Understanding Why Some of Our People Gravitate to ADOS

If you follow the articles I write and post here on even a semi-regular basis, you know I've written as many pieces on African identity, the so-called American Descendants of Slaves movement (ADOs), and our relationship as African people (revolutionary Pan-Africanism) regardless of what country and/or continent we are born, raised, and living in.  As a result of the large volume of content I produce around these issues, I receive an overwhelming number of responses, primarily from people I don't know, providing feedback around these questions.  I receive feedback from people all over Africa and the Caribbean and those Africans are running 100% in support of the clear Pan-African themes in these articles.  From many Africans within the U.S., I get some support, but mostly arguments against what I'm writing and even straight up personal attacks against the positions I'm writing about.  None of this, even the most vile vitriol, is an issue for me.  I organize people for a living and I certainly dedicate most of my energy, time, and resources, towards organizing African people towards Pan-Africanism.  As a result, I know from study and my own life the pain our people experience because of our oppression.  In fact, I would tell you that every single problem we have - from diabetes (of which I'm afflicted), to unemployment, to depression, is the result of our oppression under this capitalist system.  This worldwide oppression against the African masses and all of humanity, because of this worldwide capitalist system, and its never ending reliance on Africa to fuel its existence.

Its due to this understanding that I would never get offended at my people who wage these attacks.  Actually, I'd like to talk about some of the reasons I believe our people have gravitated towards this so-called ADOs movement since that's where the majority of attacks I'm receiving are coming from.  If you aren't African in the U.S. and/or you just don't know, ADOs is a movement that seeks to recognize the condition specifically of Africans in the U.S. as it relates to the wealth we contributed towards the rise of the U.S. to be the preeminent world power in the world today and this system's lack of wealth sharing towards our people for our work in building this empire.  I phrase it like that because I believe that those of us who are Pan-Africanists have to recognize that and make a distinction between our people who are simply seeing the issue through those lenses as opposed to the framers of the ADOS movement.  The framers e.g. Yvette Carnell, Antonio Moore, and some of their talking heads like Cornel West, Tariq Nasheed, etc., are representing themselves and this so-called movement by attempting to define and couch what I wrote above within an extremely dangerous xenophobic and anti-African born outside of the U.S. framework.  Those people are covertly and overtly attacking Africans born in other countries and sowing the seeds of distrust among us as a worldwide people by doing the same thing the capitalist system does to us - push us into a fear based scarcity vision of the world.  Convincing us that there is not enough wealth and that we must call out these "others" who are competing against us for these resources.  This dysfunction operates within their talking points all the way from arguing for reparations from this government solely for Africans in the U.S. to attacking Africans born outside the U.S. who are starring in movies like "US", and "Black Panther", etc. insinuating that they are "stealing" jobs from Africans born here.  Perpetuating the crabs in the barrel theory among Africans.  In other words, these people are literally advocating that we compete against one another for the crumbs from the master's table.  And, the most disgusting element of their approach is that they are in bed with absolute white supremacists, getting on their payrolls to promote anti-immigrant (in our case Africans not born here) rhetoric to advance the racist and xenophobic agendas of people like that racist woman political commentator Ann Coulter, who has come out on record as supporting the so-called "ADOs leaders" due to their anti-African immigrant messaging.

There are so many problems with the articulated notions of ADOS that its always so very difficult for me to even know where to start so what I'll say is there is no scarcity.  This is nothing except the same fear mongering capitalism has attacked us with for centuries.  We have more than enough resources to liberate every African body on earth.  We have over 600 million hectares of arable land that is not even growing a single piece of fruit in Africa today.  Just a tiny fraction of that land, developed and sustained, would provide enough ongoing food to wipe out hunger in the African world.  And, just a little more of that land could contribute towards wiping out hunger everywhere on earth.  I can go on and on with examples like that.  The point is the problem isn't that we need to compete against our own family members.  The problem is Africa is not free.  And, she's not free because our enemies have convinced so many of us that she is ill relevant.  Sadly, we have been misled to believe that the only pathway to salvation is through the valley controlled by the very enemies (the capitalist countries e.g. the U.S., Europe, etc.) that stole everything from us, including us, and placed us in this situation in the first place.  

The soul/funk group "Brick" produced a great song in 1977 called "We don't wanna sit down, we wanna get down!"  Well, we don't want to bargain with our enemies, we want to destroy them and take back what they stole from us.  That's what Pan-Africanism is.  Creating, organizing, developing worldwide African consciousness and organization to wage a relentless fight to reclaim our dignity by reclaiming our ability to build independence for our lives.  We don't believe this can happen without Africa being center to our focus.  And, since everyone reading this, including any non-Africans, knows that Africa isn't even on the radar for most Africans in the U.S., we know our central task today is bringing Africa into the primary focus for the masses of our people here and everywhere on earth.

That's why we have to understand why people gravitate towards ADOs despite how dysfunctional it is.  I would argue that most Africans who support ADOs probably know very little about Carnell, Moore, or even Cornel West, etc.  These people are attracted to this because to them it represents a vehicle to speak up for our suffering when they see no other vehicle working to do that.  

