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Written by Odebitola
Sunday, 13 November 2005


I may have a jaundiced view of cultural nationalism but I feel that I have been around sufficient of them to have some understanding of their world view. I am going to restrict my comments to black cultural nationalists as they are paradoxically the biggest threat to black liberty and freedom of worship for Affrican Traditional religions.

Cultural nationalists tend to emphasise the role of black culture as the primal role in the battle for black liberation. As such the adoption of African (or should I say Afrikan) dress, names and cuisine is held as the most liberating of actions. The fact that cultural nationalists frequently look down on those who do not share their views is more alarming.

Maulana Ron Karenga was one of the leading lights in the movement to have a separate black religious holiday in the US and is seen by many as the founder of black cultural nationalism. Karenga was the enemy of the Black panthers and was also convicted for torturing two black women in the early 70s. It is no surprise that he has produced his own version of the Ifa verses and certain Egyptian texts as he feels that black religion must be a ripe hunting ground for further followers for his cult.

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I would take this writer's opinion with a pound of salt.

The whole article is very dismissive of Black Nationalism, because the writer has a history of cultivating a 'white face'.

While the writer is entitled to his own perspective, using this article as a basis for ANYTHING at all, other than discussing how some Black people live with self-hatred and make more of white culture and people than what is considered strictly necessary, will engender laughter from the serious Orisa people.

Hey Kev! That link not working can you please check it?

I know yuh tail in Trini having a time and I doh wanna hear bout it lol.

Well I don't know who Odebitola is and I can't open the link either to read the whole article although I think I know what the writer is going to say. But if we set aside the messenger and just look at the message, we have to look at some unpleasant realities.

Like Bro Valentino sang in a calypso "every brother is not a brother" and Karenga eh no brother. He has been denounced before by no less than the late great Dr John Henrik Clarke PRIMARILY because of his role in bringing down the Black Panthers on behalf of the LAPD and the FBI (he was a paid informant and this is not speculation). Now Karenga has some good literature; his translations of the Egyptian Wisdom Teachings are great, but it is instructive that two major heavyweights - Dr Clarke and Dr Ben - pulled out of a venture dealing with Classical African Studies when they realised that he was going to be a part of it.

Black/African Nationalism had its time and place; I have no problem with the dress and the names and the cuisine; I subscribe to all of the above. But we have to confront the fact that in the Diaspora and even on the Continent itself, many of the Nationalists were products of the same oppressive, masculinist Eurocentric system they fought against. It's instructive that many of the African nationalists harboured and still hold deep ignorance and contempt towards Africa and the values that are found in many traditional African societies. Many of the A/N organisations have nothing in their unwritten or written constitutions that advocate wealth/resource distrubution to the less fortunate in the organisation or to the target groups they claim to be reaching out to; many of them have no politically and economically autonomous Women's Group or party (which was a central feature in traditional African societies, read the works of Ifi Amadiume). How many of these A/N truly read Africentric thinkers like Diop, Clarke, Nkrumah, CLR James, Walter Rodney, Kenneth Kaunda, Amilcar Cabral? How many of them studied the model of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania? Indeed, forget Africa, how many people even studied the self-reliance ventures of the Black Panthers or the UNIA? How many people even bother with indigenous banking and saving systems like the su-su (which, according to what Chalkdust once sang, Chase Manhatten Bank studied and copied?).

It has to be more than just the slogans and the names and the dress; it has to be a totality. I always liked the "pyramid" model advanced by Dr Lennard Jeffries in which he used to sides of the pyramid to show how one must have African-centred politics, economics AND culture, all linked to each other, all feeding off of each other. And that culture includes the kind of accountability all leaders must adhere to before decisions are made. Odebitola may or may not have on "whiteface" but if any African advancement is to take place, we have to be prepared to look at those brothers who are not brothers.

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Create your own university; develop and encourage a culture of critical thinking and action

Couldn't agree with you more bro!

The concept of pan africanism and nationalism have to take a giant step forward from it's inception. This is the reason why it's been stuck in first gear. Sometimes I feel s though people within the diaspora found out about only 1/10th of it's cultural identity and ran with just what they know. We have to keep searching for the truth and redevelop our communities around what we find.

Here's my two cents for what its worth......
I work with quite a few Black Nationalists/Pan-Africanists and I can identify with alot of what they believe in and espouse. However my biggest gripe about them is their habit of talking AT people rather than TO them. They tend to have this approach which is dictating to people how they should feel, wthey should dress, what they should call themselves all of which are extremely patronizing. Many of these people and the groups they are apart of are EXTREMELY male dominated, and paternalistic all things that they accuse eurocentrics of being. I dont know like I said I like the message but have issues with many of the messengers i guess.

