My Dear Beloved Brother in the Love for the Love of
Africa.

I sincerly want you to give what I am going to say
some deep and mindful consideration. I love all of
humanity as you sure do. I have a special love for all
African people or those who know that life has it
birth from the continent of Africa. From Africa or by
what ever name it was called before Africa became the
name.

I am deeply bothered and distressed when we exchange
our birth rite as an African people to using the
color code system of racism,Black & White to classify
people.

There is no doubt we understand that the Europeans
who were in a race to be first or superior found it
expedient to make white the subject of greatness
based on false exposition to expostulate and define
history too support their justification of being
better then the African people. We know as scientist
that the Caucasion stole the history from African
people and also stole African people.

I am sure you are very well aware of all that. Let
us return to our source as an African people not
based on the erroneous lies they have told in their
definition of history and in the language of the
written word and the definitions of the lexicon of
the English or Europe caucasion.

For most of us in the United States all of our
education is from the English/European caucasion
standard of literati(Literature). In the last 500
years or more we The African people have been forced
in termes of European/Latin,Greek to name a few have
been victims of there definitions.

Today we utilize their books for
clarification;identification or by any other
European Standard.

We know for example Merriam Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary does not say any thing positive or
favorable about Africa or the Negro,or people of
dark skin pigmentation,when in fact in your recent
travels to Brazil and other countries in South &
Central America so-called we see some thing
different, plus we also know that every person of
African roots is not of dark pigmentation. I think
my brother you see my point. It would take a volume
to go thru the DNA process of positive and recessive
genes.

While in Africa we have many different nations and
many tribes and many languages which is of our own
culture and roots.

In the United States,or what is called the Americas;
Africans who have been there for more then 400 years
have lost all that was Africa in terms of language,
but we can see that they were from Africa for the most
part.

My point is that we think that it would serve much
better to be called and to be identified as African
America then to be in the mode of the color code
system of racism (Black & White)

Why is it we can't say the first African man or
woman we can relate to that on an international and
global scale. Being a African is not necessarily to
say a person in so-called black.

We in Africa don't have this problem unless you are
an African who has the European bourgeois education
and classification. In the bush or the jungle or the
interior of Africa in our villages and compound this
concept of a color code system means nothing to us.
It is asystem from the caucasion european such as
the two U.S.A. {Union of South Africa and the United
States}.

We have two African men or for those in the USA we
have two African Americans who will be coaching in
the super bowl, not two black men, if we look at
them we can see the difference in skin tone,they are
both of African mixture but one is much darker then
the other. So what it only tells us that African
people are not all the same in compexsion.

I hope we can educate our younger people to say
African or African American or from what ever nation
one might be such as Ethiopian, Nigerian, Gambian,
Senegalese, Algerian, Tanzanian and so on. That also
holds true for the people of Europe and from Asia etc
there are many variables.

People from Fiji Islands are of a very dark hue but
when they come to the USA such as the great golfer
Vijay Singh they never say he is a black
man;something to think about.

Racist countries that is to say those who are in the
race of being first or wanting to be superior.

Just something for us to think about.

Cher'no Manu Salah Omowali Barboza Rosa Mateus

Greetings Elder,

Thank you for your comments. Here is my initial
response. With all due respect, I am inclined to
disagree with a lot of your analysis and conclusions
as I understand them. I will have to reread your
letter again. But, in the meanwhile, allow me to say
that I see myself and take pride in being both a Black
man and an African. I see no contradiction there.

At least as far back as the ancient Nile Valley we
designated ourselves as the "black" people. I suppose
that if we wanted to we could talk about shades of
blackness. And we should never forget that many,
perhaps most, of the national borders of modern Africa
have been drawn up by foreign governments with their
own interests paramount.

I do not and never will accept the idea of "white"
Africans. That just does not compute.

It is true that many of us are now "mixed" as a result
of our interaction with other peoples. But it is
certainly nothing to be proud of and boast about, and
we should not forget how the bulk of the
"intermixture" came about. We know that it has not
always been voluntary. And know that I love all of
our people even though some of us look more like snow
than crow. But I think that not only must we accept
our blackness; we must glorify it.

This may sound to you like a harsh position but I
think that we have to be direct and to the point and
not apologize to anyone while taking uncompromising
positions. I think that the majority of our people
understand and accept that even if some of the
intellectuals want to engage in discussion.

I would like to think that my position is not simply
an "African-American" position. Even though I have
traveled over much of world and interacted with a
great many of our people I have not been to your
native Cabo Verde yet, even though I would very much
like to. But I have been to Southern Africa on two
occasions and there you have people of clearly
European ancestry running around claiming to be
Africans. I regard that as an insult to my Ancestors
and to me. Much the same can be said about the white
Arab and Berber populations in North Africa. They are
largely the descendants of generations of invaders.

In other words, just because a person occupies African
land does not make them African.

I hope that my position is clear and you will forgive
my rambling although I suspect that we will end up
going back and forth on the matter. And I hope that
we can disagree without being disagreeable as I
greatly respect your contributions to the struggle.

All the best to you.

In love of Africa,

Runoko Rashidi
=========================================

Id have to agree with the response..We didnt let whites define what black was. Black was turned into a positive thing in the united states. Vijay Sing is not African, hesindian, thats wht hes not calledblack.

I am happy for this post.banana.gif I feel a little sad because Rashidi is wrong. I think the argument presented to him is far stronger. His reply is more African American and old at that. We like the dirty toilet because we bleached it so now lets drink from it.:X

I never gave it much though but thinking about it, Yes I am black. But really I am African. When did i become black. In my home country we NEVER EVER use this word Black people. We say we r African. Contact with America i use the word more "i am black" 2 fit into their world. And nobody in Kemet called themselves black, i dont know where that comes from. Kmt like Dmt has no vowels, and it def doesnt mean black people it means black land. In Sudan the soil is BLACK around the river bed. just like Nubia it doesnt mean Golden people, it means land of gold. As an academic he should know that from basic grammar

The thing i dont understand is, werrunning to be black and the whiteman is running to claim the name African. So now you hear ohh he is a black African or a white African. nobody else allows this. It is rooted to Niger (latin), Negro, y clean up something that has such a bad history.

I mean i still use the word but i have to think and mayb i should just say i am African, like Kenyan-African, Ethiopian-African African American, I actually get angry when u buy into something and then u say "oh my God, y do i use this word?"

Now thinking about it, Runkuko would have too much to lose (politically) if he accepted that explaination because his entire work rotates around a "black" identity. So keep pushing the little mistake 4 the greater good i guess.