Habari Gani? Kujichagulia! which means Self Determination – To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Self-Determination is such a beautiful principle which speaks to the freedom that all individuals and people-groups should be able to rightly exercise. Though not always using the term, I have been writing about “kujichagulia” on this site for a long time.

In early 2008, I was blessed to be a part of the Park Heights Community “Dry Out” campaign that sought to expel liquor stores and predatory businesses from the 5100 block of Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore. It’s beyond shameful that there are 4 liquor stores in that one block! It’s also telling that in this overwhelmingly Black community; all of those liquor stores are owned by non-Black people. Under the leadership of Derrick Compton and with the support of others like now-councilman Brandon Scott, Al Watson, and Pastor Kevin Brooks; we put weekly pressure on these establishments to let them know they were being monitored for infractions and targeted for eventual expulsion.

In November 2009, I critiqued the Emerging Christian Movement in the spirit of self-determination, for its exclusion of non-white voices as it presented theological dynamics and features as if they created them while all the while People of Color of other Faith traditions and denominations have been practicing different “emerging” principles for generations.

I wrote about “kujichagulia” back in August 2010 when I proclaimed that “Black People Should Control The Baltimore City Public School System” on the grounds that Afrikan youth make up about 98% of the student population and the city is somewhere around 65% Afrikan. This notwithstanding, Black folks are regularly begging and pleading to have substantive say in the education of their own youth.

Self-determination pushed me back in April 2011 when I talked about the general “whiteness” of the Urban Farming/Healthy Food Movement and the need for people of color to be at the lead of the food revolution just as we are in most cases the ones suffering under the brunt of America’s food deserts.

And of course, my involvement in the struggle against Governor O’Malley’s plan to build a new youth jail in East Baltimore has been fueled by my firm belief that the Black Community should decide what institutions we want or don’t want in our community just like White people and Jewish people decide what will or won’t come in their communities. If White people don’t want a business or even a church to come into their community; chances are it won’t come. If Jewish people don’t want a business to come in their community; chances are it doesn’t come. Why should it be any different for Afrikan people? We don’t want O’Malley’s multi-million dollar youth jail and many of us have committed ourselves to organize, agitate, and protest – even if it means physically impeding the path of construction trucks – until O’Malley bends to our wishes.

This, my friends, is self-determination and in different ways it’s happening all over the world.

I pray that the flames of “Kujichagulia” burn even brighter in the new year for the Global Afrikan Family. As Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. reminded us – “No one can ride your back unless its bent.” No more hunched-backness in the Black community! May we stand up straight like righteous women and men and commit to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves” without timidity or apology.

Ashe.

So off the top let me say that yes – I am a follower of Christ and yes – I celebrate Kwanzaa. Some may see these affirmations as incompatible and polar opposites, however, there is no incongruity with me. I am thankful for Kwanzaa and truly appreciate the fact that the day after I join countless millions of Christians in celebrating the gift of new life in Christ; I can immediately keep the celebration going by observing the new life that is possible for the Afrikan community as we embrace sacred values.

Those sacred values in Kwanzaa are called the Nguzo Saba – the 7 principles – and today the principle that is uplifted is UMOJA which means UNITY. With this principle we are invited to “strive for and maintain unity between the family, community, nation, and race.”

In my estimation this is a beautiful way to start this sacred week of observance for the Afrikan community. And leading up to this day of UNITY, my mind was reflecting on Bro. Malcolm X and his speech entitled The Ballot of The Bullet – given in 1964. The whole speech is powerful to say the least, but the first few paragraphs and the closing paragraph are particularly important given today’s focus on UNITY.

Bro. Malcolm goes to great lengths in the opening of the speech to diminish divisions between himself and other Freedom Fighters who embraced different religious perspectives. By 1964, he understood that religion should NOT be a barrier that keeps the Black Community from working together. He shared his position that the Black community has a common fight and a common enemy. At the end of his talk that day, he pledged his support for any of the organizations or ministers (Christian or otherwise) on the rostrum who needed his support. Bro. Malcolm’s evolution in that way can inspire the Black Community today.

