Black Language Must Reflect
the New Dimension to our Struggle.

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Analysis

A new criticism emerges to support Afrocentricity which introduces relevant values; denounces non-Afrocentric behavior; and promotes analysis. Furthermore, in every field, in music, art, dance, sports, law, medicine, science, business, sociology, philosophy, communication, and every other aspect of life and society the Afrocentric critical methods start with the primary measure! Does it place Africans in the center? It proceeds on the basis of Haki' s brilliant question, "Is it in the best interest of African peoples?" (Madhubut. 1978).

The personalities and events most representative of our story in America and of the continent reflect our historical values; they teach us the nature of success and failure, good and evil, strength and weakness, what to hate and what to love. The lives of Piankhy, Tutankhamun, Nzingha, Tinubu, Hatshepsut, Isis, Horus, Tubman, Tutu, Asantewaa, Zumb~ Delaney, and Truth are just a few of the precious moments in our story which are as significant as the stories of Peter, Paul, Moses, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, Matthew, and David. Nothing is more right for you than the way derived from your own historical experiences. Whatever we know about the events surrounding the wars of England, the czars of Russia, the artistic flourishing in Italy; none of this knowledge is comparable to the knowledge you can have of yourself. Afrocentricity questions your approach to every conceivable human enterprise. It questions the approach you make to reading, writing, jogging, running, eating, keeping healthy, seeing, studying, loving, struggling, and working. If you do not come from an Afrocentric base, then you are in serious ethical and cultural trouble. No human being, who would be free, can be free by submitting when he does not have to submit. A fool is the person who cannot see that there are no longer any chains around his ankles, yet he walks as if he has weights at the bottom of his legs.

Our language must begin to reflect the new dimension to our struggle.

Understand clearly that there is no classical music to you other than that which comes out of your culture. When a brother or sister says that Beethoven or Bach or Mozart is classical let us understand what is being said, they may be classical to Europeans but not to us. When the Europeans use classical they use it to refer to the highest of their art forms. To me, because of Afrocentricity, what they refer to is European Concert Music because the only classical music I know is the polyrhythms and syncopated eights or Ellington, Coltrane, Eubie Blake, Charlie Parker, Mingus, and Gillespie.

I cannot deny the possibility of others speaking of classics within their contexts; I applaud their nationalism I do not have to share in it when my tradition is so rich and varied Universal is another of those words that has been used to hold the enemy in our brains. When a poet or a writer speaks on matters that relate to us, white critics are apt to say that the poet is not universal, meaning that he does not submit to white images or a Eurocentric framework Such arrogance perceives the Afrocentric writer as narrow, but promotes the Eurocentric writer as universal But we know where that comes from and understand precisely the nature of misleading classifications. A language mobilization constituting an Afrocentric sense begins and ends with consciousness.

You must be careful how you use language. Certain terms must either be redefined or eliminated. Consider the following list of terms that beg new definitions or elimination:

non-white tribe minority pygmy jungle war-like chief headman witch doctor Black Death Black Africa

African slaves hut cult mixed blood primitive colored Hottentot bushman African slave trade African dialects sub-Saharan native

To see how language can disrupt the thought of good solid brothers and sisters, ask one of your friends to comment on the meaning of these words. They should also be asked to find appropriate substitutes.

The Way of Newness.

The poet is right when he says "we walk the way of the new world," a world built upon the foundations of political and cultural Afrocentricity. Nothing can ever achieve for us the victory we seek but a recapture of our own minds. Most Diasporan Africans and many continental African intellectuals have been taught by white teachers or by blacks who were taught by white teachers. White teachers cannot inspire in our children the visions necessary for them to overcome limitations. Walking the way of the new world means that we must establish schools which will teach our children how to behave like the kings and queens they are meant to be. It is the process of creating Afrocentric schools. Indeed, many of the "socalled" leaders must be re-educated, re-oriented, and restored to their center.

The time for preachers who parade as leaders while taking our people down the sleepy road to a white Jesus who does little for our image or who participates in struggle against us is over. Afrocentricity says that "God" can speak to us as directly as he spoke to Nat Turner. It says that we do not have to rely upon the distant prophet of the Jews to give us God's words when we have prophets and holy people in our own heritage. We acknowledge that Jesus came among the Jews but we also recognize the presence of God among Africans and the wide acceptance of the Afrocentric view. The reason we walk the way of the new world is because as the express symbol for the survival of the spirit we have received the invaluable legacies of those who have gone before us and can now demonstrate the superiority of the way for us. It is superior for us because it is from us. It is not external to us; it was not given by some other people to us; it is not a paternalistic, materialistic, benevolent conceptualization. Afrocentricity is you. It derives from you and goes back to you.

Now it is possible that your brain is so whitewashed that you cannot see your own center because of the white glare. A few students at a major university organized a splinter organization in opposition to the Black Student Union because they felt that the black students were much too involved in issues of Afrocentricity; they called their organization, Inter-race. Such madness is the direct consequence of self- hatred, obligatory attitudes, false assumptions about society, and stupidity. Our story does not afford us an example of genuine white obligation to anything that is African; it is healthy and is evidence of the respect with which they hold their own culture and heritage. No words can be strong enough for the person who undercuts his own salvation by engaging in rearguard actions for the enemy which strips him of his self-sense in the first place. Historically correct notions of cohesion and collective imperatives are the most instructive measures for us to assume at this time.

African-American History and Its
Meanings, 1619 to the Present

Our social scientists must begin to explore from an Afrocentric methodology the impact of racism on whites, and their socia-communication networks that inflict white racism upon them. Afrocentric social science may be a misnomer, what I am really saying is that Afrocentricity can be used to examine many aspects of white life with the intention of providing clues to successful intervention and circumvention. A total rewrite of the major events and developments in the world is long overdue. Let us give credit to Jacob Carruthers, Chancellor Williams, Ivan van Sertima, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Maulana Karenga, and Cheikh Anta Diop. They have put us on our way. There has been and will be for the foreseeable future a need to examine the historical sources used by the white scholars to confute and refute the actual visual and textual evidences presented of the black civilization in Egypt Our own research, lecturing, writing, and activism contribute to the restitution of the collective conscious will of Africa. When our will was broken, a dispersal of the most universal nature occurred We had reached our point of technical perfection; our collective conscious will be lessened, and dissipated. Nevertheless, the research to which we must address ourselves at this juncture has to do with recapturing our own collective consciousness. By reclaiming Egypt, deciphering the ancient writing of Nubia, circulating the histories and geographies of Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Battuta, and examining records of Africans in Mexico and other places in the new world, we have begun the necessary reconstruction.

Afrocentricity is the logical outgrowth of the collective conscious will of the people; the collective conscious will is derived from Afrocentricity. What seems like a tautology is. Afrocentricity and collective conscious will are one. It is impossible to have a people who accept one without accepting the other. However, it is possible for misguided persons to assume that they can have an Afrocentric collective consciousness through ideologies or religions external to their histories. What they have is a faith in some spookism! Why is it so difficult for us to believe in each other? People did not believe in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but they believed in Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and various Indian gurus. I believe that God spoke to many of our most active intellectuals, scholars, and teachers. The message they received was that all truth resides in our own experiences if we only look there.

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