SELFHATE7 empowerment - March 17, 2009 add/view comments (0) |
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HOW DO YOU CONTROL BLACK PEOPLE KEEP THE DUMB OF THERE HISTORY AND CULTURE. LET THEM CONTINUED TO BELEIVE IN A SPOOK GOD IN THE SKY IS COMING TO SAVE THEM. THEY WILL DO NOTHING TO SAVE THEMSELVES, BUT WAIT ON THAT SPOOK GOD. In my bag, I have a fool proof method for controlling your slaves. I guarantee every one of you that if installed it will control BLACK PEOPLE FOREVER My method is simple, any member of your WHITE FAMILY or any OVERSEER can use it. I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves, and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use FEAR, DISTRUST, and ENVY for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies, and it will work throughout the SOUTH. Take this simple little list of differences and think about them. On the top of my list is "AGE" but it is only there because it starts with an "A"; The second is†COLOR" or shade; there is INTELLIGENCE, SIZE, SEX, SIZE OF PLANTATION, ATTITUDE of owner, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, east or west, north, south, have fine or coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action- but before that, I shall assure you that DISTRUST IS STRONGER THAN TRUST, AND ENVY IS STRONGER THAN ADULATION, RESPECT OR ADMIRATION. The BLACK PEOPLE, after receiving YOUR indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don't forget you must pitch the old black VS. The young black males and the young black male against the old black male. You must use the dark skinned slaves VS. The light skin slaves. You must use the female VS the male, and the male VS, the female. You must always have your BLACK servants and OVERSEERS distrust all blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us WHITE PEOPLE FOREVER
Today, what has changed is not the game or the playing field, it is our understanding of game theory and game strategy. For example, psychologist Wade Nobles (1986) coined the metaphorical term conceptual incarceration to help us better understand a key aspect of the psychological slavery that shackles African people. Conceptual incarceration results from our unwitting adoption of erroneous concepts, ideas, views, opinions and theories about ourselves as African people, about Europeans, and about the world. It is Nobles’ contention that the debilitating anti-Black, anti-African attitudes in the belief systems of virtually all Black people regardless of class, education, or religious orientation are largely to blame for the underdeveloped state of African communities in the U.S. and abroad.  Dr. Nobles also believes that since our behavior is influenced by what we think about ourselves and the world, large numbers of African people are imprisoned by false beliefs about themselves and the world which generates behaviors that keep us among the poor in every nation. We all, in varying degrees as Black people socialized under White supremacy, have internalized a set of beliefs that compel us to serve the needs of our oppressors while blatantly neglecting our own group development. These are the “invisible chains†that bind us. One tool for breaking the chains of psychological slavery and freeing African people from the shackles of conceptual incarceration is a process I call Dwt (Dwat) after the Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) word that signifies the daily transformations wrought by the rising and the setting of the sun. Dwt is the fourth principle of the Johari Sita and thus a scientific method for removing the psychological chains of mental bondage. Rooted in Erriel Addae’s (1996) notion of nyansa nnsa da or “thought without boundaries,†at its most elementary levels, Dwt equips us to experience then actively promote what Thomas Kuhn (1970) called a paradigm shift — in our case, from European centered to African centered world views. At its highest level, Dwt promotes harmonizing the human will with the Universal Will, a process the Kemites called Maat.  Dwt emancipates African people from the dungeon of false beliefs about ourselves, others and the world because it provides us with a new set of historically accurate facts, concepts, theories, and perspectives about ourselves, about others, and about the world based on our African cultural and intellectual heritage. African centered scholars, like Maulana Karenga, Molefi Asante, Linda Myers, Wade Nobles, Na’im Akbar, Marimba Ani, Amos Wilson, Kwame Akoto, Jacob Carruthers, Asa Hilliard and a host of others, are developing a lexicon to free us from conceptual incarceration — not only by replacing our false, limited concepts and ideas with correct ones, but also by expanding and re-centering our analyses, definitions, and understanding of ourselves and the world.  