The Prospects For Afrocentric Victory (lV)

Institutional senility is another of the most pressing problems we face in the American society. The African American community is one of the most organized in the United States. We are inundated with churches, community groups, mosques, and old and new civil rights organizations. Yet these institutions do not adequately cover the black population and have little relevance in the lives of many people. The black Baptist church is said to have eight million members yet they do not act in a collective manner in support of an African agenda.

Other institutions of a religious nature are also quite conservative and reactionary when it comes to the assertion of African ideas and ideals. I am convinced that the disease of institutional senility has affected all of the institutions in the African American community that have not expressly declared their Afrocentric and Pan African character. To be Afrocentric you must be self-consciously so, it does not arrive by virtue of blackness or nativity; it is an awareness that must be repeated daily until it becomes a part of our nature.

To act in the best interest of African people and to commit ourselves to agency that allows us to become fully human involves a commitment to dispense with any beggar position. We are the mothers and fathers of human civilization and as such we are quite capable of securing our position in the world on our own. We must take what belongs to us but we must not depend upon others to do what we can and must do for ourselves.

(The Obama Factor: 1) The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States was a historic moment in many respects. It brought about more racism, brutal acts against blacks, attacks on black youths, police killings, and more threats to the president than ever in the history of the country. We are still in the cold tundra of white supremacist thinking in the United States despite the fact that the combination of demography and block voting on the parts of Africans and Mexicans, and Asians, helped to cement the electoral victory for Barack Obama.

But the majority of whites did not vote for Obama in either of the two elections where he ran for the presidency. This is a fact that has been repeatedly missed when people make assessments about the American elections. It is like the new hype that all of the Westerners loved Madiba and celebrated the struggle against apartheid when we know that they were the biggest supporters of the apartheid governments. Just as we must prevent the re-writing of South African history we must prevent the re-writing of the history of Barack Obama’s election.

There is much to be discussed about the role of Obama in the destabilizing of the African continent in service to white world corporate dominance. One of the great tragedies for many African Americans was the lack of progressive advances on our issues during the Obama administration. We lost leadership, we lost wealth, we lost sovereignty, and we lost respect with the prosecuting of the Obama Administration.

Few could see any positive results for the Obama government when it came to Africa. Some African Americans wished for the African policies of Bush and Clinton. While I think that would be going too far I must truly criticize the lack of African initiatives that will solidify Africa’s economic place in the world. Africa is not begging but Africa needs to be treated fairly and with respect. This is what the Afrocentric Pan African Movement is calling for in regards to the African continent.

(Onward Toward Unity: l) Despite the fact that I do not wish to abandon the blackness of the northern region of the continent and despite the fact that I claim the ancient civilizations of the Nile River for Black Africa, I have concluded that the best way for Africa to advance is to move toward a unity of the willing nations. This collection of nations will be known as the courageous engineers of a new Africa. They will shatter 2017 as a date for union and move immediately toward a confederation of states that will secure the political kingdom and the economic kingdom simultaneously.

I spoke to a sub-committee of Heads of States under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo at Abuja, Nigeria in 2005 and said that those who were assembled could make history if they took charge of the United States of Africa. They simply kicked the football down the path to wait for another generation of leaders. What cowardice? Why would they run away from immortality as continental leaders only to be dragged into the pen of narrow nationalists? African Americans know that the suffering of black people in Sudan, Libya, Egypt, and Mauritania would not be permitted if we had a strong African Union. But a strong African Union would mean an organization that was supported by the Black States in an aggressive financial manner.

We would not have to have the European nations paying 30% of the African Union’s bills or we would no longer have to depend upon those Arabized nations that straddle the field between Africa and Arabia with their commitments more to their Arab grandfathers than they have to their African countries. This quandary is at the root of the problem of Afrocentric Pan Africanism. There can be no effective Pan Africanism without an Afrocentric underpinning where we do what is in the best interest of Africa all the time. This is often problematic for those nations with heavily Arabized populations.

Part V is next…