Negative Images Harm Black Youth, Forum Told
| AR Articles on Africa |
|---|
| The Agony of Africa (Dec. 2003) |
| Why is Africa Poor? (Jan. 1992) |
| Light on the Dark Continent (Oct. 1992) |
| Search AmRen.com for Africa |
| More news stories on Africa |
Black youth must gain a greater knowledge of the history of African civilization and the effects of colonialism and the slave trade before they can learn to reject some of the negative influences that enslave them today, says an award-winning history teacher.
David Watkins told the African Canadian Diaspora 2008 youth conference at the University of Windsor that when a community is only vaguely aware of its past, it becomes easy for negative assumptions to be foisted upon them.
He said many blacks are unaware of the history of Africa, running back hundreds to thousands of years to when Ethiopia and Zimbabwe were great empires and Africa was “the envied cradle of civilization,” boasting the first universities, great religions and a proud people.
“What happened? Slavery. You had to have an absolute methodology to change their minds and decimate a continent. You had to take Africa out of the African, dismantle their history and culture, all who he is. And when you take all that out what are you left with? A slave.”
Watkins, the descendant of American slaves who made their way to Canada via the Underground Railroad, is credited with helping his students learn about African history in relation to Canada, the U.S. and the Caribbean, while helping them define “what being black in Canada means.”
The Governor General’s award winner, who is an advocate of an all-black school, said many remain enslaved today, caught up in negative and counterproductive images of themselves. Some of that, he said, is perpetrated by the gangsta rap and hip hop cultures, which have sold a generation a bill of goods on what it means to be black.
Watkins, a father of two, cautioned that not all hip hop is negative. In fact, he said, in the early days of the form it was a purveyor of truth and those influences continue today among many cultural-affirming acts like Public Enemy. But it also has became distorted into an exploitive, violent and misogynist expression meant to perpetuate negative stereotypical images of black culture.
“The record companies say throw in some ‘nigger, bitch and ho’ and we’ll take you on,” he said. “Gangsta rap is bought 80 per cent by white male college students … . It’s a construct from outside our community.&nsbp;. .&n sbp;. As educators, we need to deconstruct this mentality and show how we’re being manipulated. We’ve got to replace it with the truth.”
Too often, he said, blacks allow these false cultural constructs to determine who they are. One message, he said, is that “black people don’t snitch. A criminal is allowed to run around the area and no one will come forward.” The problem, he said, “is cool has turned to cold.”
The conference brought together black students from Windsor, Toronto and Detroit.
Watkins teaches mostly students of Caribbean and African heritage.
The purpose of the conference was to help students network and meet black professionals.
The students, Watkins said, “can see the occupations, but in a lot of ways, the resources and roadmap to those professions aren’t always there.”
(Posted on May 14, 2008)
Comments
“What happened? Slavery. You had to have an absolute methodology to change their minds and decimate a continent. You had to take Africa out of the African, dismantle their history and culture, all who he is. And when you take all that out what are you left with? A slave.”
If slavery is responsible for Africa’s current desolate state, then why did other peoples manage to successfully rebuild their societies after disaster struck them? Berlin was destroyed in World War II, but Germans rebuilt it. Hiroshima, Japan was destroyed in an A-bomb, and Japan was occupied by U.S. forces after 1945, but that didn’t stop the Japanese from getting back on their feet and rebuilding Hiroshima and becoming a major country internationally. And besides, Africans weren’t the only enslaved peoples. Slavery was very common on the British Columbia coast among the aboriginal groups, with a strict caste system. Despite the proliferation of slavery, these aboriginals constructed marvellous houses, canoes, and totem poles. In other words, there’s no rational justification for blaming past slavery for all of Africa’s woes.
Posted by Matt at 6:29 PM on May 14
The usual idiocy.
Posted by at 7:34 PM on May 14
David Watkins told the African Canadian Diaspora 2008 youth conference at the University of Windsor that when a community is only vaguely aware of its past, it becomes easy for negative assumptions to be foisted upon them
Sounds a lot like the way white students are being indoctrinated about their past at all levels of state education; if they do get to receive any history about their past achievements it is always cast in a disparaging light.
Does anyone know whether Africans in Africa, both in the pre and post colonial period ever educated their students about African civilisation. My cousin was a grade school teacher in Zambia for 30 years, she never heard of this African civilisation, neither did anyone else.