In addition, our African centered scholars have discovered that much of what is passed off in our schools, in our churches, in our civic organizations, and by the media as universal truths are nothing more than select European theories, practices, preferences, and customs wrapped around a core of Jewish mythology and folklore. Today, our psychological slavery in large measure is self-imposed; we have allowed others to imprison us in their ethnic or cultural group’s concepts and beliefs. In short, we have been contained by our infatuation with Europe’s knowledge; therefore, we have scant knowledge of our own.  Dwt, for African people, is a journey of rediscovery and reconnection inspired by what the Akan people of Ghana, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire call sankofa. Sankofa posits that the wisdom is reaching back and reconnecting with the best of one’s ancestral traditions, customs, and practices. We American Africans are blessed because we are perhaps the only large group in the U.S. with a tricultural heritage. We have three cultural traditions we can mine for “goldâ ;€: African, European, and Native American. As recipients of European centered education, most African Americans have an abundance of operational concepts from our European “gold mine.† But that is not enough; we cannot empower ourselves, our people, or Abibiman (The Black Nation) merely by adopting the world views, belief systems, and life styles of European Americans. Our salvation will not come from imitating others, but only from being our authentic, African selves. That is why we sankofa, which means that we: (1) extract the “goldâ ;€ from our African and Native American heritages (two long neglected, untapped sources of potent operational concepts) and (2) assess our European cultural borrowings through the lenses of African and Native American philosophy and tradition. In cases where there are conflicting world views, we gravitate toward the traditional wisdom of Africa. Mwalimu Shujaa (1996) sees this process of African cultural “gold mining†and European cultural sifting as aspects of re-Africanization.  Dwt, because it vigorously promotes re-Africanization, breaks African people out of conceptual incarceration by shifting what psychologist Julian Rotter (1966) calls our locus of control from external sources to internal sources. It is Dr. Rotter’s belief that individuals (and my belief that entire communities) have either an internal or external locus or center of control.  People and communities that have internal centers of control believe that through their own persistent effort, they can rearrange or change their life conditions without outside approval or assistance. Because they believe deeply that they are the “captains of their fate†and the “masters of their destiny,†they feel empowered, optimistic, creative, productive, energetic, and positive. Because of this deep faith in themselves, their people, and hard work, they are willing to take calculated risks to fulfill their dreams. Such people are successful and such communities are autonomous, wholesome places to live and raise children.  On the other hand, people and communities that have an external center of control believe at their core that they cannot arrange their lives and construct their futures without the active approval of and assistance and guidance from external human agencies. Those with an external locus of control look for powerful others to think, legitimize and provide for them. They are victims of a psychology of dependence often to the extent that they are willing to place their lives and the lives of their children in the hands of others who they believe will treat them fairly. Because they believe that others are better equipped to make decisions about their fate than they themselves, they are considered child-like and foolish, worthy of exploitation and abuse by their oppressors. Such people and communities languish in a “dependency state,†depressed, demoralized, and disenfranchised.  The American institution of psychological slavery is predicated on African people maintaining an external locus of control. Through a variety of tactics and strategies, like those advocated by Willie Lynch, slave masters shifted the self-perception (locus of control) of most captured Africans from that of “prisoners of war,†which is an internal focus to “accommodat ing slaves,†an external focus. As Akoto and Akoto (2000) pointed out, there are vast differences in how these two groups see the world.  Though both are “constraine d by the dominant order,†the prisoner of war or P.O.W. “steadfastl y refuse to accept the legitimacy or permanence of his/her condition.†She/He constantly seeks opportunities to escape from, sabotage, or destroy her/his captors. Even in the face of unspeakable horror and brutality, the P.O.W. maintains her/his internal locus of control, which Akoto and Akoto believe to be “an unbreachable psycho-emotional fortress anchored in the unknowable depths and expanse of the spirit.â€Â&nb sp; Once they escaped from slavery, British and American slave owners called African P.O.W.s, Maroons, a term which comes from the Spanish word cimarrones, meaning “wild ones.† Stripped of the “spirit&aci rc;€ of resistance inherent in knowing one’s ethnic group history, culture and traditions, the slave, on the other hand, accepts “the current order as permanent and seeks only to modulate the personal discomfort associated with that order.