On December 9, 2020, the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society President Siphiwe Baleka made a presentation entitled The Lineage Restoration Movement and the Future of Africa to the Plenary Session on Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Movement at the 1st African Diaspora Summit in Nairobi, Kenya organized by The Africa Diaspora Alliance and the Kenya Diaspora Alliance. The Keynote address was given by H.E. Amb. (Dr.) Arikana Chihombori-Quao.
The Lineage Restoration Movement and the Future of Africa
“Since the 22 million of us were originally Africans, who are now in America, not by choice but only by a cruel accident in our history, we strongly believe that African problems are our problems and our problems are African problems. . . . The American Government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of your 22 million African-American brothers and sisters. We stand defenseless, at the mercy of American racists who murder us at will for no reason other than we are black and of African descent. . . . We have lived for over three hundred years in that American den of racist wolves in constant fear of losing life and limb. Recently, three students from Kenya were mistaken for American Negroes and were brutally beaten by the New York police. . . . Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected. You will never be recognized as free human beings until and unless we are also recognized and treated as human beings.”
– Malcolm X, Memo to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), 1964
These are extremely strong words from brother Malcolm. Perhaps my words today may be equally as strong.
It is a great honor to be asked to present a paper to the 1st Africa Diaspora Symposium and 7th Edition of the Kenya Diaspora Homecoming Convention. I have been to many places in Africa, but never to the beautiful Mt. Kilimanjaro and the land of the beautiful Kikuyu, Luo, Jaramogi and other peoples as well as the brave Mau Mau. I hope someday to correct this.
My first visit to East Africa was Ethiopia. On February 3-4, 2003, the 1st Extraordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa adopted the historic Article 3(q) that officially “invite(s) and encourage(s) the full participation of Africans in the Diaspora in the building of the African Union in its capacity as an important part of our Continent”. I was the only member of the Diaspora from the United States present at that historic moment. I felt an incredible sense of pride and duty, as Malcolm must have felt, when I, like him, served as the bridge reaching across the Atlantic to connect the two African peoples separated by the criminal European Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage.
Malcolm X visited Kenya in 1959 and developed a friendship with Pio Gama Pinto. Together, they planned a common strategy to deal with the daily humiliations and indignities suffered by both Africans and African Americans. When Malcolm returned from the OAU in 1964, he created the Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU) to organize the African American people for the next phase of their liberation struggle. As part of that plan, Malcolm X wanted African Nations to support his petition to the United Nations charging the United States government with genocide. On February 21, 1965, the day Malcolm X was to explain this strategy of the OAAU, Malcom was assassinated. Three days later, Pinto, a strong supporter of Malcolm’s genocide petition against the United States at the UN, was also assassinated. Truly, Malcolm X’s words came to pass: “Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved.”
I have begun this presentation with the story of Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto to place the topic of the Diaspora participation in the African Union in its historical context and to highlight the close connection of the liberation struggles of Kenyans and African Americans.
When Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie made his first visit to the United States in 1954, the first ever visit of an African Emperor to the United States, the Chicago Defender newspaper reported on this seminal event with the headline, “Emperor Selassie Links Negro With Africans Throughout World.”
Just days before, however, the British launched Operation Anvil. 40,000 British troops captured 26,500 “suspects” and held them in concentration camps. Pictures of Field Marshall General Musa Mwariama inspired many people across the Atlantic to start growing dreadlocks. The Mau Mau inspired the liberation struggle of Africans in America, and many members of the Black Liberation Army took Swahili names. The Mau Mau and the Kenyan people succeeded in overthrowing their colonial masters. African American people, were not successful in overthrowing theirs and achieving national independence. Our liberation movement was crushed by the United States government. Our leaders, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton and many others, were targeted by the FBI, assassinated, and our formations, like the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Republic of New Afrika, the Black Panther Party, and many other “suspects” like the Mau Mau, were targeted, surveilled, imprisoned and destroyed.
You may forgive me for making such a point, but the theme of this workshop is “Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Moment.” Therefore, we can not talk about Economic Emancipation without talking about what this Black Lives Matter Moment is. And this Black Lives Matter Moment didn’t start with the police murders of Sean Bell in 2006, Kimani Gray in 2013, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice in 2014, Sandra Bland in 2015, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in 2016, Chinedu Okobi in 2018, Breonna Taylor in 2020, or my cousin, Jacob Blake, a descendant of the Balanta people of Guinea Bissau, who miraculously survived seven bullets in his back from white police officers in Kenosha, WI in August, 2020. The Black Lives Matter Moment started with the African Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic and included the Mau Mau. In America, it is the unfinished business of the liberation struggle and decolonization of the African American.
