Background Image

...

Slavery Ended And Left Its False Images Of Black People Intact

-John Henrik Clarke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Slavery Ended And Left

John Henrik Clarke

...

Slavery Ended And Left Its False Images Of Black People Intact

Views: 3

Topic

More From John Henrik Clarke

Service Is The Highest Form Of Prayer As Far As I Am Concerned.

You Can See In Our Churches Most Of The Males Are Pastors. Most Of The Deacons Are Males. But If The Woman Withdrew Her Support From Our Churches, You'd Have To Close The Doors.

In The Closing Years Of The Nineteenth Century, African-american Historians Began To Look At Their People's History From Their Vantage Point And Their Point Of View.

We Have Different Levels Of Slavery. We've Got Educational Slavery. All The Major Religions Of The World, Even Christianity And Islam, Are Engaged In Some Form Of Servitude Of People. I Don't Look Favorably On Either One Although I Think Properly Practiced All Religions Are Basically Good.

If The Africans And Arabs Were Ruling Spain From 711 To 1492, Had They Destroyed The Catholic Church, They Still Would Be Ruling Spain To This Day Because That's The Institution That Held Them Together. The Institute That Gave Them The Only Hope Was Their Church. This Is Why We Are So Depressed Because The Institutions Of Hope That Would Cause Fulfillment Amongst Us Has Either Been Destroyed Or Laughed At.

To Control A People You Must First Control What They Think About Themselves And How They Regard Their History And Culture. And When Your Conqueror Makes You Ashamed Of Your Culture And Your History, He Needs No Prison Walls And No Chains To Hold You.

Egypt Gave Birth To What Later Would Become Known As 'western Civilization,' Long Before The Greatness Of Greece And Rome.

I Believe In Doing Good For Good's Sake.

We're All In A Test. With Or Without God, We're In A Test.

In The United States, The Supreme Court's Decision Of 1954, Outlawing Segregation In School Systems, Was Greeted With Mixed Feelings Of Hope And Skepticism By African-americans.

African American

If We Are Going To Be Masters Of Our Destiny, We Must Be Masters Of The Ideas That Influence That Destiny.

You Walk Out In The Street, We Don't Know If We're Going To Get Across. It's A Test.

African People Need To Stop Shouting 'nationtime' Until They Are Clear About The Responsibilities Of Running A Nation.

I Don't Attend Any Particular Church Now. I Don't Believe In Denominations, Nor Do I Believe In Organized Religion.

I Could Pull All Kinds Of Games On My Mother. I Couldn't Pull Any Games On My Father.

We Have Been Educated Into Believing Someone Else's Concept Of The Deity, And Someone Else's Standard Of Beauty. You Have The Right To Practice Any Religion And Politics In A Way That Best Suits Your Freedom, Your Dignity, And Your Understanding. And Once You Do That, You Don't Apologize.

Anytime You Turn On Your Own Concept Of God, You Are No Longer A Free Man. No One Needs To Put Chains On Your Body, Because The Chains Are On Your Mind.

When People Laugh At Your Institutions And Convince You That You Have To Adopt Theirs - Adopt Their Dress, Adopt Their Taste In Food - You Are A Prisoner To Those People.

Africa And Its People Are The Most Written About And The Least Understood Of All Of The World's People. This Condition Started In The 15th And The 16th Centuries With The Beginning Of The Slave Trade System. The Europeans Not Only Colonialized Most Of The World, They Began To Colonialize Information About The World And Its People.

To Be Black And Beautiful Means Nothing In This World Unless We Are Black And Powerful.

People Rise And Fall On The Basis Of The Makings Of Institutions.

Our Concept Of Beauty Is Taken From Hollywood, Which Is Anti-black. We Don't See Ourselves As Beautiful In Most Cases. Although We Are Naturally One Of The Most Beautiful Peoples Out There, We Don't See It. We Don't Get The Point. Hollywood Sets The Standards.

Whoever Is In Control Of The Hell In Your Life, Is Your Devil.

We Will Have Taken One Giant Step Forward When We Face This Reality: Powerful People Never Teach Powerless People How To Take Their Power Away From Them.

Whoever The Lord Is, He'd Give Us A Facility. He's Given You Hands, Legs And Might So You Use That Facility To Rise Above The Lowly Status. Failing That, He Gave You Two Good Legs, Just Run Like Hell.