â€Â&nbs p; Forsaking all thought of rescue and seeing small chance for permanent escape, over time, vast numbers of African P.O.W.’s came to see their European captors as first their masters, and then their superiors and benefactors thereby completing their conversion to “accommodat ing slaves.†In exchange for petty creature comforts, favorite status, or merely, like house slaves, close physical proximity to their beloved masters, slaves, by definition, are content to center their locus of control only on those external “rewards&ac irc;€ provided by their masters.  Dwt teaches that the maintenance and perpetuation of African psychological enslavement and its chief expression, conceptual incarceration, pivot on African people maintaining an external locus of control. As long as we turn away from Africa and our ancestral wisdom and embrace as solutions to our life problems the views of Europeans, Arabs, Asians, Jews and others from outside of our traditional African cultural centers, we will remain the servants of Europeans, Arabs, Asians, and Jews, in both thought and deed.  Because of its emphasis upon re-Africanization, Dwt ends our “dependency state,†liberating us from psychological slavery and conceptual incarceration by re-centering us in traditional African knowledge bases. This re-centering returns us to Maroon status, permanently shifting our locus of control from external or European-based concepts and definitions to internal or African and Native American-based concepts and definitions. For African people, Dwt may be our most effective strategy for combating European mind control and defeating its attendant, psychological slavery.
Decolonizing the African Mind: Further Analysis and Strategy Deculturalization and Black America: 1500 to Present Deculturalization is a method of pacification and control perfected over the past 500 years by European ruling elites. This practice involves first the systematic stripping away of the intended victim’s ancestral culture and then systematically replacing it with European culture. Â&n bsp; According to educators Felix Boateng (1990) and Joel Spring (1997) Africans, Asians, Native Americans, (and I would add Native Australians and Pacific Islanders), have all been the victims of this form of psychological and spiritual abuse. Early American slaveholders called this practice seasoning. Today, the academic community calls it deculturalization, but the popular term is brain-washing.
As it affects Africans in the United States, decultualization is a three-stage process. First, African Americans are quietly taught to feel ashamed of so they will reject their African and Native American heritage. Next, they are taught in schools and churches to admire and respect so they will adopt and practice only their European heritage. And finally, if they obediently submit to this indoctrination, they are rewarded with opportunities to receive even more indoctrination. And ultimately once they have been effectively indoctrinated, they are allowed an opportunity to compete for a “profession al†job in the “main stream.†And a rare, handpicked few of the most thoroughly indoctrinated (brain-washed) are allowed access to the inner sanctums of White power, prestige and privilege.  The American system of deculturalization has been an extremely effective process. It has successfully brain-washed the majority of African Americans to accept the dominance of Europeans and European institutions over their lives. History teaches us that African prisoners of war (POWs) were subjected to a vicious, European-orchestrated, three to four years of seasoning during which the most important expressions of their African heritage were brutally stripped away from them and brutally replaced with the European colonizer-slave master-oppressorâ€& trade;s cultural practices and beliefs.  Africans enslaved in the North American British colonies, for example, were forbidden to use their original African names, languages and religions. They were forced to use their European colonizer-slave master-oppressorâ€& trade;s names, language and religion. This is why most Africans born in the United States have European surnames, speak English and practice some form of Christianity. Slavery imposed these European cultural practices on their African ancestors and their descendants blindly continue them unless they take steps to open their eyes to and free their minds of all remnants of European slavery.  Both Boateng (1990) and Spring (1997) identified the public school as a major agent of African American deculturalization (brain-washing). & Acirc; I agree; however, I would add that nearly all American educational institutions – Black, White, public, private, day care to college – must be placed along side the public schools as agents of deculturalization. ; In fact, no aspect of American education is free of this curse except the African centered independent school whose sole mission if it is functioning properly is to decolonize or re-Africanize Black students and their families.  