Yvette Carnell, one of the primary voices behind this so-called "American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS)" movement, is a director for the so-called Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR). That's not the most egregious element here though. Carnell is the type of person who presents serious miss information while draping herself in the American flag, the height of personal opportunism. So, we certainly aren't surprised that such a selfish opportunist would be affiliated with losers like PFIR. Our concern is that so many African people are warming to Carnell's rhetoric on critical issues like the very real connection between Africans born in the U.S. and outside the U.S. Carnell and her ADOS movement are doing everything they can to increase the wedge between our African family and that's dangerous. And, for no realistic reason that will benefit African people anywhere, but for simple opportunism as her connection to PFIR clearly illustrates.
We say the above because PFIR is nothing except a 2019 representation of the old Southern Strategy approach to racist xenophobia. With the number of African sellouts who have figured out there's money available for any of us who will cape and coon for their capitalist masters, none of us should be surprised by the fact an African woman would/could be considered a spokesperson for our people while at the same time being a board member for something like PFIR. This so-called immigration reform organization relies on the subtle racism of the Southern Strategy approach by claiming their position is based on a desire to (quoting their website) "protect American workers from unemployment and wage suppression." The irony of this is the inference that our Indigenous (Latino/a) family members, as well as Africans who have come to the U.S. recently, are somehow the reason Africans within the U.S. cannot find employment and stability. We challenge anyone anywhere to question the fact that African people in the U.S. have had the highest unemployment in this country since the days of chattal slavery when all of us were "employed" as free and brutalized labor for the construction of this country. The reason for this is that capitalism has been built and maintained on exploiting Africa and Africans (along with everyone else). So, this system - which is based on our subjugation - is never going to provide stability for us. Our purpose for being in the Western Hemisphere was simply to provide the stability for this backward system, at our expense. No immigrant labor is taking employment opportunities away from us and not a single person reading this can prove otherwise. The capitalist system is solely responsible for our suffering. Thousands of jobs each year are shipped overseas in order to save costs for capitalist corporations. The future and this increasing reliance on artificial intelligence indicates continued loss of employment opportunities for the most expendable labor communities in this country. The massive push to weaken labor unions by big money and to privatize anything public sector is a part of the agenda of multi-national corporations. Not immigrant labor. The U.S. Post Office is an example. Big money has been working since 2006 to destabilize the Post Office. A large percentage of African people historically work within public sector institutions like the Post Office and other government agencies because the hiring process is at least slightly more objective than the private sector and public sector unions at least provide some protection against racist employment practices. Our people know that the privatization of public sector jobs means disaster for us because employers can more easily hide their racist hiring and managing practices. None of that has anything to do with immigrant labor. Absolutely nothing.
We are a people who have been blessed with outstanding spokespeople. Even if you just look at Africans within this U.S. alone, this is true. Malcolm X, Marcus and Amy/Amy Garvey. W.E.B. and Shirley DuBois. Paul Robison. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). Ruby Doris Robinson. Assata Shakur. Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown). People who are/were principled and focused and dedicated solely to our liberation by any means necessary. People who died for the most part with little to no personal assets because their lives were dedicated to one thing only - courageous and selfless confrontation against the forces who oppress Africa, Africans, and humanity. As a result, all of those people had sense enough to understand the forces that hold us down are international in operation. Therefore, common sense dictates that an international formation of African unity is absolutely necessary to facilitate bringing down the beast that disrespects us.
On the other hand, we've also had a series of race hustlers and phonies who prey upon our vulnerabilities (and our unwillingness to study our movements and histories) to develop messages designed to appeal to our sensitivities while draining whatever limited resources we possess. I'm talking specifically about people like this Candace Owens, Umar Johnson, Tariq Nasheed, and Yvette Carnell and this Antonio Moore. Social media celebrities who rely on our ignorance to exploit us. These people are great preachers. They sound great, but when you peel back the surface, there's nothing there. No reparations for the masses of African people. No wealth building. No independent schools, nothing. We have schools we operate/support from Sacramento/Portland to Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, with little to no money. We are talking about thousands of African youth in Kiswahili, Twi, Malinde, and English, etc. All learning about revolutionary Pan-Africanism and building a worldwide African liberation movement. Meanwhile, some of you are contributing millions of dollars to a hustle that hasn't liberated one African mind. And, you wouldn't contribute five cents to sincere and operational efforts like those we are working so hard to build.