Lets hope they educate them about the whole slave trade, the white slavery practiced by the North African civilisations, the castration practices of the Arab and African slave traders that has endured though the millenia, as well as the brief period when Europeans engaged in slavery. I’m sure top priority will be given to ensuring they understand that were it not for the sacrifices of white people, slavery would still be as rampant as ever throughout the world and most especially in Africa.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 7:54 PM on May 14
Blame it on slavery. We have all heard it befoe.Blame it on Whitey.Before Whitey came along, blacks lived in a utopian paradise.But Whitey derailed all of that.
Posted by Peejay in Frisco at 7:56 PM on May 14
Negative realities harm White youth.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 8:40 PM on May 14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomotapa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksumite_Empire
There are many interesting civilizations from Africa that we should teach all students about. The stark contrast between African empires and Western civilization will sharpen their analytic ability.
Posted by at 8:49 PM on May 14
The only slaves are the ones putting up the money for this black baloney.
Posted by Wallace Stroup at 9:03 PM on May 14
hahahahahaha…HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
blahlbbalbalblaa(its all whiteys fault)blahablalbalbalbla(poor blacks)blahbalbalbahbalbah(I have a phd and doctorate in african civilizations lost to slavery)balhablahbalbahba(gimme reparations)blabhalbahbalbah(whitey’s responsible for gangsta rap)blahbalbahbalaghba
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Posted by at 9:07 PM on May 14
Gee I wonder who’s fault that is that they have a negative image?????? Sure as hell isn’t mine or yours….you have to call a spade a spade, if you act like a moron then you get treated as one…wahhhhhhhhhhhh wahhhhhhhhhh!
Posted by lydia at 9:11 PM on May 14
Talking about Colonialism only makes them adopt a victim mentality, the same mentality that is “keeping the black man down”. Colonialism provided a foundation for civilisation, otherwise they would have been killing each other in petty tribal conflicts, kind of like how they are now.
Also, Whites didn’t enslave blacks because they were already slaves; they were purchased and moved to the Americas. The Africans are responsible for enslaving their own people but of course we will all ignore this because in reality it’s all about blaming whitey.
Posted by A. Windaus at 9:12 PM on May 14
“What happened? Slavery.”
Over a period of approximately 300 years the Transatlantic slave trade transported an estimated 10 - 12 million to the New World.
Over a certain period of six years, Germany suffered SEVEN MILLION PLUS deaths (10% of pre-war population). Over roughly the same period, Japan suffered 2.7 MILLION deaths (4% of pre-war population). These figures don’t count the number of maimed either.
If these black “academics” were correct you would expect that the Japanese and Germans would be squatting in ruined cities, eating rats amid a modern urban wasteland. But we can clearly see that this isn’t the case!
Mr Watkins, I don’t understand! How come two sets of people can go through concentrated hell and be perfectly modern and civilised places to live today while black average population losses amounted to 40 000 per annum and yet they’re perpetually scarred and need assistance for eternity?
Posted by ODDL at 9:32 PM on May 14
Should the absurd fairytales of African civilization be tolerated and even encouraged by all White Nationalists, if for no other reason to discourage (or at least tone down) the awful hip hop culture with its noise, grossness, grotesque clothes and so as to give us Whites at least a little bit of relief from such ugliness.
…or hope the blacks keep alienating Whites over to our side?
Posted by Sissy White at 9:52 PM on May 14
I’ll say it again….the Blacks in Canada represents an insignificant 2% of our population and half of them are foreign-born. But it appears that the subject of race becomes the mainstay of their entire existence to which they need to justify by every means possible.
If some “African-Canadians” are obsessed with the fact of being black while living in a majority white country, why don’t they ever consider emigrating to a Black African country?
Because they could never succeed without white people’s assistance to “help” them every step of the way from the day of birth to their grave. Blacks become addicted to being the victim of racial circumstances with all its’ attendant feel-good sympathies tossed their way by hand-wringing, liberal whites.
Posted by at 10:02 PM on May 14
Always coming up with reasons why blacks are never good enough and why it’s never their fault. Could blacks be a slave race coz they weren’t able to avoid being slaves? They are the only race that have consistently been used as slaves down through history. I wonder why? Is it that the slave holders want to keep the black man down because he is so brilliant and a threat to other people? I don’t think so!!! Get it through your head, mr.black apologist, they were slaves because other people could enslave and use them and not for any other reason. There were no incredible civilizations in sub saharan africa. Stop trying to fool your criminal spawns into more undeserved false pride. Anyway, you should have pride in your current achievement not 50th hand through some remote ancient civilization that might or might not exist. Jeeeez {shake head}
Posted by realist at 10:42 PM on May 14
Then apparently African mores and convictions were so weak that something as simple as slavery could vanquish them and thus a powerful group of African nationalists permitted negative assumptions to be “foisted upon them,” leading to their downfall.