Mis-Education and Black America: 1933 to Present The major 20th century instrument of deculturalization was and remains mis-education. Mis-education is the term coined by historian Carter G. Woodson (1933) to describe the destructive effects on the Black mind by schools that use a pedagogy and curriculum that deliberately omits, distorts or trivializes the role of African people in and their seminal contributions to world history and culture.  The American public school, as we previously noted, is a major mis-educator (brain-washer) of African people, and has been since its inception in the 1890s. But it is only one of three agents of mass mis-education used by the White ruling elite to manipulate and control African Americans over the past century. The other two carry equal weight. They are the popular media (print and electronic) and the traditional, mainstream Christian church that proclaims non-Africans as “Godâ €™s chosen people†and a White Jesus as its “personal savior.† The end goal of mis-education is three-fold: First, to produce African people who identify with and embrace as their own European history, traditions and culture, but who are ambivalent or indifferent toward African history, traditions and culture. Second, to produce Black people who have been what political scientist Jacob Carruthers (1994) calls diseducated, meaning people who have had their intellectual development arrested by the public schools. And, the third and ultimate goal of mis-education is mentacide, a term linked to genocide and diseducation coined in 1984 by Bobby Wright as a label for the European-orchestrated campaign to destroy the African mind as a prelude to destroying African people.  Literally from birth to death, African Americans are awash in a sea of European-designed, mass media disseminated disinformation, misinformation, half-truths and whole lies about the people, history, culture and significance of Africa. This, of course, is no accident. It is part of a finely crafted, century-long campaign to stop African Americans from connecting with their rich ancestral homeland and developing a Pan African worldview. While at the same time, it serves as a cloak under which Europeans can hide from African Americans their plunder of Africa’s mineral and biological wealth. Our White rulers and their Black supporters clearly understand that Black mis-education is the backbone of White domination.  Careful analysis of Black institutions that uphold mis-education and Africans who have been crippled by it reveal a number of highly identifiable features. First, these institutions will favor and their patrons will embrace what psychologist Wade Nobles (1986) calls conceptual incarceration. Conceptual incarceration is the term for Black imprisonment in White belief systems and knowledge bases.  When it comes to defining themselves and the world, mis-educated Blacks restrict their range of thought (and action) by their habit of drawing exclusively from their European background. By limiting themselves to this one, small facet of their vast, tricultural heritage, they confine themselves to a tiny, narrow corner of the world where they sit locked in a mental prison (colony) with only one set of lenses (European) to see the world.  By embracing European perspectives exclusively, Africans cut themselves off from self-knowledge. And when that occurs, deculturalization claims another victim. Fortunately, Black conceptual incarceration in large measure is self-imposed. Africans in America can choose to expand their cultural frames of reference and consciously embrace their African and Native American heritages. And when this happens, their conceptual incarceration ends.  Another feature of Black institutions that mis-educate and mis-educated Blacks is what Mwata X (1996) calls learned indifference, which is a pervasive and self-destructive psychological disorder marked by disinterest in issues, causes and organizations that promote the political and economic liberation of African people. Â&nb sp; By this measure, most of our established Black churches and prestigious Black schools mis-educate, and nearly all of our multi-millionaire Black athletes and super-star Black entertainers are mis-educated, (right along with nine out of ten Black Americans). As causalities in a war they don’t even know is being waged, the Black elite have been captured with wealth and fame by the forces of deculturalization.  A third feature of Black mis-education is what I call utengano. Utengano is a Swahili word meaning “disunity&a circ;€ and refers to the deeply entrenched, intergenerational predisposition among Africans to accept dysfunctional divisions in the African family and community as normal. Utengano afflicts Black people who expect and tolerate teen pregnancy, absent fathers, inferior schools, run-down buildings, ineffective leaders and dirty, unsafe streets filled with illicit drugs, alcohol and x-rated music as normal and thus acceptable. But if they were truly educated, they would be outraged by these perversions and committed to changing these wretched conditions or die trying.
