CULTURAL IDENTITY CRISIS
Part One
I remember reading a passage from a form of Black consciousness known as Supreme Understanding upon a video which explained our mission in one statement. He stated 'that if we identified ourselves as African Americans' --he, as a Blackman who's ancestors come from India, could not identify as other Blacks who live in America because he is not from Africa or America. He also stated, "I can not understand why we (as Blacks in America) would identify with that name either." I agree. I concur, he brings up two very good points: That name (African-American) describes a people who became identified as such, when the Blackman was abducted from Africa and brought to America as a slave to provide free labor in the establishment of the White colonial community of states. Thus being the case, the beginning of these groups of Blacks would start with the capturing of Black people on the Central Asian part of the globe and culminate into the chronicle of slavery in America. The lost prior culture through the subsequent separation and trading of their young (as was tradition in the American trade institution), along with the struggles to attempt to be accepted as equals (a phenomena which (to this date has not occurred)seem to be phenotypic or part-and-parcel for the chronology of most African-Americans. His point seems to be: if we identify ourselves with a particular part of the planet earth (Africa or America), those Blacks who were not from that part of the globe, or do not share in this same legacy or experience, will not identify as being the same people (Black). If this is his point, once again I agree.
Even the majority of Western historians will concur, the earliest find of human existence has been found in the central part of Asia-- the so called "African continent," "Middle East," (or East Africa to be precise); making the Black family the oldest human family on this planet. It is generally agreed that the Black man and woman migrated to all the other areas of the globe afterward. So when we speak of Black people as being the first people on the planet, most of our people around the world will look at these original people as our ancestors, prior to our migrations to whatever lands we eventually relocated. Whether in the Arabian Peninsula or the Himalayas, the Nile Delta, Australia or New Guinea, the Fertile Crescent or Mt. Kenya-- in the Wilderness of North America or in the Indus Kush Valley in India-- we are the same Black people in a different locale with some different customs. If we use skin tone and certain other markers to identify ourselves as a group, we can identify ourselves within every part of the world. But if we continue to engage in the Western practice of describing ourselves and our importance by where we live [land mass-and-migration](3 linked stories), we will be alienated psychologically from the rest of our people who have not made the same journey or been subjected to the same chronological experiences. For example, if the people from the Arabian Peninsula did not look at themselves as different from Ethiopia (Kush) or Egypt (Kemit)-- if the Bantu speaking people were not concentrating on tribal differences, religious ritualistic differences or which area they belong to-- Cecil Rhodes (2 linked articles) would have never had been as successful as he was at carving up the Central Asian continent into nice colonized territories, boundaries, and demarcations which the colonizers could use to rob and steal diamonds and precious minerals. The Blacks numbers and power would have been too much for the invaders to pull off such an occupation; much less hold it. And the same thing goes for the continent of India, but we allow boundaries, religion, tribalism, and other differences to divide us and therefore split-up our concern for one another-- where by allowing ourselves to be conquered by Western expansionists one-by-one or "tribe-by-tribe."
If we informed the world of a series of catastrophic events happening to a particular group of Black people on a specific part of the globe (like those chronological events depicted in Hotel Rwanda), as it stands today's reasoning, those Blacks from different areas (other than that particular group or tribe of Black people) would not relate to those events in the same way as the Blacks who are living there are going through it. In other words, unless they were kin to either of these tribes in Rwanda [Tutsi/ Hutu](2 linked stories) living elsewhere-- generally speaking the mindset of our people today would not be anywhere near the same anguish as those native or relative to Rwanda. Some among us might even focus on the differences between religion, politics, culture, or distance brought on by location and boundaries etc.-- and those things would serve to desensitize us to a lot of the empathy for "those people." It is to easy to feel that those issues confronting your people in one location has nothing to do with you in another area; especially if you do not live on that part of the globe or within that community. And in the past, this has allowed the same perpetrators to do hideous things to one group of our own people, one after the next -- while others sat complacently by as though these were another people: Saying things like, "I never like that bunch any way; serves them right." "God must be punishing them," etc., etc. So don't help them believing bad things could happen to you if you get involved. Ridiculous! This cowardice, or the lack of feeling concerning kinship, and/or feeling of neutrality was more important to them than their fear that God would be upset with their involvement. Compare the neutrality of Switzerland during World Wars I & II; the Isolationism of America before the beginning of the World Wars until President Harry Truman; the lack of sanctions by the U.S. during Apartheid as opposed to the sanctions withheld during the Bosnian Crisis. Somehow in all these cases there was a certain "disconnect" that over-rode their sense of humanity.
