Gambia Balanta Student Association

Gambia Balanta Student Association meeting September 26, 2020

“Hello Mr. Baleka. I am writing on behalf of the Gambia Balanta Student Association. We have been following your impressive work in Guinea Bissau through brother Mario Ceesay in the Gambia and I as the IPRO personally would want to thank you for such a big heart to your root. I was fortunate to listen to the Balanta anthem and in that vain of unity I write to extend greetings from the smiling coast of Africa. We hope for having connections with you and your association and with Guinea Bissau to expand the dynamism of the Balanta people. I would love to say alot but I guess this is just the beginning.”

“N'sumna. Nhidid tuk Brassa Mada, also known as Siphiwe Baleka. Abeneh. Thank you for your kind words and reaching out to me. Mario mentioned your interest. As President of the Balanta B'urassa History & Genealogy Society in America, we also look forward to closer connection Gambia Balanta Student Association. Please feel free to discuss your ideas.”

“Thank you very much for responding. As an association we focus more helping Balanta Students to reach the top in terms of education and also to bring people together and enable appreciation of the Balanta culture. I will send you our plans and some of the little things we are up to. . . . It is of great spirit we write to you again to strengthen the brotherhood and the unbreakable bond of Brassa people. We have made a close study of the Balanta people in our region and the results are intriguing. We were able to identify three key issues that serve as a hindrance in the development and low social status of Brassa people in the Gambia:

1. literacy/ignorance.

2. Selfishness/Individuality.

3. Religion.

It is quite clear that these are three key attributes in humans that when mastered can place you on top of the world. changing one's mindset on issue(2 and 3) one needs to have sound education. A great man once said" it is through education that you can change a nation). The Balanta students association comprises of young individuals that are passionate about learning but are set back by financial aid. A lot of the youths we meet and still meet gave testimony of how they have to work to pay their fees and also to feed from their labour, to this I am a living example. I and my colleagues have made a survey of the entry of students at the University of the Gambia and found that it's less that 0.001% which is heart breaking. We have interviewed youths and found out that finance is the major issue. As an association we are set out to tackle this issues by providing tutoring and help others achieve their dreams of higher education. We hope that we become more creative and get ways of helping our people out. This is why we reach out to you.”

“N'sumna. Greetings. Yes, I have received your message from Monday August 31, 2020 and this morning. Can you provide a list of the members of the association, their ages, their home villages, what they are studying, and a group photo?”

The Success of Reverend Charles Colcock Jones' Plan to Prevent Negro Insurrection: Christian Mental Slavery & The Family of Jacob Blake

Jacob Blake III is the great, great, great, great, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra, who was born in Nhacra (modern day Guinea Bissau) around 1758. Brassa Nchabra’s family were Binham Brassa, the people who were called “Balanta” which means “those who resist”.

It is popular within the “woke” community to say “Black history did not begin with the slave ship”. In order to properly understand the aftermath of the shooting of Jacob Blake and to learn the real lessons, it is necessary to tell the story from the perspective of Brassa Nchabra and the Balanta people. What becomes clear is that the Blake family came from a fierce and proud tradition of the Binham Brassa, a people who, when attacked, WOULD ALWAYS COMPLETE A COUNTER-STRIKE AGAINST THE ENEMY. Being cut-off from the knowledge of this heritage and deliberately programmed to NEVER counter-attack the enemy, the Blake family’s response to the shooting of Jacob Blake - to plead for people to pray to Jesus and to protest peacefully instead of COUNTER-STRIKING, is EXACTLY the design of Reverend Charles Colcock Jones. Here is the story of the tragic effect of severing a people from their ancestral heritage.

THE MILITARY LEGACY OF THE BALANTA PEOPLE

In 1615, Manuel Alvares commented, “They [Balantas] have no principle king. . . . They excel at making assaults . . . taking everything they can find and capturing as many persons as possible.”

In the late seventeenth century, Capuchins noted that “Balanta and the Falup’ cause notable damages and seize every day the vessels that pass by . . . and this even though the vessels are well armed.”

In defense of their freedom, scholar Walter Hawthorne describes the Balanta military skill,

“In part, the Balanta and other coastal groups resisted enslavement by exploiting the advantages offered by the region in which they lived. Put simply, the coast offered more defenses and opportunities for counterattack against slave-raiding armies and other enemies than did the savanna-woodland interior. In the early twentieth century, Portuguese administrator Alberto Gomes Pimentel explained how the Balanta utilized the natural protection of mangrove-covered areas – terrafe in Guinean creole – when they were confronted with an attack from a well-organized and well-armed enemy seeking captives or booty: ‘Armed with guns and large swords, the Balanta, who did not generally employ any resistance on these occasions. . . . pretended to flee (it was their tactic), suffering a withdrawal and going to hide in the ‘terrafe’ on the margins on the rivers and lagoons, spreading out in the flats some distance so as not to be shot by their enemies. The attackers. . . . then began to return for their lands with all of the spoils of war’. Organizing rapidly and allying themselves with others in the area, the Balanta typically followed their enemies through the densely forested coastal region. At times, the Balanta waited until their attackers had almost reached their homelands before giving ‘a few shots and making considerable noise so as to cause a panic.’ The Balanta then engaged their enemies in combat, ‘many times corpo a corpo’. . . .

Having assembled in what the Capuchins called ‘a great number,’ Balanta warriors struck their stranded victims quickly and with overwhelming force. ‘Upon approaching a boat,’ the Capuchins said, ‘they attack with fury, they kill, rob, capture and make off with everything.’

Such attacks happened with a great deal of regularity and struck fear in the hearts of merchants and missionaries alike. Others also commented on the frequency of Balanta raids on river vessels.

On March 24, 1694, Bispo Portuense feared that he would fall victim to the Balanta when his boat, guided by grumetes, ran aground on a sandbar, probably on the Canal do Impernal, ‘very close to the territory of those barbarians.’ . . . .

Faced with an impediment to the flow of trade to their ports, the Portuguese tried to bring an end to Balanta raids. But they were outclassed militarily by skilled Balanta age-grade fighters. Portuguese adjutant Amaro Rodrigues and his crew certainly discovered this. In 1696, he and a group of fourteen soldiers from a Portuguese post on Bissau anchored their craft somewhere near a Balanta village close to where Bissau’s Captain Jose Pinheiro had ordered the men to stage an attack. However, the Portuguese strategy was ill conceived. A sizable group of Balanta struck a blow against the crew before they had even left their boat. The Balanta killed Rodrigues and two Portuguese soldiers and took twelve people captive.

According to John Horhn’s They Had No King: Ella Baker and the Politics of Decentralized Organization Among African Descended Populations,

“Furthermore, the Balanta were extremely mistrusting of outsiders not from their own lineage or tabancas. This was true even when applied to members of their own ethnic group and resulted in a culture that held loyalty to the tabancas above all else. Therefore, it was impossible for outside forces to gain influence over Balanta culture without direct conquest and the commitment of military resources. “

Hawthorne’s continues in Strategies of the Decentralized,

“In 1777, Portuguese commander Ignacio Bayao reported from Bissau that he was furious that Balanta had been adversely affecting the regional flow of slaves and other goods carried by boats along Guinea-Bissau’s rivers. It was ‘not possible,’ he wrote, ‘to navigate boats for those [Balanta] parts without some fear of the continuous robbing that they have done, making captive those who navigate in the aforementioned boats.’ In response, Bayao sent infantrymen in two vessels ‘armed for war’ into Balanta territories. After these men had anchored, disembarked, and ventured some distance inland, they ‘destroyed some men, burning nine villages’ and then made a hasty retreat back to the river. Finding their vessels rendered ‘disorderly,’ the infantrymen were quickly surrounded by well-armed Balanta. Bayao lamented that ‘twenty men from two infantry companies’ were taken captive or killed. Having sent out more patrols to subdue the ‘savage Balanta’ and having attempted a ‘war’ against this decentralized people, the Portuguese found that conditions on Guinea- Bissau’s rivers did not improve.’

Viewing the regional slave trade as a threat to their communities, the Balanta continued their raids on merchant vessels transporting captives and other goods. Such raids would tax Portuguese patience throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century . . . . Thus, by garnering weapons and iron in regional markets and from Luso-African merchants, many Balanta communities, like those of other decentralized coastal societies, were not only able to stand up to threats posed by the slaving armies of Kaabu and Casamance, they were also able to withstand assaults by Portuguese who were attempting to profit by insuring the smooth running of the coastal trade routes that moved captives to area ports.”

So it is clear that the natural, historical and correct response to an attack on Balanta people is to retreat from the first strike and COUNTER-ATTACK with a retaliatory SECOND-STRIKE.

THE AMBUSH OF BRASSA NCHABRA

Sometime during the 1760’s or early 1770’s, during the period that Portuguese commander Ignacio Bayao complained about the Balanta COUNTER-ATTACKS, Brassa Nchabra, a young boy belonging to a free family and a community that dominated the local economy, was captured and trafficked across the Atlantic and brought to Charleston, South Carolina. Historian Walter Rodney writes:

“The earliest European reports disclose that the Balantas had a multiplicity of petty settlements consisting of family lineages (Fernandes, 80) . . . . The Balantas had quantities of prime yams…. The best farmers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the Balantas . . . - all had cattle and goats …. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Andre Dornelas pointed out that Balanta territory was free from heavy vegetation. It was these very Balantas who reared the most livestock in the area, and it was they who provided supplies of foodstuffs for their neighbors….That peoples who were far superior producers of food than the Mande and Fula are consistently dubbed ‘Primitives’ is due solely to the contention that they did not erect a superstructure of states. . . . It is only the Balantas who can be cited as lacking the institution of kingship. At any rate there seemed to have been little or no differentiation within Balanta society on the basis of who held property, authority and coercive power. . . . The distribution of goods, to take a very important facet of social activity, was extremely well organized on an inter-tribal basis in the Geba-Casamance area, and one of the groups primarily concerned in this were the Balantas, . . . In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese realized that the Balantas were the chief agriculturalists and the suppliers of food to the neighboring peoples. The Beafadas and Papels were heavily dependent on Balanta produce, and in return, owing to the Balanta refusal to trade with the Europeans, goods of European origin reached them via the Beafadas and the Papels. The Balantas did not allow foreigners in their midst, but they were always present in the numerous markets held in the territory of their neighbors. . . .”

Portuguese, French and English slave traders employed Bijago and Mandinka people to ambush Balanta women going to the markets. These Europeans were Christians who justified their actions in the name of God and Jesus. In this way, they seized Balanta women and children and sold them at the ports of Cacheu and Bissau. The result is that only 22% of the 6,534 Balanta who were trafficked to the United States were men. 78% were women and children. According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, this forced removal of the child Brassa Nchabra from his family to the Blake family in the Carolina’s was an act of genocide that resulted in

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the Brassa Nchabra family;

Deliberately inflicting on the family of Brassa Nchabra conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

We know that Brassa Nchbra’s family and the Balanta people continued to COUNTER-STRIKE against their enemies after the capture of Brassa Nchabra because of Commander Ignacio Bayao’s report in 1777. But what happened to the the descendants of Brass Nchabra in America?

THE TORTURE, TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST GEORGE BLAKE

B’rassa Nchabra was captured and brought to Charleston, South Carolina as part of the illegal English slave trading in the area. According to the Negro Law of South Carolina (1740), Section I declared

“all Negroes and Indians (Free Indians in amity with this Government, Negroes, mulattoes and mestizos, who are now free excepted) to be slaves.“

However, Section 4 stated that

“The term Negro is confined to slave Africans (The ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the Negro Asiatics, such as Lascars.”

Thus, by this statute, B’rassa Nchabra, who was a free inhabitant at the time of his capture and came from a family lineage and people that had never been enslaved and were not subjects of any political authority, was wrongfully enslaved in Charleston through illegal English maritime activity.

Being so young, Brassa Nchabra had never completed the Balanta age-grade initiations which is described as “opening the doors’ of maturity and wisdom in the Balanta community.” Being so young and unable to speak English, he could not make a case in defense of his freedom upon his arrival to Charleston.

Brassa Nchabra was given the slave name “George” - named after George Washington, the infamous slave owner and traitorous leader of the Sons of Liberty terrorist group. Eventually, George was purchased and brought to Wake County, North Carolina and given to Dempsey Blake, the great, great grandson of the pirate Robert Blake. Robert Blake was himself a rebellious traitor, fighting against his King during an English civil war and defeating Royal General Prince Rupert in 1650. For this, Robert Blake was given legal sanction for his mercenary actions by being designated Commander-in-Chief of the English Fleet. He stole $14 million worth of goods from the Spanish fleet and used this money to send his sons to America and establish lucrative plantations. His descendants would become some of the largest slave owners in America.

LEGAL SANCTION OF GENOCIDE AGAINST BRASSA NCHABRA

From the time of his arrival in North Carolina until 1788, Brassa Nchabra was subject to the following genocidal laws:

1741 c 35 s 25 Runaw'ys to be committed to jail--notice to be given.

1741 c 35 s 26 27. Runaway may he hired out, when owner not known.

1741 c 35 s 28 When the owner appears runaway to be delivered to him.

1741 c 35 s 29 Iron collar to be put on runaway when hired out.

1741 c 35 s 30 and 31. Duty of Justice wh'n a runaway is bro't before him and also of the constable to whom he is committ'd.

1741 c 35 s 32 Penalty on Sheriff &c for employing runaway or keeping him longer than this act directs or for suffering him to escape.

1741 c 35 s 33 Keepers of ferries to give passage to constables conveying runaways

1741 c 35 s 34 Notice to be given by the jailor in certain cases in the State Gazette.
1741 c 35 s 40 R'naway slaves may be outlawed in certain cases.

1741 c 35 s 35, 36, 37. 1831 c 44 Slaves not to go armed.

1741 c 35 s 38 No slave to go off his masters pl'ntation without leave in writing.

1741 c 35 s 39 1779 c 152 s 1 Slaves not to raise stock.

1753 c 53 s 6 Slaves not fed &c. stealing corn &c. injured person may sue the owner.

1777 c 123 s 2 Penalty on slaves burning woods.

1777 c 115 s 42 1821 c 1123. Against whom slaves and other persons of colour may be witnesses.

1783 c 190 s 1 2, 3. Slav's f'r trivi'l offences to be tried before a justice of the peace.

1786 c 249. Penalty on bringing slaves from certain States.

1787 c 287 s 2 Free negroes &c. not to entertain slaves in their houses at certain times.

NEUROLOGICAL EFFECTS OF THE TORTURE, TERRORISM AND GENOCIDE COMMITTED AGAINST GEORGE BLAKE

According to neuroscience, when faced with a threat—real or imagined, physical or emotional—the most primitive parts of the brain go into action to determine if the threat is a credible one. If it finds that yes, the threat is real, it will then go into survival mode and determine if you should stay and fight or run away—whichever one will most likely result in survival.

After surviving the trauma of the middle passage, the most primitive parts of Brassa Nchabra’s YOUNG brain had already been triggered to enter the most extreme fight or flight condition which was both ACUTE and CHRONIC. Already in a state of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse and degradation,

the constant threat of violence made fighting and escaping both unsuitable choices for Brassa Nchabra’s survival.

For most of the African people disembarking from middle passage ships, submission and obedience proved to be the only choice likely to result in survival.

Over time these tactics become imprinted on your brain.

They become your brain’s go-to fix when it feels threatened. This then becomes your pattern. You don’t have to think about these tactics. They just become part of your comfort zone and your automatic response to feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. 

These types of tactics are referred to as familiarity heuristic. In other words, your brain reverts to what it’s familiar with when faced with a threat. Remember, your brain’s job is to keep you safe and make sure you survive. What the brain considers safe is what is familiar. After all, what you’ve done to this point has kept you alive. You’ve survived so far, so as far as your brain is concerned, what it’s done to date to keep you safe has worked. 

Thus, for the first time in the history of Brassa Nchabra’s family, submission and obedience entered into it’s pathological and epigenetic code.

Sometime around 1788, George’s son Jack was born with this new submissive epigenetic coding supported by environmental programming. He was the first member of Brassa Nchabra’s family to be born into captivity and slavery. He knew little to nothing about his Balanta heritage and all he knew was the trauma of the genocide committed against he and his father. In 1819, Jack had a son named Yancy and that same year both were given to Asa Blake, the son of Dempsey Blake who was the great, great grandson of the traitorous pirate Robert Blake.

Thus, three generations of Brassa Nchabra’s family were now enslaved and victims of genocide. None of them were Christian.

They were forced through the use of coercive power and a monopoly of violence justified by Christian ideology to OBEY their master Dempsey Blake and then Asa Blake. They were forced through the use of coercive power and a monopoly of violence justified by Christian ideology to use their slave names. In a state of unnatural terror and trauma, submissiveness and obedience for the sake of survival had become the Blake family’s automatic response to the genocide they were suffering.

