Needed: New Slave Revolts by Nana Baffour Amankwatia II

[TShango]

NEEDED: NEW SLAVE REVOLTS

By

Asa G. Hilliard III-Nana Baffour Amankwatia II

Georgia State University

And

Per MAAT Foundation, Inc.

January, 2002

There was a time in the history of African people when things were very clear. Slavery was clear. Colonization was clear. Segregation/apartheid was clear. The ideology of white supremacy was clear. We knew who the enemy was.

We knew who we were. We knew where we wanted to go. We had a strong sense of community, a shared heritage and a strong sense of efficacy as a family of African people-yes African people. We were captives enslaved, not slaves. We proudly called ourselves Africans, after our local ethnic families were dispersed. This was quite common until the 20^th century. We still had the memories of our great academic, architectural, scientific, esthetic and especially our spiritual heritage. That heritage had already had global influence.

We responded to captivity with many rebellions and revolts, and with courage, gaining many victories. We thereby made slavery and other forms of oppression very costly to our oppressors. The rebellions, revolts other forms of active and passive resistance were so numerous that they struck fear in the hearts of slavers, making the cost of slavery too much to bear, hastening the demise of slavery as an institution. We were a major force in our emancipation. (Aptheker, 1993)

Some Africans escaped and established “Quilimbos,” independent “Maroon” communities, communities of escaped Africans, where they could have self-determination. (Price,1973) (Twyman,1999) (Leaming,1995) (Carter,1997) (Giddings,1997) One of the earliest examples is the establishment of the African nation of Palmares in Brazil, led by Zumbi, lasting almost 100 years. Another example is Haiti, which resisted successfully the rule of England, Spain and overthrew the rule of France, when France had the greatest military of its time. This is the only example in history where enslaved people overthrew their captors and established a full-blown nation.

Some Africans who remained with their masters faked stupidity and illness. Many sabotaged the plantation.

Some Africans gave up, collaborated with their masters, and turned on other Africans to save themselves, as individuals. Some even identified with their masters psychologically, more than with themselves or their families, and lived in voluntary servitude.

The open resistors fought the physical captivity, the physical abuse, the destruction of families, many forms of terror, and the political and economic exploitation. They also understood that, beyond the physical, the essence of our captivity and enslavement was the massive and systematic attack on our humanity. Attempts were made to reduce us to the level of beasts, led by the elites of European slave society, including especially its most prestigious academic and clerics. In fact we were called beasts, without mental capacity, and without souls. Yet we were close enough to our cultural heritage that we knew these characterizations to be false. We knew and remembered our cultural wealth, and tried to transmit it to our children. (Webber, 1978) We did not believe the propaganda of our enemies.

And so, we resisted dehumanization in many ways. We asserted ourselves at every opportunity, demanding rights. We came out of enslavement determined to gain control of our lives, and especially to gain control over the education and socialization of our children. Africans taxed themselves and set up hundreds of private schools to educate themselves. (Anderson,1988) (Dubois,1973) The Freedman’s Bureau and the Missionary societies quickly moved in, with the same assumptions that the U.S, government had used, in setting up “Indian education.” In the case of both Indians and Africans, the prime rule for domination was that they had to destroy the cultural heritage and to force Africans and First Nation peoples to become as European as possible, at least superficially. This goal was held by both those who hated us and those who “loved” us. Neither considered us capable of following our own path and leadership. Both believed in white supremacy, especially the superiority of the culture of Europe over the culture of the African.

In many ways, the situation for African people globally has not changed in any fundamental way. The forms have changed, confusing us about what is really going on. We appear to be “integrated,” and on a liberation path. But as Oginga Odinga in Kenya said at the end of the fighting resulting in the decolonization of Kenya, “Not yet Uhuru,” freedom has not yet come.

When any people looses control of socialization and their cultural wealth, that is disaster, a true MAAFA (Ani,1994). To be criminalized as Africans have been, is a disaster of great proportions. Africans today are exploited in many new ways. Privatizing schools that serve our children, putting the control of that process in the hands of distant aliens, is one way. Another way is privatizing prisons that contain an awesome number our men, in some cases sending prisoners to work in private businesses for no pay. That is nothing less than the new slavery. These are but two related examples of how who we are is being shaped by non-Africans.

The alien controlled schools (Sometimes the aliens are black) become factories and funnels for the prisons, because of savage inequalities in treatment of students, followed by tracking and special education. (Kozol, 1991) (Breggin, and Breggin, 1998) (Polakow, 2000) The one million African men in prison, if released on probation or parole, will be economically disabled competing for employment with their prison records and an inferior education background. These African men will also loose the right to vote in many cases; hence they become virtually politically impotent. They will return to communities which will not be mobilized for their re-integration.

