[Ijeoma]

@Breadfruit

Hidden within Jamaica Patwa are African words of power and wells of ancestral knowledge which kept Asante culture continuous. Patwa, then reflects the culture and spirit of a West African people
who's language was developed by Africans on the Island IN SPITE of mass scale industrial european genocide.

Na so! Patwa does sound an awful lot like Pidgin, even though the languages were developed far apart from each other.

Our culture is made made visible, when we go back into the past and this is why ancient Africa is soo important to us all. History shows us we are one people and defines us as African.

I hear you. So very important, since many modern day conflicts on the continent were/are based on ethnicity. (Rwanda, Congo, Biafra etc). We are all the same people, it is a sad thing when we kill ourselves for nonsense reasons.

I have learned many new things from your posts. Thank you for educating. I’m looking for speakers for Black History Month lectures at my uni in Holland. I think we will now concentrate on looking for someone who can tell us more about the ancients, as we want to put emphasis on what we as Africans have in common.

[Ijeoma]

@ Black Lion

Along with the wealth of knowledge Breadfruit has just expounded upon I would also say that part of the reason for the above is obvious, that they would like to know that they can better trace their culture and history through one of the more predominant ethnicities. Not so much to do with self hatred perhaps.

I don't see why they can't just be happy to know where they are from in Africa. I would think you want to trace your DNA out of a need to know who you are, PERIOD. These people just seem to want to belong to a famous group.

It's almost the same as self-hating people boasting about their Native American great-grandmother. Or that Jamaican woman a couple of years ago on BBC who traced her DNA and was happy to find out she had a significant amount of white blood in her.

[Ijeoma]

Originally Posted by DSP

Small and unknown to who? That is a matter of perspective, as well as one's cultural history. You sound slightly ethnocentric with that comment. You may not have meant to come off that way, but you did. You know I had to call you on that.

Allright. I didn't mean to come off that way, but afrocentrists kind of concentrate on Asante, Yoruba or the Swahili speaking peoples of eastern Africa. Beyond those it starts to become well...''unknown'' for lack of a better word.


I feel alot of diasporan Africans probably focus on the distant connection to Egypt/Nubia etc as a way of coping with being made to feel like they came from a percieved inferior cultrual history, so many would focus on what 'seemed' to more 'rival' Greco-Roman or descendents of Greco-Roman cultural kingdoms.

That is exactly what I meant.

I also see why you as a continental African as myself would find it odd and perplexing that they bypass whole sections and kingdoms in history and focus only on a possible distant connection to Egypt. I guess it's like whites focusing on the Greek and Roman Empires as opposed to their more immdiate British, French, Spanish and Porteugese conquests. I'm gonna guess any African history you learned mostly focused on your immediate clan/ethnic group and the major empire it broke off from... same as myself. I learned where part of my ancestry broke off from and the main focus there was empires of Songhai and Sudan with more talk of Mossi states, Sundiata, Mali, etc,( the other half was an old clan from Mozambique that set migrated to Ethiopia) as opposed to Egypt/Kemet etc.

Thats true, I've found out that my people broke of from the Kwa-people that came from eastern and central Africa. There are Igbo people that have no oral history of coming somewhere else. And some old people say our ancestors were Jews from Israel...

[Breadfruit]

Originally Posted by DSP

I feel alot of diasporan Africans probably focus on the distant connection to Egypt/Nubia etc as a way of coping with being made to feel like they came from a percieved inferior cultrual history, so many would focus on what 'seemed' to more 'rival' Greco-Roman or descendents of Greco-Roman cultural kingdoms.


I also see why you as a continental African as myself would find it odd and perplexing that they bypass whole sections and kingdoms in history and focus only on a possible distant connection to Egypt. I guess it's like whites focusing on the Greek and Roman Empires as opposed to their more immdiate British, French, Spanish and Porteugese conquests. I'm gonna guess any African history you learned mostly focused on your immediate clan/ethnic group and the major empire it broke off from... same as myself. I learned where part of my ancestry broke off from and the main focus there was empires of Songhai and Sudan with more talk of Mossi states, Sundiata, Mali, etc,( the other half was an old clan from Mozambique that set migrated to Ethiopia) as opposed to Egypt/Kemet etc.

Greetings DSP and hope you're well,

I’m surprised you say you are perplexed why Africans in the Diaspora would focus on Kemet , rather than African groups more recent in time, when recent history teaches us all that millions of Africans were enslaved by powerful European nations and murdered with the survivors being systematically stripped of their names, languages and historic knowledge of the various ethnic groups they had been kidnapped from. In fact, some of those ethnic groups disappeared completely during the Maafa became assimilated into other groups for security or died through internal warfare. Our historians in Diaspora have been writing seriously about West African histories for many generations.