But once we look at ourselves as one genus or group-- "Black people," once we can get by our differences in religion, politics, culture or territory-- we can identify with those who have the same genetic markers and make-up-- regardless of our location on this globe or Third Stone from the Sun: No matter where we are, we are Black people in every part of the world. Once this has happened then the issue becomes: "Look at what they did to Black people over here; look at what they are doing to Black people over there! What are they trying to do to our people?" Once we have manage these issues, we would not let our personal differences control our public concerns! Far too often I have witnessed our own people not do business with a fellow Black, simply because of a difference in religion-- while these same issues are never brought up by Blacks while doing business with Whites. I have personally watched a Muslim, who is Black, not return a salute to me in his native religious greeting-- while talking at length to a White man who had been studying Arabic for non-religious reasons, after they both exchanged his religious greeting: What's up with that! How can he summarily make me a non-believer on face value while accommodating a person who makes no pretense to not being Muslim? Generally speaking, Blacks in America have always respect the White man's right to be different without fully ostracizing them-- yet we are less tolerant of our differences as a people (religion, style, etc.) and less likely to work around them as Black people. And even if we don't like doing so, we will generally consider the Whites position in a given situation, more so than a fellow Black. Why is that? Is it that we don't want to seem ignorant or uncivilized? Or maybe it's a reflection of our own self-hatred for us as a people... Who knows?
Any way, when I was in college during a work-study session, I remember being up, in the rafters getting art supplies down, as I heard a female say to my supervisor that she was an "Egyptian." Curiously, because of never having looked at an indigenous native from Kemit, I leaned over the ceiling/floor to sneak-a-peek at one. To my dismay, a pale Caucasian female was the only female I saw standing there! In my mind's eye I saw her as a White woman incarnated (born into earthly flesh) in Egypt, not as an Egyptian living in Egypt (because she is not indigenous to the area)! In the same manner of speaking, we who are Black and incarnated in North America, cannot stake claim to being African-American simply because we were born here. [if anyone could stake claim to being indigenous American, it would be the natives who were exiled sixteen thousand years ago from India, who crossed the Bering Strait [Long Strait] to get to this country]. Nor should the Blackman bear the title of "African-American," because in doing so that would make his chronology start with the unloading of slave ships loaded with Black human cargo from Central Asia (so-called Northern Africa), obtained by means of abduction (taken by force). Make no doubt about it, we are Black first-- then we may or may not be indigenous to certain areas. I'm sure if you were in the military and you were stationed over in Germany and had a child there, the Germans would not take kindly to you referring your child as a Black German. Subsequently, nor would the Russians call your child a Black Russian, if you were born while you were stationed there in Russia. Neither would the Irish take kindly to your reference as being a Black Irish under such similar conditions. First of all, you are not indigenous to those areas: Secondly, you don't share the same lineage, customs, tradition, culture, genetic markers or government which embrace your ways, for starters. Third: You come from a people who have a separate story to tell from your new location. Yet the colonizers feel justified in calling themselves American and referring to the natives as Indians and not Native Americans the ones they stole the land from...
So in essence, what we have been talking about is love, humanity, care and belonging-- while referring to different peoples attachments and treatments: When we were taken from our homeland and made into slaves by the slave mongers and peddlers of of Black flesh; those colonists who owned slaves wanted what they wanted so bad, they had to make us sub-human in their minds, so they live with the act they were committing. They claimed to be Christian, so they claimed we were heathen and in need of raising. Our culture and/or religion had to that of savages to them to make their deeds justified. They had to make us into something so uneducated, they would think they were doing us a favor by enslaving and training us. We were made so rebellious that they would not have a problem inflicting cruelty upon us to "break our will" and taming us-- and in some cases something so hideous, they would not have a problem disliking and maybe even hating and/or killing (like the Klu Klux Klan).