The White Woman Has Never Had The Co-equal Status That The African Woman Has Had.

History Is Not Everything, But It Is A Starting Point. History Is A Clock That People Use To Tell Their Political And Cultural Time Of Day. It Is A Compass They Use To Find Themselves On The Map Of Human Geography. It Tells Them Where They Are But, More Importantly, What They Must Be.

If You Don't Like The Situation, If You Are Afraid And Can't Deal With It, Nothing Wrong With Your Legs, Get Out Of There.

Each Generation Must Assume The Responsibility Of Securing Their Manhood, Their Womanhood, The Definition Of Their Being On Earth That In The Final Analysis Is Nationhood.

Eat Bread. You Don't Know If It's Been Polluted. Drink Water, You Don't Know Whether It's Been Polluted. So Living Is A Test.

What Has Been Imposed On Religion Is Not Religion Itself But The Custom Of Those Who Have Been Converted To It. I Think That The Most Atrocious Of All Of This Is Islam. They Were In The Slave Trade Before Islam. The Arabs Were Natural Slave Traders. They Were The People Who Were Called On To Conquer Us, Unfortunately.

I Understood That My Family Was Rich In Love But Would Probably Never Own The Land My Father, John, Dreamed Of Owning. My Mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, Was A Washerwoman For Poor White Folks In The Area Of Columbus, Georgia Where The Writer Carson Mccullers Once Lived.

You Look At A Clock And It Tells You It's Eight O'clock, You Know The Number Of Hours That Has Been Before Eight; You Know The Number Of Hours You've Got After Eight. You Can Now Measure Your Time To See If You Can Get Done A Number Of Things You've Got To Get Done. History Serves The Same Purpose.

In A Matrilineal Society, A Woman Has Basic Rights That No One Has To Grant Her But You Can't Take It Away From Her Because The Society Is Based On The Concept That The Lifegiver Is Equal To Those She Gave The Life To. And That Will Remain... Until You Find A Pregnant Man.

What We Might Have Been Dealing With Here - With The Building Of The Pyramids - Is An Age That Got Lost. Man Had To Learn Again What They Previously Had Known.

The Impact Of Racism Has Changed Our Look At Ourselves Because Basically Racism Was Meant To Make Us Look Unfaithfully At Ourselves, And To Not Treasure Our Institutions.

In A Collective Society, Everybody's Business Is Everybody's Business.

You Have To Convince The Adults That If A Child Is To Learn His Culture, He Or She Will Have To See His Mother And Father Reading About It, And Explaining It To Him. Then It Gets A Legitimacy It Otherwise Would Never Have. Until Then, His Learning Is Limited.

A People's Relationship To Their Heritage Is The Same As The Relationship Of A Child To Its Mother.

My Daddy Wanted Me To Be A Farmer; Feel The Smoothness Of Alabama Clay And Become One Of The First Blacks In My Town To Own Land. But, I Was Worried About My History Being Caked With That Southern Clay, And I Subscribed To A Different Kind Of Teaching And Learning In My Bones And In My Spirit.

Europeans Not Only Colonized Most Of The World, They Colonized Information About The World.

If We Don't Unite, Chances Are We Will Go Back Into Slavery.

I Make A Special Point Of Working On Thanksgiving Day. I Have Friends I Go Out With But I Even Make It Plain To Them. The Standard Reason For Thanksgiving Doesn't Mean Nothing To Me.

Thanksgiving Day

...education Has But One Honorable Purpose, One Alone, Everything Else Is A Waste Of Time......that Is To Train The Student To Be A Proper Handler Of Power.

The Population Of African People In The United States Is Far In Excess Of Six Small European Nations. Where We Are Going? We Have To Go Back As Best We Can To Where Slavery And Colonialism Took Us From. And They Took Us From A Concept Of Nation Management And Nation Maintenance. We Have Been So Long Away From Home We Unfortunately Have Forgotten How We Ruled States Before The Foreigners Got There.

If People Do Not Know Where They Have Been And What They Have Been They Don't Know What They Are. They Don't Know Where They Going To Have To Go Or Where They Still Have To Be.