NAT TURNER’S REBELLION AND REVEREND CHARLES COLCOCK JONES’ PLAN TO PREVENT ANY NEGRO INSURRECTION

The Southampton Insurrection, also known as Nat Turner’s Rebellion, took place in August, 1831. The insurrectionists killed between 55 and 65 people, at least 51 of whom were white. This happened across the North Carolina border just 129 miles from the Blake plantation were George, Jack and Yancey were enslaved. The total population of Raleigh, North Carolina at that time was almost 1,700, half black and half white. The whole of Raleigh, NC was placed under arms. The North Carolina militia was called out to assist in stopping the rebellion. The North Carolina General Assembly passed a law forbidding African American preachers to speak at worship services where slaves from different owners are in attendance, and forbidding anyone to teach African Americans to read and write. John Spencer Basset, writing in 1899 in his book, Slavery in the State of North Carolina, states,

“It was, indeed, in a harsh spirit that the law came at last to regulate the religious relations of the slave. In the beginning, when the slaves were just from barbarism and freedom, it was thought best to forbid them to have churches of their own. But as they became more manageable, this restriction was omitted from the law and the churches went on with their work among the slaves. . . . The change came openly in 1830, when a law was passed by the [North Carolina] General Assembly . . . .It was enacted that no free person or slave should teach a slave to read or write, the use of figures excepted, or give to a slave any book or pamphlet. This law was no doubt intended to meet the danger from the circulation of incendiary literature, which was believed to be imminent; yet it is no less true that it bore directly on the slave’s religious life. It cut him off from the reading of the Bible - a point much insisted on by the agitators of the North - and it forestalled that mental development which was necessary to him in comprehending the Christian life. The only argument made for this law was that if a slave could read he would soon become acquainted with his rights.

A year later a severer blow fell. The Legislature then forbade any slave or free person of color to preach, exhort, or teach ‘in any prayer-meeting or other association for worship where slaves of different families are collected together’ on penalty of receiving not more than thirty-nine lashes.’ The result was to increase the responsibility of the churches of the whites. They were compelled . . . to take on themselves the task of handing down to the slaves religious instruction in such a way that it should be comprehended by their immature minds and should not be too strongly flavored with the bitterness of bondage. With the mandate of the Legislature the churches acquiesced.

As to the preaching of the dominant class to the slaves it always had one element of disadvantage. It seemed to the negro to be given with a view to upholding slavery. As an illustration of this I may introduce the testimony of Lunsford Lane. This slave was the property of a prominent and highly esteemed citizen of Raleigh, N.C. He hired his own time and with his father manufactured smoking tobacco by a secret process. His business grew and at length he bought his own freedom. Later, he opened a wood yard, a grocery store and kept teams for hauling. He at last bought his own home, and had bargained to buy his wife and children for $2500, when the rigors of the law were applied and he was driven from the State. He was intelligent enough to get a clear view of slavery from the slave’s standpoint. He was later a minister, and undoubtedly had the confidence and esteem of some of the leading people of Raleigh, among whom was Governor Morehead. He is a competent witness for the negro. In speaking of the sermons from white preachers he said that the favorite texts were ‘Servants, be obedient to your masters,’ and ‘he that knoweth his master’s will and doth it not shall be beaten with many stripes.’ He adds, ‘Similar passages with but few exceptions formed the basis of most of the public instruction. The first commandment was to obey our masters, and the second was like unto it; to labor as faithfully when they or the overseers were not watching as when they were.’ . . All this was natural. To be a slave was the fundamental fact of the negro’s life. To be a good slave was to obey and to labor. Not to obey and not to labor were, in the master’s eye, the fundamental sins of a slave. . . . [Says Lunsford Lane] ‘There was one hard doctrine to which we as slaves were compelled to listen, which I found difficult to receive. We were often told by the minister how much we owed to God for bringing us over from the benighted shores of Africa and permitting us to listen to the sound of the gospel . . . . ‘ On the other hand, many of the more independent negroes, those who in their hearts never accepted the institution of slavery, were repelled form the white man’s religion . . .

Through the teachings of the church many were enabled to bend in meekness under their bondage and be content with a hopeless lot. There are whites to whom Christianity is still chiefly a burdenbearing affair. Such quietism has a negative value. It saves men from discontent and society from chaos. But it has little positive and constructive value. The idea of social reform which is also associated with the standard of Christian duty was not for the slave.

According to Dr. Carter G. Woodson in the Miseducation of the Negro,

“‘Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their policy of enlightening the Black population, were Bishop William Meade, Bishop William Capers, and Rev. C.C. Jones . . . The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C. Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton . . . . and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. . . . Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters. History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion. . . . He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to ‘ignorant and misguided teachers’ like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves. He asserted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by White men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections. . . . . . . ‘his [the Negro} instruction must be an entirely different thing from the training of the Cuacasian,’ in regard to whom ‘the term education had widely different significations.’ For this reason these defenders believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he should be placed in the best position possible for the development of his imitative powers - ‘to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race.’ . . . Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his conversion.

Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders.

Among other publications of this kind were Dr. Capers’s Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.; A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina; Dr. Palmer’s Catechism; Rev John Mine’s Catechism; and C.C. Jones’s Catechism of Scripture,’ Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People. . . .These extracts were to ‘be read to them on proper occasions by any member of the family’.”

What was Reverend Jones’ plan?

“They are an ignorant and wicked people, from the oldest to the youngest. Hence, instruction should be committed to them all, and communicated intelligibly. And that it may be impressed upon their memories, and good order promoted amongst them, it should be communicated frequently and at stated intervals of time.

The plan is this. The Planters form themselves into a voluntary association, and take the religious instruction of the colored population into their own hands. And in this way: - As many of the association as feel themselves called to the work, shall become teachers. An Executive Committee is to regulate the operations of the Society, to establish regular stations, both for instruction during the week and on the Sabbath, and to appoint teachers who shall punctually attend to their respective charges, and communicate instruction altogether orally, and - in as systematic and intelligible a manner as possible, embracing all the principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Protestants

Specifically, Reverend Jones, in 1847, stated,

“The instruction must necessarily be communicated in a catechetical way, and with a few exceptions, the multitude of children and youth do not read. This is particularly the fact with those who live in the country. Let the teacher ask the question and repeat the answer; and explain it; and then continue asking the question until the answer is committed to memory, the scholars answering all . . . .The negroes are fond of singing, and it is a matter of much importance to their improvement and interest in the school; that hymns and psalms of a suitable character be taught. . . . These hymns and psalms will be sung by them in their religious meetings, and while they are engaged in their daily duties; and they will gradually be substituted for many songs and hymns, which they are in the habit of using, for the want of something better. . . . At the close, let the superintendent review the school on the lesson and hymns of the day, and explain and apply them; the object being not only to covey the form of sound words, but the substance and power also. Frequent reviews should by no means be omitted. . . . Take the following order of exercises, and it will about consume the time mentioned: - open with singing; read a portion of Holy Scripture - pray; after prayer, let the school repeat the Lord’s prayer, the creed, the commandments, select verses of Scripture; teach the hymn or a portion of it, which the school is learning, and making the school rise, teach, for a short time, the tune with the humn; review the last lesson - sing again - teach the lesson in the catechism for the day - give explanation and make an application; this should be done by each teacher privately to his class, and then by the superintendent to the whole school - and dismiss with or without prayer, and a dismission hymn or doxology. . . . Happy then shall we be, if we can increase the spirit of obedience in our Servants. . . . Happy shall we be if we can . . . . deliver their Masters from the pecuniary loss . . . consequent upon their negligence and crime. . . .There never will be a better state of things until the Negroes are better instructed in religion.”

And what would be the benefits of such religious instruction to the Negro? According to Reverend Jones:

1) There will be a better understanding of the mutual relations of Master and Servant;

2) There will be GREATER SUBORDINATION and a decrease of crime amongst the Negroes;

3) Much unpleasant discipline will be saved to the Churches;

4) The Church and Society at large will be benefitted;

5) The Souls of our Servants will be saved and,

6) We shall relieve ourselves of great responsibility.

Specifically, Reverend Jones stated that,

“obedience will never be felt and performed to the extent that we desire it, unless we can bottom it on religious principle.. . . It will be noticed that obedience is inculcated as a Christian duty, binding on the Servants, and thus the authority of Masters is supported by considerations drawn from eternity”

BENNETT BLAKE IMPLEMENTS REVEREND COLCOCK JONES’ PLAN TO THE NEGROES OF WAKE COUNTY, NC AND CONVERTS YANCEY BLAKE TO CHRISTIANITY.

According to Early Methodist Meeting Houses in Wake Country, North Carolina,

“Another Methodist pioneer was Bennet T. Blake, born in Virginia in 1800. While living in Petersburg, as a young man, Blake came under the influence of some prominent Methodist ministers including John Early who later became bishop. These ministers recognized a tremendous potential in the talented and capable young man and encouraged him to devote his life to the Methodist ministry. Blake joined the Virginia Conference in 1824, but gave most of his ministry to Wake Country where he began by serving in Raleigh in February, 1827. . . . .It was at this Conference that the famous Georgia slave-owning preacher, James O. Andrew, was elected bishop, a move that led to the division of the church. . . . [Blake] married the daughter of Needham Price, a prosperous land owner in southeastern Wake County, and made his home at Shotwell. After serving circuits down east, Blake filled the pulpit on Edenton Street in 1832, after Mellville B. Cox left for his missionary journey to Liberia. Three years he served as presiding elder in other districts, three years in educational work at Greensboro, but virtually the remainder of his thirty-year ministry was within Wake County. . . . He pioneered in a ministry to blacks, when this was not a popular thing to do. . . . Blake was also a delegate to the 1844 organizing Conference of the splinter group which called themselves the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Blake established the Neuse River Mission to People of Colour in 1844 and continued his work there for two years. This was the first Methodist appointment in Wake County established entirely for a minority race. . . . At the end of the first year he reported eight black members with this number doubling to 16 by the end of 1845. . . . Meanwhile at Edenton Street Church, Dr. Rufus T. Heflin held a revival early in his pastorate during 1849 in which more than 250 people were converted to swell the membership roll to 213 white and 232 black members. These numbers continued to increase proportionately. White members. . . were equally irritated and embarrassed by the strong black membership. Socially, economically and culturally, black membership in the progressive city church was incompatible with the expectations of the minority and plans were made for something to be done to remedy the situation. The remedy, announced as a satisfactory solution for all concerned, came in 1853 after the determination that the blacks should have a church of their own. People of both races worked to get money together to buy land and obtain a building. . . . For the purpose of an episcopal appointment, the black congregation was called the African Mission and Daniel Culbreth, or Uncle Culbreth as he was affectionately called, became the first pastor. . . . He was on the Raleigh Circuit in 1834 with Bennet T. Blake . . . [Blake] retired in 1854 and died at his residence near Shotwell on May 28, 1882.”

According to B’rassa Nchabra family oral history given by Eustace Blake on August 9, 1974,

"Our forefathers were George, Jack, Yancey. Yancey Blake married Melissa Page. Yancey begat nine children by Melissa. Two boys and seven girls. Boys: Yancey Jr and John Addison. During the civil war a group of Federal Soldiers came pass the house of my grandfather (Yancey Blake), Yancey Blake Jr. joined them and was never heard from anymore.”

Indeed, Yancey Jr., the son of Jack Blake, was born in 1847, the fourth generation of Brassa Nchabra and the third generation born into captivity, slavery and with the submissive and obedient epigenetic coding. In 1853, the year that the African Mission black congregation was established in Wake County, Jack Blake was emancipated and married the love of his life, a woman named Cherry. Jack’s son, Yancey was 34 years of age. Five years later, in 1858, Yancey had another son, John Addison.

In 1861, North Carolina lawmakers barred any black person from owning or controlling a slave, making it impossible for a free person of color to buy freedom for a family member or friend. Thus, Jack Blake was prevented from purchasing or obtaining the freedom of his children and grandchildren. Thus, Yancey Jr. ran off the plantation and enlisted in the the 40th U.S., Colored Troops. Military Service Records list him as "Henderson Blake", age 18, enlisted from 1863-1865.

Here, in Yancey Jr.’s willingness to risk his life for freedom’s sake, the Balanta epigenetic coding was fully expressed. Yancey Jr. returned to the military legacy of his Balanta ancestors and was willing to make a COUNTER-STRIKE against his enemies.

Meanwhile, in Wake County where Jack, Yancey and John Addison were living,

“240 black members would march out of the brick city church with a feeling of triumph and move into their new church home. Dr. Bassett, writing of the event, said, ‘They rejoiced because they had a building of their own and the whites rejoiced because the Negroes were out of their church.’ . . . The effect of the War Between the States and the resultant Conference attitude caused the members to unite with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1866.”

One year earlier, almost 150 delegates attended The Convention of the Colored People of North Carolina held at the Loyal AME Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. The President of the convention stated,

“There had never been before and there would probably never be again so important an assemblage of the colored people of North Carolina as the present in its influence upon the destinies of this people for all time to come. They had assembled from the hill-side, the mountains, and the valleys, to consult together upon the best interests of the colored people, and their watchwords, “Equal Rights before the Law.”

Writing to the Convention, William Coleman stated,

“In the first place, you should be allowed to vote as a matter of right.

There was only one State refused you this right in its organic law at the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Congress has recognized it over and over again, and many of you recollect when free persons of color voted in North Carolina . The great and good men who founded the Government felt it no degradation that the ballot-box was open to free persons of color, nor did Gen. Jackson so regard it when he called them "fellow-citizens" in his Louisiana campaign. But, further, it can easily be shown by the severest logic, that if you are not to be allowed equality before the law, then the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence, upon which our Government is based, are words "full of sound and fury," signifying nothing."

You are four millions of people, the bone and sinew of the Southern States. If they are ever to recuperate and regain the important position they once held in the commercial world, it will be due to your energy and industry. But you may well ask how this is to be expected, if yea are denied the rights of freemen, if you are still to remain a proscribed and degraded race? If you are to have no other motive to incite you than a bare struggle for physical existence, if you are to feel no weight of responsibility, to be moved by no feelings of honor and patriotism, are to entertain no hopes for the elevation and advancement of your children to a higher standpoint than you now occupy, then indeed I do not see with what heart you can go to work at rebuilding the future of these shattered States.

But then, you will pay a tax to the support of the Government. Your brethren in Louisiana have been paying one for a number of years on property at the assessed value of fifteen millions of dollars. Is the colored man to have no voice in the appropriation of his money? And this, too, in a Government claiming to be Republican, and founded, after a seven years' war, upon the principle of taxation and representation!

Nothing could be more preposterous, unless it be to refuse men the right of suffrage who bare undergone all manner of hardships and dangers far rise sake of the Government; who have volunteered in the ranks of its armies, and risked their lives upon the battle-field to maintain its integrity. There is something more than a jingle of words in the copulation of "ballot and bullet."

But there is even a more terrible calamity that you may be doomed to bear than the denial of suffrage. I mean the denial of justice in our courts of law. If you are not to be admitted to the witness stand, how are you to prove your contracts? You will be at the mercy of every scoundrel who has a white skin, and is disposed to swindle you. Of course, you can have no protection for your property. How about yer persons? You may be set upon, beaten into a jelly, and outright, and although fifty respectable colored sons might have seen it, you will be without .What is to protect your wives and daughters from, the brutal last of those who would select a time when no white witnesses were present to effect their devilish designs? Formerly, your masters protected you as property; now, you must protect Yourselves as persons; and, unfortunately, the prejudice is too strong against you (I fear) to expect justice from the State. And there are other feelings, by no means so excusable as prejudice, and a policy by no means national, which will operate to keep you down. Your only hope is an appeal to Congress.”

A year later, The Freedman’s Convention was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, from October 2nd to the 5th. There were 115 delegates from sixty counties. The representatives for Wake Country were J. H. Harris, Charles Ray, Wm. Laws, S. Ellerson, H. Locket, J. R, Caswell. Moses Patterson and Wm. High, honorary members. During the Convention, although many government officials of the state of North Carolina addressed the Convention, the convention was not informed of their legal status in international law. Specifically, they were not informed that the 14th amendment was not a grant of citizenship but merely an offer of citizenship that required an acceptance of rejection. The convention was not informed of the principle of jus soli, that America had the obligation to offer citizenship to the African born on American soil but that it could not impose this citizenship. Furthermore, the the United States government, under obligation to make the offer, also had the power to create the mechanism – a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)

The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

Concerning the education that Jack and Yancey Blake received at the moment of emancipation, Imari Obadele states,

“The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. . . . Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values. Worse, the advice given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.

The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advice given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil.”

Thus, the resolutions of the Freedman’s Convention and all the similar conventions held throughout the United States were all UNIFORMED resolutions, and therefore did not meet the standard of the plebiscite for self-determination. Neither Jack or Yancey made a free and informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship and thus their legal status in the United States of America became “colonized Binham Brassa (Balanta) people through forced integration.”

Brassa Nchabra’s Grandson Yancey Blake Returns to His Balanta Roots As A Farmer and Businessman in North Carolina.

By the time of Emancipation in 1865, then Brassa Nchabra’s grandson Yancey Blake had already been programmed never to revolt and miseducated into believing that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. Yancey Blake thus returned to the Balanta vocation of farming. By the time of the 1870 Census, Yancey Blake was listed as farmer and the city directory showed that Yancey owned 12 acres of land. He was one of only two Negroes listed in the business directory. Certainly Yancey was exposed to Bennet Blake’s Neuse River Mission to People of Colour which became the African Mission under Daniel Culbreth in 1853 and eventually united with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1866.

With his older brother Yancey Jr. lost to the war, John Addison was raised as the dignified son of a prominent black family in Wake Country.