This past weekend, I was at a labor conference that included elements of African existence within the labor movement.  There was a sister there who posed a question to one of the speakers about supporting ADOS.  After that section, I had a 45 minute conversation with that sister.  And, as I indicated above, she knew who Carnell, Moore, etc., were, but those people were not, in her eyes, the reason she considered herself an ADOs supporter.  To her, the issue is she wanted to attempt to create some dignity and ADOS represents that in her eyes.

As I thought about our conversation, I reflected on the fact that how else could I expect her to see this question?  As I've indicated above, and probably about 5000 times in various articles posted on this blog, capitalism has worked for centuries to try and completely separate Africans in the U.S. from our Mother Africa on a spiritual, cultural, and certainly political level.  Of course, as Marcus Garvey told us, "you can never separate the fruit from the tree", but our problem today is most of our people here see the fruit on the ground and believe it is isolated, alone, and unprotected.  We don't understand the relationship of that piece of fruit to all the other pieces of fruit that have fallen and what all of those pieces have in common with the tree that produced them.  All of that is by design to destabilize us.  And, that destabilization is a painful process.   I went through a portion of that pain in my discussion with the sister yesterday.  She actually told me that although her family was from Mississippi, an unquestionable slave state, and her name was some German name, which is an unquestionable piece of evidence of her family's history of being bought and sold, she told me that she still believed her family has been in the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years.  Her proof of this?  There are no slave ships still intact.  I explained to her that anything that hasn't been maintained that existed 500 years ago isn't going to be sitting around for us to see today.  Nobody is living in a 500 year old house in the U.S. unless some serious efforts were made to preserve that house.  There is a logical process of ship disintegration and recycling that is a part of the shipping industry that anyone engaged in that industry can easily explain to anyone who is interested, but the painful part of that to me is we are so ashamed of who we are.  We are so embedded with the lies about Africa that we have been told.  We are so convinced that Africa is a savage place where people eat each other and where no civilized people and societies exist - all lies pounded into us by our oppressors for centuries - that we have resorted in 2019/20 to making up history just to try and compensate for the pain and sense of loss that we live such a lonely life with today in this backward society.

The part that is our fault is our true African history is available for us to understand and be proud of, but most of us would rather believe fantasy than do the necessary research to eradicate the lies that keep us mentally shackled.  A positive note from my discussion with the sister is that she agreed she had never read and/or studied anything comprehensive about Africa.  She admitted that her information was primarily from colonized mentality Africans she knew (you know, four or five people) who came over from Africa and who parroted the lies of colonialism/imperialism.  We had a great conversation about how people who are only concerned about individual advancement (as opposed to our collective liberation) learn quickly, no matter who they are, that the fast track to "success" in this capitalist society is standing on the backs of African people here.  Every other brown community learns that and sadly, so do our own people who come here.  This is one of the vestiges of colonialism and how they sustain our oppression.  Its absolutely no different than the bourgeoisie and elitist attitude so many Africans born here go to Africa with.  

Whats critical for those who are sincere about African liberation is that we cannot get caught up in attacking each other.  These attitudes exist because they serve the interests of people who wish to advance in the capitalist system.  Its our responsibility as Pan-Africanists to figure out how to convince our people that our struggle certainly cannot just be a struggle about our "race."  Its actually a nation, class, gender struggle against capitalism.  We have to help people realize that the class portion manifests itself in the fact some people who look like us are aping the master's system to advance themselves.  This is the tactic of many of those Africans born in Africa promoting reactionary values and its the approach of the framers of ADOS.  

I was able to effectively explain to the sister that I never have that problem of having Africans born in Africa tell me reactionary things like that because when I talk to them they know immediately that I am well versed on African history, politics, culture, etc.  So, the only discussions I ever have with them are when I'm going back home (Africa) and what's happening with our Pan-African work.  I told her I haven't had the type of reactionary response she receives from anyone since about 1981, when I, (no shade) like her, knew little to nothing about Africa.  

Most Pan-Africanist understand clearly the contradictions with ADOs.  And, truthfully, all Pan-Africanists are not alike.  We are Nkrumahist/Tureist Pan-Africanists.  We are revolutionary Pan-Africanists.  We don't define Pan-Africanism as some nebulous concept of "Black people" all over the world coming together.  We are very specific with our objective.  Pan-Africanism is one unified socialist Africa, period.  We are clear and focused about this and that's why we see clearly that ADOs followers are not our enemies.  Misinformation is the primary tool for our oppressors.  Our task, for those of us who truly wish to bring liberation to our people, has to be figuring out how to advance notions of African unity to our people and how Pan-Africanism is the real key to them finding the dignity they are searching for.  Kwame Ture said it all the time.  "Once our people learn anything about Africa, they will become more African any me!"  We know this and our enemies like Ann Coulter and the system she represents know it as well.  That's why she will support ADOs because ADOs as its being framed will always serve capitalism and our oppressors with just a few select tokens like Carnell receiving payment for keeping us on the plantation loyal and committed to serving our masters.