[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

Jambo Afrikan family,
Important Read: Ndugu Kmt's latest article is attached which adds great clarity for the masses on African centered education.

For another article by Kmt that explains what Afrikan centered institutions must have check: Literatures and Definitions: Toward Understanding Africentric Education | Journal of Negro Education, The | Find Articles at BNET

• We are what we are taught;
• We are what we see and;
• We are what we consume.

We must explain each of these points in detail, otherwise we will miss the deepest meaning of this work. Parents, communities, cities, organizations, corporations, and governments should not complain of what is happening in families, communities, cities, organizations, corporations, and governments because we are harvesting what we are taught, displayed or done. No one can truly defend Democracy while fostering dictatorship and tyranny throughout the world. No judiciary system can fight against crime if the system itself is an umbrella to crime related activities.
- Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Self-Healing Power and Therapy: Old Teachings From Africa . p. 73



The instillation of “raw fear and awe of the white ‘power’, the “unconditional submission,” the conceptions of personal and racial inferiority, and the personal identification of self with the persona of the white masters were essential elements of the process of making slaves of Afrikans. Those elements have yet to be completely exorcised from our collective psyche. They manifest themselves in our family dynamics, in the interaction of Afrikan men and women, in our manner (or lack) of child rearing, in our concept of appropriate education, in our choice of religious imagery, in our definitions of physical beauty, in the manner of our philosophical inquiry, and in our political and economic choices..
K.A Akoto (p. 5) Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education


Smith Leadership Students to Go to Africa
http://www.baystatebanner.com/issues/2008/05/08/news/local05080817.htm

While we have engaged in material excess, our children have fluttered away like moths blinded by the midday sun. We have lost them to drugs and mindless materialism, and we have lost them because of our own cultural ambiguity in the face of a relentless and spell-binding Eurocentrism, and its nefarious partner, racism/ white supremacy. K.A Akoto Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education p. 73 )

Without our goodness (our built-in hope), our beautiful humanity, our belief in justice for all people, we fall into their traps…Because we have not learned to practice, figuratively speaking, the essential selfishness of survival, we should give no piece of the pie…When we began to lose these nation lessons we began to move deeper and deeper into a trap, into a trap of dependency. – John Henrik Clarke, African World Revolution: Africans at the Crossroads p.15

"In the years since our forced exile from Africa we have been in one crisis after another over leadership. We stand at the crossroads of history engaged in a sad debate over the direction and definition in political leadership…The one thing oppression does to a people is to kill in them the mind and will to assume responsibility. When you get on the edge of power you experience a critical moment of self-discovery and that is the tragic separation from having lost power, and this is part of what our conflict is about.” – John Henrik Clarke

"Both on the continent and in the diaspora, our people’s sense of value is directly determined by the Eurocentric agencies of certification and validation. Our leaders cannot lead unless they have been validated by the white-dominated popular media. Our systems of governing are judged primitive unless they are properly validated replicas of the white western governments. Our sense of physical beauty frequently amounts to no more than a slavish imitation of caucasized department store mannequins, that have little or no precedent or relation to Afrikan culture or physiology. We have an abundance of bleaching creams and hair relaxers in villages where there is no running water or electricity." (K.A Akoto p. 43 Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education)

In Chancellor William’s words, we either accomplish this mission as a people, as a generation, or be forgotten and despised by every generation that follows us. (p. 70)

Too many Afrikans still labor under the popular myth of universal culture or cultural neutrality that is heavily promoted by the media and major educational institutions. There is no universal culture, because there is no universal history beyond the generality of the human condition; food, clothing, housing, and procreation, and everybody does even those things differently. The myth of universality as popularly defied is an increasingly porous cloak for Eurocentric (Caucasian/ white) hegemony. DuBois noted at the turn of the century, that the history of the world is the history of the races. It should be clear to any student of history, that Euro-America’s time in the spotlight is over. K.A Akoto Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education p.72