It was a stroke of luck that the daughters of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) became aware that pages of written notes from their father were being auctioned off. The man selling the notes had come in possession of them after he evicted one of Malcolm’s daughters from a house he owned and the notes and other personal belongings had been left in the basement. Possession of the notes was awarded to the daughters, and they promptly published the notes into “The Diary of Malcolm X” in 2014.
One of the most lasting moments in the book were Malcolm’s reflections from visiting Guinea, West Africa, in 1964 as a guest of President Sekou Ture and the governing Democratic Party of Guinea. Malcolm recounted how inspired he was by Guinea and how Ture imparted upon him the importance of dignity for all African people.
Although still widely unknown today, Ture’s analysis of dignity, which he ties directly into his perspectives on the impacts of African culture, represent some of the most relevant thinking that should be used today to interpret what we are facing. For most people, culture is defined by the bourgeoisie definition as “learned behavior.” In his landmark work “A Dialectical Approach to Culture” Sekou Ture goes much deeper by explaining that culture for oppressed people is the primary mechanism available to them to preserve their dignity. He explains that a people who know what they have produced and endured are a people who possess a strong sense of what they are capable of achieving. This thinking was the basis of this message to Malcolm X. If Africans know that we are a strong people who built imperfect, but groundbreaking societies then we will also understand that there would never have been a time during colonialism and slavery that we would not have led with dignity in our fight against those systems of oppression. What Ture argued was equipped with that level of consciousness, there would be no way that African people could ever be convinced that we are anything except an accomplished and determined people who are fighting a vicious system of oppression. With that understanding, even if it takes us 1000 years, we will never give up, and we certainly could never be defeated.
Of course, the antithesis of Ture’s analysis on culture and dignity is the current smear campaign against African unity. Preying upon the unwillingness of so many of our people to read comprehensive works about our history, efforts by the enemies of Africa are working overtime to break us down. They do this by financing well-oiled campaigns through social media designed to convince us that there is something wrong with us on all levels. There is something wrong with Africans in the U.S. Something wrong with Africans in Africa. Something wrong with Africans in the other parts of the Americas and Europe. There are no reasons for us to understand each other. Instead, we should see the world through a scarcity view, thus viewing each other from competitive, xenophobic and ignorant points of view. We should embrace and celebrate that ignorance. We should not trust one another. Men should not trust women. Women should not trust men. And both should not trust non-binary people while non-binary people return the favor.
All of this has created an atmosphere where African people are so busy fighting each other over the most insignificant things that for most people, talk of worldwide African unity is the equivalent of suggesting dinosaurs currently exist. Going back to Sekou Ture, there is one key missing ingredient which permits this confusion to take such firm root.
The only way this type of campaign could so easily take hold among our people is if we don’t understand who we are in relationship to each other because if we don’t understand that it becomes very difficult for us to ever see through what is happening to us. In other words, if we are ignorant about ourselves, i.e. where we came from and what is happening to us, we will not possess the proper tools to place all of that in a healthy context. And, without that context, we are easily susceptible to the lies that are fed to us about us.
Ture, as well as Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and so many others who talked about culture, gave us a gift that we would do well to not take for granted. These ancestors told us that regardless of what systems our enemies put in place to control us, those efforts are useless unless we submit to them. The power of perception. If we know that Mother Africa is strong and she has never left or rejected us they can call us as many n words as they want, it will never upset or disempower us. It could only inspire us to work harder for liberation. And we certainly could not ever see such a negative word as something we think we should want to redefine use. Instead, an African with a strong sense of our history and culture of resistance would know that no matter what happens to us, we are destined to be a free people. So, it is always just a question of what we need to do and how we will do it to become free. We would know that freedom can never come from accepting any level of values from our enemies. For example, no conscious African could ever accept labels like the n word or even African-American. As rapper KRS-1 famously said during the early 90s, “calling us African-Americans is like saying Jewish Hitlers!”
The U.S. has tried its best to completely dominant us for centuries and that process continues. Any conscious African must see their only role being within these colonized societies as that of using the stolen resources within these societies to fight to seize our power back. Ture’s analysis of this would conclude that there could never be an African-American because our existence today is the result of our 500+ year struggle to fight U.S. domination over our lives. Consequently, our culture hasn’t contributed to U.S. society. It’s survived U.S. society. Our strength comes from our understanding that no matter what they do they will never break us.
Their efforts to separate us from Africa are designed to weaken us because separating us from Africa separates us from our culture and doing that opens us to accept their versions of who we are. This is why they want to replace African with Black-American because if you are a Black American the absolute best you can ever do is strengthen America i.e. the U.S. and doing that automatically weakens the entire African world, including Africans in the U.S. If you don’t believe that, think about the strongest periods in U.S. history i.e. during slavery, after World War II with Jim Crow segregation, etc. These were the worse periods for our people because this capitalist society is built upon our backs so its ability to thrive depends upon our being trampled.
There’s no way to get around any of this. Any usage of America as a part of our identity lifts capitalism and white supremacy, objectively. Any effort to strengthen our ties with Africa on a political level weakens their ability to control our thinking and actions. This is our culture in its strongest sense in real life. This is why African people in this society are the only people who are questioned when we attempt to connect to Mother Africa. If someone born in the U.S. of Chinese, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., descent expresses a desire to connect with their ancestral home, no one questions it, but the minute we make any connection to Africa, gatekeepers come out of every sewer questioning it. The change to that over the years is now, they have confused enough of our people so that we are the ones questioning it now. Our enemies can stay silent and let us do their work to destabilize us.
The dialectical part of Ture’s analysis is rooted in this struggle we are engaged in to gain control of the narrative of our culture. To define for ourselves who we are, especially in relationship with each other and of course to Africa. This is the back and forth. This is the tension that is referenced when we use the word dialectics. Ture and the others gave us the blueprint. Now, the appropriate work is up to us.
