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MISEDUCATION OF AFRICANS (BLACKS)
By Chika A. Onyeani
www.lettertoafrica.blogspot.com
From the time we are born, we are taught to hate everything
African or Black. We are taught to value the Caucasian culture over our
own culture. We are taught to value the Caucasian history over our own
history. The miseducation starts from the day we enter school, when the
African child is confronted with the first nemesis of cultural annihilation: the
language of his culture is repressed in favor of the English language.
The African race is the only race, togehter with the American Indians,
to have been conquered historically, culturally, socially and economically. The
preservation, effectiveness and ultimate survival of a race depends exclusively
on their ability to communicate effectively in the language of their culture and
history.
What makes a race formidable and distinct is the
effective use of their language. The Chinese have it, the Japanese have
it, the Indians have it, the Pakistanis have it, the Germans have it, the French
have it, the Swiss have it, Flemish have it, the Walloons have it, the Koreans
have it; and the English from Britain don't only have it but have spread their
language and culture beyond the small island where it emanated. The Arabs,
bless Islam, have it as well and through the expanding embrace of the Islamic
faith more and more people are preserving their language and culture.
In
the next twenty years, most of the African languages will be extinct.
Swahili, Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, Fula, Akan, Yoruba, and the other minor languages
will give way to the onslaught of the English language.
The annihilation
of the African languages can be traced directly to the stupid notion on the part
of older Africans who had come in contact with the British and French that it
was more of an honor for them to speak English or French with their accent, than
to learn these two languages as a secondary language as other cultures have
done. Africans delight in talking about how their children can speak with
either French or English accents with no trace of the heavy African
accent. Most of us cannot converse with our children in our own languages
because we had been taught to avoid our own languages. ....
The
second annihilation which confronts the African child when he begins his school
life is the name he must answer to. As a conquered people, Europeans,
especially the English and the French, insisted that Africans abandon their
historical names to answer to their own names, David, Michael, Paul, Peter,
John, Andrew, William, Walter, etc., etc. They insisted that if Africans
had to become "Christians," they had to abandon their names which are
historically and culturally rich. As most Africans named their children
after their parents, grandparents, great-grand parents, relatives, and others,
the abandonment of these names lost significant connection to our past and
ultimately to our future.
The Caucasian churches in Africa
are the leading offenders in annihilating the culture and history of Africans,
since the first Caucasians arrived in Africa. I have read through the
Bible, and I have not found where it says that answering to a particular name is
necessary to become a Christian; yet it was a condition that the churches
adopted to force Africans to abandon their historical and cultural names.
When a race is able to discern the attempt to ahhihilate their culture and
history, but rather chooses to do nothing but continue with the practice, then
that group is stupid.
I have never seen a European adopting an African
name. They are not a conquered people - so why would they want
to answer African names. They don't value our culture and history.
The conquered people must be made to change their names in favor of the
conqueror. Today I see these Christians, especially priests, insisting
upon these foreign names in the belief that a person cannot be regarded as a
true Christian without answering to English or French names. They neither
understand the historical antecedents of how the change of names was used to
enslave Africans nor how this is still being used to continue the cultural and
historical annihilation of a race....
At least in the earlier times, you
could blame the Europeans for this miseducation of the Africans; but now, the
culprits are the African scholars themselves, who have been too lazy to research
our past and correct the convoluted history being taught in African
schools. Unless you know the accurate history of your past, you cannot
know the present and neither can you prepare for the future.
This
laziness continues to contribute in a major way to the annihilation of the
history and culture of Africa. In permeates the whole educational system
of the African. It avoids what is most relevant in place of what is
expendient.
It is this miseducation of the African (black) that
continues to make him dependent on the Caucasian for everything he does.
We have a high cadre of Africans who have degrees, but whether they are educated
is another matter.
If we were to look at some of the categories in
the lives of Africans (blacks), we can immediately see the hollowness of their
education. We can see how we have allowed ourselves to be miseducated,
with cheerfulness, because getting the degree was more important than getting
the substance of learning attached to a particular discipline.
The
authentic education of the African will start not just with changing the
historical, cultural, political and economic history books of our schools.
Rather it will start when already educated Africans abandon the easy way out by
producing what they need rather than depending on Europeans and Caucasian
Americans.
Our authentic education will begin when we are able to
build our own roads; our authentic education will start when we can produce the
drugs and medical equipment that our people need; it will start when we
can manufacture our own lights bulbs, build our power plants, build the
electrical grids and be able to provide electricity to our multitudes.
After all, the Caucasian has already done everything for us. All we need
is to copy what they have already done and copy it for our own benefit. We
don't have to invent a new mousetrap; it has already been invented.
Our authentic education will start when we endeavor to produce the goods
we consume; it will be an accomplishment to see our office equipment produced by
African companies. It will be an accomplishment if we can tell the
Japanese to go to hell, and we are able to produce our own radio, stereo system,
television, satellite television, our own locomotives.
It will be
an accomplishment to see African aeronautical engineers build our own planes; it
will be an accomplishment to see our petroleum engineers drill the oil that
powers our cars and refine them. Our authentic education will start when
we start parallel organizations to the Europeans, Japanese and Caucasian
Americans and stop the dependency mentality.
Culled from "Capitalist
Nigger: The Road to Success - A Spider Web Doctrine," Chapter 13, pages
135-146. Available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and everywhere
that books are sold. Or you can purchase directly from Timbuktu
Publishers, 463 N. Arlington Avenue, East Orange, NJ 07017-3927, price $14.99
includes shipping and handling - tel. 973-675-9919, fax
973-675-5704
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