There Has Been A Struggle To Reclaim The African Self. That Struggle Has Been On The Part Of A Minority Of Dedicated African-americans Who Never Gave Up Our African Identity At No Time During Our Stay Here.

African American

We 've Lost Something Else: The Relationship Between Men And Women.

Clowns Don't Build Institutions, Nor Do Boxers.

Nothing The European Mind Ever Devised Was Meant To Do Anything But To Facilitate The European's Control Over The World.

I Have Gone Up In The Pyramids And The Stones Are So Close Together You Can't Force A Playing Card Between Them And (they Are) In Perfect Alignment. So Those People Must Have Had Some Hydraulics Or Something. You Take 20 Men, Put Them Around A Big Stone, Their Legs Would Get In The Way. Even If They Could Lift It, 20 Pairs Of Legs Hitting Against Each Other Would Throw It Off Balance. And They Would Not Have It In Exact Alignment. Not Even A Fraction Of An Inch Off.

The Arabs Are Deep In The Slave Trade Right Now.

When I Was Able To Go To School In My Early Years, My Third Grade Teacher, Ms. Harris, Convinced Me That One Day I Would Be A Writer. I Heard Her, But I Knew That I Had To Leave Georgia, And Unlike My Friend Ray Charles, I Did Not Go Around With 'georgia On My Mind.'

My Loving Sister Mary Has Always Shared The Pain And Pleasure Of My Heartbeat In A Unique And Special Way. We Have Sung Our Sad And Warm Songs Together.

No More Religion Anymore. No More Who's A Moslem And Who's A Protestant.

I Think That You're Just As Close To Jesus If You Use The Equipment He Gave You Other Than To Call On Him To Do For You What You Can Do For Yourself.

White People Think When You Love Yourself You Hate Them. No, When I Love Myself They Become Irrelevant To Me.

Everything That Touches Your Life, Must Be An Instrument Of Your Liberation Or Tossed Into The Trash Cans Of History

Anytime Someone Says Your God Is Ugly And You Release Your God And Join Their God, There Is No Hope For Your Freedom Until You Once More Believe In Your Own Concept Of The 'deity.'

In The African Matrilineal Society, The Lineage Of The Bloodline Comes Down Through The Female Side. The Arabs Who Invaded East Africa And Other Parts Of Africa Reversed It To The Patrilineal Where Everything Comes Down Through The Male Side And The Woman Has No Basic Rights Except That Which The Male Is Willing To Grant Her.

I Have No Faith In Much Organized Religion Because I Think It's By A Bunch Of Hypocrites And Practiced By A Bunch Of Hypocrites. They Don't Mean What They Say Because All Of Them Are In The Slave Trade One Way Or The Other.

After The Moslem Africans Lost Control Over Spain, They Began To Prey On The Africans Further To The South. They Destroyed The Great Independent States In West Africa, And Subsequently Set Africa Up For The Western Slave Trade And The Arabs Were In The Slave Trade Before Islam And They Are Still In The Slave Trade.

In Order To Have A Charismatic Leader, You Have To Have A Charismatic Program. Because If You Have A Charismatic Program, Then If You Can Read You Can Lead. When The Leader Gets Killed While You're Reading From Page 13 Of Your Charismatic Program, You Can Bury The Man With Honors, Then Continue The Plan By Reading From Page 14. Let's Keep On.

Malcolm X Found The Language That Communicated Across The Board, From College Professor To Floor Sweeper, All At The Same Time, Without Demeaning The Intellect Of Either.

It Is Not Uncommon For Ignorant And Corrupt Men To Falsely Charge Others With Doing What They Imagine That They Themselves, In Their Narrow Minds And Experience, Would Have Done Under The Circumstances Of A Given Case, And The Surest Check, Often The Only Check, On Such Perjury, Is To Recognize The Impossibility That Men Of Larger Instruction And Resources And Experience Could Have Been Guilty Of Such Conduct.

Every Form Of True Education Trains The Student In Self-reliance

Some Of Us Say, "lord Knows How Much I Can Bear". I Think You Can Assume That You Can Bear More Than You Have A Right To Bear.

The Difference Between The Pyramids In Egypt And The Ones In Mexico Is There Is Nothing Inside The Mexican Pyramids. In The African Pyramids, The Whole Inside Is A Burial Chamber. So They Were Really Gravesites To Nobility.

