Hi all,
This is an important thought to ponder from a Sierra Leonian in
response to the posting earlier on Are Africans Capable of ruling
themselves.
Tom
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>
> When I see thoughts like this one, or hear people talking this was, I
> get enraged, because, this seems to be the ultiimate plan which was
> started hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, the writer has not
> bothered to take the responsibility of reading about African history,
> and learn that prior to European entry into Africa in the 1400's,
> Africans did rule themselves, in great and powerful Empires, and infact,
> one of the earliest and well known universities, which produced
> Physicians and Scientists, was in Timbuktu. (remind me to bring you my
> set of "Great Kings of Africa").
>
> We have been so well brainwashed, that we readily think, that if it is
> not done the way a whiteman does it, it is not right. As far as I am
> concerned, we have been more that happy to give up our birth right, just
> because we have been told that is the right thing to do. We do not even
> realize that before the White man could develop his coutries, he too
> went through a lot of blood and gore, carnage, and all the other things,
> by which Africa and Africans are described today. As Edward Blyden says
> in his book, CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM AND THE NEGRO RACE written in 1888,
> "There is not a single mental or moral deficiency now existing among
> Africans - not a single practice now indulged in by them - to which we
> cannot find a parallel in the past history of Europe.....No where was
> the Ancient Slavonic superstition more deeply rooted than in
> Prussia....The practice of polygamy among the barbarian kings was for
> some centuries unchecked, or at least unsupressed, by
> Christianity.......Slavery and the trad in slaves was almost more
> difficuot to root out than Paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full
> activity as late as the tenth century between England and Ireland...The
> old Swedes, every nine years, on the great national festival, celebrated
> for nine days, offered nine male animals, together with one man daily."
> For anyone's information, the situation in Kosovo, Cheshnya, and even
> within these United States, is not really that different from what is
> happening in Africa. The difference is that, in times of need, as we
> have seen, the white man supports his own, and inspite of his/her view
> point, will do all s/he can, to help ease the problem. We Africans, on
> the other hand, spend a lot of time talking or writing the type of
> drivel, which this person wrote, while we wait with hands held out for
> some outside force, to help. If an African decides s/he is willing to
> make the sacrifice, the first thing that happens, is an attempt to
> disqualify (at the very least) or destroy that person.
>
> When we point to the fact that our Ancestors (mine included) sold
> slaves, we ignore the fact that prior to the slave trade, those captured
> in a war, became slaves of the conqueror, but were treated with at least
> a certain amount of dignity. The ancestors (wrongly) assumed that those
> they sold would be treated the same way. Instead, the slaves were told
> by their new owners, " Almighty God hath been pleased to make you slaves
> here and to give you nothing but labout and poverty in this world, which
> you are obliged to submit to, as it is His will that it should be so.
> Your bodies, you know, are not your own: they are at the disposal of
> those you beling to..." (E. Blyden 1888) Can we as Africans truly
> believe that our Ancestors believed that?
>
> I will take chance at quoting one more passage from Dr. Blyden, because,
> I believe that before we can even to sort out our problems, each one of
> us must identify for ourselves, from deep within our hearts, who we
> really believe we are, - Are we African or European/American? Only those
> who sincerely choose to be Africans, will succeed in working towards
> repairing the damage that has been wrought on our mother-AFIRCA!!! I say
> this, because of this last quote, which to me, explains our current
> problem. - Yes, it was in Blyden's book, but said by a native clergyman
>
> " In the work of elevating Africans, foreign teachers have always
> proceeded woth their work on the assumption that the negro or the
> African, is in everyone of his normal susceptibilities, an inferior race
> and that it is needful in everything to to give him a foreign model to
> copy: no account has been made of our peculiarities- our languages,
> enriched with the traditions of centuries: our parables, many of them
> the quintessence of family and national histories: our modes of
> thought,influenced more or less by local circumstances: our poetry and
> manufactures, which, though rude, had their own tales to tell: our
> social habits and even necessities of our climate. It has been forgotten
> that European ideas, tastes, languages and social habits, like those of
> other nations, have been influenced more or less by geographical
> positions amd climatic peculiarities: that what is esteemed by one
> country to be polite,may be justly esteemed by another, as rude and
> barbarous: and that God does not intend to have the races confounded,
> but that the African shoud be raised upon his (her) idiocycracies. the
> result has been that we, as a people, think more of everything that is
> foreign and less of that which is purely native to us. (Thus we) have
> lost our self-respect and our love for our own race, are becoming (have
> become) a sort of non-descrpt people, and are in many things, inferior
> to our brethren in the interior countries. There is evidently a fetter
> upon our minds, even when the body is free; mental weakness, even where
> there is physical strength and barrenness, even where appears
> fertility."
>
> To me, these are powerful words to think about. To you, they may not
> mean anything. It is fortunate that we have all been given the power of
> making our own choices. Maybe, we can at least respect each others
> choices.
>Imy
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