These ADOS people are pushing an agenda of reparations that really tarnishes the legitimate legacy of the reparations movement so principally represented by organizations like N'Cobra, Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Black United Front, and other organizations. Carnell and her ilk have reduced this question of reparations down to a weak attempt to parlay themselves into some money and many of you are unwittingly (or maybe you see dollar signs also) playing along with this foolishness.
Meanwhile, we permit Carnell to claim to speak for the interests of Africans within the U.S. while she shamelessly represents this PFIR which employs people like Leah Durant who was the attorney for the John Tanton Network which has promoted eugenics e.g. the studies advanced by people like "Professor" Benson from U.C. Berkeley and William Shockley from Stanford and others who produced the racist "Bell Curve study" which attempts to make a civilized argument (Southern Strategy) to justify claiming African people are intellectually inferior to Europeans. Just to be clear, eugenics isn't something opposed by PFIR, but supported. So, knowing all of this, if you continue to support opportunists like Carnell, then at this point, you are as much a part of the problem as she is. Reparations, organized for in a principled way, has never been advanced outside the paradigm of Pan-African unity. Liberation for African people can never be seriously argued within a micro nationalist framework. African identify is a political statement against the forces that oppress Africa and African people worldwide. Similarly, any African who actively embraces American identify, as Carnell and her people do, make the political statement that their personal interests supersede any legitimate concerns for the conditions of the masses of Africans, even within the U.S. alone.
Kwame Ture used to often repeat the old African proverb that "when you boil dirty water, the scum always rises to the top!" If you understand Carnell and her relationship to PFIR, yet you still see her as champion for African people without smelling the disgust of her actual political foundation, then you clearly are not seriously concerned about advancing African people. So, we aren't speaking to you, but to those who sincerely wish to understand and do something about this terrible situation we remain in that so many of these hustlers work so hard to capitalize off of.
We say the above because PFIR is nothing except a 2019 representation of the old Southern Strategy approach to racist xenophobia. With the number of African sellouts who have figured out there's money available for any of us who will cape and coon for their capitalist masters, none of us should be surprised by the fact an African woman would/could be considered a spokesperson for our people while at the same time being a board member for something like PFIR. This so-called immigration reform organization relies on the subtle racism of the Southern Strategy approach by claiming their position is based on a desire to (quoting their website) "protect American workers from unemployment and wage suppression." The irony of this is the inference that our Indigenous (Latino/a) family members, as well as Africans who have come to the U.S. recently, are somehow the reason Africans within the U.S. cannot find employment and stability. We challenge anyone anywhere to question the fact that African people in the U.S. have had the highest unemployment in this country since the days of chattal slavery when all of us were "employed" as free and brutalized labor for the construction of this country. The reason for this is that capitalism has been built and maintained on exploiting Africa and Africans (along with everyone else). So, this system - which is based on our subjugation - is never going to provide stability for us. Our purpose for being in the Western Hemisphere was simply to provide the stability for this backward system, at our expense. No immigrant labor is taking employment opportunities away from us and not a single person reading this can prove otherwise. The capitalist system is solely responsible for our suffering. Thousands of jobs each year are shipped overseas in order to save costs for capitalist corporations. The future and this increasing reliance on artificial intelligence indicates continued loss of employment opportunities for the most expendable labor communities in this country. The massive push to weaken labor unions by big money and to privatize anything public sector is a part of the agenda of multi-national corporations. Not immigrant labor. The U.S. Post Office is an example. Big money has been working since 2006 to destabilize the Post Office. A large percentage of African people historically work within public sector institutions like the Post Office and other government agencies because the hiring process is at least slightly more objective than the private sector and public sector unions at least provide some protection against racist employment practices. Our people know that the privatization of public sector jobs means disaster for us because employers can more easily hide their racist hiring and managing practices. None of that has anything to do with immigrant labor. Absolutely nothing.