So, let us now, then, talk of economic emancipation. Upon his return from the OAU, Malcolm X said,
“One of the things I saw the OAAU doing from the very start was collecting the names of all the people of African descent who have professional skills, no matter where they are. Then we could have a central register that we could share with independent countries in Africa and elsewhere. . . . The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here.”
Have African Americans done this? Have they lived a better life and improved their economic position since the time of Malcolm X?
The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission 1968) stated,
"This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. . . . What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget--is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
African Americans live in apartheid communities and this is de facto colonialism. Fifty years after the Kerner Commission Report, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that
· African Americans today are much better educated than they were in 1968 but still lag behind whites in overall educational attainment. More than 90 percent of younger African Americans (ages 25 to 29) have graduated from high school, compared with just over half in 1968—which means they’ve nearly closed the gap with white high school graduation rates. They are also more than twice as likely to have a college degree as in 1968 but are still half as likely as young whites to have a college degree.
· The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvements in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.
· 7.5 percent of African Americans were unemployed in 2017, compared with 6.7 percent in 1968 — still roughly twice the white unemployment rate.
· The rate of homeownership, one of the most important ways for working- and middle-class families to build wealth, has remained virtually unchanged for African Americans in the past 50 years.
· Black homeownership remains just over 40 percent, trailing 30 points behind the rate for whites, who have seen modest gains during that time.
· The share of incarcerated African Americans has nearly tripled between 1968 and 2016 — one of the largest and most depressing developments in the past 50 years, especially for black men, researchers said.
· African Americans are 6.4 times as likely than whites to be jailed or imprisoned, compared with 5.4 times as likely in 1968.
It is now known that it will take black families in America 228 years to earn the same amount of wealth white families have today. The top 10% of African Americans hold 75% of black wealth. That means that the vast majority of black people in America – 90% - have just 25% of this much-glorified spending power of the black community. In fact, the bottom 50% of the black community is worth less than $1.
Meanwhile, African Americans are just 2% of landowners in America, holding 7.7 million acres or just 0.9%, of all private agricultural land in the U.S. It is with chagrin and alarm, then, that I realize that the primary, even sole focus, of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 project concerning the African Diaspora, is centered around business investment. When it comes to the African American community that descended from Africans that were enslaved in the United States, the African Union is expecting this colonized landless peasantry to do what????
None of this comes as a surprise to me because I was there in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the African Union when they created the African Union “Sixth Region” to include the Diaspora. The Senegalese delegation proposed the amendment after it was “inadvertently omitted from the items listed on the Agenda.” They then read out the amendment to “Invite and encourage the full participation of Africans in the Diaspora in the building of the African Union in its capacity as an important part of our Continent.” The delegation of Senegal, the proposer of the amendment, informed the Meeting that the issue could be addressed from two perspectives, namely;
a) a narrow sense, whereby the Diaspora includes all Africans currently residing anywhere outside the Continent of Africa;
b) a broad and historic sense, whereby the Diaspora comprises all Africans who had left Africa by force and still consider themselves Africans."
Ever since, the primary operational definition of the diaspora has been the narrow sense, now referred to as the “contemporary” diaspora as opposed to the “historic” diaspora – i.e. those of us whose ancestors were taken against their will and brought to the America’s and enslaved. Why? Because it was the intention of the former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and the African Union, to reverse the major problem of “brain drain” at the end of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. I know the details because I was doing research at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and studying the “Brain Gain” proposals. These amounted to glorified working vacations for African expatriate doctors and engineers. For the same amount of money these programs were spending, they could get ten times as many members of the “historic” diaspora to come and permanently repatriate to Africa. But that was never their intention. Accordingly, at the First AU-Western Hemisphere Diaspora Forum in Washington DC, December 17-19, 2002 prior to adoption of Amendment 3(q) in Addis Ababa, it was decided that “The African Union should consider the African Diaspora as Business partners” and “Establish official programs to identify and qualify Diaspora businesses.” The African Growth & Opportunity Act should “identify and prioritize products that can be traded between Africa and Africans in the Diaspora” and “enhance opportunities for Africans in the Diaspora to provide appropriate equipment and technical services to enable African countries to meet AGOA standards.” Remember, the use of the word “diaspora” here is code for “contemporary” diaspora, meaning expatriate Africans to the Americas.
