BLACK AFRICAN UNITY

BY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

The Impossible Dream

Is the notion of Black African unity an impossible dream? Not according to the late Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986), a Senegalese physicist, linguist, anthropologist and ethnocentric historian well known throughout the world as "the modern pharaoh of African studies", and "the pharaoh of thought.” Professor Diop’s worldwide fame followed the elaboration of his controversial 1951 doctorate thesis, that the pharaohs of old were Black Africans. Since the ancient Pharaonic culture nourished the Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures, he reasoned that the roots of our modern civilization are essentially Black African. This thesis – dismissed in prejudiced precincts as a deliberate insult to the white race – was based on select historical facts. Of course historical activism condones the use of carefully selected historical facts or what are believed to be facts to support current political agendas.Africa is commonly regarded as the common cradle of the human race. Experts claim that race as it is commonly understood, as a biological or physical justification for racism, does not really exist. But that politically correct scientific notion has done little to improve so-called race relations – racial prejudice is built into the phrase. Therefore whatever the first father of the human race looked like, we are wont to pray that he shall forgive his children for their obsession with superficial characteristics, for such physiognomic nonsense really should not make a racial difference according to the declarations of scientists published in the most recent editions of popular encyclopedias. Of course superficial details are serious matters to those who would fight over them at the drop of a hat; hence we would not denigrate anyone by making too much sport of their prejudices.

In any case, the gravity of the original African influence on Western civilization is debatable, although we may not deny the profound and somewhat revolutionary influence of black African culture on contemporary Western culture. But what is specifically African? And who is influencing whom? Indeed, Professor Diop’s suggestions for establishing of a modern Black Africa suit Western apartheid prejudices rather well. Of course his Western bias may have Black African roots, but the absurd argument that white is black blurs the racial category he naturally fabricates and hardly suits his end: a pure Black Africa.

We know the black-and-white story well: Ignorant and ungrateful descendents of Mother Africa eventually returned to the cradle as white barbarians and ruthlessly exploited black resources, robbing black folk of their heritage, handing out Western junk in exchange – only one chief spat upon the offerings and said, “We have our own stuff!” Hence little remains of the African culture which had inspired classical culture in its infancy. The black man has been virtually freed and whites have relinquished their African empires, but now the crusading neobarbarians, doing business as usual while taking the glittering names of god and democracy in vain, would plunder Africa’s natural resources yet again, to the very hilt, and even worse, make low-wage slaves of its residents while violently stamping out resistance (so-called terrorism) to its neofascist corporate lifestyle. To that end the unelected corporate executives and their purchased political prostitutes would get rid of the remnants of the native lifestyles that are incompatible with Western-style corporate commerce. Wherefore beware of Western executives bearing laptops. If Africa is to save itself, it must return to its primal scene and scream out loud: Mother Africa must have and hold her own, Ebonic Zion, her very own landed means of production. And needless to say, non-Zionist Africans dispersed all over the world may virtually follow suit wherever Black Power can be seized and saluted with clenched black fists; say, in the Americas. If blacks do not want to return to Africa and if their souls are truly black, they should at least embrace the symbols of African culture and call each other, in America for example, African Americans, and not American Africans – the generic term, blacks, would not suffice to the purpose.

Professor Diop advocated a federal, Afrocentric approach to the Black Africa unification movement. Diverse cultures developed in Africa even before its inhabitants peopled Earth; there are many different types of Africans to this day, he recounted. His prospective African federation would welcome white people but would forbid the existence of White States on Black Soil.

In Black Africa, The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, Mr. Diop set forth several principles for Black African Unity: increased consciousness of historical, linguistic, and federal unity; black repopulation of Africa; female representation in its own chamber in a bicameral legislature; prohibition of the rise of an industrial bourgeoisie - "one of the fundamental ills of capitalism"; full employment; equalization of salaries; creation of a powerful army; development of powerful state industries, including state farms; development of production cooperatives; creation of technological institutes. And the professor of Black Africa often emphasized the development and coordination of Africa's diverse energy resources and recommended the development of atomic and thermonuclear power generation. From the foregoing suggestions it would seem that the original Africans who ruled Egypt and enthused the West were socialists if not Bolsheviks, with a ten-percent tendency to develop weapons of mass destruction.

In any event, Black Africans can rightfully take pride in the fact that their mother country was the cradle of the Wise Man - homo sapiens. Indeed, today's Black Africans purportedly have the deepest prehistorical cultural roots: "In prehistoric times, it was they who created the Nilotic Sudanese civilization and what we know as Egypt. The first Black civilizations were the first civilizations in the world." Furthermore, Professor Diop awarded honorable mention to the first Nigerian civilization, dubbed the Nok civilization, of the first millennium B.C.E.; and to the Empire of Ghana of the eight century C.E.; and to Ethiopia, home of the Isis cult and the oldest state in the world – we observe that Ethiopian pharaohs ruled Egypt for a century at least, and that Egyptians considered Ethiopian women to be the most beautiful in the world. The professor noted that Swahili tradition refers to cities of five-story stone buildings, with silver staircases leading to beds of ivory, peopled by "authentic jet-black Africans. Their women had shaven heads as in Ghana."

Examination of pre-colonial African social institutions "reveals a consistent cultural unity, resulting from similar adaptations to the same material and physical conditions of life.... There is also a common linguistic background. The African languages constitute one linguistic family," wrote our professor.  He pointed out that African empires had their own imperial languages; those languages waned after the arrival of the foreign imperialists with mother tongues from other "mother countries". If Africa is to be reunified as Black Africa, in the form of a federated state, the federation must have its own, African language.

