The Fight Against the Destruction of Black people

Hotep!!!!

Take notes!!!!!!!

“In America there is no such thing as Democrat or Republican anymore. In America you have liberals and conservatives. The only people living in the past who think in terms of I’m a Democrat or Republican, is the American Negro. He’s the one that runs around bragging about party affiliation. He’s the one that sticks to the Democrat or sticks to the Republican. But white people are divided into two groups, liberals and conservative. The Democrats who are conservative, vote with the Republicans who are conservative. The Democrats who are liberal vote with the Republicans that are liberal. The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people.”

-Malcolm X (Omowale El Hajj Malik El Shabazz)

(I will use the words Afrikan and Black interchangeable in my commentary to identify people of African descent.)

The wisdom of Dr. Asa Hilliard-one of the most of profound Afrikan centered scholars of the Afrocentric movement- is needed today. When he was alive, he taught that white supremacy constantly reorganizes itself to maintain white dominance in America, and in the world, over Afrikan people.

Dr. Asa Hilliard lived from August 22, 1933 to August 13, 2007. His Afrikan name was Nana Baffour Amankwatia. Dr. He was the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Education Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Education. His work centered on ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) Studies, Afrikan history, culture, education, psychology, and society. He served on many levels of education. Dr. Hilliard was a member of the Alliance of Black School Educators, San Francisco Chapter founder; American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education; American Psychology Association, fellow, and board member of the National Black Child Development Institute. His Afrikan centered consciousness led him to community activism in the Afrikan world community. He became one of the founders of ASCAC (the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). The purpose of ASCAC is to “provide a body of knowledge that continuously contributes to the rescue, reconstruction, and restoration of African history and culture through the promotion of the study of African civilizations for Black people to develop an African world view. ASCAC was co-founded in 1984 by Drs. John Henrik Clark, Leonard Jeffries, Jacob H. Carruthers, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Maulana Karenga (https://ascac.org/). Dr. Hilliard has passed on to the eguguun (Yoruba for the realm of the ancestors). And the Afrikan centered cultural response is to say ibaye Ase’!!!!! Ibaye is Yoruba for you to say blessings to the ancestors. Ase' is Yoruba for it is so. Ibaye Ase' are said at community events, traditional Afrikan drumming, dancing, and singing programs. But most importantly, when there are libations to the ancestors, the person leading the libations will say Ibaye after ancestral names are called. The response after Ibaye by the audience is Ase'. Before his death, Dr. Hilliard helped set up many ASCAC Afrikan centered chapters in America, and around the world, to challenge existing institutions in the world to support and serve Black people and our interests. This great Afrikan ancestor wrote many books on Black people, Afrika, Afrikan culture, Afrikan spirituality, and the importance of developing an Afrikan centered education. The following are some of his books and scholarly articles he wrote while present with us, such as, The Maroon Within Us: Selected Essays on African American Community Socialization; SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind; Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach; The Teachings of Ptahhotep; The Price They Paid: Desegregation in an African American Community; Infusion of African & African American Content in the School Curriculum; African Power: Affirming African Indigenous, Socialization in the Face of the Culture Wars; and Rx for Racism: Imperatives for America's Schools (Article; Phi Delta Kappan April 1990). Dr. Hilliard has lectured in the Black community, in Afrika, in the United States, and all over the world. A few years ago, he was the featured speaker at the ASCAC (the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization) annual national conference that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His keynote address was on the Cultural War: Afrikan Centered Education and the Fight Against the Destruction of Black people. During his speech, he said in summation, that the Afrikan world community is in a cultural war with White supremacy, the system of racism, and with some of own people. Ultimately, Dr. Hilliard argued that the intentions of White supremacy are to make Black people non-threatening to the system of oppression in the America, and in the world, by making Black people culturally a Europeanized and colonialized Afrikan people through dividing Black people from one another and our interests; attacking our own legitimate Black leadership; discrediting our own Afrikan history; sabotaging our own Afrikan culture; and enfeebling our own Afrikan spirituality.

