The 1960s was an experiment to see what was the best route or right approach, to bring blacks to where they needed to go.The 60s was a laboratory of ideas. It was a referendum on who was bringing about the best ideas.
People/Historians want to make it look like king led us all to freedom. King was not the totality of our struggle. The Civil Rights Movement is portrayed as a Christian Movement. Firstly, the CRM was not the starting point of the struggle during those years. It was a response to the Nation of Islam's movement which started at least 20 years before the CRM, trying to uplift blacks and give them a sense of identity.
King was burdened with the same idea that caused blacks to be slaves in the first place--Christianity. He realized he could not use Christianity to solve the problems blacks had/have because that is what was used to enslave us in the first place. 25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. 26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. 27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. Genesis 9:20-27. King went all the way to India to get the idea of nonviolent resistance, and he wrapped it in Christianity to get blacks to accept it. He got it from Gandhi. Gandhi worked with various religious people during his movement, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, etc. King layed out the strategy for loving white people as a way to redeem them, but that was unsuccessful. It did put the movement in the eyes of the world, that forced the US government to make some changes. Its impact came through the media. It had that impact after King met with Elijah Muhammad in 1967. King also met with Malcolm X. King evolved over the years to see America for what it was. "I have been to the mountain top..."
Christians never faced the fact that the misreading of the Bible put us in slavery and is still keeping us there. Imagine if whites were enslaved and we gave them a Black image of God and had pictures of Angels that were black, and said God's son was even black. What does that teach a person? It leads to mental slavery, a feeling that you are inferior, and those portrayed in "God's" image, must be superior, because they look like God. That psychological slavery is worse. Christians don't have the courage to be rational. Christianity is part of black people's problem. If you start with the ideology that you are born sinful, how can you expect to raise someones self-esteem and character? [Adam was not "created" sinful]. The idea of salvation through Jesus' blood is an adopted concept not found in the Bible. They don't have the strength to be rational about the problems Christianity has caused. This is a challenge to the validity of Christianity. Christianity was given to blacks during slavery. What were we before then? (Do your own research). It was given during slavery, and the people you are struggling against are not going to give you what you need to defeat them, or win the struggle. If they were okay with blacks having Christianity during slavery, why were they? The fox is not going to teach the chicken how to avoid being eaten. The fox wants to eat. A great man called blacks to "Leave America". Meaning, leave everything we were given when we came to America. Meaning,leave everything we learned from America alone. Everything. Religion, food, etc..Whatever you can think of that we received. Everything.
This as I said is a challenge to the validity of Christianity. Christianity, meaning, the literal reading of the Bible. Blacks are not in love with Christianity, they are in love with Church Life. They love the singing, the piano, the organ playing, the social atmosphere, etc. The preacher takes just a very small piece of scripture to get a sermon. Blacks don't know nothing about Christianity (the literal scripture). They don't study the Bible of its symbolism. That is why it keeps blacks enslaved. They are in love with Israel and don't know why..Believe they are born sinful..that all sins are equal (leading to the justification of the major ones)...why? They have designed Church Life and think it's Christianity. Church Life is a substitute religion for blacks. Blacks can't stand Christianity! Put away the music, the singing, and the organ, and just read the Bible straight. Give them plain Christianity and see how many people go to Church. I guarantee you will lose your congregation.
During the 1960s, all the different groups brought their ideas to the table, and 1 group won on every level. They won on politics, rehabilitation (drugs, prisons, hustlers, etc..), dignity, morality, frugality, brotherhood, dignity of dress, independence, self-sufficiency, respectability, standing on principles, education. There wasn't one thing they did not win 1st place on. You do your research and you tell me who they were. Regular history wont tell you the truth, they make it a Jack and Jill, feel good story, with a hero and a foe. I will tell u King was influenced by this group and they have progressed from where they were in the 1960s.
You weren't going to get this from anywhere else, so I had to tell it.
If you read it, you have an opinion, so don't be afraid to voice it. I will tell you, think before u speak, or better yet, write.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Music is DEAD and so is Consciousness
Music is dead…It died…RIP …well almost…let’s say it’s in a coma because there’s still some brain activity, but it sure looks dead…When grown men whine and call it singing, I get confused…Guess that’s why I love oldies…When a retarded midget is in discussion surrounding the “best rapper alive” and is considered by many to have the “title”, we have a problem. When Gucci mane is ALLOWED to release an album and is PAID to perform at a prominent HBCU, the end is near. And when Hurricane Chris sells 1 album, the Mayans may have been right. If you don’t get it, read a book, Google it, ignore it, whatever you’re comfortable with…When women complain about men’s infidelity, but sing along to the retarded midget’s “hit”, “every girl”, we have a serious problem..Well, that’s right after they finish singing and dancing to “Suck it or Not”…When “every girl” is played on the radio, performed at award shows, and is considered a “hit”, the end is near…When a man can say “I’ll take your girl from you and make her kill for me, steal for me, slut for me, and of course it’ll be your cash and I’ll murder that b!@*# and send her body back to your ass” and be given National air time, called the “best rapper alive”, and not be questioned, the world has lost consciousness…and that’s your favorite rapper…Something is wrong!...Children listen to the radio, and they are not STUPID…When Usher gets a divorce and his first words on a remix are “Which 2 of yal coming home with Usher”, we understand why he’s divorced…When women say they need a man, then want the title GIRLfriend and give him the title BOYfriend, no wonder it doesn’t work. There’s a HUGE difference between a BOY and a MAN. The difference lies in RESPONSIBILITY...Well, you get what you seek…I’m glad I found out what success is, all I had to do was cut on the radio and there it was, SUCCESS=Money, Cars, Clothes, Hoes..Sing along ladies...then ask why your man cheats…He’s chasing the last piece to the puzzle…He’s almost there, don’t worry…Umm, yea, something’s not right about that…Haven’t put my finger on it just yet…I learned that grinding is now considered “dancing”, I never knew that. For some strange reason I had a different picture of what dancing was, I was trippin…that’s the only way men and women know how to dance nowadays, and isn’t that reflective of how their relationships go, women are just objects for the man’s lower desires, or as some women say, “or vice versa”…um, uh, right…*sidebar*some men, uh, I mean males, pardon me, there’s a difference[for women who say there’s a lack of good MEN, you are correct. There are plenty of males though, pick one,smh]as I was saying, these males will have sex with ANYTHING. I look around and see some of these young girls, females, whatever, with children and think, “a blind man wouldn’t lay down with that”.smh, sad…When confused children have children, and raise children, the future looks dim…when Muslims, who most people recognize when they are out of line(yal don’t eat pork right, yal don’t drink right, yal supposed to wait to have sex right, yal supposed to dress modestly right…)are no longer recognized in the same way, and blend in with the crowd, and follow everything that goes against their teachings,smh... again, the Mayans may have been right…Good news!The 3 major religions have more in common now, they all have an ample amount of HYPOCRITES…”The majority is wrong the majority of the time”-ME..Let’s hope I’m wrong in Obama’s case…Whatever the majority of people say is “ok”, I’m staying far from it…People love to evoke Jesus and do everything he was against, and nothing he was for...WWJD, WWMD,WWMD…but who cares, live life to the “fullest”, whatever that means…I need help, someone explain this to me please…When someone who kills a pregnant woman is charged with 2 counts of murder, one for the woman, and one for the unborn child, but the woman can have the unborn child killed, aborted, call it what you want, with no consequences, again, something doesn’t seem right [special cases aside, such as rape or potential physical harm to the mother]...When people will do anything for money (green paper…) and God is taken out of and off of everything but money, clearly MONEY has become “god”,and there is a problem…but what do I know.
Cheikh Anta Diop-The African Origin of Civilization
Some notes from my reading of Cheikh Anta Diop's book, The African Origin of Civilization:
Our investigations have convinced us that the West has not been calm enough and objective enough to teach us our history correctly, without crude falsifications. Today, what interests me most is to see the formation of teams, not of passive readers, but of honest, bold research workers, allergic to complacency and busy substantiating and exploring ideas expressed in our work.-pg xiiv
Herodotus-“The Father of History”
Undoubtedly the basic reason for this is that Herodotus, after relating his eyewitness account informing us that Egyptians were Blacks, he demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek), that Greece borrowed from Egypt all the elements of her civilization, even the cult of the gods, and that Egypt was the cradle of civilization. Moreover, archeological discoveries continually justify Herodotus against his detractors.-pg 4
For all the reasons cited above, technical development was less stressed than in Europe. Although the Negro had been the first to discover iron, he had built no cannon; the secret of gunpowder was known only to the Egyptian priests, who used it solely for religious purposes at rites such as the Mysteries of Osiris. –pg 24
Pg-54 where are the Negro mummies cited by Herodotus and Fontanes?
Osiris, Isis, and Horus-ancestors of the Egyptians. This primitive Trinity moved from the scale of the universe to that of man later in Christianity.-pg 109
The history of humanity will remain confused as long as we fail to distinguish between the two early cradles in which Nature fashioned the instincts, temperament, habits, and ethical concepts of the two subdivisions before they met each other after a long separation dating back to prehistoric times. The first of those cradles, as we shall see in the chapter on Egypt’s contribution, is the valley of the Nile, from the Great Lakes to the Delta, across the so-called “Anglo-Egyptian “ Sudan. The abundance of vital resources, its sedentary, agricultural character, the specific conditions of the valley, will engender in man, that is, in the Negro, a gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature, endowed with a spirit of justice and gaiety. All these virtues were more or less indispensable for daily coexistence.
Because of the requirements of agricultural life, concepts such as matriarchy and totemism, the most perfect social organization, and monotheistic religion were born. These engendered others: thus, circumcision resulted from monotheism; in fact, it was really the notion of a god, Amon, uncreated creator of all that exists, that led to the androgynous concept. Since Amon was not created and since he is the origin of all creation, there was a time when he was alone. To the archaic mentality, he must have contained within himself all the male and female principles necessary for procreation. That is why Amon, the Negro god par excellence of the “Anglo-Egyptian” Sudan (Nubia) and all the rest of Black Africa, was to appear in Sudanese mythology as androgynous. Belief in this hermanphroditixc ontology would produce circumcision and excision in the Black world. One could go on to explain all the basic traits of the Negro soul and civilization by using the material conditions of the Nile Valley as the point of departure.