Linguistic Unity

A foreign colonial language such as French simply will not do; first of all, ordinary people do not speak it: "The major part of the population in any territory is still totally without knowledge of French." Professor Diop wrote that the "high strategy" of the French under General de Gaulle, was "intended to atrophy our national consciousness, to reduce it and render it assimilable of all sorts of mixes." European magnates, whatever their language might be, want to create a native bourgeoisie "whose class interests would thenceforth coincide with those of international high finance. Such capitalist bourgeoisification "can only be fatal to the political health of our country." Africa will never be allowed to select a political and social regime of its own without a fight. The imperialist West believes its civilization depends on control of Africa; thus Africa is the last bastion against – shall we conclude the sentence for our professor, and say, the Great White Satan and The Forces of Darkness of Corporate Board Tribalism?

As for the English language, the language of Free Trade, "We must remain circumspect about subtle efforts to Anglo-Americanize Africa .... Linguistic unity based on a foreign language, however one may look at it, is cultural abortion. It would irremediably eventuate in the death of the authentic national culture, the end of our deeper intellectual and spiritual life and reduce us to perpetual copycats, having missed out on our historical mission in this world.... One might say that it makes no difference to a Wolof-speaking African whether he adopts Zulu or English or Portuguese. This is just not so ...."

In any event, "Linguistic unity dominates all national life. Without it, national cultural unity is but fragile and illusory. The wranglings within a bilingual country, such as Belgium, illustrate this point." Therefore African intellectuals should experiment with linguistic unity in Senegal, where Wolof is the obvious choice of language, because "all minorities are nearly bilingual, speaking Wolof in addition to their primary language: cultivate Wolof as the language of government.” Furthermore, "When our demonstrations in Wolof have gone far enough, they will have proved that in due time it will be possible appropriately to choose one of the major African tongues and promote it to the level of sole governmental and cultural language for the entire continent. It will cover all territorial languages in the same way that Russian is overlaid on the languages of each Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union." In any case, "The selection of a single language for the continent - one which any foreigner ... would have to learn to communicate with any African on our Black Continent - would thus obviously lead to simplification of our intercourse with the outside world: International relations, far from becoming more complicated, would become much easier."

Many people think Professor Diop dreamed an impossible dream. Compassionate conservatives of all stripes aver that needy people need to help themselves; for example, in August 2006 Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama embarked on a five-nation tour of Africa, his father’s fatherland, carrying this important message: “Ulitmately, Africa is responsible for helping itself.” They must take action against “a lack of basic rule of law and accountability that has hampered the ability of countries with enormous natural resources.”  Nevertheless, skeptics presume that Africa will always be backwards if left to its own primitive devices, such as drums and spears and tribal culture; that it shall always ridden with famine, disease, criminality and violent dissension; that is, unless the White Man's Burden is taken up again, so that the dark continent can be made safe for democracy. That is, free for exploitation by American-style corporate capitalism; which is naturally dominated by a greedy, English-speaking power elite which has blind faith in Free Markets and the sacred power of the Almighty Dollar. Indeed, the no-account democratic one-god was replaced long ago by what really counts for U.S. Americans, a hermetic abstraction reflected by the privately owned particulars it can purchase: money. Visitors to the American colonies noted the obsession with money early on:

“The only principle of life propagated among the young people is to get money,” reported Cadwaller Colden in 1784, “and men are only esteemed according to what they are worth – that is, the money they are possesses of.” Alexis de Tocqueville mused on the same subject: “In America then everyone finds facilities, unknown elsewhere, for making or increasing his fortune. The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and the human mind, constantly diverted from pleasures of imagination and the pursuit of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the pursuit of wealth.”

It was as if the early Americans were in fact the so-called greedy Jews they and the Jewish prophets before them were so fond of denouncing on behalf of their guilty conscience represented by YHWY. But forgive them for they knew not what they did: once set afoot in the Promised Land, who can resist the allure of the new golden calf and the abstracted currency cult, of the treasure box invented by Africans, stolen from Egypt by Hebrew outlaws, repossessed by the Queen of Sheba during her great potlatch competition with Solomon, swiped from her temple beside the trade route in Yemen, and deposited in the Western bank vault? In God we Trust… ‘My One’, in a word, mONEy. We doubt Africans can outdo themselves and come up with a Black Baal or common linguistic coin to crack the safe, and Mr. Diop knew it:

"Because of the huge difficulties to be overcome in mastering the African linguistic mosaic, some observers in Europe are convinced that we will not be up to the challenge.... They are... sure that the drive for African cultural unity will fail....  None of what makes for the greatness of modern nations (will) ever exist among us, they assume."

Although an official language is indispensable for efficient bureaucratic functioning, too much top-down efficiency can be a great evil to those who have no love for totalitarian states and their tendency to war. Yet Professor Diop wanted to achieve African unity by incorporating it in a single language and thereby setting Africa solidly apart from and opposed to the world. Black Africa could therefore love itself by virtue of a single language suitable for the conveyance of intellectual abstractions. The choice of the language would be arbitrary but for the fact that many people already speak it. When outsiders showed up to trade, they would have to speak that language. Otherwise, the situation would be as if Walmart opened a store in an enormous Hispanic neighborhood and demanded that its customers speak English in order to do business. Of course money and all it buys moves people: wherefore bilingual employees would be hired, and business would be brisk; for example, many businesses in and around Miami, Florida require employees to speak Spanish because many U.S. citizens there do not speak English nor do they have to speak a word of it to succeed, even though “No comprendo” is an insult to English-only speakers in their own country.

