Africa : African

Will the real Africans please stand up (?)

Peace Brother ngumbi,

Africans need to stop this foolishness! What I have called in other post, the National Geographic and Wild Kingdom analysis of the authenticity of cultural, tribal and ethnic credibility. There are no other people in the world that has been scrutinized and categorized like Africans worldwide and then through some sort of sub-consciously induced propaganda or subliminal suggestion we internalize this scrutiny and skepticism of what is Black and/or truly African and what is not. WE ACT LIKE WE ARE SPECIMENS, instead of a diverse and every changing progressive people. Cultural sociology is unwittingly replaced with a pseudo-anthropomorphic zoology, constantly exploring the so-called “pure-true African hypothesis”.

Africans have never promoted cultural stagnation or societal isolation. Europeans do this job on all first world people of color (so-called third world), as they, in turn, glorify the fact that Western Europe is an advance civilization because it is always innovating, evolving and progressing.

WHERE IS THE ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTIC EUROPEAN (TROGLODYTE, CAVEMAN, AND POSSIBLY NEANDERTHAL)?

What is a culturally correct Irishman, German, Englishman, Frenchman or Spaniard?

What are the cultural validities of Afrikaners?

It is one thing to reexamine and embrace our aboriginal and cultural roots, but we need to construct our own criteria governing, what is necessary for African cultural consistency.
We just don’t understand how much field anthropologist and racist ethnologist have affected us. This constant cross-examination of Blackness and African-ness is very destructive to our future goals, as a progressive force to be revered and reckoned with.

THEY (WHITE PEOPLE) DIVIDE AND CONQUER ALL THE TIME.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER ALL THE TIME.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER ALL THE TIME.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER ALL THE TIME.

AND THE SAD PART IS, THAT WE FALL FOR IT.

Wake up Black people!!! P-l-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-s-e (?)

Peace, Love and Ashe,

Sun Ship
 
This discussion thread is really interesting. I've been reading postings put up by different people and I have a few comments that have come to my mind. I am a first generation African born in America, my mother is Liberian and my father is Nigerian. This is not meant to insult anyone in this forum, but it always amazes me the amount of people who will call themselves Africans , but who know nothing about Africa or Africans and when faced with an issue dealing with Africa to which they are in a position to help, they look the other way.
I am currently a college student in Massachusetts and I have seen this happen at my own university many times, where people wear the name "African" on their sleeves but do not really care about what is going on in Africa. For instance, I was part of a group that sent money and supplies to an AIDS hospice in South Africa. Although, many people seemed interested in helping out, when it came down to the important heavily weighted matters, it was other Africans who were there and a few White people. This is not something that I have seen happen once. I have read threads stating that Africans have never helped them, so why should they help us. But I beg to differ, because the world's largest rubber plantation (yes plantation) is in Liberia (owned by Firestone, the only place not destroyed by the war), the majority of the world's diamonds (even though imported from other countries to the US) come from Africa, cocoa, mohagany and a very large portion of the world's natural resources have come from Africa. In addition to this the poor people who are suffering in Africa right now are probably not the one's whose ancestors sold other Africans (who at the time did not consider themselves Africans because that was a word Europeans called all peoples living on the continent). The African's whose families were heavily involved in the slave trade, are probably the wealthy, well-to-do families in Africa right now. Remember only the wealthy and the chiefs benefitted from slavery, the general African population was just as much in danger of being sold as people who were sold, some people just had worse fates than others.
* * *
As many of you know by now my mother is from Liberia which is currently war torn, although not all of Africa is like this and there are many enjoyable aspects of Africa, it bothers me when people romanticize Africa. I know this has been stated time and time again through out this forum, but I feel the need to say it again. Romanticization of Africa is something that I can fully understand, especially from the wonderful stories that my parents have told me, however I feel that a more realistic view of Africa must me taken.
* * *
In my personal interactions with many Black or African peoples whose roots in America go deeper than mine, I am oftentimes offended. This is not to say that there are not arrogant Africans, but I am not one of them. It really hurts me when a person of African descent mocks my name or laughs at the meaning of my name or makes jokes about naked Africans, and so on and so forth.( This is not just the uneducated, but people I have met in college, people who should know.) It is things like that which anger some of my friends (who are first generation Africans born in America also) and me causing us to shy away from African Americans. This is not because of hate but simply, I don't want to feel as though I have to constantly defend myself and my culture. And when I do defend my culture, I do not want anyone feeling as though I am being arrogant, when I simply am just proud of my heritage. This is not an experience that I have had solely with African Americans but also Caribbean Americans, who have insulted me unknowingly, assuming that I am of Caribbean descent, "anything but African."


Another point that this discussion has brought to mind is what people expect African people to look like. Many people do not understand that we too have diversity in terms of skin tone and racial make up. This may seem like a far stretch from the conversation, but it is amazing to me how many people will assume, rather incorrectly that I am from Haiti or Jamaica and similarly assume that my mother is Hispanic. So she constantly finds herself caught in embarrasingly funny situations where someone is speaking to her in Spanish. My mother was born and raised in Liberia West Africa (part Americo- Liberian part Kru), but her granfather is Lebonese. This is a concept that is hard to grasp for many people who do not understand why anyone Lebonese would be in West Africa (ignorant of the fact that many Arab traders live and marry women there). I have another friend who "looks half-Hindi Indian" but is actually Ghanian and is constantly plagued with the question "what are you?" and when the response is "Ghanian" people are very shocked. My point of all this is to ask "Why?"
People are so stuck with this romanticized view of Africa and this wonderful land full of Black people, that they sometimes forget that there are other people of other nationalities there. There are White people, Asian people and Black people some of which have returned to live on the continent. With all these different people, racial mixing is bound to occur, and so the "typical African looking" African person is not always the face that a person may encounter when meeting someone from Africa. Therefore it is a real nuisance to me when people have this picture of what Africans look like and make incorrect assumptions about our ethnicities. The same way that African Americans come in all shades and hues, we do also.