Thirty years later, in 1896, John Addison Blake, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra, fully Christianized, established the Union Bethel African Methodist Church in Cary, Wake County North Carolina. His sister, Sallie married Arch Arrington Sr., a negro, one of the largest landowners and the first Mayor of Cary, North Carolina.

Thus was accomplished the conversion to and institutionalization of Christianity in the family of Brassa Nchabra now named the Blake family.

AFTERMATH OF JACOB BLAKE’S SHOOTING

It is now possible to view the response of the Blake family after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from the long, historical view of Brassa Nchabra and the Balanta people with a history that began BEFORE slavery.

When Brassa Nchabra was captured in the 1760’s, his family did not respond by appealing to the moral conscious of the attackers. They did not appeal to any foreign authority to bring the attacker to justice. They had no concept of peaceful, non-violent protest. They did not call for unity with those that kidnapped their son. Instead, they lived according to natural law which had only three restrictions:

1. You must not injure or kill anyone.

2. You must not steal or damage things owned by someone else.

3. You must be honest in your dealings and not swindle anyone.

When Brassa Nchabra was kidnapped, his family and community responded by organizing COUNTER ATTACKS. This is the normal, natural, spiritual response that had been encoded in their DNA for thousands of years.

Through the genocidal trauma, terror and the torture of seven generations a new mental programming was inserted that changed the brain structure, function and chemistry of Brassa Nchabra’s descendants. This new programming introduced the master-slave relationship that was foreign to the Balanta people. It made obedience to a God named Jesus a sacred duty that extended to the Christian slavemaster. Tolerating, suffering the master-slave relationship was imprinted on the brain and created the new familiarity heuristic of non-violence. This Christian indoctrination and behavior, so desired by the white slavemasters and particularly Reverend Colcock Jones and Bennet Blake, was institutionalized by John Addison Blake and has since been passed down to the Blake descendants, all of whom have a well-documented legacy in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

From this perspective, then, the Blake family’s calls for peaceful protest in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, can be seen as the successful outcome of Reverend Colcock Jones’ plan to prevent insurrection and COUNTER STRIKES against the Masters of the American System and their armed enforcers (police).

Having been the only member of the family to return to our ancestral homeland and unlocked this portion of our genetic code, only I can tell the story from the perspective of our ancestors.

STATEMENT ON THE SHOOTING OF JACOB BLAKE III, A BALANTA DESCENDANT, IN THE UNITED STATES

The Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society condemns the shooting of Jacob Blake III, the great, great, great, great, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra who was given the slave name George Blake.

Two hundred fifty years ago, the young Brassa Nchabra was kidnapped, chained and trafficked across the Atlantic and enslaved in the American colonies, starting the cycle of violence against a Binham Brassa (Balanta) family in what would become the United States of America.

The latest episode of senseless violence against this Balanta family occurred on August 23, 2020, when unarmed Jacob Blake III was shot multiple times in the back by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His three young sons, also Balanta descendants, were in the car and witnessed their father being shot by the police.

Previously, on August 6, 1999, it was the Chicago police that attacked another member of the Blake family, Anthony Ras Nathaniel Blake, cousin of Jacob Blake III, for sitting in a parked vehicle at a beach along Lake Michigan. During that incident, several officers drew guns while placing Mr. Blake in the same position as the late George Floyd.

The name Balanta is commonly translated to mean, “those who resist” and the Balanta people are known for their unique society in which there are no leaders, chiefs or kings and each man is the sole and effective social and political unit. Balanta people are free people. Historically, Balanta are known for resolving conflict by migrating or “walking away”.

Jeffery Robinson, a deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union, said regarding the shooting of Jacob Blake III, “with each of the seven shots fired, the police department made their intent clear – they believed they had the right to kill an unarmed Black man for the crime of walking away from them.”

The South Carolina Slave Code of 1740: AN ACT FOR THE BETTER ORDERING AND GOVERNING [OF] NEGROES AND OTHER SLAVES IN THIS PROVINCE

"V. If any slave who shall be out of the house or plantation where such slave shall live or shall be usually employed, or without some white person in company with such slave, shall refuse to submit or to undergo the examination of any white person, it shall be lawful for any such white Person to pursue, apprehend and moderately correct such slave; and if such slave shall assault and strike such white person, such slave may be lawfully killed."

HOW MUCH HAS REALLY CHANGED?

When my great, great, great, great, great grandfather Brassa Nchabra was kidnapped and illegally trafficked from his homeland to South Carolina in the 1760's, the law said that if he left his house or plantation without being accompanied by a white person, he must submit to questioning by any white person, and if he refused, it was lawful to apprehend him and if he resisted, to kill him.

On August 23, 2020, my cousin Jacob Blake, also the great, great, great, great, great grandson of Brassa Nchabra, while attempting to make peace by breaking up a fight within his community, left a house. A white man given the status of "law enforcement officer" attempted to question him and when he refused and defended himself, the white men with the status "law enforcement officer" attempted to apprehend him and shot him in the back seven times.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 1740 AND 2020 FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THE BLACK MAN IN AMERICA? IT IS COMPLETELY UNNATURAL FOR A BLACK MAN TO SUBMIT TO A WHITE MAN SIMPLY BECAUSE WHITE PEOPLE USE AN INSTRUMENT CALLED "LAW" AND DESIGNATE A PROTECTED STATUS CALLED "WHITE" IN 1740 AND "LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER" IN 2020. HOW DID WHITE PEOPLE GET SUCH AUTHORITY? WAS IT BY SPIRITUAL VIRTUE AND MORAL MERIT OR WAS IT BY CONQUEST AND THE ORGANIZED POWER OF VIOLENCE? IF IT WERE NATURAL FOR BLACK MEN TO SUBMIT TO WHITE MEN, THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY NEED FOR USING LAW AND FORCE TO COMPEL IT.....

If you change the wording of the South Carolina act, the essence is still the same.

"V. If any [black person, especially if he has a warrant or criminal record] shall be out of the house or place of employment, without some white person in company, shall refuse to submit or to undergo the examination of any white person [invested as law enforcement officer], it shall be lawful for any such [law enforcement officer PROTECTED BY QUALIFIED IMMUNITY] to apprehend and moderately correct such [black person]; and if such [black person] shall assault and strike such [law enforcement officer protected by qualified immunity], such [black person] may be lawfully killed."

SLAVERY AND WHITE SUPREMACY STILL EXISTS IN 2020 AMERICA EXCEPT THAT NOW THE WHITE SUPREMACIST WILL EVEN INVEST AND EMPLOY BLACK LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS FOR THE BETTER ORDERING AND GOVERNING [OF] NEGROES AND OTHER SLAVES IN THIS PROVINCE . . . (Oh wait, they had black slave patrols back then, too!)

What we are talking about here is state sponsored, legal genocide. They create a special status in law, formerly "white" and today "law enforcement officer" that allows them to kill with impunity.

The Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America sees the shooting of Jacob Blake III by police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin as an example of the violence of the system of white supremacy and racism that uses deadly force to compel free black men and women to obey an unnatural authority. The same violence committed by the unnatural authority against Brassa Nchabra two hundred and fifty years ago is the same violence that was committed by the unnatural authority against Jacob Blake III today.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II, states that genocide means any of the acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a)    Killing members of the group;

(b)    Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c)     Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d)    Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e)    Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group;

The history of the Blake family in the United States of America began with the forcible transfer of Brassa Nchabra to the Blake family in the Carolinas. The family was then held in the condition of slavery until Jack Black was emancipated in 1853 and the rest of the family was emancipated after the civil war. Since then, six generations of the Blake family, along with all the descendants of the 6,534 Binham Brassa (Balanta people) that were trafficked from their homeland across the Atlantic to the United States between 1761 and 1815,  have lived in ignorance of their Balanta ancestry. THIS IS CALLED ETHNOCIDE. Nevertheless, they they have survived conditions which have created the racial health and wealth gap.

It is now time that the violence being committed against the Blake family and the Balanta people in the United States must stop, that the police officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake III be prosecuted and punished, and that crime of Genocide and Ethnocide against the Binham Brassa (Balanta people) in the United States be fully investigated and punished according to The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

DONATE TO JUSTICE FOR JACOB BLAKE GOFUNDME CAMPAIGN

REPARATIONS: A REMINDER FROM 18 YEARS AGO. . . .

A Long-Term Vision For Black Reparations
Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2002

Posted By: All words and paintings from RAS JAHAZIEL

REPARATIONS FOR BLACK NATION BUILDING

NOT REPARATIONS FOR A MORE COMFORTABLE SEAT IN THE WHITE MAN'S HOUSE
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The present resurfacing of the call for BLACK REPARATIONS must be seen like the miraculous survival of a victim who has long been thrown off the ole pirate ship and left to drown. The re-emergence of this victim from beneath the waves of political and religious mis-education marks the blossoming of a new level of political maturity amongst the Black peoples of the world today.

Before the development of such political maturity, the people who were bred in bondage had long forgotten what freedom is all about, and therefore their vision of FREEDOM was confined to any new paint-job on the old slave house. But who could blame them? The only place where some of them had ever seen FREEDOM was on paper, and the vast majority could not even read, so they had little chance of even seeing it there. They had long grown accustomed to being treated like dogs, and many had come to believe the lie that Africa's poverty was a result of some form of intrinsic inferiority. They were encouraged to blame themselves for their situation, and many preachers had explained "that was the way "GOD" made it to be."

In those times it was easy to pull a veil over the eyes of the people, and many were led to believe that the gaining of political independence and having a new flag and not singing "God save the Queen" anymore was the real attainment of freedom. Having a Black Prime minister and a Black government looked very much like the children of slaves were now free at last. Just like they did on emancipation day, there was dancing and singing when the new flag was raised. In some quarters it was really believed that the provision of MORE JOBS, the building of better roads, and the right to sit at desegregated lunch counters would have meant an end to the downward slide of the carriage of protracted genocide. Little did the "ex-slaves" know that after the excitement, the "better roads" would lead to nowhere.

Aside from the wide-spread political ignorance that governed the people, there was also another factor that always made them cautious about their demands. They were quite aware of the long history of THE TERRORISTS and their capacity for becoming BEASTS. Even an attempt at registering to vote could bring down the lynching party, and if just a simple demand for the right to cross the segregated line could be met with such TERRORISM like the murder of little children, they well understood that the hour of history was not yet on their side.

RACIAL TERRORISM was so dreadful in its restraint of the Black voice that only someone of privilege and high standing in white society could dare go before the seats of power and raise the call for BLACK REPARATIONS. That is why it was actually a white man by the name of Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who in 1867 placed the issue of REPARATIONS before the US fortieth congress in section 4 of HR 29.

Thaddeus Stevens, a white Republican, was not too blind to recognize that Reparations was the only just policy after enslaving a race for so many centuries, but the conscience of the slave holding nations was not susceptible to the bidding of such noble ideals. As they are accustomed to do when their clients have lots of money, "LEGAL MINDS" used their tricks successfully to keep the case out of the court house, so that it was eventually confined to the rubbish heap of history and the garbage bin of forgetfulness.

Unfortunately, throughout the history of The White World Order, the majority opinion has never been of the Thaddeus Stevens sort, and so, every effort has been made to delay the case for Black Reparations until the day when the excuse can now be offered that it has become an irrelevant issue because "TOO MUCH TIME HAS ELAPSED AND THE INJUSTICE HAPPENED TOO LONG AGO."

But suppose the criminal element of society learns from this lesson that CRIME can be made to benefit one's offspring as long as one can keep the case out of the court house long enough! If this lesson is taken as an example of what can be achieved by delaying the legal process, the criminal spirit is bound to be emboldened by the surety of such de-facto exoneration. But this has serious consequences in terms of the NON-ETHIC that it establishes, which is nothing less than "CRIME DOES INDEED PAY." What a contradiction for a people who profess to be anti-terrorists, a people who profess to be defenders of "freedom and democracy" and "law and order," and upholders of "values."

The true principles of justice demand that as long as it can be shown that there are beneficiaries of the crime, there must be compensation for the crime, and this is not a very hard task. In the "developed" Euro-American nations of today which were founded on robbery and slavery, every single advantage that is enjoyed over those peoples who were dispossessed and enslaved, is an advantage gained from such history. Whether it be the physical infrastructure of the nation, the advanced economic level of the nation or the advanced social services of the nation, they are all benefits which are enjoyed by the inhabitants of such developed nations because of the labors of millions of slaves and underpaid laborers FOR CENTURIES. Not only is their present "first-world" status a benefit that is derived from having slave labor in the formative stages of their economic development, but such "first-world" economies have also benefitted from centuries of draining the natural resources of the world's NON-WHITE peoples.

To put it in a nut-shell, as long as one is sheltered in the house that slaves built, one is benefitting from slave labor. The only way to escape this truth is to minimize the contribution of slave labor or to erase and distort history completely. This is the main reason why European history books describe ROBBERS as discoverers, and the victimized people as "savages", "cannibals" and "heathens." Such historiography is in the same vein as a CRIMINAL trying to cover up his tracks. If such covering up of tracks had not been done so successfully there would be no reason to have to argue the case for BLACK REPARATIONS today.

Whether they know it or not, the anti-reparations activists are really arguing that CRIME DOES AND SHOULD INDEED PAY. One only has to keep the case outside of the courthouse long enough till everyone agrees that the date of the crime is too far away.

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REPAIRING MINDS
THE PRIMARY TASK OF REPARATIONS

Now that the time has finally come when the issue of BLACK REPARATIONS can no longer be shunned, it is also time to look at the role of MIS-EDUCATION to see how its widespread presence could make Reparations payments nothing more than a windfall bonus with very little long term effect.

It cannot be denied that MIS-EDUCATION is one of the main legacies of slavery and colonialism. Out of the crucible of racial terrorism and mis-education, a certain mind-set was programmed in the newly cloned creature called "THE NEGRO." This mind-set was designed to benefit those that had enough money to buy Black people and snuff out their identity in THE SLAVE-BREAKING PROCESS.

It is this slavery-inherited mind-set, scientifically known as ACUTE NEGRO PSYCHOSIS, that presently chains the vast majority of "ex-slaves" to the worship of A WHITE GOD-HEAD, and it is very rare to find an "ex-slave" who has miraculously emerged from its influence. The worship of the white god-head has become so normal on the plantation that even those who do not hold on to church and religion are still faithful to the white god-head through their cherishing of the same value system, the same standard of beauty, the same philosophy, and the same ideology as the white slave owner. It would not be overly inaccurate to say that roughly 99 percent of all Black people today worship the white god-head, and this is a direct result of having been BROKEN IN, subdued, and DOMESTICATED by white slave owners. Even in the blackest strongholds where everybody in government is black and all the lawyers and judges are black, the god-head that is worshiped is still WHITE. If you know a peoples' standard of beauty, their standard of values, their choice of philosophy, and their choice of ideology, you can know what god they are praising and worshiping. The Black man and black woman only have to examine themselves on the basis of this criteria and they will know what color god they are truly worshiping.

The Slave Owner's mind-set has always been focused on keeping his slaves in their place of subservience under his control, so naturally when slaves share their owner's mentality they actually collaborate in their own oppression, and by their choices, show a mis-educated preference for their state of TOTAL DEPENDENCY.

When the light of Black selfhood and ROYALTY is snatched from one generation, the next generation is left with mentors who are bereft of the light. Three and four generations later, there comes a generation who have neither mother, father or grandparent to whom they may look for light. Total darkness is the outcome. That is the kind of darkness where even the Teacher and the Preacher have completely lost touch with their own sacred origins that house the wellspring of their true soul, and like self-rewinding tape recorders, all that they can repeat is that which was given to them in the white man's house. The darkness can become so thick that the people find themselves chained in all sorts of emotional confusion, spiritual confusion and even sexual confusion. Men become confused and are not comfortable with being men, and women start to hate being women. In the UN-SURENESS of such spiritual confusion and gender confusion, the very sacred act of sex itself becomes a Demon in search of satisfaction beyond its natural boundaries, and there are few to whom the confused may look for guidance on what is right and what is wrong, what is natural and what is unnatural. When a people reach a state where there is no longer any clear voice on what is right and what is wrong, when no one is sure of what is natural and what is unnatural, it can be said that people is wallowing in the piss of their slave master.

Black humanity has been degraded to such great depths by its long sojourn under the degenerate rule of Greco-Roman and Sodom and Gomorrah culture that when the judgment FIRE comes down on Rome there will be very few Black people that will not be burned. Under the steady and relentless influence of the decadence and depravity that emanates from the soul of U-rocentrick civilization, the spiritually orphaned generations have become spellbound in the grips of immorality. Such is the way of the continuing process of DEHUMANIZATION, and the shackles of immorality and decadence soon assume such a hold that The Slave Master no longer needs iron chains to bind his slaves. Every day their spiritual confusion will cause them to fashion more chains for themselves. This is the pit, the deep spiritual abyss from whence the souls of Black folks must now be dug if the glory of Black civilization is to shine again.

If the ultimate goal of the struggle for Reparations is only to put some more money in the pockets of Black folks so that they can survive more comfortably in the white man's house, the struggle would be meaningless to future generations. Without a Pan-African vision that has as its goal the establishment of BLACK NATIONHOOD with a restored concept of BLACK ROYALTY AND DIVINITY, the root of the problems that now face Black civilization cannot be rooted out. The truth must be faced that the problems are not only economic, political and cultural, but they are also spiritual in the sense of having been subjected to unnaturalness for so long that naturalness becomes an unwelcome stranger.