We Never See Ourselves As Heroes And Sometimes When We Do It Is A Hero That Has Made A Fortune As A Clown Or A Boxer. And There Is No Lasting Value In Either One Of Those.

I Saw No African People In The Printed And Illustrated Sunday School Lessons. I Began To Suspect At This Early Age That Someone Had Distorted The Image Of My People. My Long Search For The True History Of African People The World Over Began.

We Probably Have, Right Now, After The Civil Rights Movement - And This Was Very Unfortunate - The Most Glaring Time Of Giving Up On Africa, Saying We're Americans. We Are Americans. I'm Not Arguing That Point. So Are The Italians. So Are The Germans. So Are The Jews. We're Americans With An Historical Geography Of Origins Outside Of The United States As All People, Maybe Except The Indigenous Americans Who Came Here So Long Ago, Who Have Generations Of People Whose Historical Origins Are Right Here But Whose Initial Historical Origins Are Somewhere In Asia.

Slavery Ended And Left Its False Images Of Black People Intact

I Believe In Spirituality, Which Is Out There.

We're In A World Of Propaganda. Some Of It Is All To Effective.

Attending Church Is One Thing, Belonging Is Another.

There Are Some Long Silences In Scandinavian And Some Japanese Films, When The Audience Knows Action Is Taking Place, But The Audience Hears No Action.

As The Eldest Son Of An Alabama Sharecropper Family, I Was Constantly Troubled By A Collage Of North American Southern Behaviors And Notions In Reference To The Inhumanity Of People. There Were Questions That I Did Not Know How To Ask But Could, In My Young, Unsophisticated Way, Articulate A Series Of Answers.

The Acceptance Of The Facts Of African-american History And The African-american Historian As A Legitimate Part Of The Academic Community Did Not Come Easily. Slavery Ended And Left Its False Images Of Black People Intact.

You Should Not Bear Insults.

In Africa, The Woman Was Co-equal. In Europe, The Woman Was A Vassal. To Some Extent, She Still Is.

Religion Is The Organization Of Spirituality Into Something That Became The Hand Maiden Of Conquerors. Nearly All Religions Were Brought To People And Imposed On People By Conquerors, And Used As The Framework To Control Their Minds.

When The Early Europeans First Met Africans, At The Crossroads Of History, It Was A Respectful Meeting And The Africans Were Not Slaves. Their Nations Were Old Before Europe Was Born.

Powerful People Cannot Afford To Educate The People That They Oppress, Because Once You Are Truly Educated, You Will Not Ask For Power. You Will Take It.

All The Working-class People Could Feel A Malcolm X. They Could Hear Malcolm X, And Two Weeks Later They Could Whisper Back What He Said. Verbatim. They Could Remember The Way He Put It, And He Put It So Well.

Your Behavior Determines, To Some Extent, The Destiny Of Your Nation And Your Group.

If You Struck Your Mother Or Your Father, It Was Punishable By Death Because You Struck At The Whole Society. You Struck At The Morality Of The Society Itself. This Is What We Have Lost.

If I Lead The Field In Any Way, It Is In The Area Of Curricula Development, Study Guides And Other Teaching Materials.

Africa Is Our Center Of Gravity, Our Cultural And Spiritual Mother And Father, Our Beating Heart, No Matter Where We Live On The Face Of This Earth.

My Main Point Here Is That If You Are The Child Of God And God Is A Part Of You, The In Your Imagination God Suppose To Look Like You. And When You Accept A Picture Of The Deity Assigned To You By Another People, You Become The Spiritual Prisoners Of That Other People.

A Good Teacher, Like A Good Entertainer First Must Hold His Audience's Attention, Then He Can Teach His Lesson.

The Southern White Baptists Now Want To Integrate With The Black Baptist Church. I Say That Would Be The End Of It. In The First Place, Most White Southern Baptists Can't Preach, Their Intentions Are Not That Good And We Make A Different Joyful Noise Unto The Lord Than White People. When We Say, "lord Jesus, Personal Savior", We May Not Mean The Same Thing As What They Mean.

What Example Do You Have Of Anything Like The Pyramids Outside Of Africa? You Have Them In Mexico, But That Can Be Traced To Early African Migration. So The African Created Mound Culture.