Still, to be literate and on the same page at the same time might be convenient as we progress to Totalitaria – the color issue might be resolved with free bleaches and government tanning salons, and genetic planning and plastic surgery could deal with other visible distinctions. If global unity is wanted for political-economic intercourse, an artificial language might be contrived to overcome factional objections to the use of an existing, natural language. We recall that such an international language, Esperanto, was devised in 1887 by L. I. Zamenhof, a Polish oculist. Of course Black Africans might reject Esperanto because of its European, especially Romantic-language roots. However that may be, the world now enjoys 100,000 Esperanto speakers, who have available for their edification 30,000 Esperanto books. Perhaps, if called upon, Esperantists might endeavor to integrate the globe if not Africa. What would it matter if most of us did not speak the elite language providing the elite who did speak it did their job well?

Professor Diop appreciated the overlaying of Russian on the diverse peoples of the former Soviet Union. In 1917, czarist doctrine held the Russian language to be "the cement of the empire." We are not surprised that both Lenin and Stalin adhered at first to the cultural relativist doctrine, that "all voices are equal." Yet from 1930 on, Stalin wanted a homogenous language for the Union, and declared that the 150 regional languages were "the opiate of the nations." The immobility of the population and restrictions on immigration from without tended to cement those languages in place. Those who could not speak Russian well had limited access to the benefits of unity. In short, Russian was the language of the power elite: the Russian-speaking intellectuals, the intelligentsia and their dictator, dominated the Soviet Union.

Stalin's universal methodology is repugnant to the relatively liberal culture we enjoy today despite the recent revolt of anti-intellectual neoconservatives, whose inclinations incline to Fascism, and, ultimately, to another kind of Totalitaria. The central tenet of cultural relativism is the ideal postulate of liberal culture: all cultures are equal - no culture is better or worse than other cultures.  The relativistic attitude is reflected by the doctrine of postmodern contemporary anti-art taught to children in America - "There is nothing right or wrong about any work of art." And, ultimately, there is nothing essentially right or wrong about any deed whatsoever, even if it is prohibited by law. Such Either/Or distinctions are artificial, flimsy impositions on brutish nature, which, like the primitive gods, is beyond good and evil. The "universal good man" does not and can not exist. The society that does not tolerate murder, rape, incest, and theft is only relatively good, not absolutely good. The only universal value flowing from universal human needs is the will to power, to survive by any means available; the survival of a group may require murder, rape, incest and theft. We may believe otherwise; indeed, untold millions have faith in the power of love to overcome animosity and thereby fulfill divine law and order. Thinking and its expression are contextual and inclined to variety given the flexibility or freedom required for survival under varying circumstances; hence for the sake of unity we would have Africans of whatever shade speak the same emotional language, the universal language of love. Any other language, even Wolof, English, Spanish, Arabic, or Russian, simply would not suffice for the unification of diverse peoples. Yes, a common verbal language is an important factor in the social unity of speakers, yet any anthropologist worthy of her man will tell us that the correlation between sect, language, and community is often ambiguous; for instance, people belonging to different language groups may identify with each other and discriminate against peoples speaking other dialects of their languages; absurdly, arbitrarily dividing diverse people into two groups, calling one orange and the other green, will result in discriminatory behavior according to their Orange and Green revolutions. 

If the Dark Continent wants to unite in opposition to Western corporatism and its gangster underbelly instead of panhandling for almighty dollars, it might be better off resolving its differences by returning to the slavery of Islam (obedience), as originally voiced by the Arabic language. But here again it might seem that a common language is essential to close cooperation, since much might be lost in translation. It is human nature to categorize, and then to fight about the categories; as native English-speakers recently learned from alien Arab terrorists, nothing unites a back-biting competitive people like war with a common enemy. Indeed, the behavior of sports teams and their fans, as well as the conduct of informally organized juvenile gangs, demonstrate that people will identify with and fight over artificial coloring and arbitrary naming; sociological studies show that if half the subjects are called the Blues and the other half the Reds, they will discriminate according to that distinction and even have at it. 

It matters not whether the difference is physiognomic or the abstract language spoken, but someone speaking and writing the curious language of the enemy is wrongly suspected. Ultimately the threat to unity shall come from within, from the seemingly nice people next door who might look and sound just like us, but are cooperating with extremists of one ilk or another, including native breeds. There exists within universal Islam a never-ending tug-of-war between Arab and non-Arab Muslims. An influential theoretician of modern Arab nationalism, Sati al-Husri, propounded on the importance of a universal language to Arab unity, and what must be done by intellectuals to inculcate the docile masses and bring them fully into the fold of umma al-arabiyya (Arab nation) to partake of uruba (Arabism):

"Every person who speaks Arabic is an Arab. Everyone affiliated with those people is an Arab. If he does not know this or if he does not cherish his Arabism, then we must study the reasons for his position. It may be a result of ignorance - then we must teach him the truth. It may be because he is unaware or deceived - then we must waken him and reassure him. It may be a result of selfishness - then we must work to limit his selfishness."

