At This Point We Leave Africa Not to Mention It Again
GET REAL: Embracing blackness
I WAS Office of the African History celebrations at a school recently. On my way to the hall I passed two piffling girls who were walking towards each other. One of them was dressed in African habiliment. The one in school uniform looked at her friend and said, "Y'all wait like an African." Me with my fast self jook in my mout and said to her playfully, "You also."
They laughed. My heart smiled. I think a time when if you told a Barbadian schoolhouse kid that they looked like an African it would have been taken as an insult.
The two little girls seemed not at all offended. This is progress. If I had dropped those 2 young ladies anywhere in Africa, no i would accept assumed that they were anything but African. I look frontward to the solar day when our children tin can look in the mirror and see Africa no matter how they are dressed.
Why is this of import? How does this solve our problems? Does it prepare potholes? Will it create jobs? Volition information technology reduce criminal offense? My answer is, Aye, we cannot really accost our problems without addressing the problem of self-prototype.
A while ago, Downwards To Brass Tacks had an episode focused on education. 1 of the guests, a prominent businessman lamented that he came beyond also many Barbadians who were very well educated but for some reason, "did not seem to have access to their pedagogy". My question is: If you own a fast car but non the keys, are y'all going anywhere?
The fundamentals of didactics are more than facts, figures and formulas. Educating self-prototype is besides a primal. Cocky-image is the key to unlocking potential.
Yous can know all the facts, figures and formulas in the globe. It is your self-image that determines what you do with them. This why Errol Barrow'south question, "What is your mirror image" was and then of import. The answer is too of import to be left to hazard.
I have spent a considerable corporeality of fourth dimension visiting in Barbadian schools. More than a few times I've called to intervene when the 2d darkest person in a class was berating the darkest person in the course for existence too dark while the other dark children cheered and laughed.
If a nighttime-skinned child is to succeed, at some betoken she will grapple with the negative associations that are often made to being darker. If yous are one of those who think that we are passed this phase y'all demand to get out more. Hopefully you are not like many others who all the same avoid the sun for fear of getting also dark.
European explorers called Africa the "Night Continent" because it was unknown and a mystery to them. A wilful ignorance of Africa led philosopher Hegel to declare, "At this bespeak we exit Africa, not to mention information technology again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit . . . . What we properly understand past Africa, is the unhistorical, undeveloped spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented hither only every bit on the threshold of the World'south History."
This incorrect and destructive image of Africa subtly seeps into the psyche of the African, who is miseducated about his or herself. She seeks to leave Africa once and for all, literally or figuratively, not to mention information technology again.
In that location is survival logic at work. Once we decided that there was no escaping the concentration camps called plantations, the next best affair was to escape as much as possible the matter that made life on the plantation hard. Here began a drastic escape from our blackness, and what nosotros perceived that to be. To exist whiter or more European meant improve food, better lodgings, meliorate handling, a meliorate life. The African was moved to effort to erase Africa from within and without herself as much as humanly possible.
Whiter skin, straighter hair, lighter skinned children, embracing so-called European "high culture" are archetype strategies to aid in the escape. The quest to escape blackness continues today considering in many cases we yet believe also much evidence of Africa in yous is a liability. That is a message that is spread overtly and covertly.
The fortresses on the west coasts of Africa, where captive Africans were held awaiting export to places similar Barbados, had narrow doors that the captives would laissez passer through to board the slave ships. They were called "doors of no render". We were not to mention Africa again.
The teachers in the schools who are spearheading the African History celebrations are creating "doors of render." This is a great work. To those who question why we should await into the by, we invite them to render to the Ashanti principle of Sankofa which ways "looking into the past in order to nautical chart the futurity".
A broken mirror image prevents one from truly reaping the benefits of even the best instruction. Blackness leadership is limited in what it can accomplish to the extent that information technology is educated to be estranged from its own black, its own Africanness. Information technology cannot operationalise Sankofa. It struggles to solve our problems considering information technology is only concerned with escaping them. Deep within it may still take the sense that the trouble is inherent in our blackness.
That securely internalised miseducation is an invisible brake on progress through a subtly destructive self-image. It may be why the commentator noticed that so many well-educated Barbadians did non have access to their teaching. At that place is a missing the cardinal of an empowered cocky-paradigm.
When that little girl looks at her friend and says admiringly, "You look like an African," Hegels propaganda and lies are existence defeated. She is being educated not to escape her Africanness, only to comprehend it. Despite all efforts to the opposite Africans spread beyond the globe continue to mention Africa and repair its self-image.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email: [email protected]
Source: https://www.nationnews.com/2017/02/19/get-real-embracing-blackness/
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