Sometimes we become caught up on words and the implied definitions. Since 0ver 90% of African people in the African Diaspora never practiced true polygamy in our recent history. We have borrowed our ideals of this form of marriage from the media, books and hearsay.
I’m sure we all may know of some Muslim, Hebrew and/or believer in the Kemetic faith that has practiced, or is practicing polygamy, or has an insider view. But their information, though important, is no different then that of a Christian monogamist. It is still subject to their personal experiences, opinions and prejudices, which are many times colored by the success or failure of a particular relationship.
It would be problematic if this discussion focuses on the ideal of polygamy, as just an alternative lifestyle, which unfortunately has always been the case; usually misconstrued as a vehicle for multiple sexual partners, than anything. There should be a broader scope, for intelligent, futuristic and culturally aware African people. I think we should be focusing on ancestral, as well as modern, answers to relationship dilemmas and crisis’s that Africans have today; regardless of the European social boundaries and norms. Even monogamy with a more than 60 % failure rate, (lets not even talk about the same statistics as it pertains to people of color worldwide) has not been put under the same intense scrutiny and castigation that polygamy has. This is because; one of these institutions represents one man’s worldview as compared to, or better yet as related to, another man/woman’s survival (i.e., Black people). If we were, statistically, talking about any other types of lifestyles, practices or institutions, other than monogamy, it would be considered a failed ideal, at the rate in which monogamy (assumed as the most perfect way to live) is unraveling.
Africans believe in European ideals more than we see these ideals work. We mythologize, romanticize and proselytize western ideals that have never given fruit to our long term and worldwide survival. As of late, we still have not reformed these western concepts to heal our shattered pan-African worldview and we still wait for something magical to turn around our dismal condition without struggling with change
Drastic conditions need drastic change.
And believe me Black people; there will be failures sometime commingling with successes as we develop our lives.
But what scares me, about closed mindedness on this subject, is that we act like we can go forever with large numbers of single-headed households, Black women with children being the largest number of homeless in America and Black women having no proper spiritual, mental or sexual balance to their existence. Every thing in the Universe that is viable has balance. If you need an African-centered reference read the Dogon myth about the Yurugu (Ogo) sometimes known as the pale fox.
How long can African people survive outside the context of Universal law?
So I hope WE, as Africans don’t blow off this subject in an emotional and reactionary fashion. For without family, there is no village, no nation.
PEACE AND LOVE ASHE
