The Black Spirit
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about a conversation I had during lunch a long time ago. My colleagues and I were talking about why as Black people, we don’t support each other, have so much infighting, and generally try to take each other down. I was askedto research why that trait was brought over here from Africa, since Black Africans display the same characteristics as Black Americans do (e.g. in the movie Amistaad).
So, I started looking into some of the Adinkra symbols of West Africa, common social customs that both societies shared, and the effects of the institutes of slavery and colonialization.
History would indicate something quite different than what we would expect. Although there were tribal wars in ancient Africa, these were for expansion and unity, and not the annihilation of another tribe or race of people. For example, Shaka’s quest for expansion in the south was to foster and create a large impenetrable Zulu empire, with a common social hierarchy and strong military to ward off external and internal enemies. Before descending into madness after the death of his mother, he would have been successful. The British and Dutch Boers seized the opportunity in his moment of weakness and dismantled the empire. There are several documentations of European wars lost to the Zulu.
In present day Ghana, Togo and Benin, the system of slavery was already in place. However it was more in the form of an indentured servitude, where the person(s) had the opportunity to work off their debt and return home at the end of the indentured period. When the Europeans came in search of diamonds, gold, and other raw materials and needed labor to furnish their activities, the first slaves as we would think if them today were the community’s riff-raff. It worked out well for both parties, since the whites could take these undesirables off the hands of the community, and the other party got a cheap labor force. Eventually, the process became more formalized with Europeans contracting with local slave raiders to kidnap members of the larger community. The notion that chiefs and elders actively sold valuable members of their society is a fallacy. When these raiders came into a community, they took away the strongest, the smartest and the most talented. These people were artisans, wood workers and farmers. For 400 years, they left behind the feeble, old and those that were less exceptional. The results are evident today. African Americans are much larger in terms of build than their indigenous African counterparts, and it has less to do with diet than it does with gene pool. No chief, tribal leader, or elder worth his salt would sell off his best and brightest when they were on a quest for expansion, as these states were during the century.
Finally, all of the Adinkra symbols I’ve researched point towards unity, communal commitment, respect for leadership and appropriate social conduct. Here are just a few:
FUNTUNFUNEFU-DENKYEMFUNEFU: “Siamese crocodiles”
Symbol of democracy and unity. The Siamese crocodiles share one stomach, yet they fight over food. This popular symbol is a remind that infighting and tribalism is harmful to all who engage in it.
DUAFE: “wooden comb”
Symbol of beauty and cleanliness; symbols of desirable feminine qualities. The meaning of this symbol is characterized slightly differently in “The Adinkra Dictionary” and “The Values of Adinkra Symbols”; the former emphasizes more abstract qualities of feminine goodness, love and care, while the latter has a more literal interpretation, looking one’s best and good hygiene. In any case, the duafe was a prized possession of the Akan woman, used to comb and plait her hair.
OWUO ATWEDEE: “the ladder of death”
Symbol of mortality. A reminder of the transitory nature of existence in this world and of the imperative to live a good life to be
I personally believe that the notions that we are unimaginative, lazy, unsupportive, and uncreative were imputed upon us by slavers and colonial masters. They called us names like “dirty nigger” (yeah, you wouldn’t let me take a bath daily and I only have 1 good outfit), “lazy nigger” (how can I be lazy when I have to work from 5 am till whatever time the moon comes out sometimes?), “no good nigger” (good enough to bear your illegitimate children though), and these are names we call ourselves today. Because we know so little about our history, even as it is being made today, we tend to accept these ideas of ourselves as a people as absolute truth. It’s well documented, but not well known, for example, that Whitney’s Cotton Gin was actually device invented by a slave that he owned, not Massa Whitney. And then there’s the email we get every February that points out all the inventions by Black people over the last 100 or so years such as the elevator, traffic light and hot-comb. Of all these, the only one most of us would know would be the hot-comb. How could a group of people come across the ocean on a 3 month “voyage”, see a leaf similar to their native “kontomre” and turn it into fine Southern cuisine in the form of collard greens, if they were not industrious and imaginative?”
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Western media would have us to believe that all African perpetually have their hand out with the begging bowl, however, they neglect to point out how unfair trade practices (with the US and Europe) over the course of 400+ years have devastated our economies and social hierarchies, leading to war, famine and general anarchy. The legacy of divide and conquer has also endured with us, fueling the problems we face today.
Divide and conquer strategies were used in Ghana, for example, to galvanize the coastal tribes of the south against their larger and more military adept Ashanti neighbors in the north. Ashanti lands were the temperate forest zones with timber and gold. The British found it impossible to penetrate their lands, and after several failed attempts to sign treatise with the Ashanti that would guarantee their allegiance to the British crown, they opted for force, using the coastal inhabitants as combat troops.
So to answer our question, no, I don’t think there is a “Black gene” or spirit carried over from Africa that keeps us back as a people, and keeps us divided. I believe our condition is as a result of learned social behavior used to navigate and survive the “machine,” and systematic conditions imposed on us (Emancipation sans the promised 40 acres + 1 mule; Jim Crow and segregation; eugenics and forced sterilization as sanctioned by the federal government; the impending need for affirmative action, etc), to guarantee that we would be set back and less capable to compete. The onus is on us to recognize that:
- Africa is a beautiful land, which is not inhabited by savages and monkeys, as taught in US school systems.
- The decedents of Africans both on the continent and in the Americas and Europe do not need to despise each other based on the notion that one group is better than the other either because they escaped slavery; or because slavery had given them the opportunity to now live in “developed” country.
- We HAVE to learn about ourselves as a community, as individuals, and to celebrate the little and well known accomplishments we’re made as a team or as individuals.
- We HAVE to know our history before slavery and colonialism. This involves technology, warfare, education and social norms. Tempered with Christ’s redemption, African values would set us apart and launch us into a new era, similar if not greater than Europe’s period of Enlightenment.
There is a lot to be done. Blacks in general are like the battered woman who has been told her whole life that she’s ugly, worthless and only fit to lie on her back and work in the yard. Until we see ourselves clearly in the mirror through God’s eyes, we will continue to our own worst abusers.
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