KILL ALL DRUG DEALERS


I recently had a conversation with a brother who argued that drug dealers are killing our community and therefore should be killed. He argued that not only drug dealers but also pimps, hoes, and lazy blacks should be killed because they are an embarrassment to “the rest of us”. I pointed out that I am neither embarrassed nor ashamed of any African no matter the condition I find them in, because I understand that Amos Wilson was right when he said “Prejudice actions, injustice, unfair housing, drug abuse, murder, disease in Africa, illiteracy and various others are symptoms of white imperialism. All these symptoms come from one reality, and that is the white mans ability to impose it on people of color.” I went on to try to explain to the brother that (paraphrasing Nelly Fuller) if he didn’t come to understand the system of racism/white supremacy everything else he believes he understands will only confuse him. But as this conversation was held in a public forum the chant of “excuses excuse” began to ring out. I was told (by other Africans) “black folk always want to make excuses,” “You can’t blame the white man for everything,” and “when are we going to take responsibility for ourselves?”
Here is an example of the flaw in such rationalities… if a doctor tells you that you have high blood pressure, it does not then become an “excuse” to stay away from salty fried foods it becomes an imperative for you to do so. If you do you eat salty foods and they make you sick its not “blaming” the food when you say “I shouldn’t have ate that salty food” its actually taking into account what position you find your self in and what you actually did to help get yourself into said position. It is taking responsibility at its very best because it isn’t just looking what is before you and going from there but its bringing in all information from your past and deciding where to go from an informed position. Such is the same when we unmask yurugu (look it up) for what it is. We are looking at the foundation that causes the symptoms we notice in our community in order that we may “wisely” take responsibility for changing those symptoms. As Amos Wilson says “The most practical thing you can have is a good working theory to guide your behavior that helps you organize and approach your world. Human consciousness is what gives life to the world. We create the world we live in so if we change our value system we INEFFECT change our world. A new social system is birth.” There is nothing practical or wise about an African American plan that doesn’t take racism/white supremacy into account.

Muhammad Ali once said “The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.” Our fight as Africans is lost if and when we do not recognize white supremacy as an underlining cause to African suffering across the diasporas and train our people/ourselves to be ready to deal with white supremacy in the “ring” of life. But Ali also said “champions aren’t made in the gym they are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire a dream a vision.” White supremacy is designed to destroy the champion in Africans by robbing us of our vision, conditioning our desires and directing our dreams to benefit their wants and desires. Knowing this we shouldn’t kill our future warriors because they come to us untrained, visionless, and desiring falsified dreams of macho manhood, or some hoe-afied versions of femininity. We should accept any brother or sister “as is” and then train them “to be” African centered in their vision, to desire that which is truly beneficial to themselves and Africans world wide, and to never stop dreaming of better days instead of seeing life as a continuous nightmare.

I could be wrong but you would have to prove it.
Mpaji ni Mungu - God is the Sustainer.

Wangari Maathai’s Seven Principles and what the African amerikan can learn from our Kenyan sister.

1ENVIRONMENT “Many issues we deal with at a national level are symptoms of a larger problem. Instead of worrying about such symptoms, we should worry about the causes… I often went into the country side. When it rained there I’d see top soil wash away. Then I’d hear rural women express need for firewood, clean water, and nutritious food. I realized these things were connected. Kenya’s indigenous forest had turned into plantations. Our country was so hungry for cash crops that to much vegetation had been removed to farm them. Degradation of land was widespread”.

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: Brother Amos Wilson couldn’t agree with her more when she says “Many issues we deal with at a national level are symptoms of a larger problem. Instead of worrying about such symptoms, we should worry about the causes”. Brother Amos taught that “ symptom orientation alienates the person and keeps them individualistic in thought. It forms a neurotic paradox where they stick to usual measures of coping although they aren’t working” he believed that we must become task orientated focusing on the root cause of our issues. Prejudice actions, injustice, unfair housing, drugs, murder, rap lyrics, disease in Africa, illiteracy and various others are symptoms of white imperialism. All these symptoms come from 1 reality the white mans ability to impose it on people of color. While we must deal with these symptoms we must never forget the root cause and our actions must be deisnged to effect said root cause which is white imperialism. Our people are desperate for power yet the fields of our consciousness have been degraded, the top soil of sense of self has been wash away by white imperial indoctrination.