By contrast, the ferocity of nature in the Eurasian steppes, the barrenness of those regions, the overall circumstances of material conditions, were to create instincts necessary for survival in such an environment. Here, Nature left no illusion of kindliness: it was implacable and permitted no negligence; man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Above all, in the course of a long, painful existence, he must learn to rely on himself alone, on his own possibilities. He could not indulge in the luxury of believing in a beneficent God who would shower down abundant means of gaining a livelihood; instead, he would conjure up deities maleficent and cruel, jealous and spiteful: Zeus, Yahweh, among others.
In the unrewarding activity that the physical environment imposed on man, there was already implied materialism, anthropomorphism (which is but one of its aspects), and the secular spirit. This is how the environment gradually molded these instincts in the men of that region, the Indo-Europeans in particular. All the peoples of the area, whether white or yellow, were instinctively to love conquest, because of a desire to escape from those hostile surroundings. The milieu chased them away; they had to leave it or succumb, try to conquer a place in the sun in a more clement nature. Invasions would not cease, once an initial contact with the Black world to the south had taught them that the existence of a land where the living was easy, riches abundant, technique flourishing. Thus, from 1450 B.C. until Hitler, from the Barbarians of the fourth and fifth centuries to Genghis Khan and the Turks, those invasions from east to west or from north to south continued uninterrupted.
Man in those regions long remained a nomad. He was cruel. The cold climate would engender the worship of fire, to remain burning from the fire of Mithras to the flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arch of Triumph and the torches of the ancient and modern Olympics. Nomadism was responsible for cremation: thus the ashes of ancestors could be transported in small urns. This custom was perpetuated by the Greeks; the Aryans introduced it to India after 1450, and that explains the cremation of Caesar and of Gandhi in our own epoch.
Obviously, man was the pillar of that kind of life. Woman’s economic role was much less significant than in Black agricultural societies. Consequently, the nomadic patriarchal family was the only embryo of social organization. The patriarchal principle would rule the whole life of the Indo-Europeans, from the Greeks and Romans to the Napoleonic Code, to our day. This is why woman’s participation in public life would arrive later in European than in Negro societies.pgs-111-113
Consequently, if one wished, the history of humanity could be quite lucid. Despite the repeated acts of vandalism from the days of Cambyses, through the Romans, the Christians of the 6th century in Egypt, the Vadals, etc., we still have enough documents left to write a clear history of man. The West today is fully aware of this, but it lacks the intellectual and moral courage required, and this is why textbooks are deliberately muddled. It then devolves on us Africans to rewrite the entire history of mankind for our own edification and that of others. Pg-115
Lokman, the mythical representative of Adite wisdom, resembles Aesop, whose name seems to Mr. Welcker to indicate an Ethiopian origin. In India also, the literature of tales and fables appears to come from the Sudra [lowest-class Hindus]. Perhaps this type of fiction, characterized by the role played by animals, is a literary genre peculiar to the Kushites. –pg 126
The Jectanides religion was of Kushite origin and seemed to emanate directly from the Babylonian cult. It would remain the same until the advent of Islam. The Sabaean gods were just about the same as the Babylonian gods and all belonged to the same Kushite family of Egyptian and Phoenician deities…The only Triad revered was: Venus-Sun-Moon, as in Babylon. The cult had a pronounced sidereal character, especially solar: they prayed to the sun at different phases of its course. There was neither idolatry, nor images, nor priesthood.
They addressed a direct invocation to the seven planets. The 30-day fasting period already existed, as in Egypt. They prayed seven times each day, with their faces turned toward the north. These prayers to the sun at different hours somewhat resemble Muslim prayers which take place during the same phases, but which have been reduced by the Prophet to five compulsory prayers “to relieve humanity”; the other two prayers are optional. Pg-126
There were also sacred springs and stones, as in Muslim times: Zenzen, a sacred spring; Kaaba, a sacred stone. The pilgrimage to Mecca already existed. The Kaaba was reputed to have been constructed by Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian (a Negro woman), historical ancestor of Muhammad, according to all Arab historians. As in Egypt, belief in a future life was already prevalent. Thus, all the elements necessary for the blossoming of Islam were in place more than 1,000 years before the birth of Muhammad. Islam would appear as a purification of Sabaeanism by the “Messenger of God.”
So we have seen that the entire Arab people, including the Prophet, is mixed with Negro blood. All educated Arabs are conscious of this fact. The fabulous hero of Arabia, Antar, is himself a mixed-breed…pg-127
The oneness of Egyptian and Black culture could not be stated more clearly. Because of this essential identity of genius, culture, and race, today all Negroes can legitimately trace their culture to ancient Egypt and build a modern culture on that foundation. A dynamic, modern contact with Egyptian Antiquity would enable Blacks to discover increasingly each day the intimate relationship between all Blacks of the continent and the mother Nile Valley. By this dynamic contact, the Negro will be convinced that these temples, these forests of columns, these pyramids, these colossi, these bas-reliefs, mathematics, medicine, and all this science, are indeed the work of his ancestors and that he has a right and a duty to claim this heritage.