Decolonizing the African Mind: Action Steps In the American context, decolonizing the African mind means reversing the seasoning process. For those millions of African POWs who survived the horrors of the middle passage, seasoning was a three to four year period of intense and often brutal slave making at the hands and feet of their European captors and their agents. Because it capitalized on our innate, human fear of pain and death, seasoning was so effective as a pacification method that North American slave owners gladly paid a premium for “seasoned&a circ;€ Africans from the Caribbean. For enslaved Africans, seasoning, when successful, laid the foundation for a lifetime of faithful, obedient service to their master and his children.
Effective seasoning, therefore, was the key that opened the door for 350 years of mental colonization of the African American people. Moreover, it allows for present-day Black pacification, manipulation and control by the European ruling elite and their agents. But, if African POWs were taught to be Negro slaves, it is reasonable to believe (like Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) that a fair number can be re-taught to be free African women and men. Reversing the seasoning process is a constructive way to frame a psychoeducational approach for cleansing African minds of European or Arab cultural infestation.
Toward this end, beginning in the late 1960s, perhaps the first African Americans to initiate systematic decolonization were small groups of youth, awakened by the Maroon spirit resounding in the voices of Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Maulana Karenga, Amiri Baraka and host of others. These decolonizing youth initiated projects of self-discovery intended to remove the European mind set (colony) implanted in their psyches as a result of living in a European dominated society.Â
To effect sweeping change in their value and belief systems, these young truth-seekers practiced self-definition, self-determination and self-defense. As a way of liberating themselves and others from the shackles of mis-education and diseducation, many established independent schools dedicated to developing African centered curriculum and pedagogy while others established research organizations dedicated to recovering traditional African knowledge bases. Â&nbs p;
The Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) established in 1972 (www.cibi.org) and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization (ASCAC) established in 1984 (www.ascac.org) are prime examples, indeed symbols, of this search for the deeper meaning of being African in the late 20th century. CIBI is an educational association and ASCAC is a research association. Both were established by this community of freedom seeking, culturally conscious, African men and women.
As CIBI and ASCAC founders quickly discovered, the first step toward decolonizing the African mind is to identify a re-placement worldview on which to frame a liberated African future. Â&nb sp; In other words, once the forces of mental colonization are defeated and their colonial government expelled, its infrastructure razed and the battle site cleansed, what type of structures do we install in this newly liberated space to unleash genius and thwart re-colonization efforts? The remainder of this essay will begin to answer this question.  Decolonization is a journey of self-discovery culminating in a reawakening and a reorientation. It involves a conscious decision to first uncover, uproot and remove all vestiges of slavery imposed European or Arab values and beliefs ingested over centuries of mis-education that are detrimental to present-day African family stability and African community empowerment. Next, as the colony is being dismantled, Africans must fill the liberated spaces with those life-sustaining social values, beliefs and customs that enabled their ancestors to establish stable, autonomous families and communities prior to the Arab or European invasions and conquest of their societies.  Like all transforming, liberatory states, decolonization is actually a protracted process demanding constant vigilance and intense dedication to task. It cannot be achieved in a single evening by reading a single book or by attending a single lecture or even by taking a single course. However, reading, lectures, courses (along with study groups and conferences), are critical to the success of any decolonization project. Because it is an effort to recover and reconnect with the best of traditional African culture as a means of ending European dominance of the African psyche, for Africans in the Americas, decolonization is Re-Africanization. ;  Re-Africanization is a term popularized by President Ahmed Sekou Toure (1922-1984) of Guinea and PAIGC-founder Amilcar Cabral (1931-1973) of Guinea-Bissau to promote a return to traditional African values and institutions among their citizens. In the American context, reAfrikanization (Akoto & Akoto, 2000) is a long-term, transgenerational, family project. Among other things, it demands family-wide embrace of select African centered values, beliefs and practices regarding the family and how it organizes and allocates its financial and human resources. To pull all of this together takes years of immersion in traditional African cultural values and daily living in an African centered mental space practicing traditional and liberatory African values, beliefs, orientations and perspectives.  