What a shame to be so noble and so stupid. Survival of the fittest…get over it, Darkey.
Posted by Mortimer at 11:29 PM on May 14
He said many blacks are unaware of the history of Africa, running back hundreds to thousands of years to when Ethiopia and Zimbabwe were great empires and Africa was “the envied cradle of civilization,” boasting the first universities, great religions and a proud people.
First off, when has Africa been envived for anything?
And what are these “universities, great religions and a proud people”
If I were to hazard a guess, the first true universities came either from Ancient Greece or from Ancient China. If neither is the case, then I still highly doubt they came from Africa.
Great religions? Last time I checked, Christianity, Juedisim, Hinduism, Shintoism, and Buddhism originated well outside of Africa. If anything, Africa has been a breeding ground for archaic paganism and Islam. Nothing great there.
And “Proud people”? Need I ask what the hell they should be proud about? Bongos?
And lastly, if the empires of Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are so “great”, then how come we don’t here more about them, hmmm? I mean c’mon, when one thinks of great empires we think of the Romans, the Monguls, the British, the Russians, etc.
All this brings new meaning to the “Dark” Continent. It is simply the dark bottom of the barrel of humanity. ‘Tis the harsh truth.
Posted by Lombard at 12:11 AM on May 15
running back hundreds to thousands of years to when Ethiopia and Zimbabwe were great empires
I thought empires were not something to be proud of.
Posted by Michael T at 12:45 AM on May 15
In Canada, with it’s totalitarian political correctness, the truth of a thing is not important if it is used in some sort of social engineering that is deemed nessasary by goverment, in this case the “uplifting” of blacks who live in Canada. Therefore, when teaching history to blacks it is a fine thing to invent fictional African history, such as Ethiopian globe straddling empires and (presumably) sub-Saharan Africa as the “envied” cradle of civilization. This once again demonstrates the modern liberal denial of truth that is now central to the essence of liberalism. No civilization that consistantly denies important facts can hope long to survive.
Posted by at 1:14 AM on May 15
Anything that vaguely resembles civilization that is found in East Africa is likely due to Arab colonization. They were all over the coastal region for millennia, trading and raiding, while the Africans stood on the beach and watched.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 1:26 AM on May 15
As someone who lived in South Africa for 24 years, the history books, as written factually by the early European and American (Stanley) explorers and traders, prove without doubt that, certainly in sub-Saharan Africa, there were no schools other than how to hunt animals or kill people for the Africans before the white man arrived. How could there be? There was no written language, no permanent buildings as Africans were, and many still are, subsistence farmers who simply moved on when the ground being planted was finished (no agrarian farming methods there then) and the small ruins in Zimbabwe, the only old building made out of stones piled on top of each other that we would call a ruin that is not worth restoring without knocking it down and starting again, have been deduced as being made by possibly Arabs or Indians who visited the country say two thousand years ago, but as there has been no recorded history there, no one is sure.
So this man needs challenging either publicly or in Court as being a fraud, unless of course he is just referring to Egypt and perhaps Ethiopia. The blacks need to get self-improved by striving to be as good as those around them and not to be told that they are like they are because it is someone else’s fault.
The slavery story is just a cop-out and a great disservice for them to be told that is the reason they are unable to compete. Most of their own chiefs at that time sold slaves to the slavers, usually people captured in a raid on a local village when the Arab slavers arrived and offered trinkets and swords etc. for the Africans to do the hard work of attacking and capturing the next batch. It was a better alternative to fighting the Arabs and being slaughtered.
And the white man (the British) stopped the slaving at great cost to themselves in the 19th Century. Tell them that as well as it is a recorded fact. They can all return to Africa if they feel aggrieved and see what it is like to live there. They will not like it one iota and beg to return within weeks.
Posted by B J Deller at 3:22 AM on May 15
They’ve been teaching “Afrocentric” history, culture and literature in North American schools for nearly 30 years now. It apparently doesn’t work in improving the “black image.”
Posted by Connie at 8:19 AM on May 15
“Black youth must gain a greater knowledge of the history of African civilization and the effects of colonialism and the slave trade before they can learn to reject some of the negative influences that enslave them today, says an award-winning history teacher.”
The “award-winning” history teacher should use a few more facts than fantasies about African history.