New ethnicities have developed in the Americas and these African groups have a strong sense of identity now in Diaspora, but those Africans seeking knowledge of their Africanity through an ancient past, just like Africans on the Continent, does not mean they do so through feelings or insecurity.

To call the Zulu, Yoruba or Shona people complex ridden, for example, because members of their group studied the Nile cultures extensively (which they do) is not a natural conclusion. If they missed out the various groups in between and argued that it is in the ancient past that we find the roots of African culture, one could easily understand and agree with such a method no? They also have the liberty to track their cultural lineage back to the that region whereas, many in the Diaspora do not!

To speak of the inferiority of Africans in Diaspora, in relation to speaking about any so-called inferiority of Africans on the motherland, can sometimes mislead Africans who are not aware of history, only one hundred or so years old.

When the Europeans, “carved up” Africa (1884-1885), creating nations they were to suck dry of resources, they did so without African invitation or permission.

Europe covered this continued robbery of African people with the lie that Africans had no history, Africans were a sub-human people and that Europe had to come into Africa had help these poor “savages” discover civilisation. This was the basis then for the formal “education” that Africans were to get; and when we look back to so-called Independence in Africa 60 or so years later, many of these countries had a majority people who could not read, had not been to school; had been given a white man on a stick and told he was the only God and the ways of your ancestors were evil and backward; told their languages were inferior to those of Europe and finally that Africans had no history of merit and that they should look to Europe to find the heights of human progress, culture and achievement.

This violence was not new to Africans who were fighting this same backward nonsense talk (European colonialism) in the Americas for centuries. Africa, not being a nation but a continent, did not have a uniform response to this European madness and aggression. Let’s contrast this point using Africans in the Americas.

In the Caribbean, Haiti completely removed the chains of European slavery by killing European colonialist by the thousands and establishing an African republic (1791). Whilst today we still find African nations in the Caribbean who still do not have full independence (Protectorates). These two examples alone, show us that Africans have reacted differently in the region, in regards to genocide.

On the continent (as in Diaspora), there are Africans who hate being Africans, behave like Europeans and who know nothing and choose to know nothing about African history and bleach their skins. The only history they know about Africa, comes from schools that only recently began to teach Africans about their people’s experience. Africans where definetely taught, the Nile Valley civilisations were white and this is one reason that to this day many Africans do not see the significance to Africa of Kemet and beyond (and why other African people would want to claim the region as African and ours). Many Africans know little about their own ethnic group's history, so the link to ancient Africa to them is not even an conscious issue. This (as in Diaspora) obviously is not a uniform set of phenomena, but the issues remains.

So African inferiority complexes exist through past (and continuing) contact with Europe and are caused by default.

The point then about Africans (especially Africans who have had their continental ethnitcies erased through genocide) learning African culture by finding that which is common between all Africans by going into the ancient past (which is a legitimate method), does not have to be something determined by feelings of inferiority which is not an obvious determinant, if the search for an African philosophy is the final objective.

How do Africans in the Caribbean explain their offering to the spirit world or dropping into trance states without knowledge of the ancients? What forms the basis for the African American spirituality overtly demonstrated in churches and thru their ability to believe in a future unseen, when other people would have given up to industrialised barbarism and become extinct?

Is the philosophical answer to be found in West Africa, where the same contact with Christian missionaries has turned people away from the religions of their ancestors?

Or maybe the answers lie in the more distant past where we all have common ancestors?

These are the questions some Africans ask and look to answer, so as to recover from slavery and brainwashing.



Feelings of inferiority are not exclusive to the Diaspora and many Africans highlight the effects of colonialism as if they in Diaspora or on the continent were somehow immune, which is nonsense. Often Africans who do this are open nationalists or micro-nationalists who are a million miles away from a Pan Africanist consciousness and indeed have no need or serious desire for Africans to find that which is common and so we can build futures.

The Nile valley offers us a method to understand African philosophy and culture as such things are developed over thousands of years and cannot be understood without that past. Africans who use their ethnicity to define Africanesss, cannot talk about the universalism of the African experience and are in fact, falling into the divide and rule, geographic/political realities set up by white colonialists of the past. The european has consciously tried to take the Nile Valley history, out of Africa and sever the history of that region with the African culture that built it. The question of African culture, it's roots and continuing legacy is encapsulated within any talk about an African philosophy and that which is African.

Europeans (or anybody ), learning philosophy in an euro-centred institution learn about the Greeks and romans if they seek to understand, why Europeans behave the way they do (through culture). Its not because each ethnicity is ashamed of the history of England, france or spain etc. For them to concentrate solely on those nations would only give them an ethnic history and the overarching culture would not be understood (which is the “education” the poor of Europe are given to keep them in their historic, disenfranchised state, in relation to the real wealth holders).