From now on, in this type of research so invaluable for the investigation of thought, we are beginning to perceive that a great part of the Black continent, instead of being unpolished and savage as was previously supposed, has cast its influence in many directions across the immense isolation of desert or forest, an influence which came from the Nile and passed through Libya, Nubia, and Ethiopia.pg-140
According to the unanimous testimony of the Ancients, first the Ethiopians and then the Egyptians created and raised to an extraordinary stage of development all the elements of civilization, while other peoples especially the Eurasians, were still deep in barbarism. The explanation of this must be sought in the material conditions in which the accident of geography had placed them at the beginning of time. For man to adapt, these conditions required the invention of sciences complemented by the creation of arts and religion.
It is impossible to stress all that the world, particularly the Hellenistic world, owed to the Egyptians. The Greeks merely continued and developed, sometimes partially, what the Egyptians had invented. By virtue of their materialistic tendencies, the Greeks stripped those inventions of the religious, idealistic shell in which the Egyptians had enveloped them. On the one hand, the rugged life on the Eurasian plains apparently intensified the materialistic instinct of the peoples living there; on the other hand, it forged moral values diametrically opposite to Egyptian moral values, which stemmed from a collective, sedentary, relatively easy, peaceful life, once it had been regulated by a few social laws.
To the extent that the Egyptians were horrified by theft, nomadism, and war, to the same extent these practices were deemed highly moral on the Eurasian plains. Only a warrior killed on the battlefield could enter Valhalla, the Germanic paradise. Among the Egyptians, no felicity was possible except for the deceased who could prove, at the Tribunal of Osiris, that he had been charitable to the poor and had never sinned. This was antithesis of the spirit of rapine and conquest that generally characterized the peoples of the north, driven, in a sense, away from a country unfavored by Nature. In contrast, existence was so easy in the Valley of the Nile, a veritable Garden of Eden, between two deserts, that Egyptians tended to believe that Nature’s benefits poured down from the sky. The finally adored it in the form of an Omnipotent Being, Creator of All that Exists and Dispenser of Blessings.
On the contrary, the horizons of the Greek were never to pass beyond material, visible man, the conqueror of hostile Nature. On the earth, everything gravitated around him; the supreme objective of art was to reproduce his exact likeness. In the “heavens”, paradoxically, he alone was to be found, with his earthly faults and weaknesses, beneath the shell of gods distinguished from ordinary mortals only by physical strength. Thus, when the Greek borrowed the Egyptian god, a real god in the full sense of the word, provided with all the moral perfections that stem from sedentary life, he could understand that deity only by reducing him to the level of man. Consequently, the adoptive Pantheon of the Greek was merely another humanity…
The typically Negro—or Kushite, as Lenormant writes—kind of fable, with animals as characters, was introduced into Greece by the Egyptian Negro, Aesop, who was to inspire the fables of the Frenchman La Fontaine. Edgar Allen Poe, in “Some Words with a Mummy”, presents a symbolic idea of the scope of scientific and technical knowledge in ancient Egypt.pg 230-233
Astronomers have noted in the Great Pyramid indications of the sidereal year, the anomalistic year, the precessions of the equinoxes “for 6,000 years, whereas modern astronomy knows them for only about 400 years.” Mathematicians have detected in it the exact value of “pi”, the exact average distance between the sun and the earth, the polar diameter of the earth, and so on…pg 233
The ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; that they were the first to erect buildings out of 6 million tons of stone (The Great Pyramid) as architects and engineers--not simply as unskilled laborers; that they built the immense temple of Karnak...
Consequently, the Black man must be able to restore the continuity of his national historic past, to draw from it the moral advantage needed to reconquer his place in the modern world, without falling into excesses of a Nazism in reverse for, insofar as one can speak of race, the civilization that is his might have been created by any other human race placed in so favorable and unique a setting.-pg 234-235
Our investigations have convinced us that the West has not been calm enough and objective enough to teach us our history correctly, without crude falsifications. Today, what interests me most is to see the formation of teams, not of passive readers, but of honest, bold research workers, allergic to complacency and busy substantiating and exploring ideas expressed in our work.-pg xiiv
Herodotus-“The Father of History”
Undoubtedly the basic reason for this is that Herodotus, after relating his eyewitness account informing us that Egyptians were Blacks, he demonstrated, with rare honesty (for a Greek), that Greece borrowed from Egypt all the elements of her civilization, even the cult of the gods, and that Egypt was the cradle of civilization. Moreover, archeological discoveries continually justify Herodotus against his detractors.-pg 4
For all the reasons cited above, technical development was less stressed than in Europe. Although the Negro had been the first to discover iron, he had built no cannon; the secret of gunpowder was known only to the Egyptian priests, who used it solely for religious purposes at rites such as the Mysteries of Osiris. –pg 24
Pg-54 where are the Negro mummies cited by Herodotus and Fontanes?
