"American history is a study in denial, for much of what is taught as history in the schools of the nation bears little relationship to the lives lived by millions of men, women and children on the land we now call America. Most schools teach that which is safe, and mostly false; so much so that shock and disbelief usually is the result of a telling of a history that reveals that many of the men called 'Founding Fathers' were slaveowners, visceral racists, and, in a word, creeps."

Mumia Abu-Jamal

"What I write and how I write is done in order to save my life. Literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.

It is an affirmation that sensuality is intelligence, that sensual language is language that makes sense."

Barbara Christian

Shared values (or not) will determine whether you have a debate or have an argument.

"We could not be Afrikans and slaves at the same time; we could not hold onto our Afrikan identity, our Afrikan selves, knowledge of our Afrikan culture, and be enslaved -- the subordinates of another people. It is only when that knowledge is removed, erased, degraded, stolen, taken and distorted that we lose our identity. It is then that an identity is placed upon us by another people and by external forces.

Therefore, a lack of self-knowledge is a lack of self-awareness. A lack of self-awareness is an insensitivity to the self.

But an insensitivity in the self is also an insensitivity to reality and to the outside world.

Without the sensitivity of the outside world and the self, we are left to blindly stumble from one point to another."

Amos N. Wilson
Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus The New World Order

"We need to examine and re-examine the factors that led us into enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism in a native mindset instead of in borrowed or imported mindsets so that we could fully appreciate the forces and agencies that made us fight wars against ourselves and blinded us to the common enemy,"

Nana Nketia
University of Cape Coast

Man Breadfruit this thread needs to be renamed The Village Bible - can you imagine if as a people we could recite quotes like these on tap in the same way we can recite from the King James - you know, as in part and parcel of the consciousness!!

I agree...it should be renamed.

Incognito, Shemsi........ It's in the pipeline as we speak


Peace

"The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself: but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity."

Marcus Garvey

And on the last day of slavery the master looked at his slaves saying go now, you have been given the freedom to emancipate your minds!

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes