I want to get something off my chest. I am appalled by the state of the black race andhow powerless we are. It is not a good position to be in. So I will like to say a few things:

In the past 40 years, all black nations all over the world became free. Can you name one Black community anywhere in the world that hasnt deteriorated in the past 40 years? How many of these deteriorations have been caused solely by the omnipotent white man?

The time to be sentimentalism is over. We are beginning to sound like cry babies. Whining and wishing Africa was the way it was 400 years ago will not bringAfrica economic power or prosperity. It will not stop Chevron from ripping us off in Africa. It wont stop China from taking over Africa. It definitely wont bring about any form of reparations. Matter of fact, the white man has stated clearly that he will not play this game of honoring our victimhood.

When are we going to hold ourselves responsible? When are we going to talk tough? When are we going to stop promoting cultural primitiveness as a superior culture? Yes, extreme afrocentrism is a therapy for many of us in a racist world, but perhaps this extreme afrocentrism is holding us back. By afrocentrism I include those obsessed with african cultures, and those obsessed with "acting black" in high schools and social gatherings.

We need to learn to move forward. We have to embrace progress. We have to embrace productivity. If to ensure economic progress and prosperity, we should be prepared to sacrifice our current african cultures and form a new. I am a believer in cultural evolution. Our ancestorts created what was suitable for their times. I dont think Africans should be stucked with maldadptive cultures which are relatively primitive for our times. Diasporan Africans were able to fudge industrialized cultures.Yes, theydid not create the best of cultures, some of the cultureshave seen a recent deterioration to oneglorifying violence and sexualism. But the fact is,cultural evolutioncan be done. Older African culturesbelong to the museum,like theEuropeans place their own older cultures.

We have to be the generation that acts, and changesour situations. We need to talk tough to each other, we need a change in attidue,cultural sacrifices have to be made,or else we will pass to our children the broken pieces of a failed race!

ayanf...we are reaping the consequences of change as we speak. Best hope is this is the storm before the calm. But if nothing else,the first problem we have to overcome is the recognition that when it comes to race, weare not black.Ok, so where do we start! - assumes of course you've gone through the village archives already?

ayanfe2006 wrote:

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I only want to comment on this excerpt here, because I think it is very important. I want to stress your point of not living in 2000 BCE or any other BCE. We are not ancient Egyptians anymore, and their way of life was according to those primitive times in the Nile Valley. It is millenia later, the world has changed vastly, and I certainly am not sitting by the Nile anymore (if my ancestors ever did). I believe that knowledge of our history is fundamental for this progress you speak of, but at the same time I agree that we shouldn't be trying to live in it. Just look at Africans in the Americas and Carribean. We have evolved or extended African culture tremendously especially in dance, literature, art and music. Much of that was done withcomplete ignorance of where and what we came from in Africa, and much has been systematically stolen bySpanish, Portuguese,French, and English Whites.

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The classics of our people is of most importance, but we must not live in the past so that we attain progress.

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Not everything about native Africa is good, diasporans can teach the continent many a thing. Thennot everything is bad. Economic prowess without family values will lead us precisely were we are today - selfish individuals with culture substituted with verbal agreements.

ayanfe2006 wrote:
The question thus provoked would be then who are we, that we need to hold ourselves responsible?

What have we done, as an Ancient people, as the oldest people, to become soo irresponsible?

The question of culture does not negate that which needs to be done (that should never be the inference); in fact culture implies that the best is being "cultivated" -done for the people.

The farce of multiculturalism masks the continued exploitation of non white people by white people; white culture always being the dominant culture that gives charity in the form of allowing others to wear their traditional clothes or beat drums during Black History month, further confusing by posing thatsuch ritualsare the whole of a peoples intellectual fruit and experience.



The Europeans, base much of what is modern and progressive on the teaching of their Greek founding fathers -a people dead over multiple millennia. To understand European political/economic/scientific development, at the level of philosophy would be impossible if the historical/cultural roots of these institutions is not investigated.

And this is what students who graduate from European schools of learning are obliged to understand. Every belief system or ideology has a cultural base and is a manifestation ofthat people’s culture.

Capitalism is a product of European culture. It is something Europeans created out of their experience. Europeans contact with Africa and Africans has highlighted the fact that Africans and Europeans did not and donot share the same world view and culture.

The European Transatlantic Slave trade was about the development of Europe at the expense of Africa and Africans. Colonialism was just a continuation of that exploitative dynamic. These phenomena are the creations of European culture.

Is it no wonder that Africans that run wholesale to being “modern� and “ soo 21[suP]st[/suP] century�, hate themselves, their people and their Motherland?

In fact, this relationship, based on the culture of Europeans, has never ended and Africa continues to be locked in thisVampiristic embrace.

White supremacy stated that Africans did not have any worthwhile history (culture) and that the way of the future was non African; hence our rush to distance ourselves from our history, culture, ancestors. Mentacide became something Africans taught their children as a means of economic achievement inAfrican slave founded transcontinental economies.

The fact that Africans created advanced civilisations that had the Greeks bowing in awe, seems to be missed by our own, who now look to Plato, Aristole and other idiots for intellectual inspiration.

Pan Africanists, at even the most basic level of education, understand that Africa, and no where else needs to be the centre of any argument or startingplace for our thoughts and actions, when addressing our modern day problems.

To look at the world from the viewpoint of the other is a backwardness that even whites now are forced to discredit (Institutional Racism )for it implies that the African can not, does not have what it takes to solve African problems. The mental slavery of analysing from a non Afrocentric frame of reference is the hallmark of coons, arrogant in their slave certification from modern day plantations of indoctrination (Universitys).

Our problems today are rooted in the Slave/colonial past that has setup institutions both locally and internationally that sanction the continued exploitation of our motherland under the guise of political/economic aid, assistance and development.

These foreign beasts hasten the developinggap between the poverty of the "Third world" and the wealth of the first, all the time saying Africans are leading this initiative. Something Africans en mass say is a lie.

On the question of culture, the Africans that are leading us into hell are Extreme Eurocentrics who's Afrophobia is made evident by Africans Internationallack of economic development under their watch. For what African loving leader, whether in Diaspora or on the continent would become the caretaker for African underdevelopment?

Indeed, the culture of poverty, where people are unable to feed their families or cover other basic human needs, has replaced pre-colonial cultures where Africans knew not deprivation, lawlessness and mental illnesseson scales witnessed over the last century and the century we now inhabit.

To abandon without understanding or critiquing the cultures of our own, while living in a world that promotes the culture of our historic enemies and othersis one of the greatest impediments to African self-development. Because the implication generated,that is impossible to miss,is that the African is incapable of solving his own problems, based on his own experience, culture and history; the African must suspend their own reality.

These Extreme Afrophobic Eurocentrics must die.

Ayanfe: i had a very similar debate with a Ghanian recently when he made a similar comment about Africa and its people.... So ayanfe i'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that i totally disagree with your analysis ona number oflevels..

1. I completely disagree with the title of this thread, the way i see it I' responsible for what i create for my mess..how am I to be hekd responsible for the mess that a European made sorry don't get that at all... Every single problem found in Africa today was created by the European, maintain by the European and is fuelled by him... Yet its my responsiblity how?

2. You then made a telling statement, you said:'in the past 40 years, all Black nations all over the world became free'. Wow really when did this happen because I must have blinked and missed it... Can i cite some obvious examples that contradict your statement.... Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah) the first 'free' leader wasn't he toppled by the CIA...Patrice Lamumba..Who killed him I wonder? Jamaica (Norman Manley) when he tried to move away from America, the CIA backed Seaga and imported guns to destablise Ja and then blockaded JA until it gave in to its will.... Cuba (castro) Blockaded since the Bay of pig..when the CIA (Oops ther's Surprise) tried to overthrown Castro... Remember now I haven't mentioned Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Greneda, Congo, Uganda, sierra Leon, Liberia, Kenya..etc etc etc Since when has AFRICA been Free or in charge of its own destiny?

Personally to rammed this point still further, I really resent it when people talk as if ordinary Africans vote for or want idiots like Mabuto, Kabilla, Amin etc etc... Since when did dictators have fair and free elections? Since when did the people invigle or instruct the military to overthrown its Goverment... This is always done by the WEST backed ruling classes..never by the people..