And you should be Rina; the problem with the messengers in my view is that too many have become comfortable with retaining the Eurocentric models and attitudes and with trying to adapt them to fit into an African framework. Also, like I said, given our deep immersion in Eurocentrism, we have become products of the very things we are fighting against and haven’t recognised that.

I remember many years ago my mother commenting on that same way African Nationalists have this way of speaking at you and not to you. I myself was guilty of it a few times. In retrospect I realised that it was a kind of frustration with the fact that many people who one was targeting, who WERE dissatisfied with their lives and their societies, nevertheless preferred to remain in their comfort zones. Change is difficult sometimes, you know, and the exploitative system we all live under has created many comfort zones in all fields to keep you pacified. Many B/N don’t really mean to talk down to people but it often grows out of disenchantment with the way that people, knowing that there are alternatives to the way they now live, are too afraid or unwilling to make that step….and yet STILL complain. Even the great Malcolm X had that problem to some degree: how is it that people were not seeing what he was seeing? Why were people still embracing a religion that kept them muzzled and pacified? Trust me, Rina, that sort of thing tends to eat away at you inside and if you don’t check it in time, you find yourself, as many B/N did, scorning and angry at the same people they were trying to convert. Even now, on a related issue, I have had to struggle with keeping my own feelings in check with Trinidadians who voted back in the PNM and yet still they are protesting and up in arms for the myriad of sh*t they doing right now, as if they didn’t figure out that that is exactly what Manning and his cohorts would have done once they got back into office. But, again, comfort zone.

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Create your own university; develop and encourage a culture of critical thinking and action

I hear what you're saying here however I still believe that even where solutions/alternatives are concerned, many Pan Africanists/Black Nationalists haven't found effectives ways to convey these alternatives. Nationalists need to remember they're fighting against the effects of over 600 yrs of European colonialism, not to mention the images we see today in the media of independant African nations being led by corrupt, selfish leaders who look just like you and me (im including the Caribbean nations also) Many people feel more comfortable with the devil they know. I think this is where Black Nationalists fail. They too busy telling people not to perm their hair, or to change their slave name when in my humble opinion this is small ting. Lets talk about repatriation to Africa, if so where we gonna go? What kind of economic system we going to put in place? How are we going to ensure that our leaders are not going to be corrupt? how are we going to co-exist in a eurocentric world? Who are we going to trade with? how do we maintain some type of diplomacy with a world that probably will not even want us to exist??
These are the issues I want to hear. Nationalists cannot expect people to fall in line and give up what they know simply for an ideal.....
Can they?

Well, some people have but they remain in the minority.

Africa has the advantage; Europe and the US need Africa more than the other way around. The problem with Africa (and the Caribbean) is that they have a multi-headed tiger on their back that they can’t shake off long enough to get that important second wind. I’m speaking about
1) The trade “agreements” they were forced to adopt when Europe was retreating from colonialism. These agreements forced African and Caribbean regions to continue to manage economies built around importing goods they did not produce and producing goods they did not use. As such the economical internal dynamics simply could not become fully developed.
2) The installation and supporting of corrupt leaders with arms, military technologies and training.
3) The supporting of political elites who are schooled in Western models that they simply transplant in their respective countries. That these economic, social and political models have almost no relevance to the historical, social, geographical and economic realities is of little importance.
4) Related to the third point, the refusal to and hostility for the idea of political involvement from the grassroots level (politics from below). Most of these regions had their own systems that worked very well for hundreds if not thousands of years (which is why I am somewhat guarded as to asking questions along the line of “what economic/social system would we use if we repatriated”). To even try to reintroduce some of these systems may trigger a chain of events that result in the challenging of the Eurocentric systems and the local political elites’ claim to holding power. Why do you think the very educational systems are structured the way they are? Leaders cannot have people actually THINKING

Mind you, even now there are attempts in Africa and in the Caribbean to cement trade and cultural links because it is being recognised that what Europe is embarking upon is a new form of colonialism. The going is difficult but not insurmountable. New paradigms need to be conceptualised; Black Nationalism had its time and place but it needs to be moved to a new level and perhaps we are looking at the wrong leaders to do so. Perhaps we should be looking more in the mirror.

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Create your own university; develop and encourage a culture of critical thinking and action