Over the past 30 years, CIBI and ASCAC activists and others seeking to reAfrikanize have found Maulana Karenga’s seven-part value system, the Nguzo Saba, to be a highly effectively decolonization tool. Other useful tools are Mukasa Afrika’s, five pillars of Afrikan spirituality, the Miamba Tano and my six jewels of African centered leadership, the Johari Sita.  Constant reAfrikanization undermines the colony’s legitimacy and weakens its infrastructure to the point where frontal attacks can be launched against its outposts and command centers. If successful, all external European trappings are discarded and the once deculturated Negro reemerges with an African name, speaking an African language, wearing African fashions and praying to an African God. Once this occurs, the lost child has found his/her way back home.  On a deeper, internal level, however, extreme individualism along with sexism, classism, racism, geocide and other European social practices and cultural orientations that give rise to aberrations like conceptual incarceration, learned indifference and utengano must be expunged from the value and belief systems. Selfish and divisive Europeancentric perspectives and behaviors must give way to wholesome, life affirming, Africancentric, communal values like community service, cooperation, and sharing.  The second step in the battle to decolonize the African mind requires dismantling the instrument of deculturalization and neutralizing the agents of mis-education previously discussed in this paper. In essence, this means rejecting the pro-European/anti-African teachings of the Christian church or Islamic mosque, disregarding the pro-European/anti-African messages conveyed by the popular media and deconstructing the pro-European/anti-African indoctrination of the public schools. It also means implementing the first of three five-year, comprehensive, African centered, self-education program designed to end one’s conceptual incarceration, learned indifference, and utengano. A starting point perhaps is the ideas presented in this paper and the books listed as Sources and Essential Readings.  Furthermore, African youth in the United States can rid themselves of time-squandering, resource-draining behaviors like conspicuous consumption of European produced goods and services, over reliance on TV, video games, sporting events and night clubs as entertainment and the other debilitating orientations discussed in this paper with sankofa. Sankofa is a philosophical principle and social custom among the Akan-speaking people of Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire that holds that wisdom is learning from the past to both understand the present and shape the future. Implicit in sankofa is the deep study/reading of African history and the application of its lessons from 2 million BCE to the present. For 21st century Africans, sankofa is the first step on the road to mental freedom.  Sankofa practitioners understand that Black deculturalization is essentially Black mis-education. And the cure for Black mis-education is to read, discuss, study, learn and then use the lessons of African history along with the best of African culture as offensive weapons in the war against the European or Arab colonial outpost implanted in the African psyche.  To decolonize the African mind, African freedom-seekers must destroy their deeply rooted, interconnecting networks of internalized European or Arab values and beliefs. These are the invisible chains of mental slavery that for centuries have allowed Europeans and Arabs to manipulate and control them, first as slaves and religious converts, and now as pseudo-citizens. Sankofa practice is an indispensable weapon in the war to decolonize or re-Africanize the African mind.  Another powerful weapon against deculturalization-mis-educatio n is to embrace through daily practice the Kemetic principle of ma’at.&Acir c; In ancient African metaphysics, ma’at was synonymous with righteousness. And, it was considered the most important spiritual principle because it sustains the cosmos. Righteousness was thought to permeate the universe as truth, justice, order, harmony and balance.  In the view of ancient Africans of the Nile River Valley, God’s will is that human society, as a microcosm of the universe, function in accordance with ma’at.