For example, Dr. Hilliard said that in the early 1980s, America’s former Republican President Ronald Regan, right-wing Republican think tank organizations, and Republican leaders began working to create their version of “Black leadership” for the Afrikan American community. In other words, the establishment needed Black leadership that pandered to the interests of white people in America and in the world. Dr. Hilliard said to make this a reality, Republicans called a meeting with some members of the Black community to replace independent community-based Black voices and leadership left over from the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of 1950s, 60s, and 70s (i.e. Kwame Ture, Chokwe Lumumba, Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Rev Jesse L. Jackson, Rev. Joseph Lowery, Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, Tom Bradley, Coleman Young, Shirley Chisholm, Dorothy Height, John Lewis, Imamu Amiri Baraka, etc). He said, “Republicans met in San Francisco, California at the Fairmont Hotel on December 12 and 13 in 1980 for the sole purpose of developing alternative Black leadership to existing Black leaders in the Afrikan American community.” Dr. Hilliard said, “this meeting was attended by Black people, such as Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Maria Johnson, Henry Lucas, Chuck Stone, Oscar Wright, Walter Williams, Charles Hamilton, Martin Kilson, Percy Sutton, and Tony Brown.” The meeting was chaired by a white American Republican named Ed Meese. In 1985, Meese became the 75th US Attorney General. However, Dr. Hilliard said, “once some of our people found out who the organizers were, they left the meeting.” But Dr. Hilliard encouraged the ASCAC attendees to read, The Fairmont Papers, to get a true picture of the dangerous nature of this meeting to the Black community. He said that in the book, “many Black attendees stayed at the meeting to help the white establishment undermine Black leadership in America.” The Fairmont Papers is a 96-page book published in 1981 by white and Black conservatives on alternative strategies to a revolutionary and progressive Black agenda for empowering Black people in the United States.

For some of you millennials, who never heard of Ed Meese, please do your own homework on this major American political figure. But in the meantime, here is some background information on the Republican political operative Edwin Meese of the 1960s, 70s, and the 80s.

Ed Meese was born December 2, 1931. He is an American attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party who served in many official capacities in the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration (1967–1974) in California, the Reagan Presidential Transition Team (1980), and the Reagan White House (1981–1985). He eventually rose in the US government to hold the position of the 75th United States Attorney General (1985–1988), a position from which he resigned following the Wedtech scandal.

But Dr. Hilliard did not stop there about the war to destroy Black people.

Lynne Cheney, the wife of former US Vice President Dick Cheney, worked to make sure any attacks on White hegemony remained neutralized. Before Bill Clinton became President of the United States of America, she was on the board of the US National Endowment for the Humanities (N.E.H). As the director of the N.E.H, she used her influence to protect White dominance in the world. Ms. Cheney targeted a 1980’s PBS film special called, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, to be cancelled. It was hosted by Ali Mazuri.

Ali Al'amin Mazrui lived from February 24, 1933 to October 12, 2014. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya, but became an American academic professor. He was a political writer on African and Islamic studies and Afrikan North-South relations. Professor Mazuri’s positions included Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and the Director of the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Now back to Ms. Cheney’s struggle to rid the television airways of a documentary on Afrikan History, Afrikan culture, and Afrikan spirituality.

Dr. Hilliard said, “Because the documentary linked Afrika’s current problems to European exploitation, she had an issue with film. Lynne Cheney insisted that the N.E.H end the funding for The Africans. Although she was not successful at stopping the funding for the film, Ms.Cheney was able to remove the National Endowment for Humanities from the film’s credits.”

Ms. Cheney has been a long time Republican operative. She was part of Republican organizations, such as the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute. She is a staunch defender of white and European western culture.

As a point of clarification, I must mention a little American political science.

Since 1619, Black people were enslaved in America. United States slavery legally forced Black people into racial servitude for 250 years. It accumulated billions of dollars in wealth for America and white people. American slavery was built upon white supremacist fictitious ideological notions that Black people, Afrikan culture, Afrikan History, and Afrikan spirituality were inferior to white people. Therefore, in their warped racial thinking, white slave-masters were justified enslaving Afrikan people. However, the enslavement of Black people caused major debates and divisions in the United States.

On one side, the Democrats were pro-slavery. On the other side, the Republicans were anti-slavery. These divisions led America on the path of the Civil War. Although war was in the air from Democrats and Republicans, both political parties shared white supremacist views about Black people. They were open about their hatred and disdain towards all Black people in America. However, white Republicans did not always have an anti-Black policy towards the Afrikan American community. Some historians argue that Republicans were not morally moved to end the enslavement of Black people because they viewed human slavery in America as an obsolete means of production. Whatever they case may be, in US politics, Republicans were the loudest voices to see the “peculiar Institution of slavery” abolished in America. During the time leading up to and after the US Civil War, white Republicans, a political party that traces its roots to Abraham Lincoln, were the strongest advocates for ending slavery. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the US dominated Republican Congress passed the 13th Amendment of 1865 (Ending enslavement for Black people in America), the 14th Amendment of 1868 (gave all Black people in American citizenship), the 15th Amendment of 1870 (gave Black people the right to vote). Republicans supported the US reconstruction of the formerly enslaved Black community and they promised 40 acres of land and a mule to all Black people. Unfortunately, almost a century later, Black people will rise in the 1950s and 60s to make the US Constitution live up to its promises of equal rights for all people, especially Black people. However, despite many gains by Black people, we are still presently in a real struggle for our reparations.