Finally (sorry for the long posting),When I think about all of these issues and I then hear someone who was not born in Africa and does not have parents born in Africa call themself African, it makes me wonder if it is sincere or something that is just popular for the moment. This is not to say that I do not embrace Black people who consider themselves Africans as my fellow Africans, but the issues that I stated above make me wonder "why?" and "what does African mean to these people?"
 
Oleremi
Your statements are poor, poor, poor,
and selfish. I am not gonna make this
long just deep.
Do you know that the

CIA need men like you?
Being privileged to be born with a direct
connection to the motherland does in no way
make you a gatekeeper!

Come on you cant be serious
read the thoughts of this Family
These are not your average americans.

It is very naive of you to even think that
your argument over African commitment would
hold weight HERE.
In this place
YOU THINK THATS AIR THAT YOUR BREATHING NOW?

OKAY america has some not so commited AFRICANS
(cos thats what we are)
but just the fact that
people post here should tell you that
we/they are searching. Your attitude is no
better in this age than the Brother way back
then who sold us TO AMERICANS.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont take it upon
yourself to try to disrupt the dreams and aspirations of SOULS seeking unification or
reconnecting with what they once were
connected to.
Remember you know nothing outside what is
expressed as scribbled digital letters on a website in cyberspace.
FEEL MY SOUL WHEN I TELL YOU THIS
AND FEEL IT GOOD

I AM AN AFRICAN!
This I know.
Regardless of where I manifested this time.
**** man Brothers tryna take you
away from the Motherland like its
Crack or suppen.

For the sake of Black unity Worldwide
Please can you Show that
commitment where its needed cos it aint
doin much but destroying peoples hopes
and disconnecting our People here.

(and take Isanusu wit ya)


:maddd:






*
 
Blacks? Africans? Many things? Everything? We need to get pass this!

I find this debate about the African-ness or African-ism of people of African descent disturbing, at this time in our history. Before there was a land or continental designation defined as Africa, people with the phenotype of West, Central, and East Africans dominated and/or originated some of the most advanced cultures in the world. Lets celebrate the fact that people with dolichocephalic heads, profuse melanin, Steatopygia and facial prognathism (and originators of all features!) were more than just the footstools of history and gave the world its spirituality, religions, medicine, culture and high artistic expressions.

Africans can debate everyday on what is African or what is not. But realistically, there has never been a collective African cultural design that all Africans could use to judge their selves by. There is more diversity between East and West Africans, than there is between the West African Yoruba and the Yoruba descendents of Cuba or Brazil. Some of my relatives, who are Black Panamanians, grew up eating fu-fu (a starchy West African dish) in their native Panama.

What’s so interesting, is that, when African Americans were voluntarily going to Ethiopia, in the late 1930’s, to fight against the colonial Italian occupiers and when African Americans were protesting, being arrested and going to jail to exacerbate the end of apartheid in South Africa, no one squawked about how African we were or were not. To appreciate what African Americans have done for the liberation of Africa you need to read more.

Brothers, the legacies of Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Patrice Lumumba, Billie Holiday, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Celia Cruz and Fela BELONG TO ALL OF US.

Some of the comments made by Africans (from the continent or N. Amer.) in this thread are based more on ignorance and colonial brainwashing, than concern. Brothers, don’t you know that people of African descent are dieing from AIDS at alarming rates all over the Pan African world (including North America).

It’s not that some of the posts in this thread are right or wrong, they are just convoluted.

This “true African” debate is from another time and is very childish, archaic and pseudo-racist.

The minds and thought processes, of Black people, are not only sometimes beyond perplexing, but are down right scary.


Whatever,

Sun Ship
 
I said all I need to say above.
Apart from sorry if you feel I am Mocking
personally I call it passion Brother.

"Hesaid:
He doesn 't have to take me to Africa. I've been 3 times."
(me 4 times from west to farthest east)
I didnt mean to Africa I meant where serious convincing is needed
for example Rappers who think theyre Pimps,
am sayin theres alot more useful work to do there.
then go to the carribean and see
the same people the same cultures, then go to nigeria and see how JAMAICANS
RESEMBLE NIGERIANS and tell me we aint the same people)Now can you absorb what im saying your point is POINTLESS.
At this point I must ask you
are you saying WE should not call ourselves African?
if so i dare say Malcolm,Garvey and also half the
Rastafarian community
would disagree leading us where?
I believe nowhere in the western world do you find such
patriotism even amongst blacks who detach from the Slave master
but keep 1 shackle on just in case. Dont worry bro AMERICAs going down
thought you would know it was
all hype.

If I conceed into your belief then I must ask you where and how were
the best parts of our Human Character shaped and where and how did we lose it?
What name? what direction? What location? God ?rah rah rah...
(You cant tell me it was'nt the little traces of Africa (that we kept against the wishes of our slavers) still instilled in the
southern states. where you think cornbread came from covering heads in church.....)
If the Answer to the latter is america then you have this debate
otherwise
Goodbye.



Still with Love
(and a bit a dissapointment)
 

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