CHAPTER 1

UNSHACKLE YOUR MIND

THE AFRIKAN ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION

by John R. Moore

The question "Who is this Negro, who is this Afrikan?" will be investigated throughout this study, with close attention being paid to the role that archaeologists, anthropologists and the traditional intellectual community played in the attempt to wipe out the Afrikan image. How various media sources like television, Hollywood, the radio and newspapers collaborated to fabricate a new personality called The Negro.

Many of you would have heard the word Pharaoh, but how many would recognise one if you saw one? Egyptian Pharaohs and Egyptian Kings will be Highlighted that Hollywood would never let you see. In addition, what took place in the white mind that caused it to try and rearrange reality and history to suit the political, economic and psychological needs of the time will be examined.

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So what does it mean to be Black from a psycho-historical perspective? Slavery was basically composed of two methods. One was the physical component and the other was mental. The physical part of slavery always had to be backed up with the mental part of slavery which the slave masters accomplished by intentionally scheming to do several things such as the following.

1. Eliminate the memory of the enslaved people, otherwise physical slavery would not be acceptable or last.

2. Wipe out the sense of group identity, otherwise unity would become possible and slavery would be that much harder to achieve.

3. Destroy the ability of a people to observe and practise their cultural traditions, because when cultural traditions are practised together; they become another source of creating an identity which produces unity which would then lead to resistance.

4. Dictate the socialization process and the direction of education. Control the media, religion and education so that what goes into the slave brain would be determined by what the slave master wants.

5. Manipulation of monetary and fiscal resources, because with wealth you would be able to correct all these other deficiencies.

6. Segregation.

These are specific practices or rules that are typical of all systems of oppression. Note that the first three rules are basically psychological. The subject of memory, identity, and cultural practices are tied to psychological procedures.

Memory in this context refers to group history, because if a group of people loses their memory they will become amnesiac, and have difficulties in accepting the culture. When a group of people loses its memory, it develops the same type of mental processing problems that a person with amnesia has.

Those controlling techniques by masters over slaves contain psychological components, the results of which can be categorized as a set of psycho-dynamics of oppression. In other words, you begin to observe perceptual distortion which is a psychological process and begin to recognize the denial of reality which is also a psychological process, where someone clearly sees the truth but refuses to accept the fact that it is there.

The projection of blame or blaming the victim for things that are perpetrated by the aggressor is a psychological, neurotic symptom. Likewise, the fear or phobia for differences or even projecting oneself as superior, a superman, or white supremacists can all be considered as delusions of greatness, because people are not superior though they may feel they are. These are all psychological components of an oppressive system.

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Euro-Americans were very successful in distorting the experiences and images of Black people, and in changing the way Afrikan people acted to a great degree. However, they were not totally successful in uprooting the "Afrikan-ness" from the Afrikan people, because a large portion of the Afrikan behaviour of Afrikan people still remains.

For example, many Black people continue to act very Afrikan as can be seen in the traditional churches where the songs and dance movements can be witnessed. This is very Afrikan but we tend to brush it aside as just Negro or coloured or Black, so Black people exhibit Afrikan behaviours without being able to recognize what used to be Afrikan. The behaviours were therefore not totally eliminated but were disrupted and severely distorted so that you no longer see a comparison between what used to be Afrikan cultural customs and what are currently Afrikan-American or Black cultural forms.

Psychologists who are into behaviour modification, state that through a system of rewards and punishment, the learning that people or even animals accomplish can be controlled, but they also state that if a person knows that through the behaviour modification process someone is trying to control that behaviour, then it does not work as well.

In actual fact, what has happened to most Black people is that they were not really aware of the calculated and deliberate methods used by others to control these processes, so the majority of Black people are really unaware of the "de-Afrikanization" method, but not only unaware of it, they actually play a part in it and even assist it by identifying with the aggressor, where the individual at the bottom begins to connect with the person at the top and starts to imitate their behaviour. Therefore you have many people who are very Afrikan but will take part in the "de-Afrikanization" process, because they believe this is the right thing to do by imitating others who are doing those things.

This brings to mind the idea of cross-over music where Black performers, hoping to get a wider share of the white market, actually cross over so as to sound less Black, but it does not happen the other way around. You rarely notice many white performers crossing over to play Black music. They will play the music, but they will also attempt to rename or re-define it so that eventually it becomes white music. For example, Elvis Presley was trained by Black people and that is how he became one of the number one musical heroes in America, - by singing Black music. A lot of other musicians like The Beatles would also say that they did the same thing, so this is just one of the ways that Afrikans get "de-Afrikanized." So by changing your audience when your own people are not the major audience (for money in this case), if the music that was invented to reach out to your own people in the church, the night clubs and so on sounds good to other people, they will pay for it, but being a larger audience means that very soon you will no longer be playing to your own people, and if you monitor that music over a period of time, it begins to lose its life.

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The same thing happens technically. For example, if you watch how Afrikans produce music, it is not done by writing it down on paper, neither is it produced separately with the saxophonist somewhere by himself practicing all day. It is generally a very important group experience, because the audience is a very important part of the performance which must be there to spur the musicians on.

But the technical way that music is produced these days is by isolating the performer from the audience, but more noticeably, the musicians are also isolated from each other. For example, a musician would be placed in a cubicle with earphones on, meaning that he no longer has an audience as long as you record in a studio. So the things that musicians were using to create the music can no longer be used, and if they continue in this manner for a long period of time, that custom will also lose its life.

Those Black or white musicians who do the cross over music and use this format to produce it, will ultimately have to go back to the sources whenever they need new vitality and inspiration. In other words, they will either have to go back to The Rastafarians in Jamaica who do it a different way, or they have to go back to the Black churches for inspiration, or even to the poverty stricken ghettos, because there is where the creativity always continues to exist.

In order to correct the picture that has been presented about Afrikans and Black people, it would be necessary to return to the original source material to obtain the primary source data wherever possible. Black people need to return to their roots, because it is important to explore the smallest aspect of their rooted-ness in order to have a foundation to stand on, and to participate as an equal in the world.

The mind must be freed due to the psycho-historical factors, based on the assumption that Black and white minds are not free and that Black people are victims of prepared information which is usually totally fabricated.

The original human existence and civilization began on the Afrikan continent. This is an important fact that needs to be utilized in the attempt to correct the distorted picture of Black people. This will be demonstrated using both pictures and words.

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