TRAPPED, domesticated and tethered for centuries to the stake of unnaturalness, the caged and domesticated creature is apt to lose its spiritual equilibrium and forget what is clean from what is unclean, what is right from what is wrong, and what is high from what is low. This is the condition of the "ex-slaves" in this time, sorely in need of something more than a political movement, something that involves the reshaping of character in the similitude of ROYALTY. As long as such spiritual confusion exists, the God of confusion will continue to reign in his cloak of red white and blue. There is just no way of escaping it, you cannot praise the same god as the slaver and expect to be delivered from the slaver. If there is no spiritual revolution, Africans can easily find themselves building a United States of Africa that is no different from the United States of America. The only difference would be oppressors in black faces.

TRAPPED in the mixed-up meditations of acute Negro psychosis , and TRAINED as they are to give their strength to their owners, Negroes would still not emerge from their present position of total dependency if REPARATIONS were awarded on an individual basis. A few may use the money wisely, but the vast majority will give it back to their owners, and this will always be the case while the SLAVE-MENTALITY still exists. Not only would the money filter right back to the slave master's house because of mental slavery, but also because THE BASIC STRUCTURE of the global economic system is geared to drain the victims of slavery and colonialism, not to secure their independence.

If REPARATIONS payments are not wisely focused on breaking the cycle of chronic dependency, then a mere fifty years from now the Black children of tomorrow will be no better off for it. They will still inherit the situation of this present generation where they are condemned to be BOYS FOREVER in a white man's world.

If it is to be true to its real purpose of resurrecting Black civilization from its grave of dehumanization and serfdom where it was interred by the forces of white racism, the focus of REPARATIONS must be on those linch-pins of economic and psychological dependency which continue to keep slavery intact long after so-called "emancipation".

The first and perhaps the most important of these unyielding cast-iron pins that keep slavery intact, is LACK OF CONTROL over the mind-manufacturing industry.

Slavery is a condition where the one enslaved has no control over his life. If someone else has control over the mind-manufacturing industry, one is essentially a slave in the controller's hands. This lack of control which was lost in the pit of slavery and colonialism, means that present-day Black civilization is still living in a white man's world.

What is the significance of the white man's ownership and control over the mind-manufacturing industry?

It means that as a Black parent, your child is not your own. Just like it was on the plantation of old, from the day that the Black child is born his mind is injected with the Negro blue-print. This means that he is instantly being programmed to think in a way that benefits the owners of the plantation and to the detriment of his own race. It is the presence of this Negro blueprint in the Black man's head which today causes him to collaborate in his own genocide. Removing this Negro blueprint must therefore be a central component of any REPARATIONS policy.

Without ownership and control of THE EDUCATION PROCESS, the minds of the newly compensated people would still continue to work against themselves in a way that would perpetuate their CHRONIC DEPENDENCY. "Ownership of the education process" should not be misunderstood as mere ownership and control of schools and universities, but also CONTROL OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS that sits within the books and the thought process that governs the television.

INTENSIVE effort backed by generous resources must be placed on The Project of Re-education. The people who have been mis-educated by the slave master to see themselves as separate peoples called Bajans, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Afro-Americans, Ghananians and Nigerians, etc, must be re-educated to see themselves as integral states of ONE BLACK NATION. When it is recognized that artificial barriers of separate national identity were specifically created to facilitate control of the slave master's plantation, it will become clear that PAN-AFRICAN THINKING is the only life-boat for the drowning peoples of Africa wherever they are scattered. This new thinking can only be achieved if it becomes a priority on every school's agenda, and the bottom line of every church sermon.

The truth must be faced that the education system which was inherited from the Slave-master was designed to keep the plantation running on a more sophisticated level. Better and more highly skilled SERVANTS was the goal, and it is not an accident that THE EDUCATED CLASS of Blacks today are for the most part ORDERS-TAKERS. There is absolutely no way how the cycle of dependency and subserviency will be broken without the introduction of a new education system that has as its goal the development of AFRICAN NATIONHOOD in place of the present goal of Black servant-hood.

Seeing that the Black mind is still being invaded on all sides by the visions and ideas of the white man's house, its rehabilitation will call for the setting up of a vast and all-encompassing PAN-AFRICAN CENTERED education system. It must be realized that NATIONHOOD is first and foremostly AN IDEA which needs to be cultivated, and it could never have been cultivated in the past while the plantation was being run by white owners who wanted to keep Black slave hands tied to the plantation. When the idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD is not being cultivated in our present religious and education systems it is because such an idea will make slaves question their landless-ness and their powerless-ness. All the teachings, be they religious or otherwise, that have bound the allegiance of Black peoples to their separate estates in the plantation economy are complimentary to the global schemes of THE WHITE WORLD ORDER.

The United States of America is AN IDEA that had to be planted and cultivated, and it was cultivated essentially for the betterment of white civilization. Separate groups of Europeans were taught THE IDEA of the USA, and the idea was not considered inconsistent with their religion. It is only slavery-inherited religion that holds the vison of BLACK NATIONHOOD to be unimportant. The white man had the wisdom to know that his personal security and prosperity depended on the establishment of A COMMON NATIONHOOD with a land base. Those who are presently known as JEWS also knew that scattered as they were in minority positions all over the globe, they needed a central land base that made NATIONHOOD a reality, and hence they set up the state of Israel.

The Black man must ask himself,
Where is my vision of Black nationhood?

Is my slavery-inherited religion blocking my mind from seeing the necessity for Black nationhood?

Does my long-term security rest with the fragmented plantation identity?

Am I comfortable with my centuries-old task of building the white man's house?

Should I continue to invest my labors and my monies in the white man's house when it is getting bigger and richer from my labors while Africa is getting poorer and more dependent every day?

Am I satisfied with my dependent position in world affairs where every major decision in my life as a Black man must be made by a group of white men who cannot help being racist?

Is this the situation that I want future generations to inherit?

Am I contented with the island identity which the slave-master gave me so that I would remain a powerless satellite, always lingering on the outskirts of white prosperity?

None but the most drunken can fail to acknowledge the need to cultivate the idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD with the prospect of putting it into reality.

If white men can come together from all parts of U-rope and build their white strongholds, why should the Black man not be doing the same? why should the Black man continue to seek refuge in the white man's stronghold instead of building his own?

In this stage of the struggle to correct the damage of slavery and colonialism, one of the greatest opponents is the white high-tech mind-control system which dominates the movie industry and global communications. It is so powerful that the way how controlled people will be thinking fifty years from now can be plotted on a drawing board and then implemented without fail.

Therefore to cultivate this idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD, major funding must also be allocated for the development of an independent Black theater and movie industry devoted to THE BLACK RESURRECTION. When the word "BLACK" is clearly defined as that which is conscious and effective in its capacity to break chains, there will be no chance of such a venture coming close to the Blakspoitation movie genre where "Black" just meant putting a black face in place of a white face. Neither minds that are bleached white by the U-rocentrick aesthetic, nor minds that are bleached color-less by white-liberal education can create the groundwork which is necessary for Black independence and Black nationhood. More than enough time has passed under the influence of both forms of mind-control to show that such thinking ultimately perpetuates white domination.

In this project of repairing Black minds for the fulfillment of Black nationhood, it will not be enough to put financial resources into the building of schools, universities and movie studios, but paralleled with all this must also be funding for the type of scholarship that is necessary for producing Black-centered books and learning materials to fulfill A BLACK CURRICULUM

The building of any nation demands an education system that is centered within the struggles and ambitions of that nation. That is why the European education system has always been WHITE-CENTERED with a historiography that places slavers, colonialists, invaders and robbers at the center. The victims of the U-ropean project cannot correct their disadvantage or re-arrange their lives without an education system that is centered on their own historical perspective and national ambition. It must be BLACK CENTERED in order to be redemptive.

The importance of repairing Black minds has to be therefore seen as a major task on the REPARATIONS agenda, and success in this venture will determine whether generations fifty years from now or three hundred years from now will benefit from today's struggles for REPARATIONS. The work of breaking down the mental chains of white racism and colonialism has to be seen for what it is, the only key to unlock the dungeon of captivity. Without a break-through in these stubborn walls of mental slavery there can be no TRUE BLACK NATIONHOOD AND ROYALTY.

A STRONG BLACK HOME BASE.

In every land, the welfare of the individual is directly dependent on the welfare of the state and its ability to maintain a prosperous economy. Take for instance the welfare of the average European tourist. He is able to be a tourist because he comes from a country that has a sufficiently prosperous economy that allows him to have enough surplus income to go on tour. He has a HOME BASE that is strong economically. It is not an accident that within the tourist economy, most tourists are white and the servants are black. While the white tourist has a strong economic home base that enables him to have surplus income, the black servant has A BEGGING AND DEPENDENT HOME BASE that barely allows him survival wages. If on the continent of Africa or in the Caribbean the safety of a white tourist is threatened, he has a strong government back at home that will come to his assistance with guns blazing if necessary. On the other hand look at the predicament of Blacks in the USA, the UK, or any part of U-rope where they may be now exiled. They are subject to the worse treatment where they can be lynched and crucified on the cross of racism and there is no strong Black government that can forcefully intervene on their behalf.

A realistic look at the Black diaspora shows that wherever they are presently domiciled, their economic survival is totally dependent on the economic health of the dominant white U-ropean nations. In places like the Caribbean where they depend on tourism, Black survival depends on the white man having enough money to go on tours. If the white man tightens his belt, many black belts will have to be further tightened throughout the islands. In places like the U-ropean strongholds of the USA and the UK, if the white man is losing money and decides to close his factory, out goes Black survival through the window of job cuts.

Throughout the history of the Caribbean, national survival has always been very dependent on exporting labor to the white man's home in the US, the UK, and Canada. Economic survival has long been structured along the lines of the plantation where the Black villagers had to leave their homes and trek to their workplace in the Big House to scrub floors, wash clothes, clean yards and do the dirty jobs. There is total dependency on the white man's economic health, and that is reflective of a situation where a people have no prosperous home base of their own. If Africa was a prosperous home base, Blacks from all over the world would be migrating to Africa in search of work instead of trekking to the U-ropean capitals of the world where they are subject to the scourge of racial discrimination which can escalate at any time.

In the white capitals of power which are so racially charged from centuries of white racism, it is quite unlikely, and even ridiculous to imagine any form of meaningful Reparations to the minority Black populations, for the simple reason that it would create what would appear to the majority white population as the creation of a privileged minority class. If in these countries, Reparations were paid on an individual basis, the majority white population can be expected to lash out angrily at the DEFENSELESS Black minority who would appear to be gaining an unfair economic advantage. Remember Black Wallstreet

(see website http://www.littleafrica.com/opportunity/opprage.html "The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Walstreet," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Block business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--A model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.

The nights carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.")

If the issue of REPARATIONS is broken down into insular pockets of interest where the Afro-American has one agenda and the Caribbean people have another, and the Africans on the homeland have another, one should expect Willie Lynch to exploit the situation. A good look at the continent of Africa today demonstrates how eagerly Willie Lynch exploits differences. If Willie Lynch has his way again, REPARATIONS will be granted with a great show of outward magnanimity which will prove to be the biggest PR stunt of the ages. An end would be put once and for all on the complaints that U-rope did this and U-rope did that, but with insularity and mental slavery still rampant, Black people would find themselves in the same old hole as before, TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON THE WHITE WORLD ORDER.

MYOPIC VISIONS will be exploited and INSULARITY will be coopted in the same way that present day MIS-EDUCATION is being enlisted in the age-old business of COLLABORATIVE GENOCIDE.

What is at stake is the future of Black peoples worldwide, and barring a serious intervention of BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, that future is as dim as it could ever have been. What kind of future will the Black visionaries of this time hold out for the salvation of the race? All the TRUE VISIONARIES have already pointed to BLACK NATIONALISM as the only means towards ending the scourge of being Black and totally dependent in a white man's world, and it should never be forgotten that racial harmony in the white man's strongholds has always depended on Black obeisance and Black subservience. The only hope for the Black race lies in its ability to get its act together on the continent of Africa. Little island satellites and little minorities are already being jettisoned by the onward sweep of history.

If the present agitation for Reparations is governed by a strong Black Nationalist commitment as it ought to be, priority will be given to establishing A POWERFUL BLACK HOME BASE as a means of securing the future of Blacks throughout the world. Greek thinking, U-ropean thinking, and insular thinking will have to give way to PAN-AFRICAN THINKING.

It is only from this WISE base of Pan-African thinking that the proper areas of NEEDED DEVELOPMENT will be identified. "NEEDS" will be seen as the abolishment of every single relic of slavery and colonialism which serves to perpetuate current BLACK DEPENDENCY, BLACK SUBSERVIENCY, AND BLACK DEHUMANIZATION.

To correct the slavery-inherited maladies, CONTROL AND OWNERSHIP must be restored to those that have been robbed and chained in dependency. As long as the Slaver still controls Black lands, Black resources, and the education process, he will continue to control BLACK LABOR AND BLACK MINDS.

To negotiate and implement this vision of Black Resurrection, A PAN-AFRICAN INSTITUTION should be established comprising of people's representatives from throughout the African diaspora and the African homeland. Similar to how the UN is structured with many subsidiary organizations, this institution should stand as an integral part of the now embryonic UNITED STATES OF AFRICA. This will enable negotiations to proceed on a GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNMENT level which offers a much better chance of bringing about the long-term betterment of African peoples than would an individual arrangement.

On a much broader level however, it must be recognized that this struggle for the long-term betterment of African peoples will prove to be a catalyst for change to the present global economic system. Further up the ladder of CONSCIOUSNESS, the question will have to arise, "What are the chances of turning a vampire into a vegetarian?" Can the proposed betterment of African peoples be achieved while the global economic system is structured on the same rapacious model as the plantation system? The answer to this question will show that for African peoples, the struggle to end racial discrimination will be very much linked to the struggle of all the world's poor to end the fundamentally parasitic nature of global capitalism. That cherished brainchild of old pirates and slave masters who always valued profit above human life has now become a Frankenstein out of control, imperiling the continued existence of all life irrespective of race, class or creed. Even the very earth and its endangered ecological system are now crying out because of the same economic policies that continue to put PROFIT first to the detriment of all life.

The magnitude of the problem is so great that it is going to take more than just a political solution, more than just an economic solution and more than just a religious solution, and the solution will not drop out of the sky. The leadership of THE BLACK RESURRECTION will have be of a quality that is seldom seen in today's human market place where the price of a man's soul has dropped so very cheap. Let the struggle for REPARATIONS become a uniting force that crystalizes the consciousness of AFRICAN NATIONHOOD. AFRICA AWAITS HER CREATORS.

August 2002

The Centuries-Old Vampire That "Romes"
Posted: Sunday, August 25, 2002

By Ras Jahaziel

When the arguments against Black Reparations are sifted and weighed in the balance, there is one overriding attitude that stands out like a centuries-old vampire that still refuses to die.

“Emancipation” did not kill him, “Civil Rights” did not kill him, Black national “Independence” did not kill him, and modern evangelism has not changed him. He still is a beast that views BLACK HUMANITY with malignant contempt. Even though he takes great care to cloak himself in righteous garments and often resorts to righteous pretense, he still cannot conceal the fact that his malignant contempt for Black humanity is still sticking to him as tight as his first birth-day suit.

This centuries-old vampire who has for so long roamed the plantation has ever shown by his words and his actions that in his estimation, Black life is not equal to other life. If the victims of a holocaust are white as in the case of “The Jewish Holocaust,” then no effort is spared in reminding the world that CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY have been committed. Monuments, commemorations and reparations are considered quite in order. But when the victims are Black as in the case of The African Holocaust, the vampire believes that they should be forgotten and dismissed as so much COLLATERAL DAMAGE. He even resents the use of the word “HOLOCAUST”in describing the Black experience at the hands of U-rope, and no matter how long he dips himself in religion he is still not convinced that the term “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” should be used when the victims are Blacks. His words and actions throughout history have long shown that “the vampire of malignant contempt for Black humanity” draws a firm line between “NEGROES” and HUMANITY.

So the truth has to be faced that the much boasted “civilization, and progress, and democratic values” are nothing but a transparent cloak disguising an unreformed vampire who is as arrogant, egocentric, self-deluded, and racist as he was in his formative years when he was not so concerned about disguises. This callous, insensitive and indifferent attitude towards the sanctity of Black life has always been common-place on HELL-PLANTATION, and it has become so “NORMAL” that it is like a pair of contact-lens that sit right on top of the eyes forming the vision of the viewer without being seen themselves.

Because of this vampire called “malignant contempt for Black humanity,” certain racist assumptions have become a sacrosanct foundation of thought permeating the psyche of “post-slavery” society. With the long indoctrination on these basic racist assumptions, it is little wonder that Black humanity is still seen in very much the same way as it was in the days of HELL PLANTATION when Black life was an expendable commodity that could be easily bought and sold. Long habit, long custom and long indoctrination have perpetuated the old attitude of “Work the slave to death and get another. The job is more important than the slave.” Of course today in this age of political correctness, that attitude is no longer prominently worn on top of the nose for everyone to see, but recent admission that the unparalleled brutality of black slavery is still not regarded as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY shows that the old racist world-view has merely moved from spectacles to contact lenses.

