire deck is stacked against the African to curb and lose any form of authentic study of self and the wider world.

So During the time of Kant It would have been stated that:

Lake Victoria was discovered in 19th Century

Today it is modified to the "neutral tone" variant':

Europeans discovered lake Victoria in 18th Century

The issue of African agency is still suppressed and the Eurocentric focus is still unchallenged. No African can say "Rome was discovered by Ethiopians in the 3rd century." So how do we explain how African is put in orbit of a European world view in a society where agency and self-determination are championed?

Racism is interruption of people’s right to determine their political and cultural destiny. Racism is mainly expressed by the dominant race class to the rest of the world. Therefore generally speaking the experience of racism is felt by non-white people. Ironically the new tone is for the dominant race-class to accuse disempowered people of being racist every time they try to identify and eliminate racism. 

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PATTERN OF EUROCENTRIC CONTEMPT

By careful analysis the European voice can be identified without seeing the face of the author. When it comes to Europe's historical record, deception and repetition is one thing that doesn't change.

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AFRICAN SUICIDE

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mind-set African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

Today we have a few African academics that wear all the clothing of Africa but in almost every attempt remove the very agency from the continent they claim to protect. In an attempt to forced concepts of "pure" and "foreign," some African historians make the job of Eurocentrism easy by support the primary thesis that Africa is on the outside of history. If you want to apply a purity test to history, almost everything in this world will fail. And while the nations and people of this world are busy expanding their claim on World history these victims are the only race of scholars busy reducing Africa's history to that of a continuously conquered people. The culture of victim-hood is a mechanism at play within some of the most significant African academics. The entire notion of “poor little Africa who was raped by Arabs and then Europeans” is a denial of African intelligence and agency. It stipulates indirectly that African have no sense, no judgment and no ability as a collective to act for self-determination or unity in the face of a collected foe. We must stop constantly seeing our history through the eyes of a victim, played out via the rhetoric of conquered, foreign and invaded. To believe that Islam and Christianity were forced down the throats of an unwilling people is as regressive and bigoted as the diatribes of Kant and Hume.

And one cannot have your cake an eat it to because every time Africans lay credit on a White agent for why Africans are doing some wrong we are denying our own agency and celebrating them as gods of our destiny. Because they would have to be gods to have such power over the African universe. African people have demonstrated absolute agency and contribution to both Islam, Christianity as well as Judaism. The theory, which identifies these religions as foreign, is baseless and shallow. When we study the history of Western Europe we find there conversion to Christianity much later than Africa , yet in all of their writings they claim authorship and agency in Christianity.

	Africans must stop constantly seeing history through the eyes of a victim, played out via the rhetoric of conquered, foreign and invaded
	'Alik Shahadah

Do we see Pakistanis doing this in Islam, even Chinese Muslims claim their noble inheritance in these faiths. Chinese Muslims cite the Chinese greats like Zheng Ho and his contributions to Islam. Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions, and at the time of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, virtually every religion had found converts, from Buddhism to Christianity to Islam. Yet with some African academics, there is this suicidal strategy to undermine the degree of agency and influence of Africa on Islam . They would rather remove it as foreign and thus collapsing the largest African kingdom of Songhai [ix] to obscurity, gone is Africa's claim to Timbuktu , Islamic Spain, Axsum, Sokoto and Ancient Mali. This anti-African rhetoric also infects the notability of Uthman Dan Fodio, Menelik Askia Muhammad, Thewdros, Bilal, Malik Sy, Selassie, Ahmadou Bamba, Sundiata, Seka Toure, The Mahdi of the Sudan , King Ezna, Emperor Fasiladas, the list is endless. But all of these people are removed from history, not to mention our recent greats such as Farrakhan, Dr. King, Garvey, El Hajj Malik Shabazz and Cheikh Anta Diop.

This again testifies to the fastidiousness of the cancer plaguing disenfranchised Africans globally. No people in history are seen to do this. The Turks, who accepted Islam late in the day, made it their own and ruled with it.  The principle cornerstones of these faiths have African origins and agency but some like fools cast Africa's historical station into the wind, as "foreign, worthless, and out of Africa " . Sufism an influential branch of Islam is African in origin, testimony to the power of Africanistic theology on Islam. Ethiopia was one of the first Christian Kingdoms in the entire World! The Khans were successful because they integrated what worked in their favor, as did our ancestors. This planet is a fusion and dynamic collision of cultures and ideas, there is no purity.

Africans have succumbed to some of the greatest horrors in history but not the extent of being the exploited historical fodder of others; the perpetual victims in the entire annals of history. Easily seduced with the same tricks that work 500 years ago.

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CONCLUSION

Top Making a Slave Europe's Solution Tarzan's Voice White Boast Products not Producers Disownership Academic Racism European Mind-set African Suicide Afrocentrics Denial of Agency Language And Racism African Holocaust Marriage Africa Before Slavery 21st Century Slavery TransAtlantic Slavery Mental Slavery

If our recent histories tell us anything is that we must be separatist in rebuilding our people. There is no "global group" effort when it comes to agency. No partnerships to create African agency. Agency is something you can only discover and seek for self. When Africans have faith in other peoples structures values are detour away from Africaness and self-determination. The African is pre-occupied with throwing a celebration party in someone else’s house, as opposed to owning and controlling our own space. So the aim of the African author is to be published by the flourishing European publishing houses, the aim of the African musician is to be signed by Columbia, the aim of the African filmmaker to be distributed by Sony and given a Cannes laurel. The aim of the African intellectual to be awarded some prize controlled by forces outside of his/her cultural reality. The ultimate product is Africans exist in a world which is owned by others and at any junction and with control they ultimate determine overtly or subtly the agency of a people. But who is working as hard to build an African Sony, An African Randle House, and African Cannes? This is where the greater emphasis needs to be places because in all disciplines Africans have enough power to have their own systems of accreditation and distribution.

Almost nothing is given to Africa without a greater benefit to Europe. The new admissions about African kingdoms are a result of overwhelming evidence which forces Europeans into admission which is then twisted to retain the old myths. The fostering of anti-Islamic sentiment among African people to break unity, or creating false borders between the Diaspora and the continent all serves a greater agenda. The promotion of western neo-liberal feminist values to break the African home. Western democracies to stifle African political genius.

It is the responsibility of the next generation of academics to re-interpret the works of their predecessors. This is not a duty exclusive to the victims of Eurocentric academic racism but rather to all. The plurality and multicultural world is far safer if we all exist in an environment of truth and fairness overriding the miss-motives of the past.

	We must sail the ship of truth on the sea of lies, against the tide of repetition
	Owen 'Alik Shahadah

The foundational paradigm must be truth; this is the driver for the next generation. We must sail the ship of truth on the sea of lies, against the tide of repetition, for this is the only way to erase the pre-assumed notion that washes and perverts our shared histories.

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Owen 'Alik Shahadah, is an African Cultural writer and a multi-award winning Filmmaker who documents African history and culture. For more info see www.owenshahadah.com

 

REFERENCES

* Said, Edward. Orientalism. Race and Racialization:

* Hall, S. The West and the Rest: Discourse and power. Race and Racialization Essential Readings

* Women make up more than 60 percent of Iranian university students with some fields in science and engineering having more than 70 percent of their alumni be women. The opportunities for women education and their involvement in higher education has grown exponentially after the Iranian Revolution. According to UNESCO world survey, Iran has the highest female to male ratio at primary level of enrollment in the world among sovereign nations

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How to Write about Africa