One of the most lasting moments in the book were Malcolm’s reflections from visiting Guinea, West Africa, in 1964 as a guest of President Sekou Ture and the governing Democratic Party of Guinea. Malcolm recounted how inspired he was by Guinea and how Ture imparted upon him the importance of dignity for all African people.
Although still widely unknown today, Ture’s analysis of dignity, which he ties directly into his perspectives on the impacts of African culture, represent some of the most relevant thinking that should be used today to interpret what we are facing. For most people, culture is defined by the bourgeoisie definition as “learned behavior.” In his landmark work “A Dialectical Approach to Culture” Sekou Ture goes much deeper by explaining that culture for oppressed people is the primary mechanism available to them to preserve their dignity. He explains that a people who know what they have produced and endured are a people who possess a strong sense of what they are capable of achieving. This thinking was the basis of this message to Malcolm X. If Africans know that we are a strong people who built imperfect, but groundbreaking societies then we will also understand that there would never have been a time during colonialism and slavery that we would not have led with dignity in our fight against those systems of oppression. What Ture argued was equipped with that level of consciousness, there would be no way that African people could ever be convinced that we are anything except an accomplished and determined people who are fighting a vicious system of oppression. With that understanding, even if it takes us 1000 years, we will never give up, and we certainly could never be defeated.
Of course, the antithesis of Ture’s analysis on culture and dignity is the current smear campaign against African unity. Preying upon the unwillingness of so many of our people to read comprehensive works about our history, efforts by the enemies of Africa are working overtime to break us down. They do this by financing well-oiled campaigns through social media designed to convince us that there is something wrong with us on all levels. There is something wrong with Africans in the U.S. Something wrong with Africans in Africa. Something wrong with Africans in the other parts of the Americas and Europe. There are no reasons for us to understand each other. Instead, we should see the world through a scarcity view, thus viewing each other from competitive, xenophobic and ignorant points of view. We should embrace and celebrate that ignorance. We should not trust one another. Men should not trust women. Women should not trust men. And both should not trust non-binary people while non-binary people return the favor.
All of this has created an atmosphere where African people are so busy fighting each other over the most insignificant things that for most people, talk of worldwide African unity is the equivalent of suggesting dinosaurs currently exist. Going back to Sekou Ture, there is one key missing ingredient which permits this confusion to take such firm root.
The only way this type of campaign could so easily take hold among our people is if we don’t understand who we are in relationship to each other because if we don’t understand that it becomes very difficult for us to ever see through what is happening to us. In other words, if we are ignorant about ourselves, i.e. where we came from and what is happening to us, we will not possess the proper tools to place all of that in a healthy context. And, without that context, we are easily susceptible to the lies that are fed to us about us.
Ture, as well as Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Franz Fanon, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and so many others who talked about culture, gave us a gift that we would do well to not take for granted. These ancestors told us that regardless of what systems our enemies put in place to control us, those efforts are useless unless we submit to them. The power of perception. If we know that Mother Africa is strong and she has never left or rejected us they can call us as many n words as they want, it will never upset or disempower us. It could only inspire us to work harder for liberation. And we certainly could not ever see such a negative word as something we think we should want to redefine use. Instead, an African with a strong sense of our history and culture of resistance would know that no matter what happens to us, we are destined to be a free people. So, it is always just a question of what we need to do and how we will do it to become free. We would know that freedom can never come from accepting any level of values from our enemies. For example, no conscious African could ever accept labels like the n word or even African-American. As rapper KRS-1 famously said during the early 90s, “calling us African-Americans is like saying Jewish Hitlers!”
The U.S. has tried its best to completely dominant us for centuries and that process continues. Any conscious African must see their only role being within these colonized societies as that of using the stolen resources within these societies to fight to seize our power back. Ture’s analysis of this would conclude that there could never be an African-American because our existence today is the result of our 500+ year struggle to fight U.S. domination over our lives. Consequently, our culture hasn’t contributed to U.S. society. It’s survived U.S. society. Our strength comes from our understanding that no matter what they do they will never break us.
Their efforts to separate us from Africa are designed to weaken us because separating us from Africa separates us from our culture and doing that opens us to accept their versions of who we are. This is why they want to replace African with Black-American because if you are a Black American the absolute best you can ever do is strengthen America i.e. the U.S. and doing that automatically weakens the entire African world, including Africans in the U.S. If you don’t believe that, think about the strongest periods in U.S. history i.e. during slavery, after World War II with Jim Crow segregation, etc. These were the worse periods for our people because this capitalist society is built upon our backs so its ability to thrive depends upon our being trampled.
There’s no way to get around any of this. Any usage of America as a part of our identity lifts capitalism and white supremacy, objectively. Any effort to strengthen our ties with Africa on a political level weakens their ability to control our thinking and actions. This is our culture in its strongest sense in real life. This is why African people in this society are the only people who are questioned when we attempt to connect to Mother Africa. If someone born in the U.S. of Chinese, Mexican, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., descent expresses a desire to connect with their ancestral home, no one questions it, but the minute we make any connection to Africa, gatekeepers come out of every sewer questioning it. The change to that over the years is now, they have confused enough of our people so that we are the ones questioning it now. Our enemies can stay silent and let us do their work to destabilize us.
The dialectical part of Ture’s analysis is rooted in this struggle we are engaged in to gain control of the narrative of our culture. To define for ourselves who we are, especially in relationship with each other and of course to Africa. This is the back and forth. This is the tension that is referenced when we use the word dialectics. Ture and the others gave us the blueprint. Now, the appropriate work is up to us.
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