Since prisoners are tied to families, the average of their family resources is far below par. Most have lost all prison rehabilitation privileges, classes etc., which have replaced by punishment, even torture. Some have been used for experimentation (Hornblum, 1998), supposedly with their “informed consent.” One day these brutalized, dehumanized, unprepared men will leave the prison, with about a hundred dollars and little more than the clothes on their backs, and will be required to find their own way to self support. While they remain in prisons, far from their mostly urban homes, they provide jobs for small town, mostly white communities, that have no other economic base, and who are eager for even more prisoners.

At least some of these men in the prisons are clear, clearer than their “free” brothers and sisters on the “outside.” The have months and years to think, and some read and think deep thoughts. They see beneath the glitter and the gloss. They see how things really are.

The relative “wealth” of the relatively small numbers of Africans in the middle-income level obscures the gross poverty of the masses of low and no income Africans. Satisfied personally, the higher income Africans may even become a buffer, silencing the voice of the masses by being in a broker position to cool out the masses, and earning money for that containment of their brothers and sisters. These brothers and sisters are usually not clear at all. Many seem not even to seek clarity. They seek entertainment.

To gain clarity, it is instructive to look very carefully at African fate over the years in Brazil, in order to understand the drift of our situation now. The special circumstances in Brazil during and after enslavement, called for the Portuguese enslavers to create a unique post slavery response for Africans. Among other things they adopted a policy called “whitening.” (Hilliard and Martin, 1997) This meant that the goal of the Portuguese was the “disappearance of the African through ‘assimilation.’ and by massive immigration of Europeans.” The African disappearance was to be physical and cultural. The cruelest joke of all was to sell the idea that Brazil would become a “racial democracy” with Africans becoming absorbed gradually. This was cover for a system of continued white supremacy, with a sleeping African population, most of who would not even be conscious of their African identity. (Hilliard, 2001)

In a country that is between 60% and 80% African by various estimates, the Africans have been so tricked, pacified and deluded that most have bought into the white supremacy ideological “racial” classification system. This was and still is a system that is based on skin color, even within the African community. This is merely an extreme version of a global African problem, the problem of identity confusion. However, the problem with the ideology, in this case, is that the Africans in Brazil have almost no resistance movement to it. The great conscious thinkers who are there appear to be almost isolated when teaching and acting to awaken and to mobilize their people. (Naciamento,1992) Empirical research documenting both identity confusion and racial oppression makes Twine, ask, “Why is the social justice protest movement in Brazil is so muted?” We might ask the same question of Africans everywhere. (Twine, 2001)

Africans in other parts of the diaspora, including the United States are drifting rapidly to a similar fate, whitening or de-Africanization. The invisibility of the structure of domination today and the presence of distractions, such as television entertainment, has lulled many of us to sleep. How else can you explain leaders in our community who beg for and accept “help” from, and make alliances with, enemies who offer hand outs to us, while calling us mentally inferior to them at the same time. (Herrenstein and Murray, 1994) (Snyderman and Rothman, 1990) Yet these enemies seek to trick us into “partnerships” with them to improve our schools, or want us to join them in demanding vouchers for half the amount of our current public school cost, in order to be able to beg for admission to schools of our “choice,” the best of which might cost more than $ 15,000 per year.

The natural response of dominated human beings is to fight back, to settle for nothing less than complete freedom, to rebel, to revolt. It is time to stop the frivolous and to take responsibility for challenging cultural genocide and the myriad other forms of new slavery. That cannot be done until we make the invisible visible.

How do we account for the fact that we endure domination, often without a whimper? How could The Bell Curve be written and disseminated, with so mild an outcry from our people? How can the Governor of Pennsylvania take de facto control of the public schools in Philadelphia, turning them over to a private business over which we have no control, in a system that is predominately African and low income? When did the Wall Street right wing and some left wing entrepreneurs become concerned about the fate of our poor children and their academic achievement, and where have they ever produced high achievement for our children? Where is our resistance on a massive scale to this new mental enslavement?

How can the nation incarcerate nearly one million African men in prisons, enriching job poor rural areas, with inmates that are often in for non-violent offences, and have our communities forget that they are there, with no active response to the situation? How can we forget that most of these men are non-violent offenders, mostly for drug related offenses? The evidence shows that they use drugs at no greater rate than young white men, are arrested more often, convicted more often, sentenced for longer terms, serve longer terms? How can we tolerate the use of many of these men being farmed out for slave labor to private businesses? (Hallinan, 2001) How can we tolerate the criminilization of our children through the application of the pseudo-science of the National Institute of Mental Health “violence initiative,” a selective initiative that does not include homegrown terrorist groups, militias and Klan in the sample for a study that seeks the “genetic” causes of “violence,” under the auspices of the Federal Government? (Breggin, and Breggin, 1998)

Many of these things are invisible to us?