To Hold A People In Oppression You Have To Convince Them First That They Are Supposed To Be Oppressed.

The People And The Cultures Of What Is Known As Africa Are Older Than The Word 'africa.' According To Most Records, Old And New, Africans Are The Oldest People On The Face Of The Earth. The People Now Called Africans Not Only Influenced The Greeks And The Romans, They Influenced The Early World Before There Was A Place Called Europe.

I Have Walked Majestically With Kings And Queens And Presidents And Other Heads Of States.

Violence Among All People Is Based On Dissatisfaction, Frustration And Crushed Ambition And People Who Don't Know Who To Strike At And Who To Blame, And Not Willing To Blame Themselves.

What I Have Learned Is That A Whole Lot Of People With Degrees Don't Know A Damn Thing, And A Lot Of People With No Degrees Are Brilliant.

The African Had Opinions About The Universe That Eventually Turned Out To Be True.

There's Such A Craving To Make Egypt White Or Asian, People Don't Just Even Listen To You. When You Explain Why Would Anyone Build Anything As Enduring As The Pyramids In Africa Before They Would Build Anything Of That Nature At Home?

I Question The Political Judgement Of Those Who Would Have The Nerve To Paint Christ White With His Obvious African Nose, Lips And Wooly Hair.

There Was A Time When All Dark-skinned People Were Called Ethiopians, For The Greeks Referred To Africa As, 'the Land Of The Burnt-face People.'

I Am A Nationalist, And A Pan-africanist, First And Foremost. I Was Well Grounded In History Before Ever Taking A History Course. I Did Not Spend Much Formal Time In School - I Had To Work.

Man's Attitude Towards The Universe And His Opinion Of The Universe Predates The Scientific Probe Of The Universe.

Africans In The United States Must Remember That The Slave Ships Brought No West Indians, No Caribbeans, No Jamaicans Or Trinidadians Or Barbadians To This Hemisphere. The Slave Ships Brought Only African People And Most Of Us Took The Semblance Of Nationality From The Places Where Slave Ships Dropped Us Off.

After The Bombing Of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, The United States Would Enter, In A Formal Way, What Had Been Up To That Date Strictly A European Conflict. Marcus Garvey's Prophecy About The European Scramble To Maintain Dominance Over The Whole World Was Now A Reality.

I Think Many Times We Charge The Lord For Things We Can Do Ourselves. If Only We Realized How Well We Have Been Equipped.

The Role Of Religions In The Domination And Destruction Of African Civilizations Was Ruthless... Islam Was As Guilty As All The Rest.

The First Light Of Human Consciousness And The World's First Civilizations Were In Africa.

Man's Most Intelligent Age May Have Gotten Lost In History.

I'm One Of The People Who Believes That Our Losses Were Greater Than Our Gains. Because Before The Civil Rights Movement We Had Entrepreneurship In The Black Community. Right Now, In Harlem, If I Wanted To Get A Shoe Repaired, I Would Have A Hard Time Finding A Black Shoe Repairman. On Near About Every Third Corner, You Could Find A Decent Black Barber, Decent Black Laundry, Had Restaurants In The Neighborhood That Were Open 24 Hours. The Food Was Good At 3 O'clock In The Morning As At 3 O'clock In The Afternoon.

If You Expect The Present Day School System To Give History To You, You Are Dreaming. This, We Have To Do Ourselves. The Chinese Didn't Go Out In The World And Beg People To Teach Chinese Studies Or Let Them Teach Chinese Studies. The Japanese Didn't Do That Either. People Don't Beg Other People To Restore Their History; They Do It Themselves.

Your Group Has A Right And Responsibility To Preside Over Your Behavior And You Have A Responsibility To Make That Behavior In A Manner That Does Not Endanger The Group.

Break All The Tvs, Burn All The Bibles.

The Standard Reason For Thanksgiving Doesn't Mean Nothing To Me.

It Is Too Often Forgotten That When The Europeans Gained Enough Maritime Skills And Gunpowder To Conquer Most Of The World, They Not Only Colonized The Bulk Of The World's People But They Colonized The Interpretation Of History Itself. Human History Was Rewritten To Favor Them At The Expense Of Other People. The Roots Of Modern Racism Can Be Traced To This Conquest And Colonization.