Everybody wants to feel loved and needed. Everybody wants to feel as though they are important to someone else or feel like they matter in the world! As you all know, love can make you feel good about yourself. By making us lesser in their minds, the people of European descent could justify their cruel, vicious, sub-human treatment of us as their property. They could cut off limbs and private parts and not feel they were doing it to a fellow human being! Isn't that what the Allied Powers did to the Hungarians in World War I? Demonize them to make the murder of their fellow Caucasians in war easier to do? Isn't that what the Germans did to the Jews? Isn't that what Hollywood rekindles, whenever they make Nazi pictures: create the person you love to hate? The people of Rwanda did it also to the Tutsi and Hutu during their tribal wars. The dehumanizing of the Blackman during slavery was institutionalized into the American Fabric, like the stars and stripes; ingraining it into the minds of the American people. Being a free man during that time was not much better for Blacks. Slave laws were created and legislation was passed in the United States concerning what could and could not be done to slaves, what their value was worth for reasons of state representation in Congress, while indirectly setting the trend for how it's citizens were to view all Blacks. A lot of that treatment spilled over to Black men and women whether or not they were free or enslaved and Congress did little to safeguard the rights of those whom the populace considered an inferior race. Most Blacks were classified as property and as sub-humans, we summarily denied human rights. As you can witness at the times of Frederick Douglass, many free Blacks were fighting to be recognised as dignified in the eyes of whites, thus they enlisted in the Civil war to achieve this end (which indicates they did not have it. But something else happened in the process of evolving the United States and its' peculiar institution called slavery: We Blacks began to curse our condition and treatment in this country by associating our skin with the hate and ill-treatment being unleashed upon us. We began to associate the treatment as something we were born into and accustom to because of the color of our skin, the two (Black skin and misery) being something which identifies us to receiving such impoverish and inhumane treatment ("just because you're Black"). We began to hate our social and political position within American Society and began creating alternative characters and alter-egos for ourselves ("I'm not Black, I'm brown--from the Boogie Down" or "Coming from an intelligent Brown man"). We began to hate what America made us and began inventing ways to escape the pain: We began to hate ourselves and those who look like us. We began to inflict the greatest cruelty on those of our own kind, out of our own frustration. Anyone who has seen gang warfare within the inner-cities knows what I am talking about. And since we (as a people) were lost from our homeland for such a long time, our sense of belonging to the homeland was severed-- leaving a big void and with it went all the love, concern, and care-- on both sides... With the invention of Tarzan and its various stereotypes, for us as Black people to identify with Africa meant to identify with being savage; at least in the minds of the unsophisticated television viewer. So as you are talking to him or her, he/she is visualizing a bone going through your nose... To identify with being an African American meant to be viewed as a former slave and inferior being (we have to look at ourselves as being Black and currently residing in America to change the playing field). Worst of all, because of the consistent ill-treatment by White America, we began to believe that maybe we were that being which is inferior and that being which they identifies with the "N" word! America created Blacks as sub-humans to rationalize the bondage of fellow human beings and create a slave institution, but it indirectly created a self-loathing victim in the process. Then, because the Black man and woman thought he/she was nothing, anything which looked like him/her must be nothing as well (in his/her mind). And in thinking that, he/she began to lash out by inflicting the greatest cruelty upon those of his kind, or go out of his way to discredit Blacks who thought highly of themselves. Therefore in a effort to escape the ill-treatment by others in America, Blacks in America also attempted to redefine and/or recreate themselves by lying about their past and their amalgamations ("I'm half Cherokee," "I'm half-White, Spanish," etc.)...
