The Liberal Elite & Its Conspiracy Against African Self Determination

Currently, we have a revolutionary book drive designed to get people to send revolutionary literature like Walter Rodney's book to our sister Pan-African party in Zimbabwe, but most people who claim to support African self-determination would never consider supporting such a project. To them, our independence stops at the point of what doesn't center them and/or feed into their fantasies for how progress is made despite the realities that directly contradict their vision

 Over the last few years, especially since the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement throughout the U.S. Europe, Central, South America, the Caribbean, and even Africa, it has become common place in community spaces to hear people from all backgrounds say things like “listen to POC (people of color, or we say colonized people)” or “respect POC” or “respect African (Black) women”, etc.  Unfortunately, in this bourgeoisie dominated world – meaning anything that doesn’t have a specific and tested commitment to the masses of people in humanity is automatically going to represent the interests of the ruling capitalist classes – these phrases, beyond their catchiness, have no concrete basis from which to evaluate how those objectives being yelled out are actually accomplished. 

For many people, just saying these things has come to represent the fulfillment of their commitment to achieving and/or respecting the voices of colonized peoples.  And, since these characterizations are classified using that bourgeoisie formula of anything goes, anything qualifies (another way of saying the status quo i.e. capitalism is the outcome), those phrases end up taking on the same arbitrary basis as other bourgeoisie catch phrases like “support our troops.”  That phrase, widely used in capitalist societies where these “troops” are used as cannon fodder to ensure that capitalist domination of everyone’s natural and material resources continues, has taken on the same nebulous characteristics of “listen to POC” meaning saying it is all that actually needs to concretely happen, not ensuring it actually happens.

Evidence of this can be confirmed many ways, but we will just take on two examples.  First, the preponderance of the willingness of all the “listen to POC” people to jump on the bandwagon of random colonized people who claim to speak for all of us, is telling.  Its also interesting how these people consistently choose to ignore the constant voices of reasoned people who call upon us to support true political prisoners like Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, or Leonard Peltier.  The campaigns and efforts to bring attention to the immoral plights of these and other genuine political prisoners never receive any recognition or support from the “listen to POC” crowd while those people immediately buy into supporting people who have not only done nothing for human liberation, but using Bill Cosby for an example, use their platforms to further destroy the dignity of oppressed African people.  Still, these “listen to POC” people will talk about Cosby, or R. Kelly, all day, while ignoring the 50 years and counting voices of “POC” who are telling you that our true political prisoners need much more support. 

On a related note, while Hollywood and other imperialist committed media outlets continue to churn out trash that is supposed to pose as historical and/or cultural accounts of the forward progress of oppressed Africans, the “listen to POC” crowds, cheer on these hit pieces against the collective militancy and independence of our movements.  These people champion garbage like “Selma” or “The Killing of Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman” or “Black Panther.”  These projects, and others like them, do anything except listen to those of us who have been saying for years that people from the Nation of Islam may have pulled the trigger against Malcolm, but the U.S. government bought the bullets.  These projects go to such great lengths to hide the militant and uncompromising elements of our actual struggle for liberation, instead choosing to portray all of us, all the time, as pacifists who desire nothing other than the approval and validation of European dominated societies.  These projects tirelessly attempt to separate us from Africa in subtle ways while slyly reinforcing the notion that nothing outside of allegiance to Western capitalism will ever prove to be a viable road for us.  Meanwhile, the militant, independent, uncompromising, and fiercely determined spirits of Malcolm X, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, the Congolese National Movement, the Black Panther Party, American Indian Movement, etc., are viciously and savagely assaulted to make any of us who dare speak from our own independent perspective appear as terrorists.  And, the “POC speaks” crowds apparently have absolutely no problems with any of this as they are always the loudest in championing these sellout projects. 

There is no surprise on our part about the role imperialist cultural media centers play in defanging our movements.  That’s their role, but the fact so many people who claim to stand for independent voices of self determination for our peoples are so quick and determined to support these hatchet jobs against us is infuriating.

Finally, the absolute unwillingness and seeming contempt these so-called “listen to POC” people have for genuine efforts to develop self determination on the part of colonized people is the elephant in the room these days.  These people who yell so quickly to respect us (this includes those of us among this element) are really saying that they support our voices only as long as our voices are saying what they want us to say.  In other words, provided our voices support bourgeoisie capitalist agendas, elections, policies, etc., they support us.  The minute we decide we are more interested in building our independent movements that do not fit inside their capitalist system paradigm, they not only have absolutely no interest in hearing us, they respond with hatred and sabotage against our efforts.  Here we have many projects that reflect a genuine and true and concrete example of Africans building revolutionary institutions on the ground and these people who clamor about “listening to POC” never even flinch in support of any of this work. 
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What all of this should be telling those of us sincere about our self determination is that the more efforts we place into strengthening our movements, the more independent we will become.  When this begins to happen, all these people will have absolutely no choice except to respect our efforts.  Or, the moment it becomes crystal clear to them that we truly don’t need them, that’s when they will pay attention.  So, for those of us concerned about this much deeper than just yelling out cliché slogans, all we have to do is keep working, keep building, and keep exposing these hypocrites.  Our time is coming and that of course means their time is coming also.