We are a people who have been blessed with outstanding spokespeople. Even if you just look at Africans within this U.S. alone, this is true. Malcolm X, Marcus and Amy/Amy Garvey. W.E.B. and Shirley DuBois. Paul Robison. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). Ruby Doris Robinson. Assata Shakur. Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown). People who are/were principled and focused and dedicated solely to our liberation by any means necessary. People who died for the most part with little to no personal assets because their lives were dedicated to one thing only - courageous and selfless confrontation against the forces who oppress Africa, Africans, and humanity. As a result, all of those people had sense enough to understand the forces that hold us down are international in operation. Therefore, common sense dictates that an international formation of African unity is absolutely necessary to facilitate bringing down the beast that disrespects us.
On the other hand, we've also had a series of race hustlers and phonies who prey upon our vulnerabilities (and our unwillingness to study our movements and histories) to develop messages designed to appeal to our sensitivities while draining whatever limited resources we possess. I'm talking specifically about people like this Candace Owens, Umar Johnson, Tariq Nasheed, and Yvette Carnell and this Antonio Moore. Social media celebrities who rely on our ignorance to exploit us. These people are great preachers. They sound great, but when you peel back the surface, there's nothing there. No reparations for the masses of African people. No wealth building. No independent schools, nothing. We have schools we operate/support from Sacramento/Portland to Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, with little to no money. We are talking about thousands of African youth in Kiswahili, Twi, Malinde, and English, etc. All learning about revolutionary Pan-Africanism and building a worldwide African liberation movement. Meanwhile, some of you are contributing millions of dollars to a hustle that hasn't liberated one African mind. And, you wouldn't contribute five cents to sincere and operational efforts like those we are working so hard to build.
These ADOS people are pushing an agenda of reparations that really tarnishes the legitimate legacy of the reparations movement so principally represented by organizations like N'Cobra, Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Black United Front, and other organizations. Carnell and her ilk have reduced this question of reparations down to a weak attempt to parlay themselves into some money and many of you are unwittingly (or maybe you see dollar signs also) playing along with this foolishness.
Meanwhile, we permit Carnell to claim to speak for the interests of Africans within the U.S. while she shamelessly represents this PFIR which employs people like Leah Durant who was the attorney for the John Tanton Network which has promoted eugenics e.g. the studies advanced by people like "Professor" Benson from U.C. Berkeley and William Shockley from Stanford and others who produced the racist "Bell Curve study" which attempts to make a civilized argument (Southern Strategy) to justify claiming African people are intellectually inferior to Europeans. Just to be clear, eugenics isn't something opposed by PFIR, but supported. So, knowing all of this, if you continue to support opportunists like Carnell, then at this point, you are as much a part of the problem as she is. Reparations, organized for in a principled way, has never been advanced outside the paradigm of Pan-African unity. Liberation for African people can never be seriously argued within a micro nationalist framework. African identify is a political statement against the forces that oppress Africa and African people worldwide. Similarly, any African who actively embraces American identify, as Carnell and her people do, make the political statement that their personal interests supersede any legitimate concerns for the conditions of the masses of Africans, even within the U.S. alone.
Kwame Ture used to often repeat the old African proverb that "when you boil dirty water, the scum always rises to the top!" If you understand Carnell and her relationship to PFIR, yet you still see her as champion for African people without smelling the disgust of her actual political foundation, then you clearly are not seriously concerned about advancing African people. So, we aren't speaking to you, but to those who sincerely wish to understand and do something about this terrible situation we remain in that so many of these hustlers work so hard to capitalize off of.
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