Notably, however, the Forum did make a recommendation that the AU should “include in its agenda the ‘crime against humanity’ concept and work with Diaspora organizations to suggest a process for reparations.” What has the AU done towards seeking reparations? Which European country have they brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto planned? What did Kenya do to pursue reparations when it’s grandson, Barack Obama, became the United States President?
I will spare this session a detailed recounting of what has happened since 2003. You can read my article, The Au 6th Region Diaspora Initiative Is Failing Members of the Diaspora Whose Ancestors Were Enslaved In The United States and How The African Union Was Established To Include The African Diaspora. Suffice it to say, countless business and development schemes have been created and marketed to the contemporary diaspora in the United States and Europe. Numerous forums and expos have been held which were largely attended by the contemporary diaspora of expatriate Africans in America. This is because the AU and its networks in the United States do not do outreach to the historical diaspora – let us call them Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS). DAEUS, while welcomed, is not usually specifically invited. When there is outreach, however, it is primarily to use heritage tourism as an engine for economic growth. This was the case in 2007 when Ghana launched the Joseph Project to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade (1807) and the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s impendence (1957). Ghana did the same in 2019, this time commemorating the 400-year anniversary of the Africans brought to the Jamestown colony in Virginia (1619). Neither program was designed to repair the long-term spiritual damage and Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect of slavery. They were designed to achieve tourism. That is not what the historic diaspora needs.
So let me finally get on with the main point then. What is Economic Emancipation and the Black Lives Matter Moment? How can Economic Emancipation be achieved now?
First, we must learn the lessons from history. “Our problems are your problems. . . . Your problems will never be fully solved until and unless ours are solved. You will never be fully respected until and unless we are also respected.” The African continent is not respected. Kenya is not respected, even though a Kenyan-European became the first black president of the United States in 2008. The general perception is that Africa continues to be a neocolonialist territory controlled by its former colonial masters and subject to new colonial overtures from China and Turkey. Civil society has roundly condemned the African Union, and hardly a black person in America even knows anything about the African Union. At best, there is only the great Pan African nostalgia for a powerful United States of Africa as envisioned by Marcus Garvey and Kwame Nkrumah but betrayed by today’s African elite.
Why are there both traditional rulers and political rulers in Africa? Why aren’t these the same? Is that not an admission that Africa is still not free? That it has two sets of “leaders”, one official and the other marginalized?
Why are we talking about “contemporary” diaspora versus the “historic” diaspora? Are we not simply Bam’faba, all descendants from the same ancestors?
We have tried this project before. Prior to the American civil war, African people in America were returning to the African continent, to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Men like Martin Delaney were talking about African economic development and planning a transcontinental railroad 170 years ago! Why did this not succeed? Why has the partnership between the African continent and the Diaspora not realized its potential? It is because such projects did not have as their aim spiritual and human repair. They were not concerned with restoring ancestral lineage. Instead, they were infected with Christian religion and missionary ideals that were not different than white Christian teachers except for the black face. Because the repatriates did not know who their ancestors were, which tribes they came from, they did not seek to restore those connections. Instead, they came as religious missionaries and the histories of Liberia and Sierra Leone reveal to us the pitfalls of this. You can not have long-term economic sustainability without first integrating into the local population. And “foreigners” can not integrate. For Africans to truly realize the benefits of a great African Renaissance, it will require undoing the “crime against humanity” that took place. And for those of us on this side of the Atlantic, that crime is the crime of Ethnocide.
Fortunately, it is now possible to reverse Ethnocide. The African Ancestry genetic test can identify a person’s maternal and paternal ancestry. 750,000 tests have already been done. We now know where we came from, who we came from. A small number of Kikuyu, Somali, Turkana and Maasai from Kenya have already been identified. For there to be Economic Emancipation during the Black Lives Matter Moment, it will require reverse engineering the dehumanization process that enslaved African people in the Americas and colonized people on the African continent. You can not expect people still suffering from the dehumanization process to become the economic engine for Africa. So what are we talking about?
There are 47 million people of African descent in the United States. That means there are almost as many people of African descent in the United States as there are in Kenya (51 million). There are 97 million people of African descent in Brazil. Hait has 9.9 million, Colombia has 4.9 million, Venezuela has 3.7 million, Jamaica has 2.5 million, Mexico has 1.4 million, Canada has 1.2 million, the Dominican Republic has 1.1 million, Cuba has 1.1 million people, Ecuador has 1.1 million and there are more in Peru, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Grenada and elsewhere. The problem is the same in each and every one of these territories: The problem is IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM. Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African Peoples Socialist Party states,
“All throughout Africa, we have this false national consciousness, just as we do here (in the United States).
