I started using the term African for self-identification when I was 17. That was 37 years ago which means I've been calling myself African for 69% of my time on this earth compared to the 31% of my life I called myself every derogatory name designated for our people that I had available to me. I "legally" changed my name, meaning I went through the capitalist system's process of changing my entire identification to my African name when I was 22 which means I've had my African name 59% of life compared to 41% of my life without it. So clearly, I've had plenty of time to think quite deeply about this identity question. That's almost 40 years of engaging in just the simple exercise of introducing myself to people. Just like you, for that long stretch of time, I've introduced myself to quite a few people. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? This experience has given me a very large sampling of data to assess this identity question. For years and years I've heard the same things over and over. "John?" I got that today from someone I introduced myself to. Although I can't for the life of me understand how anyone could possibly hear John phonetically when I say Ahjamu, today, for the 10,000th time, it happened. I say phonetically because the only way John turns into Ahjamu is not because of a phonetic issue, but a political one. White supremacy, the primary appendage of capitalism, has remote control programmed everyone in the world to see European culture as the primary and only legitimate lenses from which to view the world. That's why when I say Ahjamu - a clear African name - no matter how well I articulate it, people hear the European John in response. You can use this same example for everything in this capitalist society. Everything we say and do is seen through European capitalist lenses. This is the reason why my decision, our decision, to call ourselves African is overwhelmingly a political identity and not a biological one.
When we say Africans we are not making any type of statement about our ancestry, although that is how most people incorrectly interpret it. Since the capitalist definition of anthropology and biology has trained us that our ancestry is a question in biology and geography, when we say African, people incorrectly assume they can make an assessment of our claim through a racial and geographical point of view. That's why people have always responded, and continue to respond to us by telling us that since we were born in the U.S., at best, we can be African Americans, but we cannot be Africans. We always tell them what Malcolm said. He responded that "when a cat has kittens in an oven, they aren't called biscuits!" Malcolm's point is the cat has specific designations that define its existence and those designations are not eliminated based simply on where the cat happens to be produced. This is equally true for us as human beings. We are not of African "descent." We are of African ascent which means the relevance of Africa isn't that its where we came from, its that Africa is where we are going. In other words, the future of African people everywhere is intrinsically linked to the future of Africa. That's why we call ourselves African and that's why this decision is motivated and defined by political, and not biological and/or geographical considerations.
Its also why our intent in calling ourselves African is to connect ourselves to our national homeland. That same homeland that produces all of the natural resources and much of the cheap labor that fuels and finances the continued economic dominance of capitalism. Our desire is to end that exploitation of Africa and to use those vast mineral resources to serve the needs of Africa, her children, and all of humanity. So, since we understand this task and we have taken on the mission of fulfilling it, we start by making the natural and historically correct act of connecting ourselves to our mother - Africa. Without question this is a political act and since it is political, what we call Africa is inconsequential. So, for all you Kemitics or whomever who want to spend all day arguing that Africa is the name of a European, we respond to this silliness by telling you that you can call Africa Party People Land if it suits you. That would just make us Party People Land People.
So the next time you say African and someone corrects you by saying "African American." The next time you connect yourself in any way to Africa and people start immediately attempting to convince you that your only possible option is to connect to the U.S. The next time someone makes an attempt to divide Africans who are born in different countries. All of these things are manifestations of the remote control brain dirtying effort to confuse us away from making those political connections to our national homeland. You see, capitalism needs Africa, not the other way around. And, the U.S. needs Africans, not the other way around. And although everyone tries their absolute best to pretend that what I'm writing about here lacks any logic, my logic does explain why whenever I wear something that says "African" there are always people, mostly Europeans, who make it a point to ask me why. While you are out and about this weekend with people who are wearing Ireland all over themselves with absolutely no one asking why, ask yourself about that.
When we say Africans we are not making any type of statement about our ancestry, although that is how most people incorrectly interpret it. Since the capitalist definition of anthropology and biology has trained us that our ancestry is a question in biology and geography, when we say African, people incorrectly assume they can make an assessment of our claim through a racial and geographical point of view. That's why people have always responded, and continue to respond to us by telling us that since we were born in the U.S., at best, we can be African Americans, but we cannot be Africans. We always tell them what Malcolm said. He responded that "when a cat has kittens in an oven, they aren't called biscuits!" Malcolm's point is the cat has specific designations that define its existence and those designations are not eliminated based simply on where the cat happens to be produced. This is equally true for us as human beings. We are not of African "descent." We are of African ascent which means the relevance of Africa isn't that its where we came from, its that Africa is where we are going. In other words, the future of African people everywhere is intrinsically linked to the future of Africa. That's why we call ourselves African and that's why this decision is motivated and defined by political, and not biological and/or geographical considerations.
Its also why our intent in calling ourselves African is to connect ourselves to our national homeland. That same homeland that produces all of the natural resources and much of the cheap labor that fuels and finances the continued economic dominance of capitalism. Our desire is to end that exploitation of Africa and to use those vast mineral resources to serve the needs of Africa, her children, and all of humanity. So, since we understand this task and we have taken on the mission of fulfilling it, we start by making the natural and historically correct act of connecting ourselves to our mother - Africa. Without question this is a political act and since it is political, what we call Africa is inconsequential. So, for all you Kemitics or whomever who want to spend all day arguing that Africa is the name of a European, we respond to this silliness by telling you that you can call Africa Party People Land if it suits you. That would just make us Party People Land People.
So the next time you say African and someone corrects you by saying "African American." The next time you connect yourself in any way to Africa and people start immediately attempting to convince you that your only possible option is to connect to the U.S. The next time someone makes an attempt to divide Africans who are born in different countries. All of these things are manifestations of the remote control brain dirtying effort to confuse us away from making those political connections to our national homeland. You see, capitalism needs Africa, not the other way around. And, the U.S. needs Africans, not the other way around. And although everyone tries their absolute best to pretend that what I'm writing about here lacks any logic, my logic does explain why whenever I wear something that says "African" there are always people, mostly Europeans, who make it a point to ask me why. While you are out and about this weekend with people who are wearing Ireland all over themselves with absolutely no one asking why, ask yourself about that.
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