But getting back to American political science.

After Reconstruction ended in the 1870s, white racist southern Democrats, who traced their roots to Andrew Jackson, controlled all the Southern states and disenfranchised Black people (who were now Republicans). Southern whites gave nearly all its electoral votes to Democrats in presidential elections. These conditions created what US history books call the Southern Compromise of 1877. The Southern Compromise of 1877 was an unwritten deal, informally arranged by all White US Congressmen that settled the intensely disputed 1876 Presidential election. It resulted in the US government making a racist decision to pull the last US Army troops out of the South and formally ending the reconstruction era. Through the Compromise, US Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove all US Army troops, whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in the South, such as South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana.

The compromise involved Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral College to take effect. The outgoing US President, Republican Ulysses S Grant, made a racist military decision to remove all American soldiers from Florida. US President Hayes removed the remaining American troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the US Army left, white racist Democrats reclaimed complete political and economic control of the south.

Once in political and economic power, racist whites began to abridge Black people’s equal rights using loopholes in the US Constitution, which they used to prevent members of the Afrikan American community from voting, being judges, holding political offices, and owning land. Socially, white racist terror attacks dominated the lives of Black people every day with the creation of the Klu Klux Klan (an American home grown white racist terror organization created by former Confederate soldiers in Tennessee to kill and intimidate Black people in the United States.)

From 1896 to 1966, segregation became the cultural, religious, social, political, and economic order of the day. The Civil Rights and Black power movements of the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s will challenge and change the racial dynamics in America between white and Black people.

Segregation racially separated Black people from white people in every function of life in the United States of America.

Black people could not intermingle with white people in marriages, public schools, public parks, restaurants, public restrooms, movie theaters, amusement parks, public buses, public trains, and public water fountains. Under segregation, Black people were the last hired and first fired on the majority of jobs in America. The laws of segregation restricted us in buying land, owning our own houses, renting apartments, and operating our own businesses, and holding public offices.

But the progressive Black Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s will force the white establishment to protect the rights of Black people through massive non-violent civil disobedience rallies and marches all over America. By the mid 1960’s, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights of 1965 were established and ultimately signed by US President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat. He was opposed by Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, which led many white Southern Democrats to vote Republican for president. The increasing appeal by white southern Democrats to the national party, such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and actions by some national Republicans, including the Southern Strategy, accelerated the shifting of demographics in the Republican and Democratic Parties.

In the ensuing years, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and the increasing conservatism of the Republican Party, compared to the liberalism of the Democratic Party (especially on social and cultural issues), led many racist white southern Democrats to vote Republican and eventually become members of the US Republican Party of today.

In this context of American politics, the driving force of Dr. Hilliard’s speech at the ASCAC conference, discussing white supremacy and the system of racism, is the hidden white hands working to annihilate Black people, Afrika, Afrikan History, Afrikan culture, and Afrikan spirituality.

He said, “the attacks on Black people are happening in circles of White hegemony.” And Dr. Hilliard is right on point.

In a book called-Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth As History. It was published in 1996. The book’s author is Professor Mary Lefkowitz. Not Out of Africa was produced in response to the popular and massive Afrocentric movement taking place amongst Black people in America and in the world in the late 1980s to mid-1990s. She argues that Kemet (Egypt) did not play any role in the development of Greek culture and civilization.

The late Cornell University scholar and professor Dr. Martin Bernal, an internationally respected writer of European classics, wrote Black Athena. His important anti-racist work was published back in 1987. His book argues that Kemet (Egypt) played a major role in helping to create Greek philosophical, scientific, religious, and liturgical cultural traditions.

He once participated in a huge debate in New York City with Professor Lefkowitz. The debate also included, Professors Guy Maclean Rogers (Black Athena Revisited), and John Henrick Clark (Africana Studies). It was moderated by legendary journalist Utrice Leid (W.B.A.I ) in 1996. At the debate, Dr. Bernal said, “Not Out of Africa is an extremely provocative book.”

Dr. Bernal, who was white, wrote a review of the book Not Out of Africa, in the London Review of Books dated on December 12, 1996 titled, “Whose Greece.”