Osiris, Isis, and Horus-ancestors of the Egyptians. This primitive Trinity moved from the scale of the universe to that of man later in Christianity.-pg 109
The history of humanity will remain confused as long as we fail to distinguish between the two early cradles in which Nature fashioned the instincts, temperament, habits, and ethical concepts of the two subdivisions before they met each other after a long separation dating back to prehistoric times. The first of those cradles, as we shall see in the chapter on Egypt’s contribution, is the valley of the Nile, from the Great Lakes to the Delta, across the so-called “Anglo-Egyptian “ Sudan. The abundance of vital resources, its sedentary, agricultural character, the specific conditions of the valley, will engender in man, that is, in the Negro, a gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature, endowed with a spirit of justice and gaiety. All these virtues were more or less indispensable for daily coexistence.
Because of the requirements of agricultural life, concepts such as matriarchy and totemism, the most perfect social organization, and monotheistic religion were born. These engendered others: thus, circumcision resulted from monotheism; in fact, it was really the notion of a god, Amon, uncreated creator of all that exists, that led to the androgynous concept. Since Amon was not created and since he is the origin of all creation, there was a time when he was alone. To the archaic mentality, he must have contained within himself all the male and female principles necessary for procreation. That is why Amon, the Negro god par excellence of the “Anglo-Egyptian” Sudan (Nubia) and all the rest of Black Africa, was to appear in Sudanese mythology as androgynous. Belief in this hermanphroditixc ontology would produce circumcision and excision in the Black world. One could go on to explain all the basic traits of the Negro soul and civilization by using the material conditions of the Nile Valley as the point of departure.
By contrast, the ferocity of nature in the Eurasian steppes, the barrenness of those regions, the overall circumstances of material conditions, were to create instincts necessary for survival in such an environment. Here, Nature left no illusion of kindliness: it was implacable and permitted no negligence; man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Above all, in the course of a long, painful existence, he must learn to rely on himself alone, on his own possibilities. He could not indulge in the luxury of believing in a beneficent God who would shower down abundant means of gaining a livelihood; instead, he would conjure up deities maleficent and cruel, jealous and spiteful: Zeus, Yahweh, among others.
In the unrewarding activity that the physical environment imposed on man, there was already implied materialism, anthropomorphism (which is but one of its aspects), and the secular spirit. This is how the environment gradually molded these instincts in the men of that region, the Indo-Europeans in particular. All the peoples of the area, whether white or yellow, were instinctively to love conquest, because of a desire to escape from those hostile surroundings. The milieu chased them away; they had to leave it or succumb, try to conquer a place in the sun in a more clement nature. Invasions would not cease, once an initial contact with the Black world to the south had taught them that the existence of a land where the living was easy, riches abundant, technique flourishing. Thus, from 1450 B.C. until Hitler, from the Barbarians of the fourth and fifth centuries to Genghis Khan and the Turks, those invasions from east to west or from north to south continued uninterrupted.
Man in those regions long remained a nomad. He was cruel. The cold climate would engender the worship of fire, to remain burning from the fire of Mithras to the flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arch of Triumph and the torches of the ancient and modern Olympics. Nomadism was responsible for cremation: thus the ashes of ancestors could be transported in small urns. This custom was perpetuated by the Greeks; the Aryans introduced it to India after 1450, and that explains the cremation of Caesar and of Gandhi in our own epoch.
Obviously, man was the pillar of that kind of life. Woman’s economic role was much less significant than in Black agricultural societies. Consequently, the nomadic patriarchal family was the only embryo of social organization. The patriarchal principle would rule the whole life of the Indo-Europeans, from the Greeks and Romans to the Napoleonic Code, to our day. This is why woman’s participation in public life would arrive later in European than in Negro societies.pgs-111-113
Consequently, if one wished, the history of humanity could be quite lucid. Despite the repeated acts of vandalism from the days of Cambyses, through the Romans, the Christians of the 6th century in Egypt, the Vadals, etc., we still have enough documents left to write a clear history of man. The West today is fully aware of this, but it lacks the intellectual and moral courage required, and this is why textbooks are deliberately muddled. It then devolves on us Africans to rewrite the entire history of mankind for our own edification and that of others. Pg-115
Lokman, the mythical representative of Adite wisdom, resembles Aesop, whose name seems to Mr. Welcker to indicate an Ethiopian origin. In India also, the literature of tales and fables appears to come from the Sudra [lowest-class Hindus]. Perhaps this type of fiction, characterized by the role played by animals, is a literary genre peculiar to the Kushites. –pg 126
The Jectanides religion was of Kushite origin and seemed to emanate directly from the Babylonian cult. It would remain the same until the advent of Islam. The Sabaean gods were just about the same as the Babylonian gods and all belonged to the same Kushite family of Egyptian and Phoenician deities…The only Triad revered was: Venus-Sun-Moon, as in Babylon. The cult had a pronounced sidereal character, especially solar: they prayed to the sun at different phases of its course. There was neither idolatry, nor images, nor priesthood.