If we informed the world of a series of catastrophic events happening to a particular group of Black people on a specific part of the globe (like those chronological events depicted in Hotel Rwanda), as it stands today's reasoning, those Blacks from different areas (other than that particular group or tribe of Black people) would not relate to those events in the same way as the Blacks who are living there are going through it. In other words, unless they were kin to either of these tribes in Rwanda [Tutsi/ Hutu](2 linked stories) living elsewhere-- generally speaking the mindset of our people today would not be anywhere near the same anguish as those native or relative to Rwanda. Some among us might even focus on the differences between religion, politics, culture, or distance brought on by location and boundaries etc.-- and those things would serve to desensitize us to a lot of the empathy for "those people." It is to easy to feel that those issues confronting your people in one location has nothing to do with you in another area; especially if you do not live on that part of the globe or within that community. And in the past, this has allowed the same perpetrators to do hideous things to one group of our own people, one after the next -- while others sat complacently by as though these were another people: Saying things like, "I never like that bunch any way; serves them right." "God must be punishing them," etc., etc. So don't help them believing bad things could happen to you if you get involved. Ridiculous! This cowardice, or the lack of feeling concerning kinship, and/or feeling of neutrality was more important to them than their fear that God would be upset with their involvement. Compare the neutrality of Switzerland during World Wars I & II; the Isolationism of America before the beginning of the World Wars until President Harry Truman; the lack of sanctions by the U.S. during Apartheid as opposed to the sanctions withheld during the Bosnian Crisis. Somehow in all these cases there was a certain "disconnect" that over-rode their sense of humanity.
But once we look at ourselves as one genus or group-- "Black people," once we can get by our differences in religion, politics, culture or territory-- we can identify with those who have the same genetic markers and make-up-- regardless of our location on this globe or Third Stone from the Sun: No matter where we are, we are Black people in every part of the world. Once this has happened then the issue becomes: "Look at what they did to Black people over here; look at what they are doing to Black people over there! What are they trying to do to our people?" Once we have manage these issues, we would not let our personal differences control our public concerns! Far too often I have witnessed our own people not do business with a fellow Black, simply because of a difference in religion-- while these same issues are never brought up by Blacks while doing business with Whites. I have personally watched a Muslim, who is Black, not return a salute to me in his native religious greeting-- while talking at length to a White man who had been studying Arabic for non-religious reasons, after they both exchanged his religious greeting: What's up with that! How can he summarily make me a non-believer on face value while accommodating a person who makes no pretense to not being Muslim? Generally speaking, Blacks in America have always respect the White man's right to be different without fully ostracizing them-- yet we are less tolerant of our differences as a people (religion, style, etc.) and less likely to work around them as Black people. And even if we don't like doing so, we will generally consider the Whites position in a given situation, more so than a fellow Black. Why is that? Is it that we don't want to seem ignorant or uncivilized? Or maybe it's a reflection of our own self-hatred for us as a people... Who knows?
Any way, when I was in college during a work-study session, I remember being up, in the rafters getting art supplies down, as I heard a female say to my supervisor that she was an "Egyptian." Curiously, because of never having looked at an indigenous native from Kemit, I leaned over the ceiling/floor to sneak-a-peek at one. To my dismay, a pale Caucasian female was the only female I saw standing there! In my mind's eye I saw her as a White woman incarnated (born into earthly flesh) in Egypt, not as an Egyptian living in Egypt (because she is not indigenous to the area)! In the same manner of speaking, we who are Black and incarnated in North America, cannot stake claim to being African-American simply because we were born here. [if anyone could stake claim to being indigenous American, it would be the natives who were exiled sixteen thousand years ago from India, who crossed the Bering Strait [Long Strait] to get to this country]. Nor should the Blackman bear the title of "African-American," because in doing so that would make his chronology start with the unloading of slave ships loaded with Black human cargo from Central Asia (so-called Northern Africa), obtained by means of abduction (taken by force). Make no doubt about it, we are Black first-- then we may or may not be indigenous to certain areas. I'm sure if you were in the military and you were stationed over in Germany and had a child there, the Germans would not take kindly to you referring your child as a Black German. Subsequently, nor would the Russians call your child a Black Russian, if you were born while you were stationed there in Russia. Neither would the Irish take kindly to your reference as being a Black Irish under such similar conditions. First of all, you are not indigenous to those areas: Secondly, you don't share the same lineage, customs, tradition, culture, genetic markers or government which embrace your ways, for starters. Third: You come from a people who have a separate story to tell from your new location. Yet the colonizers feel justified in calling themselves American and referring to the natives as Indians and not Native Americans the ones they stole the land from...
