From The Ramparts

Our Solution To Eurocentric Oppression is Developing an African Consciousness

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, we see the same conditions the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey observed in the early twentieth century. We see 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 disorganization, 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, Western imperialists, their European settler kin and the treacherous Negroes who aligned themselves with their European masters saw Garvey as a major threat to their quest for global dominance. Using their Negro lackeys, those in in the NAACP and Garvey’s Caribbean rivals, the US government framed Garvey using a prototype of COINTELPRO on a bogus mail fraud charge. The US government then imprisoned Garvey subsequently deporting him to England. They were successful getting Garvey out of their hair, removing him as an organizational threat to their global dominance.
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 so unabashedly pro-African. He exuded his love for African people and he desired the total liberation of Africans everywhere. Marcus Mosiah Garvey had both an ethnic consciousness and a nationalistic consciousness. He saw the importance and need for a unified people with a land base and an economic program. Garvey’s negotiations with Liberia to establish a beachhead on the continent 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 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 psychopathic 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. We must 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 the other repressive antics of our enemies. At the heart of Garvey’s success was his tapping into the latent African consciousness of Africans world wide. While this consciousness is suppressed due to Eurocentric anti-African propaganda, it is there nonetheless. The burgeoning Bring Black Back movement is designed to resurrect our latent African consciousness, revive our need for self-determination and develop a 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”. Garvey fulfilled his life mission, what about us?! Don’t look outside of yourself, for someone to free you. 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!

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 7:23 AM