The One Thing You Never Integrate At The Ruin Of Your Own Pleasure Is Your Institutions.

She Was Not A White Woman. She Was Not A Greek... Until The Emergence Of The Doctrine Of White Superiority, Cleopatra Was Generally Pictured As A Distinctly African Woman, Dark In Color.

I Want To Make It Clear That The Black Race Did Not Come To The United States Culturally Empty-handed. The Role And Importance Of Ethnic History Is In How Well It Teaches A People To Use Their Own Talents, Take Pride In Their Own History And Love Their Own Memories.

My Mother Really Held The Family Together. She Was A Perfect Example Of The Kind Of Black Woman I Would Love To See Again. She Ruled My Father With An Iron Hand, Yet She Barely Ever Raised Her Voice Above A Whisper.

I Attended A Baptist Church As A Child And Was An Avid Reader Starting With The Bible.

When Marcus Garvey Died In 1940, The Role Of The British Empire Was Already Being Challenged By India And The Rising Expectations Of Her African Colonies. Marcus Garvey's Avocation Of African Redemption And The Restoration Of The African State's Sovereign Political Entity In World Affairs Was Still A Dream Without Fulfillment.

History Is A Compass That You Locate Yourself On The Map Of Human Geography, Politically, Culturally, Financially.

Most Human Behavior Is Controlled By Images. Image Is A Factor In How People Look At Themselves And What They Use To Reflect Themselves. The Control Of Images Is A Major Factor In World Power.

You Look At The Pyramids. They're Not One Fraction Of An Inch Off In Terms Of Their Alignment. They Were Built Without A Bonding Agent.

People Get Overwhelmed With Folklore As Fact. Take The Exodus. The Exodus Did Not Occur. It Could Not Have Occurred. Wasn't Necessary For It To Occur. The Jews Walked Into Africa Over A 16-mile Land Until They Built The Suez Canal - That Land Is Still There. Why Would They Have To Leave By The Sea. They Didn't Come By The Sea. Certain People Think You Are Against Their Religion When You Use Common Sense.

All Life Is A Test One Way Or The Other.

I Will Only Debate With My Equals. All Others I Teach.

Now, Jews Integrate But They Don't Destroy Their Institutions. They Don't Close The Synagogue. They Don't Stop Having Special Jewish Graveyards. They Don't Stop Having Special Jewish Holidays. Why Can't We Understand That We Can Have Things Special To Us And Still Comingle And Integrate With Others.

I Think That Jesus-dependency Has Taken Over Our Minds, And Too Many Of Our Institutions.

To Make One People Better Than The Other Would Be Ungodly In The First Place.

With No Specific Procedure, Man Arrived At Sweeping Conclusions About The Universe That Have Proven To Be True.

It's Time For Black People To Stop Playing The Separating Game Of Geography, Of Where The Slave Ship Put Us Down. We Must Concentrate On Where The Slave Ship Picked Us Up.

Most Of The Pyramids Were Observatories In Perfect Alignment. Some Pyramids Were Aligned So That The Sun Would Hit Them At A Certain Time Of The Year. And Yet, It Could Rain All Year, And Not A Drop Of Rain Could Get Inside. No One Covered The Hole. So That Took Some High Intelligence To Line A Thing Up So That The Exact Time Of Year When The Sun Was In The Exact Position, It Would Light Up The Inside Of That Crypt.

It Is Unfortunate That So Much Of The History Of Africa Has Been Written By Conquerors, Foreigners, Missionaries And Adventurers. The Egyptians Left The Best Record Of Their History Written By Local Writers.

You Shouldn't Bear Humiliations.

Educating A Child Won't Be Difficult If You Get Through To The Parent.

If God Is Love, Then God Has No Stepchildren To Love.

History Is Like A Clock, It Tells You Your Time Of Day.

I Say If Black People Don't Unite And Begin To Support Themselves, Their Communities And Their Families, They Might As Well Begin To Go Out Of Business As A People. Nobody's Going To Have Any Mercy. And Nobody's Going To Have Any Compunction About Making Slaves Out Of Them.

This Kind Of Collective Society - Giving To Each According To His Need - Existed In Africa Not Only Before Karl Marx, But Also Before Europe.

Trending Author

Robin G. Collingwood

Claudia Schiffer

Category