3. Africentric..for all its many qualities is not a strategy, or a blueprint for change..its a Value and thats it..So its a bit of a stretch to now blame Diaporran Africans for sentimentality as it this is the ONLY thing we have to cleave to in terms of moving forward... Part of the reason Kwame Nkrumah was undermined for example was because it was looking to unit Africa within Scientific Socialism.. Now lets get this straight he wasn't talking Marxism, or the importation of European politics into Africa... He was talking about radicalising Africans to such a degree so that Neo Colonialism couldn't take hold... So its not surprising he was Toppled by the CIA was it?

4. When you make statement like' when are we going to talk tough'.. for thats a bit of an insult because it presupposes that we have done NOTHING (a European perspective)..what aboutPadmore, Nkrumah, Lamumba etc who talked tough at the 5th PAC held in Manchester, its a bit of an insult to Joshua Nkomo, Mugage and others who fought the Aparthied Rhodesian Rule, to Steve Biko and Winne Mandele would fought in Azania...to those who fought in Namibia, Angola the Carribean etc etc.. To hear you talk one COULD get the impression we (africans) have done jack in 40 years..come on now thats obviously NOT true is it...?

5. The line that 'Afrocentrism is holding us back' is flawed by an obivious fact...Africans in the continent don't cleave to Africentrism as a strategy.. Afrocentrism' is essentially a diasporran ideal, and eben then I would argue that it is a debate limited to the USA and the UK only... So whilst I would agree that the viewing of African values through rose tinted western specs is a big problem.. IMO its a problem that is WESTERN in focus ..not African!!!

6. lastly when you say we need to 'embrace progress' my first question is what do YOU mean by that? What do you identify as 'progress' and who do you see as its standard bearer? Ayanfe...whilst you might think you are saying something new, I have to say, you're sounding dangerously like those free American slaves who thought they'd go back and 'teach their heathen Brothers' in Liberia and Sierra leone... The onelesson we should definately take from history is how that model of collaboration failed miserably and why and then take a long look at the problem it created in African that exist to this day...

Ayanfe..I agree that we need to do bette, I agree that we need to develop proper workable strategies..where I disagree is the premise on which you made that statements and that you do not appear to recognise the value of learning from history...

agree with ayanfe





we've identified the problems years ago......and haven't done much about them but talk, talk , and more talk.



200 years from now......Blacks worldwide will be singing the same songs...

There are a few countries that have not deteriorated over the last 40 years, and which have majority Black populations - look at Bermuda, Barbados, the Bahamas and probably a few more Caribbean islands that I can't think of now.

Also in Africa - Mozambique, Tanzania, Botswana, Ghana and probably a few more African countries that I can't think of now have not totally broken down in the last 40 years and are keeping their head above water, although not perfect.

We mustn't over generalize. Not all Black countries are horrible. We probably will never have Black countries that are as rich or powerful as most Western nations are, but so be it.

I agree with your arguments, however, that every problem Blacks have should not be put at the feet of "the White man". Sometimes we ascribe too much power to White people.

<<AmeriJamCan wrote: I agree with your arguments, however, that every problem Blacks have should not be put at the feet of "the White man". Sometimes we ascribe too much power to White people.>>

^5. But the white people are guilty. There is no dismissing the fact. But we have to take responsibility of the cards we have dealt and come up with ingenious solutions to build the great nation we were destined to become!

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Ayanfe: thank you for the clarification in your last post really interesting points made... Whilst I do agree that if Africa is for the African, then it is our duty to take responsibility as you put it for making it fir for purpose so to speak... I further agree with your point that we should stop with the begging bit... However i would say that asking for money owed, money taken out of African by crooks and exploiters is not begging its justice so that for me is different..

Where I still disagree with you is on the unreasonable expectations you appear to have of the people... again this mirrors my conversation with the Ghanian.. He made must the same point. My view however is that its all great an dandy to say rise up, be ungovernable..but the reality is that your family disappears, your loved ones are killed...lets remember that dictators and facist regimes do not play nice... So whilst i might be brave..its a whole new ball game when my bravery impacts on my children, my brothers, mother, father or other relatives and friends... I remake my point Arms dealers don't sell arms to the people they sell arms to whomwever will pay, that is usually dictators non..?

I think the point of Afrocentrism has been put to bed so I won't belay that point, Although I would make the point that progress without a value base is not progress at all...

However to flip this somewhat I would say that the future of African is inextricably linked to its sons and daughters based in the WEST...I think that our destiny is entwined...I know its not popular to say that but that is what i believe...