There are yet unhealthy levels of factionalism and outright division in the Afrikan community…there is even disconnect within factions that causes greater splintering. As I shared recently on a WEAA radio program; one of the tools of the MAAFA (or Afrikan Holocaust) was Disconnection. African people were forcibly disconnected from their names, their villages, their culture, their land, their religious beliefs, etc. My position is that if DISCONNECTION was the tool used to overpower us; then RECONNECTION and thereby UNITY will be the path that restores our collective strength.

I am excited to see the seeds of this in Baltimore. There is a rising generation of social justice activists and servants of the Afrikan Community that are expressing a greater readiness for strategic unity around shared goals. We are African Spiritualists, Muslims, Christians, Black Nationalists, Pan Africanists, and Integrationists. We don’t agree on every minor point or detail, however, we recognize that no one of us and no one of our organizations will be able to achieve some of the laudable goals that we cherish for the broader Afrikan community in the city.

We MUST work together. We MUST share resources. We MUST lend support to each others initiatives. We MUST begin to identify specific points that we will work together on in 2012. This does not mean that the distinct identities of any of our organizations must be erased. Rather, I believe that our greatest strength is in our varied gifts, organizational identities, and perspectives that when combined can produce lasting fruit.

I close this Umoja reflection by giving thanks for some of the Afrikan-centered groups that I know of that are serving Baltimore’s Afrikan community in remarkable ways. I give thanks for Everyone’s Place Bookstore & African Cultural Center, Solvivaz Nation/Reality Speaks Bookstore, Habesha, the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement and its various programs, ISA Academy, Nsoroma Academy, Ujima People’s Progress Party, the Marshall “Eddie” Conway Freedom School, and the many others that I don’t even know about (please add other Baltimore-based, Afrikan-centered organizations that you know of in the comments section)

May 2012 be a year of continued blessing to your organizations and I pray that we can lay the foundation for closer cooperation and functional unity for the benefit of our people. If there is anything that I can do to support you, your organizations, and/or initiatives that will benefit our community; please don’t hesitate to ask. I truly appreciate you all and look forward to strengthening the ties that bind us together.

Ashe.

I spent the afternoon on a therapist’s couch yesterday exploring the hurts and the prospects of healing between Continental and Diasporan Africans. The meeting was called to begin preliminary discussions on how we might be able to work together on an event (or series of events) that would bring the two groups together in order to share our stories, foster understanding, and nurture unity on shared interests. Given that most of her clients are new African immigrants and most of my church is made up of Blacks born here; we see the potential to work together as – what one of my professors, Dr. Jacqueline Lewis, might call – “border people” to invite the groups to share space in sanctuary.

What started as a planning meeting seemed to evolve into a personal therapy session for me. Without external prompting, I began to share my stories and my pain as it relates to wrestling with identity. I spoke of going to study in Ghana for a brief period and while packing my suitcases, I filled one up with food and when asked why, I said, “I don’t know what those people eat over there.” It was just another outward manifestation of the stigmas related to Africa and Africans that I had internalized. “Those people,” as backward as they are – had to eat some crazy food and I wasn’t down for it.

I remember being in high school with my boys and us “cracking on” one another – the “sport” of humorously putting each other down. And if you really wanted to get a good joke in, you’d call somebody an “African booty scratcher” or throw their “blackness” at them in insult – “you’re so black you’re blurple!”

This didn’t come out of no where. At a young age, I was trained to think of Africa as backward and Africans as people I didn’t want to be. I remember watching movies like “The Air Up There” and listening to comedians like Godfrey [Warning: link has explicit language] paint mental portraits of Africa/Africans that I wanted nothing to do with.