As for mere affiliation with Arabs, non-Arabic-speaking students in the taliban schools of Afghanistan and Pakistan memorized Arabic scripture by rote, depending on their radical masters for interpretation of its meaning. Thus it is said that Islam is overdue for a protest or protestant revolution against its masters both spiritual and secular. So it is again made apparent that language, although an important factor for the unification of a people, is not the crucial factor. In any case, many Muslims do not speak Arabic, and in fact they might resent the Arab inclination to dominate Islam; the dream of pan-Arab unity, or at least the Arab supremacy advocated, for instance, by the socialistic Ba'ath faction, despite its foundational expression of universal toleration, has failed to capture the hearts of all Muslims simply because of its emphasis on Arabic mastery of the faith.

Notwithstanding the internal squabbles over the particulars of Islam, Islam has earned substantial credit for its enduring universalism. Black Africans, despite their cultural and linguistic predilections, may want to look to Islam for their unity - and that is precisely what the West is afraid of, for Islam, given its history, is perceived as a threat to the cult of gilded individualism. Indeed, the proud egoism and ethnic partiality of a black African man might be converted to white protestantism and educated to work for The Man, whose rationalized corporate gangsterism has been legalized and far more productive in the material sense. Criminal gangs are the underbelly of private capitalism. To further the vested interests of its power elite, the United States has supported gangs of ruthless thugs everywhere; for example, in Africa, the U.S. government currently supports the sort of warlord gangs who murdered the valiant peacekeepers of Blackhawk Down fame. Relatively informal alliances of Muslim families and clans armed themselves, established sharia, and managed to run the outlaws and their warlords out of town, establishing the first peace in decades, but despite its profession of family values, the U.S. neoconservative government by and for the power elite are opposed to such a peace, which it associates with the terrorism, which is in part spawned by its arrogant assumption that its own civilization, based on the war of all against all for more money and property and other forms of power, is superior to the enemies it needs to overcharge in order to exist.

Perhaps human universality may depend on a loosely knit "folkish" culture, and not on the imposition of a particular language and monetary system from high political authority. After all, the virtue of a common language depends on common experiences. Human nature, notwithstanding the various cultural and natural circumstances, has its universality. Music, for instance, is deemed a universal language despite the various forms it takes, for all are moved to a better understanding of different folks by its modes. Music expresses a wide variety of feelings. Particular verbal languages may be incidental to but not essential to cultural unity. Each language has its musicality; certain language groups may convey a different way of feeling and thinking than others. And the language of love is the best music of all; love is not nonsense: it is the most sensible course to harmonious intercourse and peace of mind.

Intellectual Colonization Incorporated

A growing number of respectable Westerners, particularly productive workers who believe they are being bled to death by neoliberal corporate vampires, sympathize with the biases if not prejudices of Black Africa's author; and even the more so since Mr. Diop’s manner of thinking if not his language corresponds to our systematic way of thinking. We are fashioned by our enemies: Fight fire with fire. Use the rational system and its technological developments against the system. Use the techniques of the colonialists against them. Misery loves company and there is safety in numbers; forget Small is Beautiful; remember: Big is Better. The only solution to corporatism, it seems, is another form of corporatism. Communism, for instance, is an ideal corporation once state capitalism withers away, leaving social utopia in its wake. On the other hand, certain low-browed magnates have sworn that Fascism is the perfect form of capitalism, for Fascism does not renounce private property nor repudiate big corporate profits, and knows that might makes it right.

It seems that the ultimate goal of competition is to eliminate competition while praising it to no end, as if General Electric and the like are small family businesses. What else can black fish do but obey natural law and cruise in the wake of the predominately white killer whales? Let black folk form their own do-it-yourself, black corporation. Given the colonial experience with imperialists, no doubt a federal incorporation of partially owned subsidiaries would be better than a central state headquartered in a capitol – the illusion or legal fiction of federation, such as that employed in the United States of America, can be maintained for the appearance of pluralistic propriety. Therefore let us say good bye to the occupiers; call in the local lawyers, enlist the aid of intelligentsia to devise articles of confederation and then get them approved by the People, and/or the Supreme Being via his corporate representative on Earth.

That is, we should colonize ourselves instead of being farmed by foreigners. We must systematically oppose the System, taking advantage of its technology. Yes, Black Africans can use the colonial techniques to throw out the colonial occupiers while installing their own Black Power elite and intelligentsia, all highly educated by the imperialists. Of course we must convince ourselves that our Black Africa intellectuals are better than the ones we would replace – black African natives had already grown cynical of the Western intellectual colonization of Black Africa homo sapiens by the time Professor Diop drafted his Western-style academic book.

"In order to counter the budding anti-intellectualism evident throughout Black Africa among those in political power," writes Professor Diop, "as if this were a defense mechanism, intellectuals have to be able to present perspectives for Africa, solutions to problems on a national scale which allow no other possible ways out. The intellectuals must gain respect at the same time through their efficiency, their taste for unselfish work on behalf of the people, and their clarity. They must be sincere, and to do that they must truly feel themselves animated by an ideal that will stand come what may. They must set themselves apart from those minds which shine only with a deceptive light, as artificial as it is sterile, the flashy pseudo-intelligences that so readily prove to be insignificant. Self-defense anti-intellectualism would spell a new loss of Africa if it were to become general. We cannot afford the luxury of rejecting what we have most been missing during these last three centuries."

There is little respect for intellectuals in some quarters of Africa to this very day; for example, the youth in Liberia who in 2006 supported the presidential candidacy of former soccer star George Weah expressed contempt for intellectuals. Millions of idle and uneducated youth in Liberia were fed up with violence as a career; they decided to give democracy a try, despite democracy's long history of imperial wars, which they are unaware of. At least democracy does not require schooling as a prerequisite of voting; as we know very well in America, everyone of a certain age is competent to vote, no matter how ignorant they might be.