The whole issue of REPARATIONS today is really a searching out of the soul to see how far our concept of “GOD” has evolved from the dark ages of barbarism, when “Christian” founding-fathers robbed, raped and butchered their fellow-man and then said “In the name of GOD, let us have a THANKS-GIVING DAY.”

The vampire, “malignant contempt for black humanity,” was the chief architect of that concept “GOD” which held that SLAVE MASTERS, SLAVE-CATCHERS, ROBBERS and INVADERS should be honored and glorified, while showing little concern for the people who put in the real hard work that created today’s first-world wealth.

Because of the resurfacing of the reparations issue, international morality and conscience are now being tested to their very core, and the moral authority of THE INHERITORS OF THE SLAVE-MASTER LEGACY is once more proving to be as bankrupt as it ever was. To honor COLUMBUS-invaders and slavers while denying that the Black experience at the hands of Europe meets the definition of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, amounts to condoning the brutal robbery and enslavement of the African peoples. To hold this position IN THE NAME OF GOD is a profession of faith in a god who either condones crimes against humanity, or else he is being seen as a god who made the world’s non-white peoples on the same level as the chickens and goats and pigs which men slaughter every day with impunity thinking that “such lower life-forms were made “for the service of man.”

In these trying times when the mighty are waging war in the name of “RIGHT” it becomes most imperative that such long-standing concepts of “GOD” be re-examined, because if one’s concept of “GOD” is wrong, so too will be one’s concept of “RIGHT.” When racism has been truly abandoned as a guide for international policy, there will be a general willingness to accept certain basic truths which were hitherto not admitted.

Foremost amongst these truths will be the fact that somewhere in the darkness of our formative years, A CRIMINAL GOD-HEAD had enthroned itself in the spiritual seat of government. One of our great philosophers (Dr John Henrik Clarke) once said “ALL HISTORY IS CURRENT EVENT.” If at one stage of your history, your god condones and pardons terrorism, and every year you reaffirm the fact of his criminal nature by offering up thanks for the spoils, how will you escape the bloody scourge of terrorism at a later stage of that same history? If it is agreed that both the slave and the slaver all shared one common humanity, then in light of the extraordinary and UNPARALLELED barbarity that accompanied black slavery, it is fair to say that today’s leading “democracies” have been built on CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

The only escape from such a conclusion is to argue that some of the builders were not humanity. And this is the question that the children of Africa are asking today, how can your democracy be valid, how can you be truly recognized as an enlightened civilization when you declare that some of your citizens have fore-parents that were “humanity” and some have fore-parents that were not?

Does such ideology not show that today’s generation is still worshiping the same god who yesterday condoned terrorism against the world’s non-white peoples on the grounds of their supposed “NON-HUMANITY?

This revelation automatically poses another question..........
How can the hands of present generations be free of the blood of past generations if they are still worshiping the same god-head that condoned terrorism against the world’s non-white people yesterday on the basis of their supposed NON-HUMANITY ?

If as a people we were not DOPED by the vampire of malignant contempt for Black humanity, the voice of reason would have long brought a change to the old world-views which concocted a god who stood on the side of the racist. It is funny how the same god that gets a people wealth and power can also blind them from seeing the precipice of their own making.

Demystifying The Issue Of Repatriation

REPARATIONS and REPATRIATION for the descendants of slavery and colonialism are two inseparable twins that hold between them the cornerstones for the formation of a new international morality. If one is stripped from the other, JUSTICE fails, and the evil slave-master triumphs once again. Without Reparations, repatriation is more likely to become the repatriation of the privileged.

One should never forget that once upon a time there was an argument amongst the slave-masters about what should be done with the slaves after Emancipation. Some said "Let us see to it that they will never be able to really OWN anything, because we cannot afford to let them become independent. Keep them so busy working that they will never have much time to think, and saddle them with debt so that they will never progress. They can stay here, but they will always be kept busy in the pursuit of powerless-ness." Some said "But we need to keep this place ALL WHITE, so let us bring in more Caucasians and pack these niggers on a boat and send them back to Africa bare-back and empty-handed the same way how they came." The descendants of slavery therefore find themselves today in a situation where the man that is tossing the coin is doing so on one condition "HEADS, I WIN, TAILS, YOU LOSE." Whichever way the coin falls, it represents the triumph of injustice.

There is no escaping it. Historical consciousness is the faculty that causes one's eyes to truly see. Without it, one is virtually blind. A knowledge that has no proper grounding in the trails and trials of the African experience under slavery and colonialism, is therefore like a branch disconnected from its roots. Such knowledge has to go beyond the mere assimilation of facts learned in college and university. It has to be empowered by THE PASSION FOR JUSTICE that naturally flows from an at-oneness with those that have long borne the white cross. From this level of spiritual attunement, one's eyes will then behold the truth that REPATRIATION IS MERELY A COMPONENT OF REPARATIONS. To teach otherwise would surely grant the ole slave-master much pleasure and satisfaction.

It should also be clearly understood that the same ole slave-master who raped Africa and enslaved her children is very much interested in maintaining his grip on stolen property. For this reason the people in Africa have to be kept smelling Hell, and to see to it that they never escape, certain educated Negroes have been put in charge to keep the profits from the plantation flowing smoothly. This is the neo-colonial situation that presently exists in Africa and the Caribbean where there is a Black majority totally dominated and controlled by white invisible minorities. When one is aware of this situation it becomes clear why, despite the appearance of outwardly Black governments, the movement of people has always been tightly curbed and restricted just as in the old days on Hell plantation. Speaking from personal experience as a Rastaman, I have on two occasions been denied the right to set foot on two different Caribbean islands. On neither occasion was I ever even asked my name. Just one look was all it took. On one of those occasions in 1975, I was restricted to the boat until it was ready to leave the harbor. On the other occasion in 1998 or thereabouts, I was taken off the boat, stripped of shoes and all personal belongings, and then held in a jail cell until the boat was ready to leave. All of this with no questioning. After that particular experience, I had the occasion to speak to a sympathetic white woman who was married to a Black Rastaman, and here is what she said: "I can understand your experience, because my husband (the Black Rastaman from another island) was only able to visit the island BECAUSE HE WAS WITH ME."

Now this is the Caribbean where all authority is visibly Black, but it is insightful in terms of the workings of the neo-colonial mentality. It explains why Repatriation has so far been only a vision yet to be materialized. A Caucasian can travel anywhere in the world without let or hindrance. Check the same scenario in this excerpt from a lecture by Haile Gerima the famous Ethiopian film producer of the movie "Sankofa":

"I went to Ethiopia to quickly record as I was doing pre-production for BBC, the documentary film I did for BBC called Imperfect Journey. And here I was with this Niagara, not a new Niagara recorder and I felt I should record my uncle with good equipment instead of what this brother is trying to record with. I felt it was important archival material. When I got to Ethiopia the customs office, they were all these privileged European people with their privileged white trust fund skin in front of me. They went through with all their computers and cameras and here I was with my -- you know, Ethiopian citizen but illegal still in the actual context of transactions in airports. I'm illegal in every airport. I'm not complaining.

It makes you connect. That's when you know you're like the Pakistanian, the Indian, because in London you look around, you're kept -- you know where you belong and language is not important, just you know where you are on this planet. And it's educational. But, any how, here I was, excited with this equipment going to go through this customs and I was stopped. Also an Ethiopian guy with me was also a filmmaker, his machine was taken and mine was taken.

Here I was, when I was supposed to go to the village for the time period I have, I'm at the Custom's office stranded trying to liberate the equipment. I stayed there trying to fight for a whole week, two weeks doing nothing and my relatives are all in Ghanda. So, I just left it and visited friends and took some pictures and got back in the airport and then they handed me my Niagara to take it out. Now, that is not explainable in any logic. I just want you to keep that in mind. It will connect somewhere. That's why most people don't know how to follow my movie.

My thought processes is a very primitive and organized thought process. So, here again, I come back to Ethiopia with now what we call the 'White Visa'. I had my white people from England. I made sure I had three white people in front of me, and I went through the visa and immigration and customs, straight without any problem through their power. I went through every check point in Ethiopia just fronting them in the Land Rover. I made them look like they were the boss, though they were my employees. And the driver always has to have a white person in front of him at every check point. The driver has to quickly point "_________, ________," the new World Bank IMF power. And the government has told everybody, don't stop (foreigners) don't mistreat them, give them everything, don't stop them.

So here I am going any where I wanted to go with this power, armed with this power. Went to every dungeon and made my film. I recorded people who are afraid for their life, hidden in a covert way. And left. We tried in Ethiopia and that is to interview the president. The president refused to be interviewed by me although he is accessible to every beginning white filmmaker that I met who were there from Germany, Holland and. They always say, "We like your film. And I hope I can work with you." But they are in charge of my country. And I always ask them to do me a favor, to get me around."

There are two things that neo-colonial governments despise most, poor people and culturally conscious people.

It has long been known to the wise, and to those that have been put in charge of the neo-colonial system in Africa, that "ONE POOR PLUS ONE POOR EQUALS TOO POOR." What this really says is that if one repatriates without ever breaking the cycle of persistent poverty here, one is more likely to be considered an additional burden on reaching there. That is why no head of state is ever willing to permit large-scale immigration of more poor people. Even between neighboring states in Africa, immigration authorities have been placed in the road to prevent the influx of MORE POOR PEOPLE. Every place where you go in the so-called third world or developing world today, in every harbor and every airport there is an invisible sign saying "WE DON'T WANT NO MORE POOR PEOPLE HERE." In smaller writing there is another that says "and conscious people are not welcome either, because they are potential threats."

This brings us to the real truth that THE EDUCATED NEGRO IS THE MAIN BARRIER TO BLACK PROGRESS. He has been placed in a comfortable position by invisible puppeteers who are very skilled in the art of pulling strings. Whether he does it consciously or unconsciously, the educated Negro is generally a facilitator in the centuries -old project of Black exploitation. His greatest concern is to keep his personal safe place secure, and by his actions, he displays a greater kinship with the white exploiter.

When REPARATIONS and REPATRIATION are examined under the clear microscope of consciousness, one will see that their full attainment will only come after serious revolutionary changes in the present status quo. Moses has to take the message to the powers that be, and the foundations have to be shaken so severely that little puppet heads will roll. This is not to say that everyone should sit patiently and wait for the earthquake. A concerted effort should still be made meanwhile to attain some level of poor people's empowerment, for as Marcus Garvey once said, a people without real power will always be a people without respect. This is why after so many years in the Caribbean where the Rasta people are the poorest, they are still the least respected and the most oppressed.

This brings us to the most current issue that the conscious people should be addressing ...the issue of self-empowerment or poor-people's empowerment. When a people have been robbed of their land and its natural resources, the only other resource that is available to them is THEIR NATURAL CREATIVE TALENT. If these talents have not been fully developed and mobilized, such people will forever continue to spend their lives laboring to make the slave-master rich. Even those few talents that they have discovered will continue to be exploited by others.

In the absence of REPARATIONS, this development and mobilization of the people's creative talent-base would have to precede Repatriation. Where this has not been done, REPATRIATION will be nothing more than the movement of a people who have been able to serve the slave-master long enough to BUY their freedom of movement. And it ought to be considered that the slave-master has set up his system in such a way, that by the time you bow and serve him long enough to buy your freedom, your mind is no longer much different to his. If such people are repatriated to Africa, they will quite easily keep silent and non-involved in the struggle for justice there. They will betray the down-trodden, and by their non-involvement, make common cause with Africa's neo-colonial stooges. By attaining the presently required financial resources, such repatriates would have achieved something that is almost impossible for the average African to achieve. It is not good to be viewed as an island of prosperity in a sea of poverty. In places like Nigeria, such Black achievers usually live behind large iron gates with guards at the door, and high walls with barbed wire strung on top.

True Repatriation must therefore be accompanied by a total revolutionary change in the African social, political, and economic system that allows prosperity to be more broad-based. Otherwise, repatriation will be just a matter of RELOCATING HELL.

Apocalyptic doctrines should never be allowed to put common sense to sleep. Those that step in the right should never be guided by fear. Each one must ask themselves, "What is my particular role in this battle to lift Black humanity from the dust of disadvantage, scorn, and perpetual servitude? What are my unique talents, and how can they best be utilized to accomplish these goals in this generation?" When these questions are properly answered, everyone will know what his or her divinely-appointed station is in this final battle to restore the right. Some may be called sooner than others to make the journey now to help spread the light of consciousness, with the full knowledge that they will be opposed by Black oppressors. Others may have to fight in the lands of the white oppressors to give more power to the truth by galvanizing a movement similar to the days of the civil-rights movement.

Whether Hell is in the east or in the west, it is still Hell, so the battle will remain the same in either place. When this consciousness comes home fully, one will not be motivated in one's efforts to repatriate by the feeling that one is making an escape for a safe place. On the contrary, one will be relocating with the full knowledge that one is moving into place to take over the baton of struggle from the likes of Haile Selassie, Muguabe, Mbeki, Mandela, Steve Biko and all those who fought to bring Africa this far from the clutches of colonialism. The struggle for African liberation must now be taken to its ultimate conclusion, and that is the task that has been prepared for this generation.

Seeing that white-skin preference and rich man preference still overshadow the doors of return, it should be plain to see by now that there are a few righteous steps that must be taken if REPATRIATION is to come anywhere close to the idea of GOING TO ZION.

THE STEPS THAT MUST BE TAKEN FOR REPATRIATION TO MEAN GOING TO ZION

The battle to regain economic independence as a group must start now. This could be said in another way: The battle to regain African manhood must start now. The reason why this battle is so very much connected to spiritual integrity is that it ushers in a generation who can speak fearlessly without wondering if they will lose their jobs.

Because of long DOMESTICATION and continued subjugation under a rigorous slave system that was designed to benumb the soul, many slave descendants know nothing about their own creative talents, and many doubt that they even have them. Therefore most of their waking hours are spent in the mundane activities that have been prescribed by the slave-master for the purpose of suffocating and stifling the genie within. Every effort has to be made therefore to uncork the bottle and let out the genie(us). This is a process that should start from the very first arrival of true consciousness. Because of this reorganization of self, the Zion train will be carrying GENIUSES, well equipped and well prepared to do the work of rebuilding Zion. If you have already discovered your talent, no effort should be spared in sharpening, polishing, and shining it, so that it reaches its full potential. What ought to emerge from this process is a group of people, who despite their origins in the dust of society, have secured by their collective and individual works, that measure of respect that the world will have to recognize. This is a mission that is achievable. Marcus Garvey showed us how.

The people's creative talent is a yet un-UN-DEVELOPED TREASURE. It is a treasure that has been buried by slavery, and it is now kept in a coma by the mundane day to day chores of slave life. It has to be developed and mobilized to generate the kind of power that will command respect. Not only will it provide spiritual and material wealth, but it will also break the yoke of the 9 to 5 slave-master.

When this awakening has taken place, no one will have to be convinced about the essential role of I-NITY, NETWORKING, AND COOPERATION. The present blindness only happens because of faith in the pay-check.

The wide scattering of the people must also be turned into an asset, for it can be made to facilitate product-distribution which is so vital in the capitalist system. If this network is not developed, the present trend will continue where OTHERS are the main sellers and therefore the main profit-makers. Right in our midst, there are products that can be made to benefit more than just a few, but their full potential has not been realized because the words COMPANY AND CORPORATION are still believed to have been copy-written and reserved exclusively for the white man.

This is the time to make manifest THE PEOPLE OF POWER.

And while this vital NATION BUILDING project is being implemented, the battle for Reparations must be waged unceasingly, for that is the only way to resurrect justice from the dead. By struggling for Reparations, one draws closer to the heart of those countless numbers of African ancestors who were brutalized, worked to death, and buried like dogs, who now sit on the other side anxiously awaiting the restoration of their humanity. In effect, what one will be doing by whole-heartedly embracing the struggle for Black reparations is DEMONSTRATING THAT THE BLINDNESS IS OVER, AND NOW ONE CAN TRULY SEE. No generation can claim that their humanity is fully recognized and respected while the humanity of their ancestors is denied and neglected. UP, ye mighty people, you can conquer whatsoever you will.

SPECIAL SCREENING OF FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER SUNDAY AT 6:00 PM CST

Join Zoom Meeting Sunday, August 9, 2020 6:00 PM CST

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84264868591

Balanta woman Ella Baker, a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King, played an instrumental role in shaping the American civil rights movement. The dynamic activist was affectionately known as the Fundi, a Swahili word for a person who passes skills from one generation to another. By looking at the 1960s from the perspective of Baker, the "godmother of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee," "Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker" adds an essential understanding of the U.S. civil rights movement. Please join us for a special screening and discussion of this rarely viewed documentary

Siphiwe Baleka is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: SPECIAL SCREENING OF FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER

Time: Aug 9, 2020 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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AU 6th Region Diaspora Initiative: History and Current Status with the AU 6th Region Education Campaign Director

On February 3-4, 2003, the first Extra-Ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 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.” From this decision, the African Diaspora would become designated as the 6th Region of the African Union.” I was the only African American journalist present in the room and I was the first person of African descent born in the United States to start any African Union 6th Region initiative following the historic Amendment 3(q) to the African Union Constitution.

On August 7, 2020, I discussed this and more. Watch the video below.