Gradually, as the visible signs of domination and oppression disappeared, we lost our clarity. The domination and oppression continued through other forms. The chameleon changed colors. So we became confused. We lost our focus. We lost our community. We no longer know the difference between friend and foe.

I am struck by the fact that 40,000,000 Africans in the United States are virtually without a voice, having lost most of the few talk shows that dealt with serious matters. We have seen the loss of Emerge Magazine and the loss of its straight talking editor George Curry, with one explanation being that the black middle class did not want serious analysis, they wanted entertainment. Essence and BET are now owned by non-Africans. Only the Internet offers the possibility of unfiltered voices, at least for the time being. I know that the Internet data has to be critiqued seriously, but so does the current propaganda that passes for news, especially since the few mainstream voices who tried to be reporters rather than preachers are muted or gone.

That is a dangerous position. It means that we are not mobilized and feel no need to do so. That is the real crisis. As bad as the new slavery is, it pales in comparison to the mental slavery, that results in a loss of consciousness and critical analysis.

Our behavior does not fit our circumstances. We are not alarmed. We do not act as if there is a threat to our existence as a people. For Africans in America, one would think that our perennial bottom position would be a matter of grave concern. What is the likelihood that our fundamental place in the social order will change in the next 50 years, anywhere that Africans are in the world? What is there in place now or contemplated that would enable us to make significant progress as a people, rather than simply as a long ranger or two? Do we have a strategy and a structure to bring our liberation into being?

We are not defeated. We have hardly tried. We have enormous resources, all that we need to make dramatic changes in our lives. All we need is critical consciousness. “Free the mind and the behind will follow.” Conscious Africans who mobilize can rebuild our communities in Diaspora and nations in our motherland. We are not impotent. We need new slave revolts for the “post-modern world.” The place to begin is in our minds. As our venerated ancestor Dr. John Henrik Clark said so often, “It is impossible to continue to oppress a consciously historical people.”

References

Anderson, J. D. (1988) The education of black folk in the south, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Aptheker, Herbert (1993) American negro slave revolts: on Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and others. New York: International Publishers

Breggin, Peter R. and Breggin, Ginger Ross (1998) The war against children of color: psychiatry targets inner city youth. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press

DuBois, W.E.B. (1973) Black reconstruction in America: an essay toward a history of the part black folk played in the attempt to reconstruct democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York: Atheneum

Carey, Bev (1997) The maroon story: the authoritative and original history of the maroons in the history of Jamaica: 1490-1880. Gordon Town, St. Andrew, Jamaica, W.I.: Agouti Press

Giddings, Joshua R. (1997) The exiles of Florida: the crimes committed by our government against the maroons who fled from South Carolina and other slave states. Baltimore: Black Classic Press

Hallinan, Joseph T. (2001) Going up the river: travels in a prison nation. New York: Random House

Herrenstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles (1994) The bell curve: intelligence and class in American life. New York: The Free Press

Hilliard, Asa G. III and Martin, Luisa (1997) “European hegemony and African Identity” (In) Hilliard, Asa G. III Sba: the reawakening of the African mind. Gainesville, Florida: Makare Publishers pp. 25-40

Hilliard, Asa G. III (2001) “Race,” identity, hegemony and education: what do we need to know now?” (In) Watkins, William H., Lewis, James H. and Chou, Victoria (Eds.) The white architects of black education Boston: Allyn Bacon

Hornblum, Allen M. (1998) Acres of skin: human experiments a holmsburg prison: a true story of abuse and exploitation in the name of medical science. New York: Routledge

Leaming, Hugo Prosper (1995) Hidden Americans: maroons of Virginia and the Carolinas. New York: Garland

Mark, Anthony (1998) Making race and nation: a comparison of United States, South Africa, and Brazil. London: Cambridge University

Mulroy, Kevin (1993) Freedom on the border: the Seminole in Florida, the Indian territory, Coahuila, and Texas. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press

Okihoro, Gary Y. (1986) In resistance: struggle in Africa, Caribbean, and Afro-America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Polakow, Valerie (2000) The public assault on America’s children: poverty, violence and juvenile injustice. New York: Teacher’s College Press

Price, Richard (1973) (Ed.) Maroon societies: rebel slave communities in the Americas. New York: Anchor

Snyderman, Mark (1990) The I. Q. controversy, the media and public policy. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

Twine, France Winddance (2001) Racism in a racial democracy: the maintenance of white supremacy in Brazil. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press

Twyman, Bruce Edward (2000) The black Seminole legacy and north American politics, 1697 to 1845. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press

Webscale, Neil (2001) Policing the poor: from slave plantation to public housing. Boston: Northeastern University Press

[pain]

Choc full of notable quotables.