Tell let it is my brother.......
My moms always taught me about AFRICAN history she got her degree at SOUTHERN in EDUCATION with a minor in AFRICAN STUDIES in the late 70's so I was always on my game with the AFRICAN HISTORY topic.....But Black folks gotta start talking action cause you can make 100 HIDDEN COLORS & a army of so called AWAKEN BLACKS but if their no real action but FACEBOOK & IG POST it makes no since...I think honestly a few people I know got tired of TARIQ,NEELY FULLER,FRANCES WELSING & all those other cats cause they felt like it's rhetoric with no real solution....
I honestly feel that this "knowledge" is a double edge sword that gives scared blacks an excuse for not taking action. Blacks will say "I can't rock with that because they aren't Kemet" or "We dont need businesses because Capitalism is the devil" other Ethnic groups don't spend their time going back and forth about Ancient history. While it is important to know who you are, since the black man and woman are the only group of people robbed of their history,
at the end of the day we need to make moves economically THEN we can get to the history stuff after we have a strong Global Economic base, because once we have that we will have our own world class institutions to be able to teach our youth. I see all these dusty hotep cats on FB always talking this irrelevant hotep mumbo jumbo, but when you start talking economics they go ghost. While we need scholars, we have to cover the basics.
The highlighted statement confirms what I have been thinking, which is that there is a very simplistic view about what it would take to raise the economic status of Black folks worldwide.
A sound knowledge of contemporary African history (colonial and post-colonial periods) will show that an economically sound Africa would be the end of the era of Western dominance, as well as a threat to the economies AND relevancy of many world powers and the few African elites that support their interests.
Look at how Portugal is faring now that they can't rely on extracting resources at a cheap price from their former colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Brazil). Compare that to France which can still claim to be the 6th most powerful country in the world, thanks in part to the fact that in exchange for independence, they gave themselves the right to control the currency (and currency reserves) of about half the countries in Africa (I recommend reading about the CFA Franc) and to have exclusive access (at a price they will set) to any resources found in the soil of their "former" colonies.
Moreover, a sound knowledge of contemporary African history will show you that the solutions we're all looking for have already been successfully enacted. Thanks to Thomas Sankara, the whole world had a glimpse of what a truly independent Africa could be. In only 4 years of presidency (1983-1987), he turned a Burkina Faso plagued with hunger into a food sufficient country; he recognized the threat of AIDS, implemented vaccination campaigns to eradicate polio, meningitis, and measles (2.5 million of Burkinabe were vaccinated in one week), recognized the importance of women in society, and most importantly, DID NOT UNNECESSARILY BORROW MONEY FROM WESTERN BANKS AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS.
A sound knowledge of contemporary African history will show you that the Man is also Black. We all know that the leaders of the West have a vested interest in acquiring cheap raw materials. What is never discussed is how many African leaders (and their elite entourage) are all too willing to give away those resources in exchange for the guarantee that they'll die in power. Contemporary African history will show you how, toward the end of the colonial period, African individuals sympathetic to the imperialist cause were propped up by Western powers and created the African elite class. A study of the current events on the continent and of the background of the main actors will show you how the former colonial powers nurtured what constitutes much of today's political and economic elite in many African countries. And you know what that elite loves more than the IMF loans they will redirect to their personal bank accounts? The clueless fools who want to "build schools in Africa," because every school built with foreign, charity money is a school they don't have to build. Every hospital built with private foreign funds is a hospital they don't have to build, and it's more proceeds from their countries' economies they can feel free to steal.
I agree that ancient history of Africa isn't much help in the improvement of the black person's current economic condition, but you can't dismiss the relevance of the last couple centuries in the current economic condition of Africans, just like you wouldn't allow anyone to dismiss the significance of Jim Crow's laws and redlining in the general economic condition of black Americans.
