Revolutionary Daily Thoughts: The Philosophies and Opinions of Our Ancestors/Elders

[Akua Ma'at]

"Then there arose from the Spaniards a cry summoning all the noblemen, lords, war leaders, warriors, and common folk; and when they had crowded into the temple courtyard, then the Spaniards and their allies blocked the entrances and every exit. There followed a butchery of stabbing, beating, killing of the unsuspecting Cholulans armed with no bows and arrows, protected by no shields...with no warning, they were treacherously, deceitfully slain."

Aztec chronicler

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[Akua Ma'at]

"The Ottawas were greatly reduced in numbers on account of the small-pox....This small-pox. was sold to them shut up in a tine box, with the strict injunction not to open their box on their way homeward, but only when they should reach their country; and that this box contained something that would do them great good, and their people!...Accordingly, after they reached home they opened the box; but behold there was another tin box inside, smaller...and when they opened the last one they found nothing but mouldy particles in this last little box!...But alas, alas! pretty soon burst out a terrible sickness among them....Lodge after lodge was totally vacated -- nothing but the dead bodies lying here and there in their lodges -- entire families being swept off with the ravages of this terrible disease. The whole coast of Arbor Croche..., where their principal village was situated,...is said to have been a continuous village some fifteen or sixteen miles long...was entirely depopulated and laid waste...this wholesale murder of the Ottawas by this terrible disease sent by the British people, was actuated through hatred, and expressly to kill off the Ottawas and Chippewas..."

Andrew Blackbird

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[Akua Ma'at]

"A people are empowered or disempowered by the guiding ideologies of the leaders to whom they pledge allegiance."

Amos N. Wilson
Blueprint for Black Power

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[Akua Ma'at]

"Schooling is a process intended to perpetuate and maintain the society's existing power relations and the institutional structures that support those arrangements. All societies must provide a means for their members to learn, develop, and maintain adequate motivation throughout their life cycles for participation in socially valued and controlled patterns of action. However, what is crucial to understand for this discussion is that when multiple cultural orientations exist within a nation-state, it is the leadership among the adherents to the politically dominant cultural orientation that exercise the most influence on the 'concepts, values, and skills' that schools transmit....Education, in contrast to schooling, is our means of providing for the intergenerational transmission of values, beliefs, traditions, customs, rituals and sensibilities along with the the knowledge of why these things must be sustained. Through education we learn how to determine what is in our interests, distinguish our interests from those of others, and recognize when our interests are consistent and inconsistent with those of others. Education prepares us to accept the staff of cultural leadership from the generation that preceded ours, build upon our inheritance and make ready the generation that will follow us. Education transmits knowledge all things that give our particular cultural orientation its uniqueness. Every cultural group must provide for this transmission process or it will cease to exist."

Mwalimu J. Shujaa
"Education and Schooling"

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[Akua Ma'at]

"Centeredness is a conceptualization which argues for and employs the philosophical 'should' of Africans having knowledge and understanding of their historical origins and cultural development which provides connectedness to and the necessary reverence for the ancestors, and thus an efficacious perception of 'self in culture.' The problematic is decenteredness, having a false connection to European history and culture and thus a (mis) perception of reality which often causes a psychopathological disconnectedness from the ancestors, from African culture, and at times even from people of African descent. A form of self-alienation, this impedes a common cultural knowledge source for understanding in community and thus preventing effective communication, particularly inter-generational."

Danjuma Sinue Modupe
"The Afrocentic Philosophical Perspective"

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[Akua Ma'at]

"Only a fool points to his heritage with his left hand."

Ghanaian(Afrikan) proverb

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[Akua Ma'at]

"For I have come to understand that when the Black Man assumes the proper attitude about the sacredness of the feminine energy of the Black Woman, he then brings himself back in line spiritually and as he sincerely demonstrates this in word and deed, the world will begin to respect him again and he will advance by quantum leaps toward taking his rightful place in the sun."

Ishakamusa Barashango
Afrikan Woman: The Original Guardian Angel

[Akua Ma'at]

"Someone's scars are what we use to cure our diseases."

Akan (Afrikan) proverb

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[Akua Ma'at]

"Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce status relations of any kind, including, racial hierarchy, evolve and change as they are challenged."

Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow

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[Akua Ma'at]

"A term coined by Carter G. Woodson in his classic book The Miseducation of the Negro, "miseducation" names that learning which is irrelevant to one's empowerment. It means to be wrongly educated. In his book, Woodson explains how Afrikans in colleges and universities are being taught subjects, theories, agendas and philosophies that are irrelevant to the elevation of Afrikan people, but which makes them feel as if they are being highly educated because this is what european academia says defines the intelligent citizen and is critical for the continued development of their thinking and leadership skills. He points out that a miseducation leads the student and graduate everywhere they need to go, except in a direction of self-knowledge and understanding of what knowledge her or his community really needs in order to rise up and prosper as an independently thinking people. In many cases, it takes individuals so far away from the education they need that it becomes virtually impossible to move in that direction. We should add, though, that miseducation is not reserved for those who have participated in the college or university experience. It is a process that begins before the individual can officially enter the formal educational setting and is found throughout life, at all educational attainment levels, in all forms of media and all social institutions for those targeted before birth for failure or intellectual peripheralization. With miseducation, individual Afrikans become mindless clones of their eurocentric academic mentors, no longer thinking, no longer wanting to think as Afrikans....Unlike miseducation, which does teach an appreciation of learning, although wrongful learning, diseducation leads the individual to despise the very idea of learning itself. Diseducation creates an anti-learning psychology within its victims that predisposes them to reject any information and study that requires them to go beyond what is required for basic survival or assimilation. Like miseducation, diseducation is a conscious, institutionalized process designed to make a people useless and even destructive toward themselves because they see no reason to want to learn. Diseducation is further related to miseducation in that it can be a direct outcome of the recognition that the individual has been miseducated if (1) one feels he or she has too great of a vested interest in the culture or institutions of those who miseducated him or her to suicidally move against them, (2) there is so much rage that it cannot be corralled and focused toward rejection of the miseducation, or (3) one feels that he or she has gone too far down the miseducation road to recover from it."

Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti
Nyansasem: A Calender of Revolutionary Daily Thoughts

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