African Americans Need To Stop Coddling Pookie, Ray Ray And Africa!

MARTA cop Robert Waldo"

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."  - Edmond Burke

A little more than two weeks ago in Atlanta a white police officer shot and killed a young black man. The shooting occurred after a fight broke out between a large group of young black youth and a smaller group of about five young men. Reports say the fight occurred in front of a MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) station near the Georgia Dome. MARTA police show up on the scene, and shortly thereafter a young man was brutally shot and killed. Joetavious Stafford was alleged to have been shot once in the chest and shot twice more in the back while he lay on the pavement gasping for air.

This, of course, sparked outrage in the community. Radio talk shows were ablaze with fiery rhetoric and the usual anger that rears it's head when another black youth is destroyed by the police and especially  by a white cop. During one of the programs I frequently listen to, the show host asked “when will this ever stop?” “When will white racists stop killing black people?” The answer; this will stop when “good” cops stand in the office of their commanders, their chiefs, sheriff’s office, county commissioners and mayors and demand “bad” cops be removed from the force.

But, on top of this, the police killings will stop when black people stand and occupy the streets of the killers, drug dealers, rapists and child molesters. When the masses of good people living in these “war” zones call out the enabling parents, family members, boy friends, girl friends, husbands and wives of the these predators and have them removed and/or offered any assistance to change their lives for the better. This approach is relevant on the international level. We are seeing people in many nations protesting what they perceive to be the evil that is destroying their lives. This to, this calling out approach and massing out, should be the case with black Africa.

We are seeing conditions in the Congo, Kenya, Somalia, naming only a few, getting worse. We read stories of Tanzanians killing albinos to satisfy a prescription from a “witch doctor” should they want wealth and riches. Men with HIV/A.I.D.S. having sex with teen and pre teen girls in South Africa to “cure” them of the scourge of their ailment. Men in the Congo using thier penis' as weapons, using, rape as a weapon that not only is damaging women and girl’s spirits, but destroys them within their own societies and families. Raped women are regarded as “damaged” goods by their own family’s when the evil of rape is visited upon them, even as if they were some willing participant in a promiscuous act of deviant sex.

Certainly, and possibly, the greatest purveyors of the evils falling upon black Africa are the black Africans holding the offices as heads of state that are economically ravaging African countries. Nkwazi Mhango, contributor to the AfroSpear has been exposing the financial and fiscal corruption that takes place on the continent in the name of leadership. In his piece Africa’s Hidden Presidents? Mhango states “Presidency in corruption-rampant Africa is the means to opulence, not only for the holder of it but also his or her family, friends in other cases even the tribe.” Obviously, African leaders are highly motivated for self, wife and family and sometimes tribe. That’s it. No mentality of Africa for Africans. No thought of let me uplift my people and forge ahead for my people. So, why then should we, indigenous Americans (black people) and African Americans coddle Africans?

African Americans must now stop this incessant babying and coddling of Africa. The African has faced the same enemy as we have here in the west. The African has faced the white man (colonialism was just as devastating to the African as slavery was to the American), Africans have faced their internal enemy, other black Africans working for the European against other black Africans and now after so much destruction they too are ravaging each other.

We should discard the mindset that we in the west need to help Africa overcome her ills. The coddling of and protesting for Africa needs to stop. The intimation by indigenous Americans (African Americans) is almost condescending in their approach to aiding Africa.  As if the African is a child unable to make conscious decisions. And,  often making excuses for Africa much like the enabling mother’s vehement excuses for Pookie and Ray Ray after they have committed some heinous act against another black person. Or the specious sympathetic excuses fostered by heads such as Michael Eric Dyson, or Dr.  Cornell West on behalf of Africa.

Africa must begin to stand up and resist the negative prescriptions of “witch doctors”, rebuff silly notions of sexing young virgin females to cure HIV/A.I.D.S. first.  Africans must stand together and protest the rape of their women by their own men and the razing of their economies by their leaders, the African must be  the vanguard. No more should the black people in the west be the spear head. Such as in the case of Joetavious Stafford and countless other young black people in the U.S. and Caribbean, until good people protest these self destructive machinations by our own, it will not stop and outsiders need not holla until the affected people holla louder.

The Global System of Black Supremacy

The Global System of Black Supremacy, to borrow the phrase from Denmark Vesey.  Black people create every racial group.  Dr. Ivan Van Sertima reminds us that every stage of mankind can be found in Africa.  We need to stop believing the perpuated lie that their are light skin black people because massa raped our great great grand mothers.

Roots; African or American?

In the 1980’s, during the surge of Black “Afro-centric” authors and books, I became an avid reader of every angle of the history and legacy of Black people across space and time. From reading Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James to African Origin of Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Richard M. King to the Biography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton, and even Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren and Secrets of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.

My reading addiction has not stopped, nor was it or is it all by Black authors on Black/African history and accomplishments. Eventually things began to become stale for me, as if I was beginning to read things that were being rehashed over and over, but with a little different spice added to the mix thus, in the end it was basically the same.

While listening to my favorite community radio station in Atlanta in December of 2000, there was an advertisement that would be rotated throughout the many hours of the day as I listened while I worked ,saying something to the affect of “Have you ever heard grandmamma or great grand ma was in Indian? Come down to the Auburn Research Library to learn more about this.”

Of course this peaked my curiosity since I had heard this very same thing all my life from my mother concerning her grandfather, my great grandfather “papa” all my life. She would point at his picture on our living room wall and say “look at papa, looking just like and Indian.” So, of course I was at the library’s auditorium promptly at 6 o’clock.

Shortly after 6 pm, the little auditorium was filled with many people, from college professors from the AU center (the center where several HBCU’s are located in Atlanta) and professors from Georgia State and a couple reporters from local Black newspapers, to average people wanting clarity about this “Indian” ancestry we have.

By 6:30, Rev. Radine Amen Ra took the stage and proceeded to layout her argument that the aboriginal people of the Americas , including the Caribbean islands were Black people and how European history books and European artists’ renditions of the aboriginal people of the Americas had been anglicized to fit the imaginations of the people back home in Europe.

She actually based her theory on several books, writings and portraits by George Catlin and county tax records and court documents of various states. She pointed to books by J. leitch Wright that wrote of the plight of Indians of the Southeastern United States. Rev. Amen Ra spoke of the logic and logistics of a huge Atlantic slave trade including cost and expense of transporting so many people from the west coast of Africa.(Ah yaw ne tak oar-A warriror of the Menominee or more specifically the Mamaceqtaw nation)

For years I had heard and read how the enslaved Africans would often runaway and live with the Native Americans, and if any Africans were enslaved by the Indian their slave system was nothing like the system of slavery that was instituted by the Europeans. Thus, the Africans would intermarry with the Indians and would often become great leaders of the “tribes.” This is what I was taught, which made sense to me and of course Alex Haley’s Roots re-enforced these lessons. But is that really the truth?

Next time what I learned.