2 EMPOWERMENT “I suggested we engage women in tree planting to solve these problems, since trees provide wood and food, and stop oil erosion. We later had resistance from the government then in power . we understood that its members fought us not because we’d planted trees but because we had organized and challenged the mismanagement of the environment.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: I suggest we engage Africans in self knowledge planting, since a strong sense of our African self will build a stronger community thru stronger African centered individuals. We will receive resistance from the government and other entrenched power elites because our unity takes their power from over us and gives it back to us. It challenges them to either work with us on issues that we see as beneficial for us or be removed. Molefi K. Asante in Afrocentricity said “An ideology for liberation must find its existence in ourselves, it cannot be external to us, and it cannot be imposed by those other than ourselves; it must be derived from our particular historical and cultural experience." This means we must engage ourselves in views we have based on our history and not their view of our history based on their egocentrism. This is hard work black Christian scholars must rethink all they have been indoctrinated to believe as do Muslims or people of and other non traditional African faith tradition.


3 EDUCATION “When people are educated to the links between environment and government they can improve both. Through civic and environmental programs, they lose there apathy and get involved.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: When Africans are educated to African centered power realities and how we can redirect the direction of our community we lose the apathy encourage by white imperialism. Amos taught “In many ways the white man is our creation, and our values sustain his power over us. We waist time trying to transform them when if we transform us, they are automatically transformed. You see they cant have what they have unless we are who we are. We must believe that the power to change the world is in us and that we aren’t destined to be servants. God would not have blessed the black man with the African home land if he meant for us to be servants of others. For Africans to be starving and in debt means something must be wrong with our consciousness.” When we sat in, marched , boycotted, etc we forced a paradigm shift in our relations with them. Yet today Africans belittle marching. We don’t understand the power dynamic gathering masses of Africans creates. Marching can unite, it can rally people and energize their spirit. It can create a place where brothers and sisters can network with like minded progressive people who are willing to sacrifice in order to build. It may not be the marching that was the problem but what we were marching for.

4 GOOD GOVERNMENT “Without a government that is respectful of peoples rights, the environment will gradually be destroyed by privatization of public lands.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: Without an African centered leadership that is respectful of the rights and needs of all Africans, our communities will gradually be destroyed from the outside and within by the privatization of public lands and individualizations of personal lives. Amos Wilson says “white people are racist because they have the power to do so”. Partially due to the lack of a unifying African centered perspective members of the bush administration boldly announce that New Orleans will not as black again and we don’t have the network to move Africans back to La to demand jobs in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Where we don’t empower ourselves they will exploit us, and to often our so-called leadership is clueless to the attack if not participating with them in said attack.

For the African American good leadership is leadership with a African centered perspective which can only be obtained thru African centered education. "Kwame Agyei Akoto in Nation building says "Afrikan centered education is rooted in the unique history and evolved culture of Afrikan people. It is defined in its singular commitment to the elucidation of that history, that culture, and the confirmation, invigoration and perpetuation of the Afrikan collective identity that emanates from that history and culture. Afrikan centered education is concerned with the origins, original status and future of the Afrikan world. Afrikan centered education is committed to correcting the historical distortions born of three millennia of foreign invasion, destruction, enslavement, physical and mental colonialism, cultural disruption, and dependency. Afrikan centered education is committed to rooting or anchoring the spiritual and intellectual energies of Afrikan people in the spiritual, moral, and philosophical traditions of Afrika. Afrikan centered education, whether in the several nations of the diaspora or on the motherland, is concerned to fully develop the sense of Afrikan nationality within a broader Pan-Afrikan world. Afrikan centered education is concerned to sever irrevocably the pathological and slavish linkage of Afrikans to the European or Asian ethos. Afrikan centered education is concerned to enable the Afrikan person with nation building, nation management, and nation maintenance abilities. Afrikan centered education is concerned to motivate teacher, student, parent and community to advance the Afrikan nation/world by any means necessary”
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5 SUBSTANTIAL DEVELOPMENT “Environmental needs must be taken into account. If we manage resources more effectively and with more responsibility and share them more equitably many conflicts over them can be reduced.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: If we manage resources more effectively and with more responsibility (spinners, bling bling) and share them more equitably (build up our own community and stop enriching other people) many conflicts over them can be reduced. Think of this “many Africans have stopped wearing traditional colors and traded that for euro-centric attire, across Africa labor unions complain that western hand me downs are killing regional clothing industries. But experts (white folk and their minions) blame factory shut downs on poor management, political instability, and growing competition from inexpensive asian clothes.” What if Africans in america told African American clothing makers that either they get a specific amount of their clothing made in Africa and not china or we wont shop with them. Roca wear fubu and others would be forced to invest in the already established but struggling clothing infrastructure across Africa. We would be empowering ourselves instead of just going along in a system designed to continue our oppression.

