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Our Solution To Oppression Is Developing an African Consciousness
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Junious Ricardo Stanton
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Feb 06, 2007 20:50 PST
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*From the Ramparts*
Junious Ricardo Stanton
*Our Solution To Oppression is Developing An African Consciousness*
/"Consequently, if we are to be empowered and our power is to work in
our interests, then our consciousness must be an Afrikan consciousness,
our values must be Afrikan values, our personality must be an Afrikan
based personality. If not we may suffer first ethnicide and then
genocide. What we are saying here is that our culture will not be
functional in a way that it protects our interests. We must then, as a
people, develop a new Afrikan consciousness- an Afrikan centered
consciousness- and that means we develop it based on an Afriakn history,
Afrikan culture and Afrikan values. Most of all, we must develop an
Afrikan sense of nationhood."/ Amos N Wilson,* Afrikan-Centered
Consciousness Versus The New World Order* page 120-21
When we critically examine world events today, we see the same
conditions the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey observed in the early
twentieth century, Africans languishing in brutal oppression mired at
the bottom of a global Western Neo-colonial (as opposed to the virulent
colonialism of Garvey's time) socio-economic and political system. As we
pause to celebrate the resilience, perseverance and creativity of
Africans in AmeriKKKa, let us not lose sight of the fact that everywhere
we find Africans in this world, we are in a state of turmoil,
subjugation, oppression and victims of ongoing genocide.
Marcus Garvey launched his Pan-African program the UNIA-ACL with the
expressed purpose of waking the masses of Africans around the world,
organizing, uniting and galvanizing them to act in their best interests.
The enemies of African people both Western imperialists, their European
settler kin and the treacherous Negroes who aligned themselves with
their European masters saw Garvey as a threat to their quest for global
dominance. Using their Negro lackeys in the NAACP and Garvey's Caribbean
rivals in the US , the US government framed Garvey (using a prototype of
COINTELPRO) on a bogus mail fraud charge. The US federal government then
imprisoned Garvey and subsequently deporting him to get him out of their
hair. They succeeded in removing him as an organizational threat to
their global dominance plans.
Examining the powerful impact of Garvey's UNIA-ACL Pan-African movement
Amos N. Wilson observed, "Wherever the organization took root, so too
did its voice, Negro World, which became a thorn in the side of the
imperialist powers who pulled all stops to stymy or eradicate the
paper's appeal. Indeed, in much of Afrika, all of Europe and Great
Britain, the Southern states of the US, the Caribbean, Central and South
America, to have been caught reading a copy of the 'subversive weekly'
was a punishable offense, often resulting in hard jail time or worse.
Nothing the imperialist governments tried, including seizing bundles of
cleverly concealed papers smuggled aboard even their own ships bound for
lands adjacent and afar was completely successful. The liberating
message borne on the pages of the Negro World infiltrated even the most
tightly surveilled borders, reaching as far as Nyasaland (modern Malawi)
where it penetrated a defensive ring established by the British Foreign
Office." *Afrikan Consciousness Versus The New World Order Garveyism in
the Age of Globalism* page 26.
What made Garvey's Negro World such a threat to Western imperialists? It
was because Garvey was unabashedly pro-African, he loved African people
and desired the total liberation of Africans everywhere. Marcus Mosiah
Garvey had both an ethnic consciousness and a national consciousness. He
saw the importance and need for a unified people with a land base.
Garvey's negotiations with Liberia to establish a beachhead on the
continent of Africa posed a serious threat to the US government and the
Firestone Rubber Company's exploitation of that nation's resources.
Garvey's efforts to unite Africans worldwide sent chills up and down the
spines of Western imperialists. The last thing they wanted to risk and
face was an aroused, unified and united African people. Garvey espoused
a Pan-African ideology albeit one tinged with Anglo-Saxon cultural
trappings. The key to Garvey's rise was his promotion and exhorting
Africans worldwide to embrace a Pan-African consciousness and a do for
self mentality. We need to take a lesson from Garvey. We need to realize
the only way we can counter our oppressors and their will to subjugate
us, is to develop and propagate a Pan- African consciousness. We must
throw off the yoke of Eurocentric thinking, what some call our slave
mentality and replace it with a pro-African do for self consciousness.
Garvey understood this implicitly. He said, "The Negro must understand
that he is standing by himself. If he is to enjoy the best out of life,
he must create for himself, and he can only create for himself when he
has given to the world his philosophy and code to guide him. And I can
recommend to you nothing more enhancing than the Creed we have laid down
in 'African Fundamentalism'. If you will absorb it you will get
inspiration to guide you and your children... When you get to understand
that, you will no longer be the cringing creatures as others would have
you be, but a master. The opportunity is yours, you can lift yourselves
any height, as others have done, it is only for you to summon the
courage and absorb these things which are at your doors, and so merit
the blessings of God. The Universal Improvement Association is opening
the door of intelligence to the Four Hundred Million Negroes of the
world- the door of inspiration." Marcus Mosiah Garvey Marcus Garvey Life
and Lessons Robert A Hill Editor, Barbara Bair, Associate editor page 10.
We can learn the lesson from Garvey's movement including ways to counter
COINTELPRO and other repressive antics of our enemies. At the heart of
Garvey's success was his tapping into the latent African consciousness
of Africans worldwide. While this consciousness is suppressed due to
Eurocentric anti-African propaganda, it is still there nonetheless. The
burgeoning Bring Black Back movement is designed to resurrect our
dormant African consciousness, revive our need for self-determination
and do for self mentality. Don't wait for another Marcus Garvey to come
and shout "Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will". Don't
look outside of yourself, you are a liberator just as I am. We are the
ones we have been waiting for. We are the ones our ancestors prayed for.
Rise up and come forth!
-30-
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