I spoke recently at Oxford, where the question of Africa and African freedom has begun to resurface during this era of the crisis of the social system that’s based on slavery and colonialism. Everything that you see—all the wealth, all the resources—in this country and throughout Europe, stem from the enslavement of African people and the colonization of Africa and other peoples around the world. In this country, Africans still live under colonial domination, just as we do in other places. We’ve concluded that there is no way out of this just trying to fight this struggle within the U.S. Our struggle is one that is global. The imperialists understand that.
The definition of institutional racism is called colonialism every place else in the world.
Everyone else calls it colonialism, now you come up with this concept of institutional racism.
All the institutions do that to us because they're colonial institutions. We have a colonial relationship. When a foreign alien, hostile entity, captures you, your resources, controls and dominates everything: that's colonialism. It's important to say that because I don't know how to cure racism. Although people are making fortunes doing that—setting up schools, and trainings to cure your racism. When they leave those classes to cure their racism and they go home and relieve their Vietnamese, Mexican, or African baby sitter, the conditions in the white community are just as they were when they took the course, before they took the course and the conditions of the African community are still the same.
You say you're fighting against racism? How do you know when you've won? Does someone come out waving a white flag? Do you sign a peace treaty? Racism now surrenders?
No! But colonialism, you know that. That's a foreign power that dominates our lives. We've seen people fight and defeat colonialism and we can fight and defeat colonialism as well. We came to those conclusions, many of them, in the 1960s, when our revolution was defeated. I don't talk about the 60s as some kind of nostalgic waxing, to say how wonderful the 60s were. It's important to us only as a means by which we can get closer to understanding where we are now.
We didn't just drop out of the sky, into this situation in 2019. There's a process that brought us here, that's really important for us to understand. We need to understand the nature of the social system that we're dealing with. That's part of what it is we intend to do.”
We now know that Economic Emancipation cannot happen without reparations. African American economist Sandy Darrity has shown that the racial wealth gap in the United States can not be closed by pursuing any of the ten myths:
Myth 1: Greater educational attainment or more work effort on the part of blacks will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 2: The racial homeownership gap is the “driver” of the racial wealth gap
Myth 3: Buying and banking black will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 4: Black people saving more will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 5: Greater financial literacy will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 6: Entrepreneurship will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 7: Emulating successful minorities will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 8: Improved “soft skills” and “personal responsibility” will close the racial wealth gap
Myth 9: The growing numbers of black celebrities prove the racial wealth gap is closing
Myth 10: Black family disorganization is a cause of the racial wealth gap
This is because the racial wealth gap was created by the dehumanization process that occurred in a controlled environment – i.e. state sanctioned ethnocide by the American Government. In order for the Historic Diaspora to contribute to any Economic Emancipation on the African Continent, there must be some Economic Emancipation on this side of the continent. That can only happen in a controlled environment in the United States that is conducive to reversing ethnocide and the rehumanizing process. In other words, to reverse engineer The Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects of slavery that occurred in environments that used trauma and terrorism, it is going to require controlled environments of the opposite kind: peace, security, and most importantly, autonomy, self-determination and liberty.
This can be achieved through the exercise of minority rights and self-determination under a framework of democratic pluralism in the Americas. And this is exactly what was presented to the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent at the United Nations at their regional meeting with civil society in North America, November 23, 2020. However, such autonomous environments for African descendant peoples in the United States will not be achieved without support from African nations themselves. This Malcolm X and Pio Gama Pinto understood very well.
What can Kenya do in international forums to encourage the United States to pursue the Agenda For Black America’s Restoration and Self Determination? Will Kenya support the Afro-Descendants Confederate Nation’s request to be placed on the decolonization list at the United Nations which was made September 24, 2018 to the UN Decolonization Fourth Committee? Is it right for the African Union and its members to seek the economic support of African Americans without supporting African American civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights at the United Nations?
Meanwhile, the rehumanization process will require controlled environments on the African continent itself. The Lineage Restoration Movement is pursuing just that. This, we believe, is the key to the Economic Emancipation. DAEUS is now using genetic testing from African Ancestry to identify and restore their ancestral lineages. Those that have done this are now starting to return to the territories of their maternal and paternal ancestors. Why is this important? Because the members of the Lineage Restoration Movement are primarily concerned with human-centered development first instead of economic development. Our members have a genuine interest in learning and preserving their indigenous language, spiritual systems and culture at the same time that many people on the African continent are willing to abandon them for European languages, religions, and cultural models. Thus, the Lineage Restoration Movement serves as a new force for African self-determination and anti-colonialism on both sides of the Atlantic.