For background for tonight’s discussion, read:

HOW THE AFRICAN UNION WAS ESTABLISHED TO INCLUDE THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

THE BALANTA FOUNDER OF THE AFRICAN UNION 6TH REGION CAMPAIGN

March 31, 2007 Election Results for the African Union 6th Region for New York State

THE AU 6TH REGION DIASPORA INITIATIVE IS FAILING MEMBERS OF THE DIASPORA WHOSE ANCESTORS WERE ENSLAVED IN THE UNITED STATES

LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

Join the Movement and Sign the Declaration

Click Here to Sign the Declaration

Look at the paternal lineage on this family tree, using my paternal lineage as an example. What's the thing that is constant? In every generation, it is the "Balanta" which is passed down. This is your LINEAGE or ETHNICITY. The different colored XX are part of your genetic profile but it is not the same as the CONSTANT thing that is passed down from fathers to sons or, on the other side, from mothers to daughters. Now, if either of your paternal or maternal lineage ancestor survived the middle passage, then you are directly related to the LINEAGE and ETHNICITY of that place and people. THAT is the PRIMARY culture which the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT is helping people to RESTORE because that is the thing that was severed by the middle passage. The yellow XX in the chart, for example, is not the thing that you lost in the middle passage. In fact, if that was contributed after the middle passage, then we are not even having the same conversation. So, while we acknowledge the dna contributed to the ROOT BRANCH OF THE LINEAGE ANCESTRY, it is you maternal and paternal lineage ancestry that is of concern to those who want to reclaim what was lost because of the criminal trans-Atlantic trafficking of people of African lineage and heritage. That is where you will find the language that was taken from you and the culture that was taken from you.

Lineage Restoration Movement Declaration

1. AWARE that the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage consisted of a minimum of 36,000 voyages that are documented in Davis Eltis’ Trans-Atlantic Slate Trade Database;

2. NOTING that Thomas Cooper, in the Supplement to Mr. Cooper’s Letter on the Slave Trade , suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved, 1,000 were murdered in European inspired or exacerbated warfare on the African continent, 20 were murdered on the “way of death” on the African continent and the Middle Passage, and 70 were murdered during the “seasoning” process, for a total of 170 million deaths;

3. FURTHER NOTING that Joseph Miller, in The Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830, suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were seized, 74 reached the marketplace in the interior, 64 arrived at the slave forts and the holding pens on the coast, 57 stepped onto soil across the Atlantic, 48 lived to behold their first master or mistress, and only 28 to 30 of the original people with African lineage and heritage seized were alive three to four years later;

4. CLAIMING that Portugal and Brazil were and are responsible for at least 7,300 slave voyages (26.8%) and at least 5,074,900 (45.9%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally, and immorally transported from the African continent and, using Cooper’s order of magnitude, were and are responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of more than 73 million people of African lineage and heritage;

5. CLAIMING that Britain was and is responsible for at least 11,632 slave voyages (42.7%), and that least 3,112,300 (28.1%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 52.2 million people of African lineage and heritage;

6. CLAIMING that France was and is responsible for at least 4,038 voyages (14.8%) and at least 1,456,000 (13.2%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and
enslavement of 21.6 million people of African lineage and heritage;

7. CLAIMING that Spain was and is responsible for at least 1,116 slave voyages (4.1%), and at least 517,000 (4.7%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 8.5 million people of African lineage and heritage;

8. EMPHASIZING that almost every country of the Western Hemisphere, and especially the British Mainland of North America, the British Leewards, the British Windwards and Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, the Spanish American Mainland, the Spanish Caribbean, Northeast Brazil, Bahia, Southeast Brazil and other areas, participated in some degree, in the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

9. FURTHER EMPHASIZING that 40.6% of all kidnapped and trafficked people of African lineage and heritage were shipped to Brazil, 29 % to the British colonies in the Caribbean and North America, 14.3% to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, 12% to the French colonies, and 2.7% to the Dutch Americas;

10. LAMENTING that untold numbers of families, clans, tribes, societies, villages, nations and civilizations on the African continent were invaded, disrupted, disorganized, pillaged, raped and destroyed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

11. COGNIZANT that for more than 6 centuries and 30 generations, the theft of the fruit of labor of the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, and the nearly incalculable wealth that it produced, has redistributed income and wealth earned by the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic to generations of people of European lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving the former impoverished as a group and the latter relatively privileged as a group;

12. INFORMED that Joe R. Feagin in Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation and Contemporary Discrimination: Are Reparations in Order for African Americans? calculates that the value of the slave labor expropriated by whites in the United States from 1620 to 1865 ranges from about $1 trillion to as much as $97 trillion, depending on the rate of interest chosen;

13. INFORMED that the cost of labor market discrimination for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars) was $1.6 trillion and that the cost of anti-black discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1965, the end of legal segregation would likely increase that wage-loss estimate to several trillion dollars;

14. INFORMED that the estimate of the cost of continuing racial discrimination in employment has been put in the range of $94-$123 billion dollars;

15. CONCLUDING that, since the 47.5 million people of African lineage and heritage in the United States represents less than 4% of all the people of African lineage and heritage in the world today, the sum total of the wealth transfer by means of slavery, segregation and contemporary discrimination from more than 1 billion people of African lineage and heritage to people of European lineage and heritage amounts to more than $600 trillion dollars (taking into consideration lost interest over time and putting it in today’s dollars) and does not count the value of the wealth that this stolen labor created;

NOW therefore, we the undersigned, hereby declare:

1. The economic damage to and condition of the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH) has been well studied, identified, and calculated.

2. Less studied and understood is the damage to and condition of the IDENTITY of victims of CTATOPWALAH.

3. Identity locates an individual as a part of a family, a community, a region, a culture, and a historical period.

4. On the African continent prior to CTATOPWALAH, identity was formed by the knowledge and preservation of one’s maternal lineage, transmitted from mother to daughter and paternal lineage, transmitted from father to son. Depending on each family’s village tradition, identity, and all that it included – language, culture, spirituality, land, and one’s place in the world and universe (history), was determined either by maternal or paternal lineage.

5. Health and well-being, therefore, required the preservation of one’s lineage. If you did not preserve your lineage, you lost your location or place in the world.

6. In the same way that CTATOPWALAH caused severe and devastating economic damage, it also created severe and devastating LINEAGE DAMAGE.

7. By using violence and terrorism, people of European lineage and heritage prevented the victims of CTATOPWALAH from speaking their native language, using their native names, and returning to their families living in their ancestral homelands.

8. Consequently, the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH no longer retained knowledge of their lineage identities resulting in an IDENTITY CRISIS.

9. New identities such as Guinea-man, slave, negro, colored, mulatto, nigger, black, African American, New Afrikan replaced the lineage identities.

10. The strong existential yearning to reconnect with one’s family, community, region, culture and natural place in the word inspired noble attempts to reclaim one’s lineage identity and resulted in the appropriation of fictitious or place-holder identities such as African (a European construct and designation), Christian, Muslim, Jew, Moor, Hebrew Israelite, Kemetian, New Afrikan, Rastafarian, Pan African, Aboriginal, Native American, Blood, Crip, Black P Stone Ranger, Black Gangster Disciple, Nation of 5% and so many others. These man-made identities can and do change.

11. However, lineage is unchangeable – the descent from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters, is permanent. Thus, who you are, your identity, will always be determined by lineage. At the most fundamental level, you are your ancestral lineage.

12. Our most ancient ancestors admonished, “Man, know thyself.” One’s greatest duty on earth was to honor one’s ancestors. Not knowing who you are and who your ancestors are was considered the greatest tragedy that can befall someone.

13. Because health and well-being are dependent on the preservation of one’s lineage, the attempts to appropriate identities that are not based on one’s actual ancestors have failed to repair the LINEAGE DAMAGE.

14. THE CURRENT CONDITION OF THE DESCENDANTS OF THE VICTIMS OF THE CRIMINAL TRANS-ATLANTIC TRAFFICKING OF PEOPLE WITH AFRICAN LINEAGE AND HERITAGE REMAINS ONE OF IDENTITY CRISIS.

15. The identity crisis is now the main internal obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of CTATOPWALAH.

16. The system of white supremacy remains the main external obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

17. The Lineage Restoration Movement is the response to the IDENTITY CRISIS just described.

18. The objective of the Lineage Restoration Movement is to demonstrate that repair and healing for the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH will remain incomplete until such people RESOLVE ONCE AND FOR ALL THE IDENTITY CRISIS BY REDISCOVERING THEIR MATERNAL OR PATERNAL ANCESTRY.

19. Knowledge of one’s ancestral lineage is the foundation for answering all of the questions and solving all of the problems that people of African lineage and heritage face today. It reconnects the victims of CTATOPWALAH on both sides of the Atlantic. It identifies the natural organizing units needed for a United Front against the common enemy of those Europeans who today, still use a refined system of white supremacy.

20. The natural ordering and organizing of humanity is observable. Trillions of cells and several biological systems are organized and united into what is called an individual human being. That human being is part of a family, which is the product of previous family members or ancestors. This is permanent and unchangeable. Thus, the natural order of humanity is ancestors, family, individual. People of different families with common ancestors form a community. Communities form the highest unit of human organization which are nations.

21. Nations are the biggest unit which can organize the behavior and resources of a people through what is called government. Since there is no single planetary government, then the highest level of human organization at this time is a nation. Natural nations existed prior to CTATOPWALAH and were based on ancestral lineage and not on arbitrary designated territorial boundaries indicated by cartography.

22. The lessons of history teach that the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage MUST FORM A UNITED FRONT to defeat the systems of white supremacy, colonialism, neocolonialism and any forms of exploitation and injustice committed against people of African lineage and heritage.

23. The stronger the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage, the stronger the UNITED FRONT.

24. Until now differences in class, religion, culture, economics, geography, politics, education, music, fashion, language, skin tone, hair, noses, and even sports, were used to divide and conquer people with African lineage and heritage.

25. The Lineage Restoration Movement has observed that people who share lineage ancestry have the firmest foundation for uniting on both sides of the Atlantic.

26. When such unification happens for each group or nation of shared ancestry, communication and shared resources increase that group or nation’s strength, as the saying goes, “Strength in Unity”

27. A UNITED FRONT of all people of people of African lineage and history so organized by ancestry and strengthened, can be achieved PROVIDED that the necessity of such a UNITED FRONT is well understood.

28. Only in this way will the division and disunity between people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic be overcome and the dream of the previous generation’s Pan African ideal achieved.

THEREFORE , the Lineage Restoration Movement

1. DECLARES that for wealth to translate into well-being, people must have a spiritual element within them. Without that, “success” will work against the people;

2. DECLARES that the proper spiritual element needed by the victims of CTATOPWALAH can only be developed through restoring their ancestral lineage since their health and well-being, including their spiritual health and well-being, depend upon restoring and preserving their ancestral lineages;

3. ENCOURAGES the current Reparations movement to prioritize solving the IDENTITY CRISIS of the victims of CTATOPWALAH by using proprietary genetic testing from African Ancestry to restore knowledge of one’s maternal and paternal ancestral lineages;

4. REMINDS the international community that any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH ;

5. RESOLVES that FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day
government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH;

6. DEMANDS that every college and university establish a special program for training this class of genealogy researchers and all students entering the program should be granted free tuition and a living stipend for four years of study.

7. DEMANDS that guaranteed employment (through the government program) is provided for the program graduates for the next fifteen years so that every descendant of the victims of CTATOPWALAH can have their ancestral lineage identity restored;

8. STRONGLY RECOMMENDS that each lineage ancestry group or nation form a centralized body in each country such as the Temne Abara Nation and the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America to whom Reparations resources can be transferred and managed;

9. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such centralized ancestry lineage groups in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the UNITED FRONT for each country;

10. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such UNITED FRONTS in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the highest UNITED FRONT for the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT internationally;

11. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH severely threatens their future health and well-being;

12. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH is continued injustice;13. REPEATS that where there is NO JUSTICE there is NO PEACE.

Signed:

1. Foday K. Conteh (Jul 26, 2020 22:10 EDT)

2. Siphiwe Baleka (Jul 26, 2020 23:03 EDT) 

3. Sânsáu Tchimna (Jul 27, 2020 11:47 EDT)

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

1. The Lineage Restoration Movement (LRM) is a response by the descendants of the people who were trafficked from the African continent, carried across the Atlantic ocean, and enslaved.

2. The LRM recognizes and understands that in addition to the theft of land, people, and labor, IDENTITIES were also stolen creating the current IDENTITY CRISIS experienced by black people in the Americas today.

3. Justice and healing, therefore require the return of that which was stolen.

4. In order to return the land and people, the stolen identities must (first) be restored.

5. The principal aim of LRM is to restore the ancestral lineages that were severed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic trafficking and enslavement of people from the African continent.

6. This can be achieved by taking proprietary genetic tests from African Ancestry which uses technology that enables the identification of one’s maternal and paternal lineage.

7. LRM is trans-national since people of the same lineage were trafficked by people from multiple nations and enslaved in multiple nations.

8. LRM aims to organize the various ethnic lineages in a Lineage United Front to more effectively achieve Justice due to the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH).

9. LRM believes that at this time, FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of
CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

10. LRM demands any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

CLASH OF CULTURES: EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

WIFE: Ughhhh! We have no money! We still have a lot of credit card debt! You aren’t good at managing money!

ME: Wait a second. Our credit card debt was $6,900. I just paid $3,000 and reduced it by almost half. What are you talking about?

WIFE: We have no money!

ME: Let me explain something to you. I am President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA). It is a non-profit organization. The average salary for a nonprofit president/CEO is $118,678. For non profits with an operating budget less than $499,000, the average CEO salary is $60,206.

Thus, as the BBHAGSIA, my work this year is valued at between $60,000 and $119,000.

In the past, as a Driver Health Editor, I wrote bi-monthly articles for a magazine client. In the first three years, they paid me $600 for 600 words. The last three years, they paid me $300 for 600 words. Since September of 2019, I have written 81 articles for the Balanta website that average more than 2000+ words.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth between $72,900 and $145,800.

Now I have another client that started paying me $353 for a 2000+ word article. After 15 articles the pay increases to $470. After another 15 articles the pay increases to $588. After another 30 articles the pay increases to $706 and after another 15 articles the pay increases to $1,177.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth $64,115.

Currently, I am consulting with two foreign governments, and I have diplomatic experience going back to 2003 when I worked at the African Union and negotiated immigration and citizenship issues in Ethiopia on behalf of the Rastafari community in Shashemane. In fact, my experience as an Ambassador for my people began when I was ten years old when, as a state champion swimmer in an all-white sport, my father groomed me to be an ambassador for the race since I had such high visibility and profile. Now, the average salary of an early career Diplomat with one to four years experience is $81,077. For a diplomat in the United States, the average salary is $105,511.

Thus, the value of my diplomatic work this year, which has included meeting with Ministers of Culture, Tourism and Sport in two countries, as well as organizing COVID-19 food distribution, should earn me a salary of $105,511

Finally, I am a consultant to another start-up venture which, at this time, doesn’t have the money to pay me. Nevertheless, I have put in 58 hours of work for them. My normal consulting fee is $100/hr but I am only invoicing them at $50/hr.

Thus, I have done another $5,800 worth of work.

Now add all of that up:

NGO President $118,700

Content Creator $72,900

Diplomat $105,511

Consulting $5,800

TOTAL $302,911

In addition, in 2019 I wrote and submitted 14 grants for a total of $581,804. If I received 10% to 20% of that as administrative fee/salary, that’s another $58,000 at least added to my salary.

So, this past year, I have legitimately done $360,000 worth of work, yet I have no money. WHY? This is what you don’t understand because you don’t understand the history of African American people. But I learned early in life four things:

1) If I were to depend on money for my happiness, I, as a black man in America, would NEVER be happy;

2) If I were to spend 40 hours a week working for someone else, I would never have the time to build my own business, build my own society, build my own government, and determine my own future;

3) If I were going to be a credit to my race and a leader of my people, I would have to sacrifice high paying jobs and their creature comfort rewards and do the things that needed to be done whether they paid or not;

4) I needed to pursue work that made me happy and was beneficial to my people and de-prioritize getting a high paying job with benefits working for white people.

So the fact that we don’t have any money has nothing to do with my being a lazy, unskilled, untalented man and unworthy husband. It has to do with what is called

THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

BACKGROUND TO MY MARRIAGE

My wife and I are happily married. Like most couples, however, occasionally we have an argument and from time to time, some of those arguments concern our finances. As a result, recently I had to explain to her THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

But first, you need a little bit of context about me and my wife. I met my wife through a mutual friend in June of 2016. At the time she was living in China and I was living in Springfield, MO. Before that I had been a wage slave employee working for a white-owned company and making $57,000 salary. However, I started my own company and in 2015, in my first year as Founder and CEO of Fitness Trucking, I made $109,000. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to worry so much about money. I could pay my rent and bills, eat whatever food I want, travel, and buy things. I started living life a little, not just surviving. At this time I was also paying $800 a month child support for my two sons, who lived just a few houses down the street with their mother. Life was good and I felt confident, except that I was lonely. Springfield is 97% white and during this time I resolved that I would only date black women. Unfortunately, that made things kinda tough.

I am a 5’8” 150 lb. national champion swimmer and my Fitness Trucking core business is health coaching. They say like attracts like and birds of a feather flock together, so I like my women smaller than me. It makes me feel “big”. But I am not shallow. The boys’ mother is a big woman (relative to me) - when we met she was about 190 lbs. but that didn’t stop me from falling in love with her and raising her seven kids from a previous relationship (yes, I said SEVEN)….