'Mr. Weah's lack of political experience and formal education,' reported the New York Times (10/29/05) 'is seen as an asset by many of his supporters. "He no book, he no know book, I'll vote for him," is a popular slogan, a twist on the chilling campaign cry for Mr. (Charles) Taylor, who dragged the country through so much bloodshed: "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, I'll vote for him."'

Mr. Weah lost the election 40:60 to Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist and former World Bank official, and now the first female president of an African nation. Intellectuals do have cause for hope today, at least according to a recent global poll released by the British Broadcasting Corporation in September 2005: "When asked what type of people they would like to give more power to in their country, 35 percent of respondents chose intellectuals, putting them above every other group. Religious leaders came next on 25 percent, while military leaders, business leaders and journalists all had 20 percent. Only 16 percent said politicians should have more power." The poll showed that 65 percent of respondents worldwide believe their countries are not governed by the will of the people. In Africa, only about a quarter of West Africans believed their elections were free and fair. South Africans, incidentally, had the greatest contrary opinion, with 59 percent maintaining they are governed by the people's will.

Send the neoconservative morons home and bring in the liberal intellectuals. Our Black Studies professor is obviously one of the latter, a member of a disgruntled lot – misery loves company. Yet, regardless of Mr. Diop's enduring stature, we must beware of intellectuals lest they set up their own imperial colony at home. Eric Hoffer, in The Ordeal of Change (1963), points out that intellectuals have been traditionally aligned with the powers-that-be; they seldom take up the interest of the masses unless they become frustrated or lose their status. Their love for the People is soon lost when irrational people get in the way of their rational plans. Where the exercise of power is concerned, they differ little from their former bosses: pharoahs, kings, presidents, generals, directors, executives, and so on.

"It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future," declared Hoffer. "There is an element of misanthropy in all determinists. To all of them man as he really is is a nuisance, and they strive to prove by various means that there is no such thing as human nature. Even in the freest society power is charged with the impulse to turn men into precise, predictable automata. When watching men of power in action it must always be kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual.... Every device they employ aims at turning man into a manipulatable 'animated instrument,' which is Aristotle's definition of a slave."

Intellectuals such as the scribes of ancient Nubia and Egypt were traditionally at the top of the social pyramid; but the spread of literacy and free public education now produces far too many of them for bureaucracies to absorb. Practical men armed by high technology have rendered many an intellectual, particularly secular intelligentsia and religious clerics, virtually useless, explained Mr. Hoffer, an intellectual longshoreman and social critic. Intellectuals vainly struggle to regain their historical status; they flail about, search for support from the masses, foment revolts, usually from the more intelligent, left side of politics. However, according to Hoffer the "antagonism between the intellectual and the powers that be" is a good thing: it "serves a more vital purpose than the advancement of the masses: it keeps the social order from stagnating."

Professor Diop might have been pleased to read this statement by Mr. Hoffer: "We also see that the first step in the awakening of a stagnant society is the estrangement of the educated minority from the prevailing dispensation.... The change in the relations between the educated and governing class has been a factor in almost every renascence...." Mr. Hoffer carefully noted that, although radical changes are pioneered by intellectuals, they in turn are eventually elbowed out by practical men; for action takes precedence over words when something must be done. Yet now men of words alone can win the battle for souls: "Only they can get around the roadblock which bars our way to the dispirited millions everywhere," he wrote. "There must be general awareness of the vital role the intellectuals have to play in our struggle for survival. And they must be given a limited share in the shaping and execution of policies which they will be called upon to expound and defend." Hence enter "poets, philosophers, writers, artists, scientists and professors" to make the new policies "heard."

On Suspending Ethnocentric Bigotry

It might behoove intellectuals to transcend Professor Diop's Black African Union in its conceptual stage. It smacks of the prejudice he apparently abhors. As intellectuals ascend to transcendental unity, they should pause at each level to behold and tolerate all the dirty details below, neither condemning nor approving the categories beneath their noses – if only it were not human nature to categorize things in the first place!

As we know so well from our politically correct, compulsory free-education system, intolerance is a symptom of ethnocentrism, racism, and nationalism, or the uncritical prejudices favoring one's own cultural values. People might have to conform to social prejudices and even become bigots to survive; it is discomfiting to challenge ethnic prejudices, and easy to make them matters of habit. Still, self-proclaimed cultural relativists are beyond all that. Cultural relativism allows them to suspend value judgments. Of course that suspension is itself a value judgment; but it is the best one of all because it is based on the assumption that we the People are free and able to rationally analyze empirical data and act rationally instead of prejudicially praising and blaming whatever comes to our attention. If it were not for our ability to suspend judgment and maintain a critical attitude towards all absolute propositions, we would be victims and prisoners of our culture, and might as well espouse cultural determinism.

Indeed, it is tempting to forever refrain from arriving at a definite moral conclusion about any particular culture, or any other particular object, for that matter, that might beckon for an Either/Or decision. Why bother? It is best to remain skeptical, to suspend judgment while mulling things over ad infinitum. We joke about this, but there is truth in humor. It is best not to act when only mixed results may be obtained. When action runs to far ahead of thinking, let not thinking lead to action: let us think for the sake of thinking. After all, abstract thinking is one of the most powerful anesthetics ever conceived. As we rise by virtue of the intellectual fumes that fill our lead zeppelin (Led Zeppelin flew), we ideally look down and love all cultural excretions equally. Unadulterated or amoral reality is the precious cargo borne by our alienated dirigible. If we happen to land in an imaginary promised land, no harm shall be done.