So in essence, what we have been talking about is love, humanity, care and belonging-- while referring to different peoples attachments and treatments: When we were taken from our homeland and made into slaves by the slave mongers and peddlers of of Black flesh; those colonists who owned slaves wanted what they wanted so bad, they had to make us sub-human in their minds, so they live with the act they were committing. They claimed to be Christian, so they claimed we were heathen and in need of raising. Our culture and/or religion had to that of savages to them to make their deeds justified. They had to make us into something so uneducated, they would think they were doing us a favor by enslaving and training us. We were made so rebellious that they would not have a problem inflicting cruelty upon us to "break our will" and taming us-- and in some cases something so hideous, they would not have a problem disliking and maybe even hating and/or killing (like the Klu Klux Klan).
Everybody wants to feel loved and needed. Everybody wants to feel as though they are important to someone else or feel like they matter in the world! As you all know, love can make you feel good about yourself. By making us lesser in their minds, the people of European descent could justify their cruel, vicious, sub-human treatment of us as their property. They could cut off limbs and private parts and not feel they were doing it to a fellow human being! Isn't that what the Allied Powers did to the Hungarians in World War I? Demonize them to make the murder of their fellow Caucasians in war easier to do? Isn't that what the Germans did to the Jews? Isn't that what Hollywood rekindles, whenever they make Nazi pictures: create the person you love to hate? The people of Rwanda did it also to the Tutsi and Hutu during their tribal wars. The dehumanizing of the Blackman during slavery was institutionalized into the American Fabric, like the stars and stripes; ingraining it into the minds of the American people. Being a free man during that time was not much better for Blacks. Slave laws were created and legislation was passed in the United States concerning what could and could not be done to slaves, what their value was worth for reasons of state representation in Congress, while indirectly setting the trend for how it's citizens were to view all Blacks. A lot of that treatment spilled over to Black men and women whether or not they were free or enslaved and Congress did little to safeguard the rights of those whom the populace considered an inferior race. Most Blacks were classified as property and as sub-humans, we summarily denied human rights. As you can witness at the times of Frederick Douglass, many free Blacks were fighting to be recognised as dignified in the eyes of whites, thus they enlisted in the Civil war to achieve this end (which indicates they did not have it. But something else happened in the process of evolving the United States and its' peculiar institution called slavery: We Blacks began to curse our condition and treatment in this country by associating our skin with the hate and ill-treatment being unleashed upon us. We began to associate the treatment as something we were born into and accustom to because of the color of our skin, the two (Black skin and misery) being something which identifies us to receiving such impoverish and inhumane treatment ("just because you're Black"). We began to hate our social and political position within American Society and began creating alternative characters and alter-egos for ourselves ("I'm not Black, I'm brown--from the Boogie Down" or "Coming from an intelligent Brown man"). We began to hate what America made us and began inventing ways to escape the pain: We began to hate ourselves and those who look like us. We began to inflict the greatest cruelty on those of our own kind, out of our own frustration. Anyone who has seen gang warfare within the inner-cities knows what I am talking about. And since we (as a people) were lost from our homeland for such a long time, our sense of belonging to the homeland was severed-- leaving a big void and with it went all the love, concern, and care-- on both sides... With the invention of Tarzan and its various stereotypes, for us as Black people to identify with Africa meant to identify with being savage; at least in the minds of the unsophisticated television viewer. So as you are talking to him or her, he/she is visualizing a bone going through your nose... To identify with being an African American meant to be viewed as a former slave and inferior being (we have to look at ourselves as being Black and currently residing in America to change the playing field). Worst of all, because of the consistent ill-treatment by White America, we began to believe that maybe we were that being which is inferior and that being which they identifies with the "N" word! America created Blacks as sub-humans to rationalize the bondage of fellow human beings and create a slave institution, but it indirectly created a self-loathing victim in the process. Then, because the Black man and woman thought he/she was nothing, anything which looked like him/her must be nothing as well (in his/her mind). And in thinking that, he/she began to lash out by inflicting the greatest cruelty upon those of his kind, or go out of his way to discredit Blacks who thought highly of themselves. Therefore in a effort to escape the ill-treatment by others in America, Blacks in America also attempted to redefine and/or recreate themselves by lying about their past and their amalgamations ("I'm half Cherokee," "I'm half-White, Spanish," etc.)...