But it wasn’t just about what I saw or heard, it was also about what I wasn’t exposed to. Africa and Africans were absent from my k-12 educational journey…even during “Black History Month.” I wasn’t tested on Africa, quizzed on contemporary African issues, encouraged to read African authors, or instructed on slavery and colonialism’s impact on the African world – so it must not be important to know. (And if something was slid into the curriculum it did not tend to shed a favorable light on Africa/Africans.)

And the stigmatization goes the other way as well. Before Africans even immigrate here, they are fed prejudicial information, stereotypes, and mental pictures that paint African Americans as lazy and irresponsible leaches in American society. Then they get here and are fed a fuller diet of information that props up those pictures which support the racist justifications related to the plight of African Americans. (soley internal reasons with no examination of external factors)

So both groups – Diasporan Africans and Continental Africans – internalize damning depictions of the other and then because we don’t often share safe space, we never afford each other the opportunity to re-calibrate and unlearn what we’ve learned so that we might be healed and grow personally and collectively. This dynamic plays out from corporate American, to the streets, to the college campuses.

Which is why I’m thankful for the work of Kobina Aidoo, a local filmmaker and policy analyst who created the documentary, The Neo African Americans. His efforts, which are highlighted in a thought-provoking article entitled “Black Like Us” by Kenneth Cooper [SOURCE: SPRING 2011 edition of The Crisis Magazine]; uncover the many layers that help build the chasm that exists between Africa-descended groups and highlights the similarities that are far too often overlooked.

The need to build bridges that were intentionally burned between Continental and Diasporan Africans has long been understood, however, it is encouraging to see my generational peers like Bro. Kobina, building and advancing the issue. I now understand that before we can engage the important issues of a Pan African cause (economic, political, etc.); we must deal with the question of identity and the issue of community first. The prospects of our achieving great things in partnership are slim if we don’t see ourselves in each other.

Professor Henry Gates with merengue singers in the Dominican Republic

During seminary, I was blessed to take a course on African Traditional Religions in Ghana, West Africa. It truly represented a pivotal moment in my development as a man and a minister. The course itself stretched my understanding of what it means to think about God and express those “thinkings” in this diverse world. I also couldn’t help, but notice the parallels between the Traditional Religions in Ghana and the particulars of my own precious Faith as expressed through the Black Church. During the time I was there, there was a move afoot to discredit the Traditional Religions and push up Christianity and Jehovah Witnesses as the preferred and socially acceptable religious identification. For a variety of reasons, I pray that that push has waned.

All by itself, travelling is a tremendous opportunity to broaden one’s horizon’s and more fully appreciate the collage of humanity and nature. However, my being in Ghana not only helped me to appreciate humanity more, but it helped me to appreciate my humanity. Upon my arrival in Ghana, I immediately realized how conditioned I had become in the American West to disconnect myself from my Ancestral identity – that whom The Almighty made me to be – an African man! Since my “re-birth” in Ghana, I’ve enjoyed the journey of re-connecting to the global African community. On a macro level I see this “re-connecting” as an indispensable part of the healing process for African people all over the world. We were systematically disconnected from each other, our names, languages, “God-thoughts”, values, etc. Our healing will come about in part by way of a reconnection to ourselves and each other.

Which is why I’m glad my Sister in D.C. sent me this link to Dr. Henry Louis Gates’ latest documentary entitled “Black in Latin America“. Through the documentary, Dr. Gates attempts to explore the cultures of both Ayiti (Haiti) and the Dominican Republic. He also attempts to shine light on the divisions between these two nations that share the same island. I found the people and the storyline fascinating. And being the inquisitive type, I plan on doing more research into why these divisions exist and into untold aspects of the story that perhaps did not gain coverage in this piece.

That said, I invite you to share in this, yet another chapter of the Global African Story.

Check it out!

Watch the full episode. See more Black in Latin America.

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

Could we – now in Black History Month 2011 – bear witness to the birth of a new African nation based on the self-determination of African people? It looks that way.