They addressed a direct invocation to the seven planets. The 30-day fasting period already existed, as in Egypt. They prayed seven times each day, with their faces turned toward the north. These prayers to the sun at different hours somewhat resemble Muslim prayers which take place during the same phases, but which have been reduced by the Prophet to five compulsory prayers “to relieve humanity”; the other two prayers are optional. Pg-126
There were also sacred springs and stones, as in Muslim times: Zenzen, a sacred spring; Kaaba, a sacred stone. The pilgrimage to Mecca already existed. The Kaaba was reputed to have been constructed by Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar the Egyptian (a Negro woman), historical ancestor of Muhammad, according to all Arab historians. As in Egypt, belief in a future life was already prevalent. Thus, all the elements necessary for the blossoming of Islam were in place more than 1,000 years before the birth of Muhammad. Islam would appear as a purification of Sabaeanism by the “Messenger of God.”
So we have seen that the entire Arab people, including the Prophet, is mixed with Negro blood. All educated Arabs are conscious of this fact. The fabulous hero of Arabia, Antar, is himself a mixed-breed…pg-127
The oneness of Egyptian and Black culture could not be stated more clearly. Because of this essential identity of genius, culture, and race, today all Negroes can legitimately trace their culture to ancient Egypt and build a modern culture on that foundation. A dynamic, modern contact with Egyptian Antiquity would enable Blacks to discover increasingly each day the intimate relationship between all Blacks of the continent and the mother Nile Valley. By this dynamic contact, the Negro will be convinced that these temples, these forests of columns, these pyramids, these colossi, these bas-reliefs, mathematics, medicine, and all this science, are indeed the work of his ancestors and that he has a right and a duty to claim this heritage.
From now on, in this type of research so invaluable for the investigation of thought, we are beginning to perceive that a great part of the Black continent, instead of being unpolished and savage as was previously supposed, has cast its influence in many directions across the immense isolation of desert or forest, an influence which came from the Nile and passed through Libya, Nubia, and Ethiopia.pg-140
According to the unanimous testimony of the Ancients, first the Ethiopians and then the Egyptians created and raised to an extraordinary stage of development all the elements of civilization, while other peoples especially the Eurasians, were still deep in barbarism. The explanation of this must be sought in the material conditions in which the accident of geography had placed them at the beginning of time. For man to adapt, these conditions required the invention of sciences complemented by the creation of arts and religion.
It is impossible to stress all that the world, particularly the Hellenistic world, owed to the Egyptians. The Greeks merely continued and developed, sometimes partially, what the Egyptians had invented. By virtue of their materialistic tendencies, the Greeks stripped those inventions of the religious, idealistic shell in which the Egyptians had enveloped them. On the one hand, the rugged life on the Eurasian plains apparently intensified the materialistic instinct of the peoples living there; on the other hand, it forged moral values diametrically opposite to Egyptian moral values, which stemmed from a collective, sedentary, relatively easy, peaceful life, once it had been regulated by a few social laws.
To the extent that the Egyptians were horrified by theft, nomadism, and war, to the same extent these practices were deemed highly moral on the Eurasian plains. Only a warrior killed on the battlefield could enter Valhalla, the Germanic paradise. Among the Egyptians, no felicity was possible except for the deceased who could prove, at the Tribunal of Osiris, that he had been charitable to the poor and had never sinned. This was antithesis of the spirit of rapine and conquest that generally characterized the peoples of the north, driven, in a sense, away from a country unfavored by Nature. In contrast, existence was so easy in the Valley of the Nile, a veritable Garden of Eden, between two deserts, that Egyptians tended to believe that Nature’s benefits poured down from the sky. The finally adored it in the form of an Omnipotent Being, Creator of All that Exists and Dispenser of Blessings.
On the contrary, the horizons of the Greek were never to pass beyond material, visible man, the conqueror of hostile Nature. On the earth, everything gravitated around him; the supreme objective of art was to reproduce his exact likeness. In the “heavens”, paradoxically, he alone was to be found, with his earthly faults and weaknesses, beneath the shell of gods distinguished from ordinary mortals only by physical strength. Thus, when the Greek borrowed the Egyptian god, a real god in the full sense of the word, provided with all the moral perfections that stem from sedentary life, he could understand that deity only by reducing him to the level of man. Consequently, the adoptive Pantheon of the Greek was merely another humanity…
The typically Negro—or Kushite, as Lenormant writes—kind of fable, with animals as characters, was introduced into Greece by the Egyptian Negro, Aesop, who was to inspire the fables of the Frenchman La Fontaine. Edgar Allen Poe, in “Some Words with a Mummy”, presents a symbolic idea of the scope of scientific and technical knowledge in ancient Egypt.pg 230-233
Astronomers have noted in the Great Pyramid indications of the sidereal year, the anomalistic year, the precessions of the equinoxes “for 6,000 years, whereas modern astronomy knows them for only about 400 years.” Mathematicians have detected in it the exact value of “pi”, the exact average distance between the sun and the earth, the polar diameter of the earth, and so on…pg 233
The ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; that they were the first to erect buildings out of 6 million tons of stone (The Great Pyramid) as architects and engineers--not simply as unskilled laborers; that they built the immense temple of Karnak...
