An African Centered Perspective
“We have declared that we wish to build our economy on the basis of the equality of all citizens and have specifically rejected the concept of creating a class system where one group of people owns the means of production for the purpose of getting profit and another group works for them. We have not excluded private enterprise, and we want people to start their own productive and commercial undertakings. But we have said that the emphasis in our economy should be on ownership by the people, through the people’s own institutions. What we are thus trying to do is build a ‘mixed economy’ which includes both public and private enterprise – with the emphasis on the former – so as to get the most rapid and most beneficial economic development.” – Julius Nyerere, the 1st President of Tanzania, 1960
When I read that quote from my brother of kindred spirit, Equism was born in my mind, and it has continued to grow and develop. The creative thinking that I offer is the same as that of my brother, President Nyerere. Equism provides the methodology to achieve our mutual objective.
I call my perspective African-centered. My memoir, I Am What Hate Produced: My Journey to Freedom in a Racist World, c.2020, provides insight to the formation of my African-centered perspective. Malcolm X offers an excellent example of an African-centered perspective.
“…I don’t even consider myself an American.
If you and I were Americans, there would be no problem. Those whites that just got off the boat, they are already Americans. Polacks are already American. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet.
Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you an American, you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution, you wouldn’t be faced with Civil-Rights filibustering in Washington, D.C.
They don’t have to pass legislation to make a Polack an American.
No, I’m not an American. I’m one of 22 million Black people who are victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.
So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-waver – no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim.
I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”
That was said a ‘life-time’ ago (almost 60 years), and today, June 14, 2022, as I write, there is filibustering in Washington, DC to prevent the John Lewis Voting Rights Act from becoming Law, which supposedly would secure ‘equal rights’ for all Americans, regardless to ‘race, creed, or color’. It’s just another joke that makes me laugh every time I hear a news report about ‘politics and voting’.
Dissatisfaction of the slavery, poverty, and death Africans and other people of color have experienced for the last 2,300 years under European hegemony has produced a very real perspective on the problem, and a solution. I am offering Equism as the antidote for capitalism, the deadly economic pandemic that has plagued the world since its birth over 2,300 years ago.
The following quote from Chancellor Williams’ seminal work, The Destruction of Black Civilizations, 1974, is another great example of a difference of perspective between cultures. This was said almost 50 years ago, and it is true today for people of all colors, not just so-called ‘black’ people.
“The outlook is grim. For the Black people of the world there is no bright tomorrow. The Blacks continue to live in their dream world of singing, dancing, marching, praying, and hoping – still trusting in the ultimate justice of the white man, but a thousand years hence their decedents will be substantially where the race was a thousand years before.
For the white people, still masters of the world, are not about to yield. They still own and control the wealth of Africa, directly and indirectly, and from it, along with that from other areas of the world, they have developed technologies and a world commerce [Capitalism] that assure them of continued white supremacy.
This phenomenal success, this unquestionable position of strength, derived from their conquests of others and their wealth, has led them to believe that they are, as a matter of fact, the superior people and therefore, the rightful rulers of this planet.
Why then should they be expected to yield? ‘Human Rights’? ‘Equal Rights’? What are these but narcotic slogans for the masses – even the white masses – which are quickly conceded as ‘ideals’ and ‘principles’ everywhere.”
Until the so-called Liberal Caucasians are willing to share/give back the stolen wealth they presently possess, they need to stop their cry that American democracy represents freedom, justice, and equality of opportunity, because it does not. Liberals say that they care about the increasing world-wide injustices and inequities suffered by people of color, but their words are countered by their behavior; living a lavish lifestyle in suburbia or re-gentrified urban markets, while poor people suffer and die in the ghettoes and flavedos of the world. Their lifestyle is something they will never willingly give up and surrender.
The past 2,300 years of suffering that Africans and other people of color have experienced with capitalism as the economic paradigm has honed my African-centered perspective and has enabled me to offer a solution, which can only occur if we are clear that ‘racism’ is a man-made construct to empower capitalism.
Scientifically, no valid fact regarding human behavior can be drawn from the melanin content of a human being’s skin. Melanin is a pigment, the compounds added to materials to give them color, not a neurological genetic factor in human behavior.
The false narrative of race propagated by the European has deliberately divided humanity since its inception and is still in effect and in force as I write. I was certainly subject to it for most of my adult life, and I am grateful and thankful that I no longer allow the color of a human being’s skin to determine my view of them, but I am sure that my life experiences will always be with me as I traverse the course of life.
“Our brains are meaning machines. What we understand as ‘meaning’ is generated by the associations our brain makes between two or more experiences.” – Mark Manson
Please consider the following perspective of an astute indigenous ‘Native American’ who the Caucasian called the ‘red’ man. In 1854 Chief Seattle wrote to Franklin Pierce, the President of the United States, in response to the United States request to buy his tribal territory.
“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you sell them? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth, and it is a part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells events and memories in the life of my people. The waters murmur in the voice of my father’s father. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the river the kindness you would give to another brother.
If we sell our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirits with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and separate, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow Flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our Mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites all of us. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: Our God is your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffaloes are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love the earth as a newborn loves his mother’s heartbeat. So if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.
As we are a part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious life to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be the Red Man or White man, can be apart. We are all brothers.”
The stark cultural differences are clear. The irony is that Chief Seattle’s concern for the behavior of the Caucasian, “…Your destiny is a mystery to us.” is still the crux of the problem that is the existential threat that humanity faces today. Both the virulent, and now violent racism; and the toxic poisoning of our mutual ‘realm of mortal existence’, the planet Earth, continues unabated.
“What will happen when the buffaloes are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.” – Chief Seattle, 1854
Equism, an African-centered perspective, is the appropriate response.