&Acir c; Hence, to do ma’at is to wisely align oneself with the Divine Order. Because the European world order is rooted in isfet or lies, injustice, deception and manipulation, to do ma’at, (always speaking the truth, demanding justice, and bringing order, harmony and balance) eats away the soft underbelly of this wicked global system like steady rain eats away drought.  A fourth weapon in the struggle to reverse the seasoning process is what I call intellectual disobedience, which is the soul-deep belief that Africans have a moral imperative to resist all attempts by the dominant social order to constrict, restrict or regulate the content of their education. In other words, Africans have the divine right to resist all European efforts at mind control. Implicit in intellectual disobedience, which is the 21st century corollary to philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s (1860) notion of civil disobedience, is decolonization.  In the late 1950 and early 1960s, it was the notion of civil disobedience that emboldened   Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) and others to defy the White political establishmentâ€&tra de;s immoral effort to constrict, restrict and regulate African citizenship rights in this country. Similarly, in the 21st century, intellectual disobedience demands that freedom-seeking Africans defy the White educational establishmentâ€&tra de;s immoral effort to constrict, restrict and regulate our right to resist the imposition of Europeancentric worldviews as the norm. Intellectual disobedience is the ultimate act of decolonization. Moreover, it is the hallmark of a liberated mind.  The ultimate weapon, however, in the African liberatory arsenal is by far the simplest, but the most lethal. Its power lies in its demand that Africans financially support organizations that build African centered independent schools like CIBI and organizations that promotes African centered research like ASCAC. Each organization is a powerful ally in the collective struggle to decolonize the African mind. Liberatory Practices  Intellectual Disobedience – Twenty-first century corollary to Henry David Thoreau’s (1860) notion of civil disobedience that holds that African people have a moral imperative to resist all attempts by the European dominated educational hegemony to constrict, restrict or regulate the content of their education (Hotep, 2000).  Maâ€&t rade;at (Mdw Ntr) – Seven thousand-year-old Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) term for the divine law of truth, justice, order, harmony, balance, in short, righteousness. The restoration, maintenance and preservation of ma’at was considered the highest social ideal by the ancient Africans of the Nile River Valley civilizations. Today, it is the motive and goal of all conscious, African freedom fighters (Karenga, 1986;Hilliard, 1994; Carruthers, 1995; Ashby, 1996).  Re-Africanization – Intergenerational, family-based process of reclamation, revivification and reincorporation of African cultural knowledge and values as the prerequisite for establishing a 21st century African social order rooted in the traditional wisdom of African people (Akoto & Akoto, 2000).  Sankofa (Twi) – Akan concept, symbol and social practice adopted by late 20th century Pan African nationalist scholars and activists, which refers to the practice of learning from the past to build for the future. For African people, this means having the desire to not only to understand the worldview of our ancient African ancestors, but also the wisdom to adopt or adapt their social practices and philosophical beliefs when they will help us establish financially independent, emotionally wholesome and nurturing families and autonomous, sovereign, self-sufficient communities. Sankofa practice demands confronting the Maafa by respecting life, nature and the wisdom of our African ancestors, establishing viable extended families, supporting African centered institutions and organizations, and creating social and economic ties throughout the African World Community (Wase, 1998; Akoto & Akoto, 2000).
MAÃT: The symbolic representation of Maát as a human figure with outreached hands and wings, is the Netcher of the weighing of the soul in ancient Kemet. The heart of the deceased was believed to be the seat of the soul and it was weighed on the scale of the Netcher Maát, against a feather, which represented the principles of truth and righteousness (the seven cardinal virtues). This symbolic weighing of the heart against the feather of truth (Maát) was performed to established the righteousness of the deceased. The scale of Maát was balanced after the recitation of the "42" Declarations of Innocence or Admonitions of Maát. pg. 91, NVCTC.
Truth Justice Harmony Balance Order Reciprocity Propriety
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