6 EMPLOYMENT “People need opportunities and resources where they live. Other wise many migrate to big cities seeking jobs that are no more. Kenya’s solutions to thes problems include allocating funds to rural areas to help address poverty and give kids the skills to compete in the job market.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: People need opportunities and resources where they live. WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO SPEND OUR MONEIES WITH PEOPLE FROM OUTSIDE OUR COMMUNITY!! We must make our money stay in our community longer than it takes to take our paychecks to the bank.. African American communities are rich on Friday and poor on Monday. We put or monies in banks who won’t loan to us, we shop in stores who wont hire us, and we don’t understand why we don’t have what we need in our community to empower us.

7 THE FUTURE “As we work to create a world that honors and rewards women, we look to our daughters and think of the future. I hope that the daughters of Africa will be inspired to know that if they are committed and patient, they can achieve something worth while.”

AFRICAN AMERICAN EMPOWERMENT PRINCIPLE: As we work to create a world that honors and rewards Africans, ESPECIALY OUR WOMEN, we look to our children and think of the future. I hope that the sons and daughters of Africa will be inspired to know that if they are committed to African centered principles and patient, they can achieve something worth while.

FROM MAAFA TO MENTACIDE AND BACK AGAIN?

A kiswahili proverb says “Asiyekujua hakuthamini” it means “He/she who doesn't know you, doesn't value you”. In a world ruled by enemies of African people across the diaspora the first question the African must as is “do I know my African self?” Why ask “do I know my African self” instead of just asking “do I know myself? It is simple, we are, first in all things, “African”. We must live knowing that we were created by God as African for a purpose and have been designed out of our African self on purpose. No movement, no revival, no anything we want to depend on will ever work if it doesn’t take into consideration our African core and how to re-energize that core. Please understand me, I am not saying that old tired statement “your black and no matter how rich you get you gone still be black and they are still going treat you like the rest of us”. That may very well be true but, it is no way for us to design our lives. We cant know ourselves thru some one else’s hatred of us. That kind of focus can only lead to our own hatred of self. What we study is what you’ll come to accept as truth. We as Africans must come to understand what god has blessed us with and expound on that. For example study’s on African children wherever you find them, (on the mother land or another land)show that our children’s capacity to learn is greater than any other race at an earlier age. That being so, we retard ourselves by tying our learning to other peoples time tables not to mention their view of our reality. We are a people of rhythm, soul, and dance to not use that in the education of our kids is to the detriment of our own children. What is worse is that most the things we don’t do is out of some sense of shame in front of white people. Our children are dying because of mal-nutritious diet of Euro-centric education. We fight for better schools when even if we got 90% of our wishes the education we receive would still be poison it would still de-legitimize the African while over emphasizing the european. It would still make the European the hero of all its stories no matter how evil his actions where in the story, and make the African, the Indian, and all other cultures who have made contact with Europeans helpless savages, who are victims of a godlessness and structure. Both of which the god filled Europeans brought to the savage. Come on now African, if we don’t change that how do we expect our children on a massive level to succeed. Sure some will make it thru, we will always have a talented tenth and until we formalize a structure for African enlightenment you had best raise your child like he/she is in that tenth right now. But remember also that tenth will have to survive in and ever deteriorating culture within our community that debases our women constantly, that feminizes our men daily, and that does it under the slogan of getting rich or dying while trying. Either black men and women of an African centered God frame of mind stand up now or we continue to fall.
“African centered God frame?” Yes, get back to our African self and stop putting on the euro-frames. Be Christian if you want to be, be Muslim if you want to be, be a Buddhist if you want to be but don’t be them like we’ve been taught to be them here. Don’t bring someone your religion while you steal everything they have from them. don’t bring someone your God only to send them to your heaven, literally. In your African self you know and understand that there can be no separations between who you proclaim you are and what you do. You wont find a traditional African religion where the religion wasn’t tied into the way of life because it was life and not a religion. Religion was not some system of things “out there” that you could put on when needed but rather a functional part of ones existence. Black churches now wont even sing with soul because they want to sing like white slave masters song on Sundays. Imagine that, your ashamed of Negro spirituals that help pull your ancestors thru their enslavement but will gladly sing the songs that helped your ancestor’s enslavers carry out their evil deeds and will sing them with their same spirit and not your own. So ashamed to be you, you cant even worship your god in truth.

Maafa to mentacide can only lead to a new maafa if we don’t begin to re-enlighten our African self. No ones going to help us help us. Take the personal journey to an African collective understanding.