Showing posts with label self-determination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self-determination. Show all posts

Friday, January 10, 2014

The Inconvenient Truths (Part 1)

This is not about Al Gore’s campaign on global warming. This is about the truth that we as Africans are not comfortable bringing up or discussing. It’s the no-go are in our society. It’s the unquestionable, unspeakable aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, the truth is the truth. It never changes. It never dies. In order for us to liberate ourselves we must embrace the truth that we have been avoiding; the truth about what we really feel; the truth about who we really are; the truth about what we really think. The truth about who or what we really love. And only the truth is capable of setting a people/person free from the baggage and deceits carried over from generations to generations.

This is about how our enslavers and colonizers (and subsequently neocolonialists who have been taught the trade via the divide and conquer strategy) wants us to forget who we were so we will not know what we still can be. John Henrik Clarke says “When you want to lose a people from history, you first destroy their self-confidence and historical memory. This is the basis of our dilemma”. I know it will sound like a broken record to some ears but we must understand the place of these historical events in context of our lives.