With much interest, I’ve had my eyes on Sudan for the past 6 years – using this blog as a vehicle to educate, organize, and share my experiences while advocating alongside the Sudanese people principally in light of government-sponsored violence in Darfur. And while the conflict in that African nation is much more intricate than I initially realized (there are religious, ethnic, and cultural disputations in the mix of the discord and violence), recent events are far simpler to understand. Namely that Africans in the southern half of the country have made a stand for self-determination.

After nearly 20 years of conflict between North and South Sudan – the people of the South voted in record number to secede from the North and become their own nation. Moving on a 2005 peace agreement with the government in Khartoum (in the North), the people of South Sudan decided that they were tired of being neglected by the North-based government, tired of attempts to impose arab cultural ways upon their decidedly African community, and tired of living in extreme poverty despite being literally on top of oil fields.

Nearly 4 million people in South Sudan voted for independence from the North to the tune of 99% in favor. If all continues in this direction, South Sudan will become a new nation in July 2011.

Even as the winds of revolution seem to be blustering through the African nations of Egypt and Tunisia, I am excited for our sisters and brothers in Sudan who took an important step toward self-determination this year. My hope now is that the people of South Sudan will keep a wary eye out for imperial-opportunists like the United States. The U.S. and other imperial nations would like nothing more than to swoop into that undeveloped nation rich in oil and lacking in infrastructure to begin laying the groundwork to privatize services and prop up government leaders loyal to their national interest. In fact, China is already in the country positioning itself to benefit from the new-found freedom of South Sudan though it helped finance and support military attacks upon these same people via its partnership with President Omar Al-Bashir in the North. The scramble for imperial expansion has begun.

I pray that the children of Africa throughout the Diaspora would pray for, support, and prepare to advocate alongside our sisters and brothers in Southern Sudan as they take an important step in their history – which is by extension an important step in our history as well.

I have an uneasy feeling when it comes to Christian Missionaries. I know that sounds strange coming from a pastor. But anyone who reviews the history of missionaries from the Western, American context will find a deluge of disheartening examples connecting Christian Mission with subjugation, oppression, and the dehumanizing of Indigenous Communities. While all Christian Mission cannot be characterized as such; all too often from antiquity to more modern times, it has had a cozy relationship (if not a partnership) with colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and White Supremacy.

People of Color from virtually all over the world have a chapter somewhere in their history about their engagement with ambassadors from the Western World who often came with Jesus on their lips and ulterior motives in their hearts. I know that is a hard saying, but it’s something that must be said – particularly in the Christian Community today – if we ever are to embrace the whole of our collective human story and learn from it. The reality is that many White people have never faced the fact of their own privilege and therefore have never explored how its poisonous residue permeates the rest of their lives. (That’s why Chris Matthews from MSNBC’s Hardball can listen to President Barack Obama give his first State of the Union address and say, “I forgot he was Black for an hour.” Even in trying to give what he thought was a compliment, he delivered an insult probably because he has never thoroughly explored his own privilege and ingrained perceptions of race. What his comment really did was categorize “Blackness” as deficiency.)

I believe that’s one reason the movie, Avatar, has done so well around the world. The movie gives voice to Indigenous Communities. In a way that lowers psychological defenses, the movie tells the story of what happens when imperial interests locate new land and sense something valuable connected to that land or culture. While Avatar still has problematic themes that are present in many Western movies (such as the “White” man as Saviour motif, the marginalization of Indigenous Manhood, and the disconnection of the Indigenous Man from the Indigenous Woman), there are many lessons that the movie can teach about colonial imperialism. One of the most poignant of which revolves around the possibility of redemption for the colonizer.