Consequently, the Black man must be able to restore the continuity of his national historic past, to draw from it the moral advantage needed to reconquer his place in the modern world, without falling into excesses of a Nazism in reverse for, insofar as one can speak of race, the civilization that is his might have been created by any other human race placed in so favorable and unique a setting.-pg 234-235
Cheikh Anta Diop-African historian, anthropologist, physicist, Egyptologist and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. A true scholar.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Howard University:Outstripping The Myth
Howard life is much too burdensome for me to endure the plethora of vulgarity aimlessly seeking to find solace. I have persevered for months on end without so much as a faint attempt from the university administrators to recognize nor realize the discombobulated state in which the university structure operates. I am appalled by their behaviors, and am, as of now absolved from any guilt that may have been entrenched within my soul on their behalf. I have submitted my bequest in a sense, on behalf of my family and supporters to no avail. (I sought to reconcile the differences I had with HU, but was blatantly ignored) I refuse to allow myself to continue to be refuted and dismissed. Howard University’s actions toward me are irreprehensible. I am thoroughly sentient of the things that Howard promotes and the things that are concealed. Of those things, some are allowed to come into fruition by God’s leave, and man cannot in his finite mind comprehend them, nor change them. While I down the institution that is Howard, I must with great regard acknowledge the valiant work that some of the professors and students alike, are doing on the daily. Ask anyone who has frequented a classroom, a panel discussion, or just come into contact with Dr. Carr. This is one professor that the students have great reverence for. Dr. Carr is but one of a few brilliant professors I have had the pleasure of learning from. Not only is his student’s love perceptible, it is also understood. Dr. Carr exudes the same love back to his pupils. He oftentimes is quoted as saying, “I learn from you all as well.”
Throughout my short tenure here on this Earth, I have come to apprehend that you can find some good in everything and every situation, as is the case with my experience here amongst my own people, all of whom are virtually of African descent. However, I would be remiss and rueful if I failed to chastise Howard for its enumerable shortcomings. Many may speculate as to why I am so unrelenting when it comes to my criticism of the university, and I say, it is because I know we can and must do better. Often times because of our feelings of attachment to the university, we tend to overlook its searing faults. However, just as a wife/husband acknowledge each others flaws out of love and for the benefit of them both, we too must recognize and make known the flaws in order for us as a people, and us as a community to advance. Not only are the flaws overlooked, they are purposely concealed from those who need to be made aware. Herein lays our challenge as students. We must, out of love for the university, call for an unequivocal change. There must be a major paradigm shift if we long to witness any improvement. We are walking, in some cases backwards, while peoples of other cultures and ethnic groups are sprinting far ahead of us. We are taking a major “L” as children in this “hip-hop” generation love to phrase it. A very close colleague and associate of mine stated the other day, “That it seems as though we are worse off than we were before.” He was essentially saying that we have regressed. We as a people were making progress gradually, up through the civil rights or what should be known more so as the human rights movement. Yet, soon thereafter, we lost our way. We reverted back to being slaves voluntarily; slaves to money, our passions, pride, and many more enumerable things. We chose to be disenfranchised after we strove so hard for our right to vote and things of that sort. We lost sight of what mattered. Dubois frames it very eloquently in James Anderson’s book, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935. Dubois is quoted as having said, in his address to Howard University in 1930, “Our college man today is, on the average, a man untouched by real culture. He deliberately surrenders to selfish and even silly ideals, swarming into semiprofessional athletics and Greek letter societies, and affecting to despise scholarship and the hard grind of study and research. The greatest meetings of the Negro college year like those of the white college year have become vulgar exhibitions of liquor, extravagance, and fur coats. We have in our colleges a growing mass of stupidity and indifference.” It is tempting to place an exclamation point at the end of Dubois’ quote to emphasize his frustration. This was what Dubois said in 1930, and yet it is still prevalent today, right at this day and time on this campus. I attest to the fact that what Dubois said sixty something odd years ago, has progressed as a problem, and yet and still remains a major hindrance to our community at large.
We as college students, black college students, have an incumbent responsibility to ourselves, but mainly to our communities to come to college to become educated, and then with education provide for the up lift of society. How then do we explain our, as Dubois put it, “growing mass of stupidity and indifference”? How do we explain our extravagance and infatuation with intoxicants? How do we begin to explain our nonchalant attitude towards reading? How do we explain our contempt and condescending attitude towards our people who are not in college? How do we explain the “othering” that goes on amidst blacks, with the “light skin” vs “dark skin”? How? Are we really that much better because we attend a college/university? That is a trick question, because one cannot lead with the ideology that he is somewhat better, but must step forward with the ideology that he is a reflection of his people and that he is not successful unless his people are as well.