What does this mean? Members of the Lineage Restoration Movement are pursuing authentic connections with the people who share their actual ancestry. This means going out of the city and returning to the villages where they come from. It is these villages where development most needs to happen and which continue to be ignored. Consider Ghana’s recent 2019 Year of Return event. The average Ghanaian knew nothing about what was happening because they weren’t consulted or informed beforehand. Members of the Diaspora that returned were sold the idea that returning to Ghana’s “Door of Return” was somehow a healing ritual without regard for whether or not the ancestors of those who returned actually departed from Ghana. Many of the people who returned to Ghana had no idea whether or not their ancestors were from Ghana. They were not interested in learning any of the languages or living any of the traditional culture. Many of those that came were from the class of people of looking to invest in real estate and upscale coffee shops. That is not what the vast majority of people on the African continent need or want, neither is it what DAEUS needs, either. When business investment happens before there is a solid relationship and bond between people, the potential for xenophobic conflict is great. We have seen this in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1800’s, and given the current division between Africans on the continent and Africans in the Diaspora, and exacerbated by the further division between the “contemporary” diaspora and “historic” diaspora, pursuing the current models of AU 6th Region economic development in Africa is not likely to lead to Economic Emancipation during the Black Lives Matter Moment. Significant segments of the Black community in America already feels that the AU initiative is disingenuous and is only trying to reach into the pockets of black Americans while not caring enough to pursue reparations. Meanwhile, current outreach programs further convince the historic diaspora that the AU 6th Region is mostly concerned with the contemporary diaspora. The irony is that the black Americans most genuinely interested in the future of Africa – those who can do the most to popularize and promote it - are the grassroots Pan Africanists and Black Nationalists who are not part of the top 10% of black wealth owners in America and who are being ignored by AU outreach efforts.
How can the situation be improved? The AU must approach the problem by asking the question, what can the AU offer the Diaspora instead of always asking, how do we get economic investment from the Diaspora? Indeed, in May, 2003, the Executive Council of the African Union met at the Third Extraordinary Session in Sun City, South Africa and issued the "Decision on the Development of the Diaspora Initiative in the African Union". The Declaration stated,
"b. What can the African Union offer the Diaspora?
Discussions during the Washington Forum also offers a picture of some of what the Diaspora may expect - a measure of credible involvement in the policy making processes, some corresponding level of representation, symbolic identification, requirements of dual or honorary citizenship of some sort, moral and political support of Diaspora initiatives in their respective regions, preferential treatment in access to African economic undertakings including consultancies, trade preferences and benefits for entrepreneurs, vis a vis non - Africans, social and political recognition as evident in invitation to Summits and important meetings etc. These deliberations must also focus on possibilities, criteria and qualification for Diaspora representation in the Economic, Cultural and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Pan-African Parliament, etc.”
Clearly, what needs to be done is well known. Since 2003, the first objective was to elect the 20 Diaspora representatives to the AU ECOSOCC. I myself, along with Dr. David Horne, were the first to pursue this, following the guidelines that were inadequately presented by the AU at the time. We began the process of organizing and hosting elections in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, and the Caribbean with communication with our colleagues in Europe. And what did the AU do? They did everything to prevent the elections. And that is why until this very day, after 17 years of struggle, the historic African Diaspora still has zero representation in ECOSOCC. Even Shem Ochuodho, a “contemporary” diasporan, took 8 years before he could be seated as Eastern Africa’s Representative to the AU ECOSOCC. So what are we, the historic diaspora, to make of the authenticity of the AU 6th Region Diaspora initiative?
If we are to effectively utilize the potential of the 175 million people of the “historic” diaspora in the Americas, it will depend on the deepening of their identification with Africa. This will be accelerated and strengthened through African Ancestry genetic testing and participation in the Lineage Restoration Movement. Programs for these people, aimed at repairing the damage of the Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect of slavery, must replace superficial heritage tourism if there is going to be any Economic Emancipation now and in the future. It would be well for Africa’s intellectuals and scientists and spiritual practitioners to study and master the Transgenerational Epigenetic Effect and for Africa’s politicians to aggressively pursue in international forums the decolonization and reparations for victims of the criminal European trans-Atlantic trafficking, enslavement and ethnocide of people with African lineage and heritage.