● African Roots – Absorption

This is part 1 of a 2 part series regarding the world’s African roots.

• Absorption – a process in which one substance permeates another; a fluid permeates or is dissolved by a liquid or solid.

Terra nullius or the concept of a “no man’s land” anywhere is incredulous. People have always been “there” until someone else determined they weren’t. Then it is easy pickings. There is, even, worse imagery than most people know.

Ancient origin of life on the continent is a fact. The fact that African intellect birthed the civilized world is rarely said out loud.

• Africa provides a comprehensive and contiguous time line of human development going back at least 7 million years.
• Africa, which developed the world’s oldest human civilization, gave humanity the use of fire a million and a half to two million years ago.
• It is the home of the first tools, astronomy, jewelry, fishing, mathematics, crops, art, use of pigments, cutting and other pointed instruments and animal domestication.
• In short, Africa gave the world human civilization.*

That does not sound like a land belonging to no one.

African Gold

Gold of the African continent is more than a chemical element. In its purest state it is a bright, dense, stable, and malleable metal sought after by the world.

Chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler substances by any chemical reaction. However, gold has been altered and alloyed to satisfy the whims of its exploiters.

True gold – ancient knowledge – coexists there. It is science, architecture, design, medicine, spirituality, learning, and every art practiced on this earth.

This, too, is highly sought after. Principles cannot be broken down, but subsequent discoveries will expand them. They are often “alloyed” beyond recognition, such that their origins are hidden.

Student of denial

Thinking critically is a learned skill. But it is an ability that needs to be nurtured. Often, a child’s questions challenges an adult’s self-perception. A way of life and just about anything that exists in this world is fair game.

A mighty hurricane originating from the African coast awesomely powers itself across the Atlantic Ocean. Why does it not have an African name?

The absence of African influence from history

I am challenged, everyday, to reconcile what I see with my own eyes with that which is presented as truth.

Those are the things that are offered as evidence of a good education and desired lifestyle as in the American dream. It is expected to help gain vocational influence and perceived expertise in anything and everything.

It is difficult to accept that a so-called good education pursued by many is built on a foundation of unquestioned acceptance of “facts” that have been rearranged and sanitized. 

This taints the educational and vocational integrity of the credentials of any educated person in all fields of study in any country on this planet. That includes the arts, sciences, architecture, engineering, furniture design, and history.

Dead men do tell tales

Darwin’s theory of evolution, imposed on the world over 150 years ago, shrouded the true depth of millions of years of African existence. Ancient viewpoints were simply picked up and promulgated to confirm contrived details of African humanity – or perceived lack thereof.

Rarely do beneficiaries of this theory call for facts or receipts to disprove these destructive viewpoints regarding African intellect. Not many are willing, either, to provide any substantiating truths.

What are you doing with that?

Those words sound familiar to many “discovered” people and (in modern times) their descendants.

African expertise in the arts and design confound those who will not accept that the people of nature – animistic appearing primitive – were and still are capable of developing and using theories independent of a colonizing element.

Significant advances in engineering and the sciences were made on the continent long before the raiders “discovered” them.

Contrived skepticism of the intellectual abilities of their creators justified looting and the bloody seizure of works from ancient African kingdoms.

What followed was the utter destruction of the creators of those treasures by the raiders of humanity and their armies.

Lies regarding the greedy, immoral acts perpetrated to destroy a country and its people were accepted by the world. The campaigns were not sudden or unplanned. Armed with modern weaponry, fire and explosives, fake revenge-seeking indignation and forked tongues, the raiders utterly destroyed a way of life.

Immediately, brutal “enterprises” were repeated by multiple perpetrators all over the continent.

Afterwards, students throughout the world were taught or studied the works of conveniently “unknown” artisans, contrived dates, and “blanks” in timelines and culture.

Today, confusion reigns as a result of egregious attributions to other civilizations and intentional disregard for the truth.

Scramble for Africa redux

Centuries of rigid, unchanged traditions were wielded as weapons standards to build up and maintain an unsustainable system of economic exploitation.

Marketing and timed negative world events, including war, drove the demand for the results of production. Enter all of the -isms, including darwinism’s clone, capitalism, devised as one of many ways to conceal awful truths.

Ensuing propaganda and incredulous demands continue to this day. The raiders insisted on and continue to receive reparations paid by vanquished African nations, for the lost opportunity to loot even more.

This guarantees and compounds an ongoing human tragedy of which the world anchors and fixes responsibility solely on the African people. The shameful, true story is sorrowful and remains unavenged.

It is cause and effect as to why the richest continent on the planet cannot sustain itself or most of its inhabitants. As a result, again and again, black Africa needed the world’s (perpetrators) help. Not much changed.

The “help” continues with the helpers helping themselves to what is left after the near-destruction of a land and its people. The psychological destruction has not been forgiven or forgotten.

The state of cognitive dissonance regarding how the raiders of humanity can even lay claim to and keep important cultural and spiritual works from Africa has reached a critical stage. There has never been collective acknowledgement of the damage they had done either, until now.

Universal demands for justice have sparked incredulous responses from perpetrators. Most are not willing to compensate or return what is left of raids made over successive centuries. Many simply ignored the call to address the issue. Others have turned the tables to appear the victim.

Our African grandmother’s hair

Anyone, especially a teacher is not qualified to teach any child when she, herself, is ignorant. Totally blind to living history, she cuts the braids from a child’s head with no compunction.

She clearly committed an assault on the child and its culture. The teacher/perpetrator demonstrates ignorance of the very subjects that she claims to teach.

It indicates something else: the teacher’s belief in an undeserved feeling of superiority that goes beyond that of mwalimu mtukufu or honored teacher.

That adult is a destroyer of children’s minds – the future – in which she expects to exist in peace. That adult is ensuring by her own violent actions that the black child of African origin, under her hand lives in fear.

The child is a continuation of life in the present… a child of the diaspora. That adult should never be allowed back in a classroom. She does not know what she caused. She does not know what she has done.

She certainly isn’t teaching or thinking.

What she has done is this: guaranteed that there will be no peace in that sacred space. Tone deaf to the effect on the child’s mental health and violating the parent’s trust, her humanity and honor are gone.

Note: Even when it grows out of her grand-descendant’s head, no one touches our African grandmother’s hair — hakuna anayegusa nywele za bibi yetu mwafrika!

Next note: This and similar instances of abuse have been perpetrated by both female and male adults in the classroom, the athletic arena, and other places where they overestimated their position of authority and egregiously stepped beyond the confines of their own common sense.

Encore in space

We have but one earth, remember? That’s all we’re gonna get. So far, we have not been good tenants. I don’t believe all of us should accept blame for the destructive acts of a few. If we are willing, we can draft a new blueprint for humanity that flings open the door to opportunity, fairness, and truth.

There are some who look to space… for what, exploration and exploitation. Hmmm. The same players employing the same methods. Yes, it’s that familiar scramble all over again.

Think about this:

On earth, can we continue to build a future based on a series of centuries-old untruths?

Can one be a critical thinker and at the same time accept a recorded “history” not jiving with real, true history?

We can talk about that.

– To be continued.

Φ Shirley J

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This is the end of part 1 – African Roots: Absorption. Next: part 2 – African Roots: Anchoring.
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* Pan African Perspective