From our ivory-tower safari perspective, what goes on in Africa seems surreal – Africa is a dream to those of us who have not set foot on the continent. If black cannot reflect white, Professor Diop’s Black Africa, influenced as it is by his white academic perspective, is an impossible dream. But if our so-called Pharaoh of Black Culture is correct; that is, IF the white, First World perspective does in fact have its roots in Black Africa, white might become black again. Still, his ebony world might require a century or more of centralized federal violence or organized mass terrorism for its realization, not to mention the imposition of a universal Black African language on the black intellectual power elite. Furthermore, if black is beautiful in the concrete instantiation of its Ebonics ideal, the black elite would of course have truly black souls to begin with.

Of course the dream of a civilized, peaceful and prosperous Black Africa is a state of mind that does not require one's actual presence in Africa. We can virtually return to Africa from wherever we might be, without setting foot on the continent of that name, and then do our best to realize Africa wherever we put our foot down. No doubt there shall be impediments to overcome for our own good, but with a little cooperation from the white man, whose racial unconscious knows our plight because his primitive forebears were black, we shall someday overcome our evil distinctions, to the end that we might all be gray skinned and earning $10 per hour in paradise. But first of all, we must be pure black again, the color of the obscure origin of humankind.

For instance, in the first chapters of Journey To Nowhere - A New World Tragedy, Shiva Naipaul traced the influence of the Black African and Black Power movements and the rise of criminality and corruption subsequent to the decolonization of the Caribbean territories, particularly in Guyana, where he ventured on the heels of other journalists to cover the mass suicide at Jonestown – a white man by the name of Jim Jones (James Warren Jones), following the rhetorical lead of Father Divine, referred to Guyana as "the Promised Land," and led his people to their demise.

"Everywhere in the region (Caribbean territories)," wrote Naipaul, "society was in disarray and men seemed to be decaying - Third Worldhood has bred regression, and that regression was ending in personal and political catastrophe. 'You is a princess,' a slum girl was assured again and again in a local play. 'You is a princess.' "

"As imperialist ties and restraints dissolved, one reality, one self was lost," Naipaul observed, during a visit to his native Trinidad. "Something snapped. Wild dreams rushed in to fill the vacuum. 'Call me Ata Kujifi!' says a big headline in a Trinidad newspaper. The article is about a lawyer who is described as a top Port of Spain barrister. He has decided to change his name from Arthur Fleming Lawrence to Atta Khufu Obafemi Kujifi. 'You see,' he explained to the interviewer, 'once you start thinking African then a name like Arthur Fleming Lawrence is a plain embarrassment....' It was Africa which had given the world law, philosophy, medicine, religion, astronomy, music, magic and science; it was Africa which had civilized Europe, and not the other way around, as the white man had been misleadingly teaching the world."

Black Power was imported into the region from the United States. Stokely Carmichael, Black Power's main theorist, equated Black Power with being African and learning how to kill. In any case, the burden was on black people to remake themselves: they must become more Third-Worldish. Negritude was the thing. Just being black skinned was not good enough: their very souls of black people must be black; it was not long before black people were warring on black people to make all souls black.

Naipaul noted that Forbes Burnham, head of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, sometimes dressed up in flowing white robes and called himself 'Kabaka' - the Big Black Chief of Uganda's Baganda tribe. Burnham's eclectic concoction of Kabakhood, Communism and Corruption set the tone for the nation. A legislator by the name of Eusi Kwayana - 'black man in Guyana', formerly known as Sydney King - who had fallen out with Burnham's ruling faction, remarked that, in Guyana, "black people believe they have a right steal and cheat and rob in order to get rich."

Confronted with such disguises, Naipaul was moved to ask the big question: "Could a country like Guyana have any genuine existence on its own?" That sort of Black Africana, which arose with a vengeance in many countries when the white man handed down his abused burden to blacks, obviously could not save the oppressed black man in Africa nor abroad. Blacks, despite their political and economic progress in the First World, have suffered one horror after another at the hands of their brothers since Dr. Diop first conceived his utopian scheme for a Black Africa. Hence many Africans long for the return of the rule of law of the white man, their great white hope. But beware of Americans and Europeans bearing Trojan laptops, for they tend to take more than they leave; nature is ravaged and free labor imprisoned in ghettos. The white man’s burdensome cargo is poison for the soul. Do not be deceived by the promises of prosperity nor by the color of their skin; black WASPs exist now, and at the highest imperial levels, where they worship Power unsullied by ethical considerations; as far as they are concerned, their might is right, for God told them so. In any case, your elected black leaders will most likely sell you and yours out for more cargo. 

Thankfully, not all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants are completely alike. Take Jim Jones for instance, or rather the hypothesis that he really had good intentions, and that the white and black devils drove him to madness and the planning and execution of a mass suicide. The related conspiracy theory posits that many of his followers fled into the jungle to avoid the mass killing, where they were murdered by American and British commandos; the bodies were hauled back to the camp, deposited with the others, and allowed to badly decompose; and then the bodies were flown to secretive U.S. morgues where autopsies were deliberately botched. Members of Jim Jones’ security force were allegedly CIA operatives, whose covert mission was allegedly to obliterate the communal threat to the Western lifestyle in the middle of nowhere – as it was said of Arabs during the Crusades, it was said of suspected Reds; since they are going to Hell anyway, kill them now before they corrupt others; better dead than Red. In any event, Jim Jones grew increasingly paranoid as the negative publicity about the goings on at People's Temple at Jonestown mounted.  Serious allegations, characterized as preposterous attacks by People's Temple, had been made by former members and concerned relatives. Jim Jones felt that he and his organization were being persecuted because of his grand attempt to save the impoverished world no matter what color it was. Mr. Naipaul summarized their defense as follows:

"People's Temple was only one of a number of progressive groups marked down for destruction because they were bringing together the poor and the working-class and defying racial barriers. The fact that they had highlighted the failure of the free-enterprise system; the fact that they had been able to create successful survival programs providing food, medical care, jobs and vocational training; the fact that they had demonstrated the corporate power and solidarity of the dispossessed - a corporate power and solidarity that racist forces seemed to regard as their unique birthright; the fact that they had been able to generate wealth from a 'cooperative life-style' rather than from a dog-eat-dog ethic of capitalism; the fact that they had distributed a free newspaper attacking all manifestations of injustice ...  these were the real reasons behind their persecution."

We do not believe the conspiracy theory enjoyed by People’s Temple. In any case, the very notion that the super-powerful leader of world civilization, upon whom an attack is an attack on civilization itself, would go out of its way to destroy a communal alternative to the American Way, seems awfully absurd to Americans whose prejudices and functional illiteracy prevent them from grasping the meaning of the daily news, that the United States has been doing just that for many years, that its very health as a nation depends on having enemies, that its “Judeo-Christian” love for its own kind is rooted in hatred of other kinds, that if it were not for external enemies, the people of the United States would be at each others throats. That is to say that the civilization of organized greed bred by Anglo-Saxon-Americans needs another civilization to clash with for its very existence. Without massive resistance, it would collapse under its own weight, for it has built its house on sand, on the idea that a selfish war of all against all will bring peace to all. If only everyone would overcharge everyone else, everyone will get rich. If only everyone would do as they please, everyone will be happy in the long run.

Islamic Africa

Jim Jones was certainly paranoid, but his delusions of grandeur and persecution pale beside those of the neoconservative leaders of the United States, whose Secretary of Defense conceived the current “Ten Percent Solution” policy of barely mitigated paranoia now followed – if there is a ten-percent chance of being attacked by foreigners, take the war to them and kill them first. The Cold War is over; another enemy is vital to the health of the United States. A war is needed to support the military-industrial-energy complex. Take that war to those who are jealous of our freedom and wealth. Destroy whole countries in the process of apprehending and killing a few killers; the collateral damage alone will give millions of people sufficient cause to hate the United States; how convenient: a numerically worthy enemy shall be produced to wage a world war with. The Evil Empire is dead! Long live the Axis of Evil! But let Asia take care of Korea and communism; the select enemy of the American Way, the civilization with which it would fain clash in a final Crusade, is the civilization of Islam, or rather the remnant of Islam which still submits to Allah instead of greed for the Almighty Dollar – as long as Muslims go along with the American Way and keep to themselves in their ghettos, they are as good as the other People of the Book, to whom Muhammad was sent, to warn them against their backsliding into ignorance, violence, and selfishness.

The so-called world war against terrorism is being taken to Africa, where the United States government is financing alliances of ruthless gangs of thugs, rapists, arsonists, thieves and murderers to fight the advance of family-, tribe-, and clan-oriented Islam, a civilization that might, as can be seen in Somalia, bring some semblance of law and order to much of the continent – no doubt the salvation would entail the enthusiastic use of force. The First World stands opposed to total religious pacification because its own totalitarian system needs a certain degree of criminality for its existence – a thief is a capitalist without capital. Private capitalism is inherently selfish; the true nature its feel-good religious and self-flattering ethical professions are exposed by the fact, for example, that the amount spent on producing perfume in America and England could feed the hungry of the world and provide them with preventative hygienic health care. As for Red communism, it is simply another organization of greed based on zealous jealousy and resentment, and it is bankrupt.

Italian Fascism and German Nazism arose and ran rampant the last time communism and capitalism were widely perceived as inherently incompetent, hence President Bush’s inept speechwriters have recently renamed the so-called terrorists and extremists and fanatics, “Muslim Fascists.” Of course there were Muslim Fascists and Nazis during the war, but the president’s application of the term is inappropriate, and applies more to the underlying Germanic ideology of his court, although it is far more compassionate than the “New Conservative” ideology of the Germans who inspired the American Neoconservative movement – the Prussian thinkers but there own spin on Hobbes and Machiavelli. Fascism is the perfection of capitalism; the end game of free competition is the merger and consolidation of companies into a few corporations whose leaders are unelected and whose direct and indirect rule over the globe is Total. Again, the neoconservative movement of the United States has its roots in German National Socialism and Nazism. Despite its professed faith in the human family, in fatherhood and motherhood, it works the ruin of families, the core-value of traditional cultures, still evidenced by Islamic culture. Despite the promise that the so-called world war on terrorism is not the continuation of the traditional crusade against Islam, the deeds of the paranoid First World indicate that Islam is indeed the targeted civilization with which the “Party of War” – the cult of ignorance, violence, and self-interest – would fain clash to the death of one or the other or both – when going to war, dig two graves. Muslim immigrants are becoming increasingly aware of the disconcerting fact that so-called Christians, whose propensity to unconditional forgiveness sanctifies sinful conduct, have little love for them except as more cheap labor to manipulate for private profit. As for Islam itself, Christians and Jewish citizens of the Superpower generally albeit privately consider the religion of Submission to Allah to be a perverse and evil religion, one that should be “reformed” – bribed and stamped out of effective existence, that it too might become a feel-good religion, one that justifies doing as one pleases. 