Remaining slaves to our passions, society’s expectations, and wealth amongst other things will continue to keep us as a people entrenched to the bottom of society’s totem pole. Howard needs to be ushered towards excellence, not minor improvements such as a paved street, or a few computers. Whereas that is a start, do not become complacent or satisfied until excellence is achieved. Excellence not in terms of the past, nor the myth within the name itself, or excellence in societal terms, but the universal excellence that we all can recognize as being innately true. And until that comes into fruition, we should not be satisfied. I am leaving the university after countless attempts to give HU the benefit of the doubt and after many successive concessions, but now I am exhausted and tired of condoning mediocrity. This is my call to the university and community to step your game up. And also a call to the black youth who inhabit this university to improve yourselves! Life is much more than a game. Stop living with the mindset that we play now, work later. We are adults, the times for childish games are done, step up and help improve society. All the alcoholics, weed heads, hoes, nymphs, “players”, party promoters, and others who do nothing to improve the educating of leaders, and are not characteristic of leaders, have no place on a college campus that seeks excellence and need to be removed from this environment. If you are in that category, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP!.. I shall elaborate and expound upon that in further detail at a later date, but for now, I’m done…
Throughout my short tenure here on this Earth, I have come to apprehend that you can find some good in everything and every situation, as is the case with my experience here amongst my own people, all of whom are virtually of African descent. However, I would be remiss and rueful if I failed to chastise Howard for its enumerable shortcomings. Many may speculate as to why I am so unrelenting when it comes to my criticism of the university, and I say, it is because I know we can and must do better. Often times because of our feelings of attachment to the university, we tend to overlook its searing faults. However, just as a wife/husband acknowledge each others flaws out of love and for the benefit of them both, we too must recognize and make known the flaws in order for us as a people, and us as a community to advance. Not only are the flaws overlooked, they are purposely concealed from those who need to be made aware. Herein lays our challenge as students. We must, out of love for the university, call for an unequivocal change. There must be a major paradigm shift if we long to witness any improvement. We are walking, in some cases backwards, while peoples of other cultures and ethnic groups are sprinting far ahead of us. We are taking a major “L” as children in this “hip-hop” generation love to phrase it. A very close colleague and associate of mine stated the other day, “That it seems as though we are worse off than we were before.” He was essentially saying that we have regressed. We as a people were making progress gradually, up through the civil rights or what should be known more so as the human rights movement. Yet, soon thereafter, we lost our way. We reverted back to being slaves voluntarily; slaves to money, our passions, pride, and many more enumerable things. We chose to be disenfranchised after we strove so hard for our right to vote and things of that sort. We lost sight of what mattered. Dubois frames it very eloquently in James Anderson’s book, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860-1935. Dubois is quoted as having said, in his address to Howard University in 1930, “Our college man today is, on the average, a man untouched by real culture. He deliberately surrenders to selfish and even silly ideals, swarming into semiprofessional athletics and Greek letter societies, and affecting to despise scholarship and the hard grind of study and research. The greatest meetings of the Negro college year like those of the white college year have become vulgar exhibitions of liquor, extravagance, and fur coats. We have in our colleges a growing mass of stupidity and indifference.” It is tempting to place an exclamation point at the end of Dubois’ quote to emphasize his frustration. This was what Dubois said in 1930, and yet it is still prevalent today, right at this day and time on this campus. I attest to the fact that what Dubois said sixty something odd years ago, has progressed as a problem, and yet and still remains a major hindrance to our community at large.
We as college students, black college students, have an incumbent responsibility to ourselves, but mainly to our communities to come to college to become educated, and then with education provide for the up lift of society. How then do we explain our, as Dubois put it, “growing mass of stupidity and indifference”? How do we explain our extravagance and infatuation with intoxicants? How do we begin to explain our nonchalant attitude towards reading? How do we explain our contempt and condescending attitude towards our people who are not in college? How do we explain the “othering” that goes on amidst blacks, with the “light skin” vs “dark skin”? How? Are we really that much better because we attend a college/university? That is a trick question, because one cannot lead with the ideology that he is somewhat better, but must step forward with the ideology that he is a reflection of his people and that he is not successful unless his people are as well.
Remaining slaves to our passions, society’s expectations, and wealth amongst other things will continue to keep us as a people entrenched to the bottom of society’s totem pole. Howard needs to be ushered towards excellence, not minor improvements such as a paved street, or a few computers. Whereas that is a start, do not become complacent or satisfied until excellence is achieved. Excellence not in terms of the past, nor the myth within the name itself, or excellence in societal terms, but the universal excellence that we all can recognize as being innately true. And until that comes into fruition, we should not be satisfied. I am leaving the university after countless attempts to give HU the benefit of the doubt and after many successive concessions, but now I am exhausted and tired of condoning mediocrity. This is my call to the university and community to step your game up. And also a call to the black youth who inhabit this university to improve yourselves! Life is much more than a game. Stop living with the mindset that we play now, work later. We are adults, the times for childish games are done, step up and help improve society. All the alcoholics, weed heads, hoes, nymphs, “players”, party promoters, and others who do nothing to improve the educating of leaders, and are not characteristic of leaders, have no place on a college campus that seeks excellence and need to be removed from this environment. If you are in that category, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP!.. I shall elaborate and expound upon that in further detail at a later date, but for now, I’m done…
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