Toward the Unity of North American Africans

Monday, December 6, 2010

Toward the Unity of North American Africans







Toward the Unity of North American Africans

We must force black unity!
--Elijah Muhammad

Thistopic has challenged the thinking and actions of our greatest minds andsocial activists. Our intellectuals have pondered over this topic untiltheir brains were exhausted, depleted, and probably their bodieswrithed in pain, after years of work on the subject. Some held on untilthe end of their lives, giving their all to the matter, others threw inthe towel and departed for other causes, other opportunities, and therewere those who simply sold out, convinced the cause was lost.

Andso we come to the now, a time in the myth of Sisyphus where we are, in asense, at the top of the mountain and yet at the bottom. Even Sisyphusdidn't experience this dilemma, this moment in space and time thatdefies the law of physics, for how can one be at the top and bottomsimultaneously? We're in the White House, yet in the dog house, outhouse, down and out in Babylon. Clearly we've come a long way but havemiles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep--the poet said.

Wetherefore ask what shall we do at this hour that is such a joy and sucha pain, for as soon as we rejoiced over the victory of Obama, the painof an economic meltdown engulfed the entire world, and of course we werecaught in the belly of the beast, robbed and left half dead on theroadside.

Yes, it shall take ineluctable energy to come out ofthis economic minefield. for sure, if we don't do the right thing, weshall go neither backward nor forward, but we shall remain instagnation, stuck on stupid.

So we must again don our thinkingcaps to configure a way out of this conundrum of major proportion. Howdo we escape the box of Pax Americana, for it is a certainty theAmerican empire is falling, and perhaps the American republic as well.Long ago, Amiri Baraka asked what shall we do when white power falls?For sure, there shall be a power grab by all ethnic groups for theirshare of the pie as it falls into pieces. What piece of the pie do wewant? Other groups shall come with a unified front, but what about us, adivided people, totally lacking a consensus on freedom. Some clingprecariously to their American citizenship while slapped in the face atevery turn. Others dismiss their American identity for a Pan Africanfantasy, for what fool would return home after 400 years in thewilderness? But the alienation is so great, the trauma and unresolvedgrief so severe that there are those of us who would escape from theforest to the jungle, claiming a hut on the Niger is better thansuffering in Babylon, for the water of the Mississippi wreaks of bloodand bones, and the putrid taste overwhelming. Let us then escape to theMotherland, even if we are called American slaves when we return throughthe door of no return.

What a complexity we endure, what aschizophrenic act we must perform, an action that awaits a solution, butnone shall come until we gain a semblance of our mental equilibrium.Only then can we arrive at a consensus on freedom and the prerequisiteunity.

Unity is the key, but we cannot unify while our minds aredisparate , while our loyalties are divided between religious andpolitical allegiances , including gender divisions. The post Million ManMarch Movement is but a precursor of our challenge, for after gatheringthe men, the post march organization was dead in the water. Apparentlythe Million Men went back to their sects, cults, fraternities,organizations and groups, splitting the men to winds of chaos anddivision, in short, to where they were before the march.

Weshould know now that only a secular non-religious, non-politicalformation shall bring and keep us in any degree of functional unity. Weshould understand that we can have no multi-cultural unity until we haveforged unity within our group, North American Africans, and this canonly come about after we go through the process of detoxification fromthe addiction to white supremacy in all its vicissitudes. The processbegins with recognizing the grand denial some of us pretend, for noproblem can be solved until we admit we have a problem, that we areindeed addicted to the American mythology to the degree our lives areunmanageable and we are a danger to ourselves and others. Yes, this is ahumbling moment on the road to unity and freedom in the last days ofthe American empire.

So many of us are arrogant, in the manner ofour master, of course, believing that we are exceptional and beyondfault since we have obtained all the manifestations required to live inthe world of make believe. Yet there is clear evidence in our behaviorthat self hatred consumes us at every turn. We are unable to look atanother black man and/or woman without feelings of hatred, jealousy,envy and contempt. Even when we have it all (nigger rich), we cannotstand to see another black person with little or nothing. Many of ussteeped in Pan Africanism and Afro-centrism, go to Africa but findourselves eating only American food at restaurants. And our childrenattend socalled independent black schools yet refuse to clean up afterthemselves because they say they don't clean at home since they havemaids.

No, until we enter a process, some giant or house to houserecovery ritual, there shall be no real, functional in our community.This addiction has infected all classes of our society, the middle classactually in a mental state more pathological than the bloods in thehood. Yes, the edumaked blacks may need more help, therapy, that thetraumatized blood homeless, drug addicted and criminalized. The edumakedmiddle class so-called Negro is first a victim of his brainwashing inthe white and/or negro universities and colleges. He's more Greek thanAfrican. Amiri Baraka says we send them to the white schools/negro too,and they come home hating everything we're about but they don't evenknow what we're about, don't have a clue, for they are too brainwashedto understand.

Dr. Wade Nobles says while our black boys go toprison, our black girls enter college yet find themselves in a kind ofprison as well, for few of them shall find mates, and many shall suffermental breakdowns trying to absorb the Eurocentric racist mythologycalled education.

Again, the absolute need for all of us to entera detoxification and recovery program before we talk about unity as apeople, for with our weird, twisted, convoluted thoughts, we are indeed adanger to ourselves and others. And this goes for all classes, from theblack bourgeoisie to the grass roots.
--Marvin X

See MarvinX's How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a Pan African,12 Step Model for a Mental Health Peer Group, Black Bird Press,Berkeley, 2007, foreword by Dr. Nathan Hare, afterword by Ptah Allah El,$19.95
Votes: 0
E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of TheBlackList Pub to add comments!

Join TheBlackList Pub


https://theblacklist.net/