negroes and other essays: m.k.b.Baruti

[Baba Ahmed]

I Am Not Ashamed
{kwame note: another essay}

"Is it by accident that we have been driven to focus our sympathy on the pain of others and concentrate on those aspects of our past and present forms of enslavement that neutralize our minds, paralyze our bodies, and keep our spirituality at bay while our children, our primary responsibility, remain lost in this cultural wasteland? The same miseducation teaches us to readily accept as unimportant those aspects of our heritage that speak to our strengths and love of family and community. It is indeed a sad statement when a people, fully cognizant of their own miseducation, allow and foster the same for their very own children as if it were an appropriate and necessary rite of passage into full citizenship.

The interpretation of historical events, like culture, is intentional. What you learn, and learn to accept as truth, is not without purpose for the teacher. DuBois spoke on this in his explanation of the good and bad of propaganda. Objectivity is the subjectivity of those who have the power to impose their self-serving interpretation of reality.

The key to informed empowerment lies in both the past and the present. We must come to understand the substance and conditions of our tradition of moral leadership and instill that in our youth by example, by becoming the template. A quick study reveals the obvious. It is always a distinct minority who assume a proactie posture and unquestioningly thinks and acts in concert with the Omnipotent against the perpetrators of their people's nightmares. In the world's recent past, those like Vesey, Tubman, Turner, Prosser and the crew of the Armistad obviously stand above the masses. They did not beg, plead, request, implore, supplicate, entreat, shuffle, cowtow, bootlick, brownnose, or in any way prostitute themselves for the crumbs or love of their persecutors. As you must, they understood that people create power and rule from that seat.

We must reclaim those Afrikan qualities. We must again become a warrior class willing to die for the physical and psychological liberation of our descendants for generations to come. We must absolutely recognize that the material that revolutionizes our thinking must not be read, studied or treated as merely literature. Thinking men understand that information presented in a logical fashion can distort the truth in such a way that those subject to it systematically and increasingly undermine their self interests in order to benefit the perpretators of the lie.

We must increasingly improve the quality of the reeducation of each successive warrior cohort. We must equip forthcoming generations with a working intelligence so that they can recognize and dismiss negroes when they hear them, especially those who cry the blues of and for others and profit from the crumbs gained from our confusion and at our expense. And yes, negro should be an important concept in our vocabulary for it marks those among us who grow from their knees; those of us who believe that crawling is fine as long as they get the biggest crumbs. Or as Kelly Miller says, 'The negro pays for what he wants and begs for what he needs.' The question should not be, "Shouldn't you crawl before you walk?" Instead, the question is, "How long must you crawl before you walk like a man?" How long must four appendages be your mode of transportation before you recognize that two will mmore efficiantly and effectively do the job?

We must also teach our children that to be pro-Black is not to be anit-white.... We must teach them to continuously recognize all manifestations of racism.... They must be shown that nothing should interfere with their pursuit of the best interests of their children. It is not Black versus white, unless Europeans obstruct us from saving our children. War is not about the hate of others. Like spirituality, it is about the love of self."


Larry D. Crawford (Mwalimu A. Bomani Baruti)
in negroes and other essays pgs 176-179.

[tyydae]

Originally Posted by Baba Ahmed

I Am Not Ashamed
{kwame note: another essay}


We must also teach our children that to be pro-Black is not to be anit-white.... We must teach them to continuously recognize all manifestations of racism.... They must be shown that nothing should interfere with their pursuit of the best interests of their children. It is not Black versus white, unless Europeans obstruct us from saving our children. War is not about the hate of others. Like spirituality, it is about the love of self."


Larry D. Crawford (Mwalimu A. Bomani Baruti)
in negroes and other essays pgs 176-179.

Love that paragraph... It is the love of self...