But our relationship became very unhealthy (like my parents’ relationship which ended in divorce when I was ten) and we decided that it was better if we separated. I realized that there were lots of requirements for a healthy relationship, among them physical attraction. Women like to feel “desired” and a vibrant sex life is the glue in a marriage. I learned that even though I loved my wife, I wasn’t physically attracted to her and this created some of our many problems.

So by 2016, I realized that besides all of the character and integrity requirements - honesty, caring and considerate, integrity, adventurous, feminine, etc. - there were other things that I needed, and a physique that I found attractive was one of them. But I wasn’t requiring anything that I myself didn’t have and wasn’t offering.

First, I wanted a woman who was fit and healthy and enjoyed physical activity as much as me so that we could share this aspect of life. Unfortunately, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, 80.6% of African American women over the age of twenty are overweight or obese. So that means that for every 100 black women, 80 of them are not attractive to me. That’s not saying anything against these women. Remember, I am a SMALL man but I like to feel BIG, so I like a woman I can wrap my arms around that fits into me and I can feel like her protector. I’m quite sure women like such a man and feeling, too.

Next, I have a high level of education, having graduated from Yale University in 1996. I’m what people call an “intellectual”. Fortunately, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that black women are the most educated group in America and earn 68% of all degrees awarded to black students. While formal educational achievement is not all that important to me (the boys’ mother never went to college and I was ok with that), at least a healthy intellect or the ability to value and respect my intellectual pursuits is important. I buy books the way a lot of women buy shoes….. which leads us to money.

My desire is that I make enough money so that my wife doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to. What makes her happy is her choice. As a man, I feel it is my responsibility to provide for her. If we have children together, my preference is for my wife to stay at home and raise the children. But if she wants a career, I support that, too.

But here’s the kicker - I’M NOT CHRISTIAN!!!! I’m not interested in the Bible or going to church. But, the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study revealed that 79% of African American identify as Christian. So, out of 100 women, 80 are overweight or obese, so that leaves just 20 women that I might be attracted to. Out of those 20 women, about 80% are Christian, and educated black Christian women love them some church and Jesus and are looking for a “god-fearing man” which to them means a Christian man. So if I exclude them, that leaves just 4 available black women for me. Now, at this point, these 4 black women have to 1) be single; and 2) be attracted to me. Now, what are the odds that I am going to find my black queen in Springfield, MO???? At 44 years of age at the time, such women were in their twenties and weren’t looking for a man my age….

So I started using dating apps and to my surprise, I wasn’t getting any attention. I couldn’t understand it! Here I was, a successful athlete, entrepreneur, I had traveled to forty countries, I was active, etc. . . I thought I was a good catch. But then I did some research and discovered that as a black man, I was the least likely to get any response. (But the situation was even worse for black women!!!!)

In 2016, I was a rising star. My business was becoming a success, I just signed a six-figure book deal with Touchstone Books (division of Simon & Schuster), a book tour was being planned for 2017, I had just won seven gold medals at the US Masters Swimming National Championships and set my first national record, I was ranked in the top three in the world and was heading to the 2017 FINA World Championships to become a World Champion. I even made an appearance on Good Morning America. I wanted someone to share this life with. I wanted a wife and I just couldn’t find one…..

One day I jokingly asked a Chinese friend of mine if she could find me a wife. Two days later she showed me a picture of Zhou YuTong, a friend living in Liuzhou, China, and the rest is history….

Now, the reason I went into this background is for two reasons. First, because there are a lot of people, some merely ignorant, others prejudiced, mean-spirited and hateful, who, without knowing me or my wife, have a lot of negative things to say about my marriage. In their eyes, I have betrayed the black woman and the black race. And I understand this point of view and have written extensively about the historically negative effect of mixed race relationships on African people, especially between blacks and whites. Thus, I am quite aware of the contradictions in my own life. However, to these people, I also point out that:

1) my marriage is to another non-white person

2) Balanta people and Chinese people have a history. When Balanta people waged war against their Portuguese colonizers, it was the Chinese who first gave Balanta people weapons and military training for the liberation war

3) A man of my stature in traditional African culture, is expected to have many wives and also have “diplomatic marriages” to form alliances with other peoples.

4) From the Balanta perspective, the point of marriage is to find another person that consistently increases your vital force energy and for whom your vital force energy increases theirs, and then have children together. This is a happy marriage. It ensures that the greatest amount of vital life force energy remains perpetually in one’s posterity. One can now understand the real and spiritual danger of being in a toxic marriage.

Since I fulfilled my debt to the ancestors by giving them two sons from a woman of African descent, I was free to find a wife that provided the greatest increase to my vital life force energy. That is called “the pursuit of happiness”.

5) when I asked my Balanta ancestors for a wife, they sent Zhou YuTong. This was confirmed when I visited the most ancient homeland of my Balanta ancestors.

Now, the other reason I brought up the background of my marriage is so that one can understand the challenge my wife and I face when it comes to navigating our life together, especially when it comes to wealth building. Coming from her culture, I found it necessary to explain the racial wealth gap to her.

EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

As soon as we met, Zhou YuTong and I decided we were both ready for marriage and we wanted to marry each other. In order to do this, we had to go through the K1 Visa process and I had to submit tax returns to prove that I could support her. She and her family were happy to see that for the past two years I was making more than $100,000. When I took two trips to China at the end of 2016, I paid for everything and showed my wife a wonderful time. When the K-1 visa was approved, I arranged for her to fly to meet me in Budapest, Hungary for the Masters Swimming World Championships (where I re-proposed to her) and from there she returned with me to start her new life in America. The first year she was not allowed to work (until she got her green card) so she stayed at home and I took care of her. At that time I was doing a lot of public speaking, earning $2,000 to $2,500 plus travel expenses for a one-hour presentation. Thus, during that first year, she traveled with me on all those business trips and in this way got to see America. I was making money, giving interviews, and she lacked for nothing. My income put me in the top 12% of Black American wealth (Upper middle-class) and our expectation was that life would just continue to get better and better.

Fast forward to October, 2019. After a seven year business relationship, I lost my flagship client. That was 70% of my income. Then in February 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. I lost more clients and there was no more travel for speaking engagements. Our finances tanked. I dropped back into the “working-class/poverty class. During this time I used a credit card to make ends meet, the first time in my life that I ever had credit card debt. Meanwhile, I don’t own my house. I still rent. I don’t have any retirement savings. Plus, I owe a lot of money in back taxes.

I stopped paying taxes after 2016 because I was no longer going to give the fruit of my labor to a government I don’t recognize nor support nor never chose to become its “citizen” (see my post Interpreting the 14th Amendment).

I realized that the majority of the government’s budget, $3.8 trillion, comes from average people like me and not from the super-wealthy people and their businesses.

MOST OF THE DISCRETIONARY SPENDING GOES TO THE MILITARY WHICH IS FIGHTING WARS, KILLING PEOPLE, AND SPREADING A SYSTEM THAT CONCENTRATES WEALTH INTO THE HANDS OF A FEW RICH WHITE PEOPLE. THIS IS A SYSTEM WHICH I DON’T SUPPORT.

THE MONEY THAT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON HEALTH, HOUSING, EDUCATION AND OTHER SERVICES ARE CLEARLY FAILING THE BLACK COMMUNITY IN AMERICA, SO WHY WOULD I WANT TO SUPPORT SUCH A GOVERNMENT BY PAYING THEM INCOME TAXES ON MY EARNINGS???

Then I started learning about international law, the banking system and the Federal Reserve and realized

1) my great, great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother were both brought to America against their will before the United States’ Declaration of Independence;

2) The Declaration of Independence states,

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

3) After President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, my emancipated great, great, great grandfather NEVER freely consented to be governed by the United States Government

4) The 14th Amendment forced citizenship on my great, great, great grandfather and his descendants who never freely consented to this citizenship

5) I am not required by law to file Income Taxes

I wanted to use my money to build build my business and achieve my dreams. For about 100 years my family had been working and giving 100% of the fruit of their labor to slave owners. Those slave owners built a government that today still wants me to give 33% of my earnings to them. How exactly, does one remove consent from the United States Government?

I refused to vote, I stopped paying taxes, and I started restoring my lineage ancestry.

As my wife began to realize how precarious our financial situation is, she began to feel very insecure and even accused me of being financially irresponsible because, in her eyes, from her cultural point of view, I should have been saving money and buying a house. In China, everything is about upward mobility and asset accumulation. This is what caused the argument. So I had to explain some things to her.

1. First, she didn’t understand African American history in general, or Balanta history specifically. So I had to explain to her that my family had been in the United States for five generations before me. The first two generations were enslaved - they worked from sun up to sun down with no pay. All the fruit of their labor was taken from them and used to build white businesses and white society.

2. Second, I had to explain to her that the third and fourth generation had to live through Jim Crow and all that entailed.

3. Third, I had to explain to her that the fifth generation and my generation (the sixth) live with the racial wealth gap that would take 228 years to overcome.

Now, let’s go into more detail or you can skip to the video at the end of this post.

In essence, I was trying to explain to her that she can’t hold me to the same standards and expectations for either a white family or a Chinese family.

So let’s get into some of the details why.

Wealthiest countries in the world.

The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, followed by China. However, income distribution in China is a lot more equitable than in the United States.

Compared to other countries, the concentration of wealth concentrated in the top 1% is far greater in the United States than anywhere in the world.

This means that more than anywhere, in the United States, a few people have most of the wealth and the vast majority of people are competing against each other for what is left over.

Compare the United States With China

Now, the ethnic diversity in China is very low. 90% of China is ethnically descended from the Han people. There are 55 other ethnic groups that make up the remaining 10% of the population. China’s economic development was not based on slavery, racism or ethnic discrimination. Thus, they have no system of racial superiority that distributes wealth to one racial group over others.

Meanwhile, the economic development boom in China allows for wealthy Chinese to come to America to invest. They come with capital and have the strength of a national economy behind them. With such a start, they are able to succeed and accumulate more capital in the United States compared to any other group. African American people, by contrast, didn’t choose to come to America. They were ripped from their families, kidnapped, and trafficked illegally. For their first 245 years in the United States, everything was taken from them, including all the fruits of their labor, and their status in law was on the level of being consider as a chattel, an animal, a piece of protperty.

Now, when slavery ended in 1865, the black people needed land. A few black people got land and by 1900, there were a million black farmers and African Americans had built very wealthy towns such as Tulsa, Oklahoma which was called “Black Wall Street”. However, the white racists took their land and took control of the local, state and federal government and created laws to cheat and steal from black people. They destroyed Black Wall street and the other towns, too.

The 1870 census showed that my great, great, great grandfather Yancey was one of two black men listed in the town business directory for Cary, North Carolina. He owned 12 acres at the time but I don’t know what happened to the land. Today, there are less than 40,000 black farmers and black people own only 0.9% of the land in the United States.

This was the result of 89 years of Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Meanwhile, eighty years ago, a federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created “Residential Security” maps of major American cities. These maps document how loan officers, appraisers, and real estate professionals evaluated mortgage lending risk during the era immediately before the surge of suburbanization in the 1950’s. Neighborhoods considered high risk, or “Hazardous” were often “redlined” by lending institutions, denying them access to capital investment which could improve the housing and economic opportunity of residents. This is why white neighborhoods are wealthier and black neighborhoods are so poor.

After the end of Jim Crow segregation in 1954, black people still faced lying, cheating white people and their governments. Though the laws changed, there was still discrimination and black people had to fight for their rights. The Civil Rights movement gained them some political rights such as voting, but not economic rights and the racist system to cheat black people remained. However, things were changing as a result of the black insurrections in the 1960’s and the white people had to come up with new ways to cheat black people and steal their labor and wealth. So they created a new kind of slavery system that was based on deception. First, they allowed some black people to go to college and get an education. They wanted a small group of black people to become successful, mostly entertainers and athletes, and a few smart black people to serve as managers. This they called “affirmative action” and they used it to trick black people into thinking that the United States was not a racist country and that black people had the same opportunities as white people. During this time, the President Nixon lied to my grand uncle John Blake and told him he wanted to help black people and give them jobs. President Nixon convinced my Uncle John to serve as the Director of Jobs Corps and gave him a $2.5 billion budget. Meanwhile, my father, Jeremiah Blake, was given one of those good affirmative action jobs when he graduated from Fisk University. However, at the same time, President Nixon came up with a plan to re-enslave black people and on June 18, 1971 right after hiring Uncle John and just two months after I was born, he announced the “The War on Drugs”.

The War on Drugs began when I was born and continues today. By the time I went to college, the United States was spending more money on the War on Drugs than they were spending on educating black people. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million. Department of Defense anti-drug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA anti-drug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million and FBI anti-drug allocations grew from $8 to $181 million. This is how the white supremacists used TAX dollars to establish the new system of legalized slavery.

By contrast, the budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984 and anti-drug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.

Between 1988 and October 1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 stores about the "drug scourge". This is an example of how the white supremacists used THE MEDIA to justify the War on Drugs.

In September 1986, the House of Representatives passed legislation that allocated $2 billion to the anti-drug crusade and shortly thereafter, the president signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that included mandatory minimum sentencing. Once elected, President Clinton endorsed the "three strikes and you are out" law and passed the $30 billion crime bill which authorized $16 billion for new prisons. During Clinton's tenure, the white supremacists slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61%) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171%), "effectively making the construction of prisons the nation's main housing program for the urban poor".

Drug offenses alone account for two thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the state prisoners. Approximately half a million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980 - an increase of 1,100 percent.

By 2005, four of five drug arrests were for possession. By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans - or one in every 31 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole. 31 million people have been arrested since the drug war began. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the U.S. in 2016. The vast majority – more than 80% – were for possession only. Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 57 white children. One in 13 black people of voting age are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions.

A lot of money and military weapons were given to the police and they became armies of colonial occupation in cities wherever there were a lot of black people. Even though the white people use drugs more than black people, most of the people who were imprisoned were black people.

Even though the United States only has one-quarter the population of China, it imprisons almost twice as many people than China. Most of these people are black.

That means a lot of black children’s’ fathers are in prison. When they get out, they can’t get jobs because they have a criminal record. So black families become dependent on government aid just to survive. It has nothing to do with black people being lazy or stupid or violent. Most of the drug convictions were because of the cannabis plant!

The Drug War transferred the labor and wealth from black communities into the white employees of the legal system and the white investors of the prison industrial complex. For example, the largest private prison corporations, Core Civic and GEO Group, collectively manage over half of the private prison contracts in the United States with revenues of $3.5 billion in 2015.

Unfortunately, on August 6, 1999, I became a victim of the drug war, too. At that time, I was growing my own cannabis plants in abandoned buildings as well as raiding the US Army Corp of Engineers’ secret hemp field on Chicago’s south side coast along Lake Michigan. I took garbage bags full of low grade hemp, extracted the THC in the kitchen and put the THC into butters and cooking oils, as well as baking items and salad dressings. I managed to sell my products “low key” to restaurants and started a lucrative business. Except that President Nixon’s declared drug war, now under President Clinton, was considered criminal activity. I was arrested and charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. Because of my “status” as a privileged son of the Blake family who had graduated from Yale and the fact that I was going to reveal that the US Government was secretly growing cannabis, I was given probation and not sent to prison. However, that conviction prevented me from getting any good job despite my degree from Yale University.

But let’s look at what happened. From the moment of my birth until 2019, America declared the War on Drugs and sent an occupying force of militarized police into black areas of the largest cities, arrested large segments of the black population, seized their property, convicted them, and re-enslaved them under the legal justification of the 13th Amendment. The entire industry employed millions of people who took their paychecks from the city and out to segregated white suburban communities where they paid taxes and reaped the rewards of tax-based expenditures - better schools and services. In this way, for over forty years, black families were broken up, mostly black men were re-enslaved, and the wealth of black communities was transferred to white communities.

Then, on May 31, 2019, the Illinois House of Representatives passed House Bill 1438 by a 66-47 vote. The bill included expungement provisions for those arrested for marijuana possession prior to decriminalization.

“The most historic aspect of this is not just that it legalizes cannabis for adults but rather the extraordinary efforts it takes to reduce the harm caused by the failed war on marijuana and the communities it hurt the most,” state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, said during a Senate floor debate, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Thus, the state of Illinois is now admitting that they were wrong and that I was right. It is a victory, nineteen years delayed, but a victory, nonetheless.

However, let’s take an even more closer look at what happened. After declaring the Drug Way when I was born, then capturing, arresting, and convicting me as a prisoner of the war, which gave them the legal authority to re-enslave me, they then decided that the activity for which I was criminalized was no longer criminal, and overnight a $344 billion dollar industry was born.

Except, cannabis was legalized for some people and still criminal for others…. (the red line below represents the illegal market)

The sectors of the cannabis market with the most investment were cultivation, retail, and biotech pharmaceuticals. As we have already seen, black people no longer had land for cultivation, their business/retail districts had been destroyed and they certainly played no part in biotech pharmaceuticals.