Back in the days when wearing buttons was popular (let's bring it back), my persons wore a statement which read, "Think globally, act locally." We not only wore it, we accepted it as a philosophical part of our being. What that means to those who think along these lines is, "You should take stock of what is happening around the world, but you should make your synopsis felt within the area you are in-- make something happen locally. Foreigners constantly breeze by multitudes of "experts in the field," in order to ask me (or other Black people) questions. Why? Is it because, "Even though we do not speak the same language," WE DO speak the same the same language?! Why yes, I would say, a lot of foreigners feel that a lot of Black people are sympathetic to their situation. They can tell if we know how they feel. They can sense our souls. When the souls are the same, then it is the same mental, verbal, as well as body "language." Therefore these people are people who will know and understands how it feels-- as well as make every effort to understand and/or remedy situations. All over the world (though the chronological events are slightly different) we as Blacks suffer from a common affliction, by a common group of people from a common part of the continent, who believe that all other people are stepping stones to their goals. They use other peoples and nationalities to achieve their goals of world domination and somewhat of a monopoly on the finer things in life. I use the term "part of the continent" because before the Suez Canal was constructed by Europe (an engineered feat which cost thousands of so-called Egyptians their lives to show the West of their design fallacies), one could walk from Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula straight into the Middle East which is so-called Egypt in Northern Africa: Showing. and proving that this land mass is really one great single continent called Asia.
Once we begin to look at ourselves as one people-- Black-- located in different parts of the globe, our concerns for us as a people will start to expand. It will stop being a myopic perspective, or a religious perspective and will begin to expand into an international one. We will cease having a sparrow-like perception, darting through the trees of Western obstacles while getting "crumbs of dollars" for mere sustenance and develop a hawk's eye view concerning these "land developers" (land grabbing thieves). Flying high above their restrictions, surveying the total layout which encompasses all the land masses, overlooking total details with a free soul.
Once we begin to look at ourselves as one people-- Black-- located in different parts of the globe, our concerns for us as a people will start to expand. It will stop being a myopic perspective, or a religious perspective and will begin to expand into an international one. We will cease having a sparrow-like perception, darting through the trees of Western obstacles while getting "crumbs of dollars" for mere sustenance and develop a hawk's eye view concerning these "land developers" (land grabbing thieves). Flying high above their restrictions, surveying the total layout which encompasses all the land masses, overlooking total details with a free soul.
[Next: How our schooling in geography, education and religion plays its part in the Cultural Identity Crisis]
Our aim at Black Consciousness on the Third Stone from the Sun is to bring you the truth in hopes it will expand your mind and raise your consciousness as a people (creating international unconventional thinkers), instead of letting it whither and die under the regime of ego-centered, narcissistic, hedonistic people who just want our labor, our land, our resources and control of our souls.
Peace and Blessings,
C. Be'erla Hai-roi Myers
Our aim at Black Consciousness on the Third Stone from the Sun is to bring you the truth in hopes it will expand your mind and raise your consciousness as a people (creating international unconventional thinkers), instead of letting it whither and die under the regime of ego-centered, narcissistic, hedonistic people who just want our labor, our land, our resources and control of our souls.
Peace and Blessings,
C. Be'erla Hai-roi Myers
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