He wrote, “Mary Lefkowitz’s concern, or obsession, with Afrocentrism emerged suddenly in 1991, when she wrote a review of my book Black Athena for the New Republic. As a professor of classics, she was appalled to discover that people were writing books and teaching that Greek civilisation had derived – or even been ‘stolen’ – from Egypt, and claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were black, as were Socrates and Cleopatra. The Afrocentrists maintained that Greece had been invaded from Africa in the middle of the second millennium, that Greek religion and the mysteries were based on Egyptian prototypes, and that what was called ‘Greek’ philosophy was in fact the secret wisdom of Egyptian Masonry.”

Dr. Bernal went on to say, “For this reason, she has published a series of overlapping articles denouncing these Afrocentric ‘myths’. Not Out of Africa is a compilation of these pieces, along with some added material and new arguments. The blurb on the back of the book proclaims it to be ‘a thoughtful inquiry’, ‘detailed, carefully researched and fully documented’. In fact, this is not an argument conducted with the Afrocentrists, but an attempt to finish them off.” (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-pape)

The background information on Professor Lefkowitz is very interesting. Mary Lefkowitz, a White Jewish professor, is financed and supported well by ultra right-wing conservative groups. He said, “She has found powerful helpers on the far right. In her preface she thanks the Bradley and John M. Olin Foundations for their grants. These bodies are among the most generous contributors to right-wing organisations such as the National Review, the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Scholars. Lefkowitz sits on the advisory board of the last and plays an active role on its journal, Academic Questions. The concern of these organisations and journals is to turn back what their members and contributors see as the tides of liberalism that have engulfed not only American society but also education and the highbrow media.” (ibid)

Another book used by the establishment to justify the oppression of Black people is called-The Bell Curve. It was published in 1994. The book’s authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, argue, in some many words, that white people possess higher IQs. Unfortunately, Herrnstein and Murray manipulated statistics. They negated the impact of racist social and economic conditions playing out in American society, particularly in the Afrikan American community. But Hernstein and Murry did this to argue that Black people, and poor people, are inherently born with low IQs. But what’s equally frightening is that they argue that the US government system should do absolutely nothing to help remove the roadblocks keeping Black and poor people in a permanent existence in the underclass.

Vox journalist, Matthew Yglesias, wrote in an updated review of The Bell Curve dated on April 10, 2018 titled The Bell Curve is about policy. And it’s wrong, “The Bell Curve — co-authored with Richard Herrnstein — is, after all, not a work of scientific research but rather a political book written by one of the most prominent conservative policy entrepreneurs in America as part of a larger ideological project. Like several of Murray’s other books, including Losing Ground, In Our Hands, and Coming Apart, the basic subject of The Bell Curve is what should be done to help the disadvantaged in America. And the four books all reach the conclusion that, roughly speaking, we should do as little as is politically possible.”

Again, interestingly is the background information on Charles Murray.

He gets paid well from racist ultra-Republican conservative groups, like the American Enterprises Institute, to finance his “scholarship” to build a movement to attack Black people (https://www.vox.com/2018/4/10/)

Vox journalist Matthew Yglesias continues with this, “What’s more, despite the mythmaking around Murray, nobody has silenced or stymied him. He is one of the most successful authors of policy-relevant nonfiction working in America today. He’s ensconced at the center of the conservative policy establishment as an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2016, he won the Bradley Prize, a prestigious conservative award that carries a $250,000 stipend. He regularly publishes op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times reviewed Coming Apart twice. Tom Edsall featured it in a column (he says it raises “issues that are rarely examined with the rigor necessary to affirm or deny their legitimacy”), and David Brooks recommended it twice, lauding the “incredible data,” along with the analysis. PBS built an interactive around it.” (ibid)

In conclusion, the Black community is in trouble. Black people are under attack by White supremacy, the system of racism, and from some of our own people in this new millennium. Without a nationalist centered Black liberation Movement to protect our people, and our political interests, we are now at the mercy of our oppressors in America and in the world. We as Black people must understand that the white establishment is not playing checkers with us, they are playing chess. White supremacy and the system of racism have been working to eliminate any threats to their existence from Black people for centuries, but there are doing it now on social media and in many advanced sophisticated ways. The racist cultural seeds the establishment (i.e., Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, etc.) have planted in the past, have now grown into structures for Black disunity, the Europeanization and colonization of Black people, and the oppression and genocide of the Afrikan world community right now. We must dig deep into our Afrikan history, culture, and spirituality to presently find the soul of our revolutionary Black consciousness to fight back against the destruction of Black people.

Hotep!!!

-Bashir Muhammad Akinyele is a history and Africana Studies teacher. He is also the co-coordinator for ASCAC's (the Association for Study of Classical African Civilizations) Study Group Chapter in Newark, NJ. (https://ascac.org/)

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Africa. Kiswahili is the language used in Kwanzaa. The holiday of Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1.