Fact #1 — No sub-Saharan Africans have ever developed a written language.
Fact #2 — No sub-Saharan Africans have ever developed a system of mathematics.
Irregardless of the many other facts I could post here, just these two would be enough to explain the low cognitive state of African performance in modern society.
Posted by Eichmann at 9:21 AM on May 15
“If I were to hazard a guess, the first true universities came either from Ancient Greece or from Ancient China.”
The University is a medieval invention, and first appears in Italy, having grown out of cathedral schools in ways that are still imperfectly understood.
When afrocentrists talk about “African universities,” they typically mean the seat of Koranic study at Timbuktu. The problems with their claims include the following: this place does not predate European universities, it was founded by Muslims and not by black Africans, and it was not a university at all in the conventional sense. It’s not understood perfectly by any means, but the absurd contentions of Afro-dolts about Timbuktu are wholly without foundation.
The question remains, of course: how will filling the heads of “black youth” with distortions and lies accomplish anything positive for them?
Posted by Cassiodorus at 12:25 PM on May 15
“Negative Images Harm Black Youth, Forum Told”
The only negative images being broadcast are of whites. What a farce this is. There needs to be a word for this inverted reality being pushed as reality.
Posted by at 2:32 PM on May 15
Amazing idea!! African culture?? East & West africa had no inkling of one-another nor of the concept of compass direction until the Whiteman explored & mapped. Bantu & Zulu never met. Tribal attitudes dominate to this day. Look at ‘elections’ in zimbabwe and kenya. All tribal. Nigerian muslim slaughter of Biafrans. Dafur. Watch ‘Hotel Rwanda’ for an excellent movie on the subject. Only today I received a ‘donation’ appeal from ‘Christian Aid’ citing the urgent needs of northern ghana schools. This country just spent millions of aid money on ‘Ghana@50’ to celebrate independence from the White colonial masters. More than the entire education and health budget was squandered this year on new 4x4 vehicles for black african Ghananian government ministers. I will not ever, EVER, give money to these black africans. Christian Aid can get stuffed. They even have the stupidity to ask for £51 a time to train black african Ghananians how to apply for White donated funds already supplied to their own corrupt black african government to cater for education, healthcare and transport!! So they don’t know where it’s needed?? They now have the means to drive around and look, although this may dirty their new cars!!
Posted by yorkshireman at 4:00 PM on May 15
Don’t worry about black self-image. American blacks have been tested over and over again concerning self-image and the findings are always the same, viz. that they have a very high level of self-image, far in excess of what the facts would indicate as rational. Thus, if anything, we should be worried about the nearly universal overestimation of blacks when it comes to their self-image.
Posted by at 6:48 PM on May 15
Always blaming whitey while denying their own history of enslaving & selling each other. The white man certainly didn’t run around in the jungle with nets trying to catch slaves. It was the stronger tribes as the Ashanti that enslaved the members of the weaker tribes for their own use and for profit. The descendants of slaves should thank God every night that they live in America instead of some African nation like Zimbabwe or Somalia where most of the whites have left. They sure wouldn’t be fat from gourging on free food and riding around in their Cadillac there.
Posted by at 7:27 PM on May 15
Not only did they never develop a written language or a system of mathematics, but they never created a calendar, a bridge, or a sea-going boat. They never domesticated any of the large, strong African ruminants. They never produced a wheel or a plough.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:55 PM on May 15
Speaking of Ghana’s 50th… a good measure of Africa’s failure, regardless of the facts quoted by Michael C Scott and others, is a comparison of Ghana with Malaysia. Both were British colonies, and they gained their independence about the same time. Thanks to colonialism, they started out pretty much even; infrastructure, administration, technology. Malaysia even had the legacy of their own enslavement.
Look at them now.
Posted by AnalogMan at 6:18 AM on May 16
Cassiodorus,
You say that Timbuktu was founded by Muslims—not by “black Africans”. Well, both terms are not mutually exclusive you know. Ahmed Baba was a reputed teacher at that school. He was undoubtedly black and a Muslim. So too were Mahmoud Kati and Abderahman Sadi—both historians and authors.