Africans in the Diaspora, have their own ethnicities which are centuries old (some older than many groups on the continent). The links to their histories on the continent are important parts of their identity and work is being done to repair the links broken by kidnappers and murderers, yet to apologise and pay for their crimes.

The Africanness of the Diaspora is obvious, but that overt knowledge of culture and history (central to ones conscious identity) is not to the masses of them. Just a few generations ago, white power did not even allow us to govern ourselves (or even vote (USA) ). Liberation through education then is something we will have to do ourselves and understanding what is African is an important part of our historic struggle today.

In conclusion lets sum up the above method used by many African historians with a story once told to me in Jamaica... if someone stole you away from your mother, removing your tongue, and conscious knowledge of your people, it would be natural for you to search for your mother. But that search for your mother doesn’t mean you should not also search for your people and culture made distant.

If you know you are African, discover and understand your heritage as an African. And because Africans commune with their ancestors, your mother will return to you.

Peace

[Breadfruit]

Originally Posted by Ijeoma

@Breadfruit

Hidden within Jamaica Patwa are African words of power and wells of ancestral knowledge which kept Asante culture continuous. Patwa, then reflects the culture and spirit of a West African people
who's language was developed by Africans on the Island IN SPITE of mass scale industrial european genocide.

Na so! Patwa does sound an awful lot like Pidgin, even though the languages were developed far apart from each other.


LOL! That's because they were developed by Africans coming into contact with europeans who imposed their languages on us. Africans will still use the same grammatical rules, in the Americas as they would back on the motherland - that's why many of our people in the caribbean or Africa can understand each other when we speak creole, patwa etc....

In Jamaica, our language was used to retain elements of African culture that preserved the values and beliefs of our ancestors. The culture that resisted slavery and allowed Africans to have liberty is made witness by the Patwa and it's helps record the history of a people (like all languages).

There are posters on here who could break it down far much better than me and provide quality resources for further research.



I have learned many new things from your posts. Thank you for educating. I’m looking for speakers for Black History Month lectures at my uni in Holland. I think we will now concentrate on looking for someone who can tell us more about the ancients, as we want to put emphasis on what we as Africans have in common.


Good luck with your important work sister.

Hotep (Peace)

.......................

[DSP]

Good Afternoon Breadfruit

I am not in in total disagreement with you, matter of fact i'm somewhere higher than 90% in agreement with you. I also mentioned(I think in this thread, or another related thread) that Africans the world over psychologically suffer from the affects of slavery/colonialism.......I already know there are plenty of us on the continent that don't care about anything outside of contemporary commerce and putting food in their stomachs and their immediate surroundings, even though they may be an Ashante selling t-shirts in Kenya.

You have to also realize that there are ALOT of those among us that may not have reached your level of appreciation and perspective, so they don't get it the same way you get it. Although they may have good intentions they have not dealt with their own internal issues and seek to work their way back without filling in all the peices of the puzzle in the appropriate order and perspective. With all the historical changes and migrations it just seems odd for one who's dna may mostly be of 80% Wolof or Luba ancestry to try to go to Cairo, Cape Town, or Morrocco to say they're trying to connect with their roots. It comes off kind of similar to the Oprah zulu syndrome which is still a direct affect of colonialism and slavery.

[TheCall]

Anyone who believes that some albino man's DNA test is going to tell them about their lineage is seriously confused and these individuals do not represent anything other than the latest trend wh0res and bandwagon fools.

Just like some fool you pass on the street doesn't represent every living NUBIAN(Yes, NUBIAN)person.

[Breadfruit]

I hear you DSP.

I feel Africans on the Continent are not soo critically analysed when they speak of our Nile Valley cultural origins, even when knowledge of African migrations and groups in between have been lost or forgotten (which is common).

So maybe the Diaspora deserves the same level of African tolerance when they connect to that same common past.

Especially after what they have endured.

Peace

[DSP]

Originally Posted by TheCall

Anyone who believes that some albino man's DNA test is going to tell them about their lineage is seriously confused and these individuals do not represent anything other than the latest trend wh0res and bandwagon fools.

Just like some fool you pass on the street doesn't represent every living NUBIAN(Yes, NUBIAN)person.

dna gives an idea

which is better than no idea

[TheCall]

These DNA tests are scams and total jokes.

Let's destroy this myth that the slave trade(a blip in Nubian history, a speck of the Nubian population)was this huge beast that destroyed all culture and history for some people. It's just not true. If you don't see the connection then you're choosing not to and if you can't find information(not a DNA test), again it's a choice.

[Ijeoma]

Bwhuahahaha!!! 'the Oprah Zulu syndrome'

Damn, she was dissapointed to find out she was Liberian...

I bet she watches her 'Shaka Zulu' DVD a bit less now