For those activists who fight for EQUALITY you will need these key definitions and concepts:
Racial Equality - "The status quo between Africans and European, Africans and Arabs, and Africans and Asians when millions of African families unite to establish autonomous, international and intergenerational institutions that provide food, clothing, shelter, education, health care to and self-defense for African people. True equality between the races will come only when tens of millions of African families practice nyansa nnsa da, break out of conceptual incarceration, embrace pan-africanism, and then restore ma'at to end the Maafa" (Uhuru Hotep 2004)
Rhetorical Ethic (RE) – Centuries-old European strategy of using declarations of peace, friendship, brotherhood, equality, liberty, democracy, kwk, to mask their intentions to control and then exploit the minds, labor, lands and natural resources of Africans and other people of color. The RE is a function of the greed and fear that spawned the Ancient Aryan Project, the maafa, and racism/white supremacy (Ani, 1994)
Deculturalization(DC) – Three-part process revolving around mis-education that results in conceptual incarceration, identity confusion and cultural mis-orientation. When applied to U.S Africans, DC (1) denigrates to alienates us from our cultural heritage, (2) teaches us to value only the cultural orientations of Europeans and (3) assimilates us into the European dominated social order as supporters of the status quo. The U.S public educational system, the Christian church and the corporate media are the prime instruments of African American DC (Boateng,1990;Spring,1997).
Comfortable Captivity - Psycho-emotional state of African American middle class resulting from material affluence, deculturalization and cultural mis-orientation that renders them unwilling to engage in intellectual disobedience, reAfrikanization or reality confrontation (Addae, 1996)
Identity Confusion - Intergenerational African Psychological disorder characterized by ambivalence toward (stemming from ignorance of) African history, traditions and culture. W.E.B. DuBois in Souls of Black Folk (1903) called this condition "double consciousness." Decultuarlization, mis-education, cultural misorientation and conceptual incarceration are casual agents while learned indifference and the white face syndrome are results. Overcoming IC is the major challenge facing African people (Hilliard, 1997)
Illusion of Inclusion (IOI) - Misperception based in fantasy and wishful thinking pervasive among middle class, assimilation-oriented, U.S. Africans that they are valued contributors to the American social order with the same rights and responsibilities as European Americans. The IOI is a result of cultural misorientation, identity confusion, inferiorization, and reality avoidance. (Farrakhan, 1990)
ReAfrikanization (RA)- Social movements created by Sekou Ture (Guinea) and Amilicar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau) to encourage their people to return to traditional African values and institution. In the American context, ReAfrikanizaation is an intergenerational family based process of reclamation, revivification and reincorporation of African cultural knowledge as the prerequisite for establishing a 21st century African social order rooted in the traditional wisdom of African people. RA at its core demands the "rediscovery, redefinition, and revitalization of African history, ancestral traditions and customs," or what the Akan people of Ghana , Togo and Cote d'Ivoire call Sankofa. RA is the supreme act of intellectual disobedience, the preventive and cure for cultural mis-orientation and mentacide, and the answer to Africa 's identity confusion (Akoto & Akoto, 2000)
Information exerpted from 72 Concepts to Liberate the African Mind by Uhuru and Talibah Hotep