Posted by OCCAM at 11:44 AM on May 16
>>>Ethiopia and Zimbabwe were great empires and Africa was “the envied cradle of civilization,” boasting the first universities, great religions and a proud people
and long before those empires… was the reign of Great King Oobla Goobla, mighty leader of the Ooba Gooba people. You may recall those stories I posted about him. How he had steam powered railroads criss-crossing Africa 4,000 years before the first steam engine was tinkered with in Industrial England.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:04 PM on May 16
Africans were worshiping trees before the Europeans came. A primitive tribal mentality prevailed and was the accepted norm. I have no idea where the author gets his notions of Africa’s past “greatness” from. Certainly, the “descendants” have little to show for it. Oh, and I know that Africa was a dump prior to European arrival because having been a victim of the liberal education system at an inner city school, I was forced to read some book by a Nigerian author describing the impact that colonial slavery had on that part of the world. From the little I recall, the protagonist converted to Christianity and was basically harassed to the extent that his fellow animist villagers came after him with spears and machetes. So much for “civilization.”
Posted by Bill at 1:08 PM on May 16
Good point, AngloMan, but one could take it a little farther. Shortly before independence, Malaysia had undergone three years of occupation by the Imperial Japanese Army, which was considerably less benign than anything the British had imposed. In addition, Malaysia suffered a Communist-inspired civil war once the Japanese were gone.
A politically-correct apologist for Ghana might try to claim that tribalism - ethnic distruct and strife - has hurt African nations, as the borders are in the wrong places, but the same is true in the Southeast Asian archipelago. Malaysia has a large Chinese minority, and the anti-Chinese quota system there for university admissions and government jobs is notoious.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:36 PM on May 16
“Ahmed Baba was a reputed [?] teacher at that school. He was undoubtedly black and a Muslim.”
Half right. Muslim, yes; black, barring far more solid evidence than currently is available, no. Too many claims of this kind are demonstrably ridiculous for them to be accepted merely on your testimony.
No doubt in your mind the existence of a black instructor at Harvard would prove that Harvard was the creation of blacks. Having considerable experience with your canons of logic, I suspect you might examine my trashcan and, upon finding three discarded tissues, conclude that I have three noses.
In any case the point stands: Timbuktu was not the first university, it was not a university at all, and it was not founded by blacks.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 9:47 PM on May 16
“they never created a calendar, a bridge, or a sea-going boat.”
How the hell did ‘aborigines’ get to Australia?
Posted by at 12:25 PM on May 17
Everything in East Africa that resembles civilization either came upstream from Egypt, or from Arab pirates and traders sailing down from the Red Sea area. And, just as Africans today are unable to sustain the infrastructure that Whites built, ancient Blacks were unable to pass on what the Arabs left them.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 2:29 PM on May 17
Australian Aboriginees are closely related to Dravidian southern Indians, and they walked there in one of the ice ages.
Aboriginees are really a fourth race.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 10:35 PM on May 17
Europe survived the black plague, losing upwards of 40-50 percent of their population, yet they recovered stronger than ever, because intelligence is innate. If africans ever had “great empires” prior to slavery, they should have been able to repeat them. I guess the term “great empire” is subjective and reletive.
what happens when a generation of blacks are taught about their past greatness in class, then they enter society faced with their current abject failure? how do they reconcile this?
Posted by at 2:53 AM on May 18
Schoolteacher,
The cultures and civilizations of East Africa have not been traced to Arab sources. Acording to the serious archaeological and anthropological research Ancient Axum, Ancient Kush and Ancient Egypt owe no cultural inputs to Arabs.
In fact, the consensus among those who study the linguistics of Africa is that Semitic as a language family began in East Africa and was culturally diffused to the Arabian peninsula where Arabic developed—as dialects of Semitic were transported to that peninsula by African migrants. See the research of Christopher Ehret and Joseph Greenberg.
Posted by OCCAM at 10:19 AM on May 18
“what happens when a generation of blacks are taught about their past greatness in class, then they enter society faced with their current abject failure? how do they reconcile this?”
Thousands of years ago when a black scientist created Whites out of lab monkeys and they escaped, they stole a powerful magic that allowed them to steal the black man’s intelligence. Farrakhan will come up with something.
Posted by at 1:22 PM on May 18
To Michael C. Scott:
Correct. Austalian aborigines are classified as “Australoids”, a race separate from any other on Earth.
Isn’t there a fifth race, the Vedda, or Veddoids, living in India?
Posted by Soprano Fan at 4:47 PM on May 18
Africa was the “envied cradle of civilization”? Ha ha ha ha!
That’s only true if you count Egypt, in the upper right hand corner of the continent. But at its civilizational height the leadership and people of Egypt were not black. They depicted themselves as copper colored, while Sudanese and Ethiopians (used as slaves) were depicted as black.
Posted by WR the elder at 11:23 PM on May 20