However, redemption for the colonizer – or in our case in this article, the Christian Missionary, can only come when the Christian Missionary examines him or herself. Christian Missionaries would do well to explore the impact of language upon their theological construct. What does it mean when you say, “We’re going to ‘WIN‘ souls for Christ?” What does it mean when you characterize foreign communities as “LOST“? Dear Christian Missionary, what do you mean when you visit intentionally impoverished nations with the intent of “SAVING SOULS?” What beliefs are buried beneath your language? How do these beliefs impact not only your language, but your actions?

If I had my way, I would make it mandatory that every Christian Missionary spend significant time examining themselves, studying the history of Christian Mission from the Indigenous Perspective, and engaging in what might feel like very uncomfortable group dialogue to uncover racialized presuppositions related to culture, privilege, and Faith.

Christian Missionaries need to study and reflect on Christian Imperialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade among other related historical occurrences. And they need to reflect on more modern occurrences which have interplay like how the U.S. Military has been using guns in Iraq and Afghanistan that are inscribed with Christian scriptures. (How does it feel Brother and Sister Christians to know that weapons of MURDER being used to spill blood in your name on foreign soil are inscribed with the words of your Lord & Savior?)

They need to analyze and reflect on the situation with the Idaho-based, Baptist Missionary Group in Haiti right now which has links to the Southern Baptist Convention – a convention with an admitted White Supremacist past and history of female subjugation as well. The Baptist Mission group in Haiti will tell you that they were there to “save” those poor children. It has seemed to become one of the latest phenomenon in the Western World to “save” children of color by adopting and removing them from their culture and community with little regard to how their disconnection from their culture will impact their development as human beings…much less any analysis of the social dynamics that even make it possible for parents to consider giving their children to White Saviors from the United States. It turns out that the more than 30 children who were kidnapped were NOT all orphans. Some of their parents survived the earthquake and for the parents that didn’t survive, who says the next of kin couldn’t have taken the child in? I’m not necessarily questioning the motives of the White Missionaries from Idaho – many people were moved with compassion upon seeing the devastation in Haiti and engaged in remarkable acts of kindness. What I am holding up for scrutiny, however, is the level of arrogance that this group had to possess in order to engage in this action. Reports have surfaced that suggest that Laura Silsby, the leader of this missionary group, “didn’t think about Haitian permission to take the children out of the country.” [SOURCE: The Baptist Press]. (The idiocy of that misstep aside, what levels of White American privilege and arrogance have to be present in order for you to think you can just fly to another country and take other people’s children like they’re tourist trinkets!?)

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? It should.

Those sensitive to the history of Christian Mission from the perspective of the Indigenous Community, remember how Christian Missionaries engaged in aboriginal child separations and removals in Australia in the name of “civilizing” and “christianizing” the indigenous community – in hopes of ultimately destroying their culture and forcing them to assimilate into the dominant culture.

As I said at the outset, this analysis does not suggest that all Christian Mission and all Christian Missionaries are really tools of Western, White imperial plans. (I also don’t want to suggest that only White Missionaries become tripped up in the potholes of the western missionary paradigm. There are “westernized” missionaries of Color as well who propagate unexamined understandings of God and Faith in foreign lands.)

In light of all that I’ve shared, there are many examples as well of Christian Missionaries from the West who have surrendered their privilege and arrogance to follow the leadership of those within Indigenous Communities and probably most importantly have committed themselves to the establishment of real relationship with those in other lands. Relationship with no strings attached. A real “I-Thou” Human Connection that sees the Image of the Divine in the other.

That’s what Brazilian pastor, Claudio Oliver, recommends in this short youtube video. He speaks of the importance of “Friendship Trips” over the traditional “Mission Trips”. Heeding his words and the words of so many others like Lamin Sanneh who speak on these issues, will help prevent Christian Mission from drifting into a dangerously wayward direction that is disconnected from The Way of Jesus. This is a perfect time for Christian Missionaries to hold up the mirror, lay aside every weight and sin that so easily besets us, disconnect from the Western concept of Mission, and explore what it means to first be Friends.