Professor Diop’s left-winged dream of a secular Black Africa is obviously passé today and would be a subject of small historical interest if the subsequent events had not taught us that superficial color-consciousness, no matter what language is currency, is inadequate for the achievement of continental unity – in this case a Black African confederacy was expected. Pure black simply defined, as the Russian Suprematists illustrated, is the revolutionary colorist’s symbol of anarchy or chaos, and that has its time and place, when and where the slate needs to be wiped clean of white graffiti. Not that birds of the same feather should not flock together if they so prefer, but let them be at peace. If a diverse and relatively cooperative culture is desired in Africa, the imposition of red communism or white capitalism will not serve the purpose nearly as well as a moderate Islamic civilization of the current discontent. Traditional Islam has suffered its internal conflicts, yet it is best known for its adaptation to the particularistic tendencies of time and place, incorporating all sorts of cultures and languages; at the same time, moderate reformist Islam emphasizes the universalistic aspects, which are not incompatible with Western influences and institutions provided they are harnessed in service to Islam; that is, a law-abiding, devout, ethical life of submission to Allah, a life far more honorable and much less vicious than Christianity as it is generally practiced in the United States. 

Since the universalistic tendency left to its own devices might override particularistic concerns and be taken to the extreme of totalitarian theocracy, the Islamism of the Islamic Confederacy of African States must be moderated by a uniform set of basic political and civil rights. As can be seen in Somalia at present, an Islamic network of alliances of African peoples, established ad hoc for the local establishment of sharia, can be much more effective than Western-trained African police forces for curbing the gangland corruption and violence that pernicious Western influences do more to aggravate than ameliorate – the United States is notorious for its support of criminal gangs and political thuggery throughout the world as part of its effort to free markets from local control and make the world safe for corporate America’s domination and exploitation of the world’s natural resources. 

As for the natural tendency of human beings to conceptually categorize and organize themselves into hierarchically ordered kinds and to discriminate against each other according to such artificial or superficial groupings; true Islam, as amply demonstrated during its golden period, is essentially democratic and tolerant of categories, particularly the black-and-white categorization. Despite the apparent progress in “race relations” in the United States, all the so-called races, including the brainwashed portion of the black race, seem convinced that, notwithstanding a few glaring exceptions, black-skinned people are of inferior stock, are most likely impoverished, incompetent, ignorant, and criminally inclined – hence prime candidates for Christianity. A nation within the United States, the Nation of Islam, begs to disagree and has taken commendable steps towards extirpating the denigrating perspective from its black members; unfortunately, too many brothers have fostered white hatred and blackened it for their own use. But that is not the path of the faithful pilgrim. Malcolm X recognized the righteous path during his pilgrimage to Mecca, when he was immediately accepted as a brother pilgrim instead of discriminated against. He was astonished to see that tens of thousands of pilgrims “were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe could never exist.”

Malcolm X observed patterns in the Muslim crowds; he saw birds of a feather flocking together, but concluded that “true brotherhood” existed, for the patterns in themselves implied no hierarchies of superiority and inferiority. His subsequent belief, that such a brotherhood could exist in the United States, led to his assassination. Likewise, the belief of a growing number of people that Islam is a viable alternative to a life of ignorance, arrogance, greed, lust, and pre-emptive violence, has led to their general persecution by hypocritical bigots who are jealous of and resent their pious lifestyle, who covet their natural resources as well, and therefore project their own faults on Muslims. Therefore the establishment of the Islamic Federation of African States would probably be violently resisted by the state sponsors of massively organized terrorism. The Quran obligates Muslims to retaliate instead of turning the other cheek as advised by Jesus Christ; lip-service adherents to the ‘feel good no matter what you do’ religion have regressed to being, like many Muslims, frustrated Hebrews, inasmuch as they embrace the talion principle instead of love-thine-enemy: tallying up eyes for eyes, teeth for teeth, with the difference that the Judeo-Christian imposters demand at least a ten-to-one body count under the presumption their kind at the bare minimum is ten times better than all other kinds, hence genocidal collateral damage and massive population displacements are divinely ordained by the brutal arbitrary lord of lost paradise, the high-tech omnipotent god of the neo-barbarian super-power - the Terrorist Almighty.

But as Solomon said ever so wisely, do not count on your riches for success in war. The tables shall be turned and the tallies brought into balance if the principle of retaliation is pursued to its just solution in a worldwide bloodbath. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim “Semites” are at self-contemptuous, anti-Semitic odds with each other; in the their self-contempt they want to see each other dead. In death all are at one in equality and peace, but that is not the sort unity we should advance. If only the People of the Book would find or write a loving page to dwell upon, the Islamic Federation of African States would be a glorious instantiation of the most divine principle of humankind, for love transcends and embraces all superficial differences such as skin colors, languages spoken, and cultures enjoyed. 

Quoted:

Black Africa, The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, by Cheikh Anta Diop, Translated by Harold J. Salemson, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books 1987 (Copyright 1974)

Journey To Nowhere - A New World Tragedy, by Shiva Naipaul, c1980

Biographical Note:

The author is an independent author, without portfolio, currently anchored in Miami Beach. He is not a Muslim nor is he a member of any other organized religion. He is not affiliated with any terrorist organization, nor is he affiliated with any organization committed to violently overthrowing the present government of the United States. He enjoys the cosmopolitan privileges of  being a citizen of the United States of America, and he is grateful to all people who augment and safeguard those privileges.