What this means is that for more than forty years, white people decided that black people should become criminals and re-enslaved for building an economy based on the cannabis trade. Then these white people decided that they should be able to profit from the trade, so they created laws and a system that enabled them to benefit from a $344 billion market. The new system used non-racist language and laws, but access to the opportunities was certainly not equal. Instead of the profits of the new market being used to build the black communities and families that were the victims of the War on Drugs, it was used to make the white capitalists even more wealthy.

In late 2000, a new project called the Reparations Assessment Group began making preparations for lawsuits. The dollar sums mentioned were staggering. Harper’s magazine estimated that it could require $97 trillion to pay for the hours of uncompensated work done during the slavery era, which would require extracting, on average, about $300,000 from every American of non-slave descent.

None of this money has been returned to me. Combining Reparations with the value of my current labor (calculated at the beginning of this article) makes my TRUE net worth at least $650,000 . . . .

So after all this the result is that there are 47.5 million black people in America. 4.75 million own 75.4% of all black wealth.. These are mostly the celebrities and entertainers.

The rest of the black people - 90% - have just 25% of black wealth. In fact , the bottom 50% of black people in America - more than 23 million people - are worth less than 1 dollar.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MUCH INCOME I MAKE . . . .

Even though for a few years I made more than $100,000 a year, my “wealth” doesn’t even come close to the wealth of white people making the same amount of money.

IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT I HAVE A DEGREE FROM YALE UNIVERSITY. A white person who dropped out of high school has greater wealth.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW HARD I WORK. I STILL WON’T CATCH UP TO WHITE PEOPLE.

NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, UNLESS WE ARE ENTERTAINERS OR CELEBRITIES IN THE TOP 10%, NOTHING WE DO WILL CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN US AND WHITE PEOPLE.

THE SYSTEM IS SO RIGGED, THAT EVEN RICH BLACK PEOPLE WILL MOST LIKELY END UP BEING POOR LIVING IN AMERICA.

OWNING A BLACK BUSINESS ISN’T GOING TO HELP.

Few cities have enough black owned businesses to begin with and the rate of African American businesses failing today is at an all time high. 80% of businesses crash and burn within the first year.

Black-owned businesses nationally average only $58,000 in annual revenue compared to $546,000 for white-owned businesses and are outperformed by most ethnic groups.

As a result, only about 120,000 black-owned businesses, out of the 2.7m in the US, have employees on payroll.

Research shows that:

1. Prior family business ownership is less frequent among Black entrepreneurs than among Asian and White entrepreneurs.

2. Black entrepreneurs also have lower education levels and fewer years of managerial experience than Asian and White entrepreneurs do.

3. Black families have lower wealth levels than White families do, which results in the lower equity levels of new Black businesses compared to White businesses.

4. Black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses experience less favorable loan application outcomes than do White-owned and Asian-owned businesses

5. Minority-owned firms that focus on co-ethnic retail markets do not perform as well as those that do not focus on co-ethnic retail markets

6. These traits result in lower success at starting new businesses, greater propensity to enter business lines with low entry barriers (thus higher failure rates), and lower business survival rates.

The major problem is this: To have a successful business you need customers who want and can afford your product or service. Because of this racial wealth gap, black owned businesses who’s business is targeted specifically for the black community have a very small customer base compared to America as a whole. Thus, if a black owned business wants to compete with white business, it must produce products and services tailored for white Americans. This can present a problem for some black businesses that want to serve their community. For example, when I write health articles for the white community, I get paid well. When I write articles for the Balanta community, I don’t get paid at all. The Balanta community needs the educational materials more than the white community. So I have to make the sacrifice and work for free in order to serve my people.

So the idea that I am going to become wealthy, that I am going to close the racial wealth gap, that we are going to live lives comparable to white and Asian people in America, is TOTALLY UNREALISTIC. Given the current conditions it will take 228 years for my offspring to close the racial wealth gap. The current efforts to reduce the wealth gap are all wrong.

EQUALITY in America isn’t going to do it. Changing the laws so that they are color-blind and race-blind and provide equality before the law and equal opportunity mean that black people will have to compete starting at the bottom and against overwhelming odds.

EQUITY in America isn’t going to do it. Even receiving Reparations is not going to close the racial wealth gap as long as the only systems in place are the systems of white supremacy that built America and their codification and refinement through positive law.

The only solution is JUSTICE which is defined as 1) no one is mistreated and those that need the most help receive the most help.

When JUSTICE replaces WHITE SUPREMACY (meaning whites must always be the most dominant and on top of the hierarchy), then we will be able to live and experience life. Remember, a healthy soul with a healthy spirit in a healthy body living in a sick society is not healthy!

INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT: A CONVERSATION WITH A VETERAN OF THE BLACK LIBERATION LEGAL STRUGGLE

Note: The following is the direct transcript of a conversation I had with a veteran of the black liberation legal struggle who has taught law school for more than three decades. I asked to permission to make their identity known and received this response:

“First - thank you for asking. I would prefer that you not share it with any identifying information. Neither my name or my page name . My Facebook discussions are often intended to be short, incomplete and I often deliberately stop to avoid "value" battles. Again, thanks for asking.”

Therefore, respecting their privacy, I will use the honorable identifier BLM Legal Scholar where BLM stands for “Black Liberation Movement”

Siphiwe Baleka: I really would like some discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment was only an offer and not a grant of citizenship, and the implications of the failure to make an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer.....

BLM Legal Scholar: I know that interpretation is around. It is not the way I interpret the clause.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

At the time of adoption of the 14th amendment the cause applies to anyone is born in the United States or Naturalized. There is no qualification in the plain meaning of the amendment: It could have said "may" or "can" instead of "are". If the amendment said may or can it implies additional steps are required and uncertainty of outcome.

"Are" means to exist. Definitely not open to interpretation. 

So adoption of the amendment - everyone who had been born in the United States or naturalized were citizens, no additional step required. A person can always reject the citizenship.

Siphiwe Baleka:  At the moment of emancipation, isn’t imposing citizenship the antithesis of “freedom” and how would an emancipated slave meaningfully reject the citizenship?

BLM Legal Scholar: I am not arguing the correctness or the moral function -- I thought you were asking me a legal question. I gave you a legal interpretation.

Siphiwe Baleka:  Yes, I appreciate your response, but as I originally posted, I wasn't asking so much a question rather, I wanted "discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment." You gave AN interpretation and one that is consistent with the historical application. However, that is what is being challenged and I am hoping that this group can help challenge that interpretation. To clarify status and jurisdiction at the moment of Emancipation IS a legal matter. What is the meaning of emancipation? What is the meaning of freedom? Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition states:

"Emancipation Proclamation. (1863) An executive proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all persons held in slavery in designated states and districts were free."

That same dictionary states,

"free, adj. 2. Not subject to the constraint or domination of another; enjoying personal freedom; emancipated <a free person>."

So it is not a moral question, it is a legal question on the applicability of the 13th Amendment (April 8, 1864) and the 14th Amendment (July 9, 1868) to "emancipated" or "free" people "not subject to the constraint or domination" of the United States Government. This is what I am hoping to discuss - were the emancipated free people "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" on July 9, 1868 and if so, how (beyond the simple assumption that the 14th Amendment has been so interpreted)?

BLM Legal Scholar  interesting. . . . what do you think "subject to jurisdiction thereof" means separate from formerly enslaved?

Siphiwe Baleka: According to Imari Obadele,

"the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slave-masters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will."

BLM Legal Scholar: That statement does not answer the question of what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean. Independent of whether it applies or should apply to African descendants - at time. Your initial argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

Siphiwe Baleka: Yes, my argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And Imari Obadle just explained why they weren't subject to the jurisdiction because "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside" is based on the international legal principle of jus soli - which is intended for legitimate accidents of birth as Imari Obadele described. Again, the legal principle of jus soli was not applicable to the emancipated slave because 1) his birth was not a legitimate accident; and 2) as previously mentioned, his status at the moment of emancipation was “free”, or "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another". As Imari Obadele further explained,

"The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom."

In other words, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" only applies to people covered by the principle of jus soli . . . .

BLM Legal Scholar:  Okay. if they were not subject to the jurisdiction - that is a statement of interpretation and value. Interesting view.

Siphiwe Baleka: again, this is why we need discussion. According to the principle of jus soli, the United States had no jurisdiction at the time of emancipation. Could we get, for example, a coalition of black lawyers to make a determination on this?

Here's another perspective. The same Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition says:

"citizen, n. (14c) 1. Someone who, by either birth or naturalization, is a member of a political community, owing allegiance to the community and being entitled to enjoy all its civil rights and political protections; a member of the civil state, entitled to all its privileges."

Now then, the slave was emancipated January 1, 1863. The 14th amendment offered/imposed citizenship on July 9,1868. So during the interim, the emancipated slave could not have been a "citizen" else there would be no need for the 14th Amendment. Therefore, what was his status? Refugee? Stateless?.... Since the emancipated slave was not a "citizen", he owed no allegiance to the United States. Such allegiance was imposed by the 14th amendment without consent, thus re-enslaving him under a new status at law called "citizen".

Now concerning our current status vis-a-vis citizenship in the United States today, it can be argued that we are not citizens using a combined "threshold" and "seed of bad fruit" defense. Consider, for example, a case of an illegal search and seizure which discovered illegal drugs and resulted in seized property. The whole case, and therefore the return of the seized property, hinges on the probable cause issue. If it is demonstrated that police officers erred in searching the car and seizing property because there was no probable cause, then the possession of illegal drug charges disappears. In this instance we can combine what is call the “threshold “ defense and the “seed of bad fruit” defense.

Probable cause functions as a key which allows police to enter into one’s property. The moment a police enters your house or begins searching your vehicle, that officer crosses a threshold. Without probable cause, the officer can only cross that threshold illegally. Crossing the threshold illegally provides defendant the “seed of bad fruit” defense which states that because the officer’s action is illegal (foul or bad fruit) then everything that follows from that illegal action is also illegal (foul or the seeds from bad fruit) and therefore inadmissible. Thus, although police did seize illegal drugs, It is argued that it can not be used as evidence for a possession charge because it was obtained without probable cause, illegally and therefore not by the due process of law. 

Now, with respect to the issue of citizenship, the moment of emancipation made the slaves free, i.e., "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another", without citizenship from January 1, 1863 until July 9, 1868 and owing no allegiance to the United States of America. Citizenship could only be offered by the 14th Amendment and accepted or rejected because the emancipated slave did not embody the principle of jus soli.

CONSEQUENTLY, CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED THE FREE AND INFORMED CONSENT OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. 

As a free person, the emancipated slave was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.Thus, the United States ILLEGALLY CROSSED THE CITIZENSHIP THRESHOLD BY INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT AS A GRANT IMPOSING CITIZENSHIP IN VIOLATION OF THE FREEDOM OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. Having thus illegally crossed the threshold, all following citizenship claims are now considered "bad fruit" unless the emancipated slave (and his or her descendants) expressly waive their right to make a free and informed acceptance or rejection of the 14th Amendment offer of citizenship. Technically (legally) speaking, then the status of African American people is undetermined and they are properly "stateless".

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Balanta B'urassa Founders Day: Celebrating Those Who Resist, August 1, 2020 Chicago, IL

BALANTA B’RASSA, CHICAGO: THOSE WHO RESIST REMAIN

Celebrating the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America

Founders Day

Saturday, August 1st, 2020

Marcus Garvey Center, 330, East 37th Street, Chicago, IL

Download Flyer

11:00 am - Montu (traditional African Martial Arts) Presentation

All Ages, with Sansau Tchimna, Council Member, Historical African Martial Arts Association (HAMAA) - see videos below

12:00 Noon - Reparations: Re-Reading African History Using African Ancestry DNA Testing

Siphiwe Baleka, Founder and President, Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America; former Director, African Union 6th Region Education Campaign

1:00 pm - Free Lunch

2:00 pm - Balanta B’urassa, Chicago: New Narratives in the Resistance Struggle

Presentation by: The 21st Century Pan Africanist From Chicago That You Never Heard Of: Siphiwe Baleka

On October 5, 2000, Siphiwe Baleka, a native of Chicago, presented the Ethiopia to Chicago Exhibit to the Association of African Historians (AAH) at the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern University. The presentation was so extraordinary, that he was invited to present it again one month later, November 4, 2000 to the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). Five years later, Nana Baffour Amankwaitia II (Dr. Asia Hilliard III) said, “I still have my copy of the excellent piece that you did. I am waiting for more of your work. . . I am not at all surprised at the work that you have pursued and know that much more is to come.”

Biography

Siphiwe Baleka was born on April 14, 1971 to Jeremiah and Yolanda Blake and given the colonized name of Anthony “Tony” Nathaniel Blake.  Jeremiah graduated from the historical black college Fisk University, where, in 1962, he participated in the Nashville civil rights movement and was met with bricks and stones. He became determined to give his son the opportunities he didn’t have. At the age of ten, Tony became an Illinois State Swimming Champion and by the time he graduated from high school, was one of the nation’s fastest swimmers. At Yale University, he became the first African American on the All -Ivy League Swim Team. In 1992, Tony failed to qualify for the 1992 Olympic Trials and fulfill his boyhood dream of becoming the first black swimmer on the United States Swim Team.

At about this same time, Tony suffered an “identity” crisis. While studying African American history at Yale, he realized that he was part of what W.E.B. DuBois called “the talented tenth” and that he had a duty to excel on behalf of the race. On the other hand, after reading the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey and books by Franz Fanon, that though he was black and African, he had been socialized and educated by white Americans and thus, as Marcus Garvey said, required a “racial re-education” if he was going to be any use to the black race.  Having internalized this, and following the example of his heroes, Walter Rodney and Ken Saro Wiwa, Tony decided to become a scholar activist. That’s when he joined the black liberation struggle in America.

After leaving Yale during his senior year in 1993, Tony became attracted to the Rastafari Movement and began growing dreadlocks. He returned to Yale in 1995 to finish his final semester as Ras Nathaniel.

While still on campus, Ras Nathaniel felt compelled to join Union Local 34’s strike against Yale University, demanding a living wage for its mostly black workforce. He spoke at University forums, marched on the picket lines, and along with a group of students, boycotted their graduation ceremony from this prestigious University. At the same time, Ras Nathaniel was mentored by George Edwards of the New Haven Black Panther Party and began organizing and raising money for Black Panther political prisoners, and started working with the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal and the MOVE Organization.

Returning to and graduating from Yale University, Ras Nathaniel rejected opportunities to enter the corporate world and instead became an instructor and grant writer for the Nkrumah Washington Community Learning Center in the Englewood neighborhood. During this time, he became a member of N’COBRA under Republic of New Afrika legend Baba Hannibal Afrik and Sister Erline Arpo. He also worked with Aonde T.  Dansby Shaka, founder and President of the Marcus Garvey Institute and one of the last students of General Charles L James of Gary Indiana one of the original graduates of Marcus Garvey’s School of African Philosophy in 1937.

Under the tutelage of Dr. Y.N. Kly of the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) and his protégé, Irish “El Amin” Greene, a product of the National Council of Black Lawyers Community College of Law and International Diplomacy (NCBLCCLID) later re-named for Fred Hampton, Ras Nathaniel began studying the curriculum. He completed the Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center On Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose International Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions.  The petition was submitted under the United Nations 1503 Procedure.

In 2003, while serving as a journalist for the Rastafari Speaks newspaper published by Chicago’s very own Frontline Distribution, Ras Nathaniel. registered with the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Information & Culture Press and Information Department as a journalist and began working at the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa. He is the only African American to attend both the 1st Extraordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa, as well as African Union Grand Debate in Ghana in 2007. As a result, Ras Nathaniel became the Director of the African Union 6th Region Education Campaign. He has appeared on South African Broadcasting Company (SABC TV), negotiated the Rastafari citizenship issues in Ethiopia, helped the Central American Black Organization to elect its representatives to the African Union at their 12th Assembly in Honduras, and gave the inaugural Marcus Garvey lecture for the Government of Barbados’ Commission for Pan African  Affairs. In 2006 he was the roommate of Dr. Kamarakafego, counselor, consultant, official and friend to Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyere, CLR James, Walter Rodney and many others while organizing the 6th Pan African Congress in Tanzania in 1969. In 2007, while organizing the Global Unity Conference in Azania, Ras Nathaniel was given the name Siphiwe Baleka by a council of Elders.

Today, Siphiwe Baleka is known as “The Fitness Guru to the Trucking Industry” and has appeared in Men’s Health magazine, Sports Illustrated, the Huffington Post, Good Morning America, CBS Evening news, NPR, CNN, and BBC. He serves as the North American Regional Director of the African Sports Ventures Group, Senior Heritage Ambassador of the United House of Ancestry, and President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society of America. He is instrumental in launching the Decade of Return Initiative of the Government of Guinea Bissau.

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THIS EXTRAORDINARY PRESENTATION ABOUT CHICAGO’S UNTOLD RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE!

• Origin of the Pan African Movement in Chicago, 1893

• First person to repatriate to Ethiopia from Chicago in 1908

• The Chicago Origin (1913) of Marcus Garvey’s “Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King”

• Ethiopia sends Ambassadors to Chicago in 1919 and the Rastafari movement starts in Chicago

• The Balanta influence in the Black Liberation Movement

• Using DNA to trace your history, reconnect with your people in Africa, and re-write African American History

• Getting citizenship in Africa

• Much, much more . . . .

Videos by Sansau Tchimna, Council Member

Historical African Martial Arts Association (HAMAA )