SANKOFA
The Education Debacle continues to teach. This current attack on teachers regardless of the tactic used amounts to elimination of rights and concentration of power. In New York City the catchphrase is “Merit not Seniority”. The million dollar question is “Who or what defines merit?” Considering past evidence, I’d say it would be Mayor Bloomberg and Company. So while merit compared to seniority might seem the better – we need to remember that the real problem is one of values. A German philosopher said, “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
In a value system (traditional African, Afro-American, Native American and Hispanic) where the highest-held value lies in the interpersonal relationships between men and whose logic is the union of opposites, merit might be a considered choice. However, we live in a culture (traditional European, Euro-American) where the highest-held value lies in the Object ($) or in the acquisition of the Object and whose logic is either/or / Edwin Nichols, Ph.D.’s The Philosophical Aspects of Cultural Difference. While it’s important to recognize the fundamental value system forming the basis of the power structure, it’s important to realize that values are not permanent. While African values empowered slaves to survive and thrive, somewhere during that journey we bought into wanting to be like the Master and keeping our fellow slaves down. The result – lack of power which comes with unity and the condition of our families and our children today. Can we turn this around? I think so.
As we conclude with Black History Month, I think a serious search to retrieve our African values must begin, to practice them, not just recite them. Nana Camille Yarbrough advises, “We must attach our African values to the cultural dress.” I invite parents and grandparents who see the need and are willing to heal relationships to join in the journey so we leave future generations with a greater sense of self-esteem and freedom to rescue themselves from being the victims in this deadly game of choosing profit over human lives.
Working to revive the African value of interpersonal relationships and the union of opposites cited by Dr. Nichols and starting in our family, we take on the challenge of one family, one organization, one block, one school creating a world that works for every one with no one left out.
Last week we talked about creating a family mission statement and working on instilling win-win concepts in problem-solving. It’s important for parents to remember that we’re teaching all the time. Children are always observing what you do and will mimic your actions, doing what you do more than what you say do. So the most crucial part of this campaign is adults healing relationships – one at a time until you have to search for someone against whom you’re holding the slightest resentment. We’re talking about major clearing here…that’ll not only allow you to be fully present with children, allowing them to get that they are valued but it’ll also have you connected with your own purpose and passions. The project starts this month. E-mail parentsnotebook@yahoo.com or call 718-783-0059 for more information and to add your name to the Home Works! Challengers.
I’m off to catch the 7th Annual Cultures Collide Community Film Festival’s opening. The festival celebrates the efforts of multicultural films and local filmmakers, featuring short-and full-length films. Opening film will be For the Next 7 Generations, a prizewinning documentary, tells of thirteen indigenous grandmothers from all four corners of the planet forming an alliance. For the weekend schedule March 3-March 7th, contact info@americantheatreofharlem.org
Tags: Afro-American, concentration of power, education, elimination of rights, Euro-American, Hispanic, Mayor Bloomberg, Merit not Seniority, Native American, Parent's Notebook, Sankofa, traditional African, traditional European
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the title makes you wonder what will the elephant say? Because it isn’t just what’s called gentrification that is troubling, after all, communities transition from one ethnic group to another for various reasons.
Whether it’s Irish to Italian or Jewish, the group that was being displaced, left because they didn’t want to be around the newcomers, and went on to form new communities at higher economic levels. What is troubling about the gentrification that is taking place now in the African-American community in Brooklyn, is it’s fitting the pattern of the gentrification of Native American neighborhoods some time ago.
Artist: Gabriel (Specter) Reese at MoCADA
“People are not just moving out, going down South or taking off for the suburbs. They are being stopped and frisked by the police at every opportunity, shipped off to prison warehouse facilities for years of ill-training, killed by whoever has a gun and a reason, killed by AIDS and the malevolent “good health living with AIDS” marketing of the pharmaceutical companies, killed by obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, killed by poor judgment born of poor judgment, killed by unemployment double the Great Depression levels, killed by hundreds of years of miseducation and economic disenfranchisement, both enabled by the original crime, the theft of language and nationhood during slavery. Killed by the constant stress on the masses of Black people just to go about day-to-day survival.
African-American residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, confronted by the multiplying and organized Hasidim to the north in Williamsburg and priced out east of Classon Avenue, are faced with seeing their community going the way of Harlem with white folks able to pick off the opportunities as they come up. If ever there was a time to come together and follow the example of Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and our Hasidic brothers, organizing people around common economic goals, it is now.
You can call it gentrification if you’d like, but a slow genocide is what it is, a claiming of territory by victorious people. It’s nothing personal, everyone is quite civil about it, tsk, tsking about the unfortunate, but unchangeable, state of affairs. Just go quietly and don’t make a scene. For further clarification, ask a Native American, if you can find one.
