Reclaim Your Stolen History Not the Toxin Abysmal N-word.

by Staff September 28, 2015 10 Comments News Opinion Relationships Weekly Columns

Like Love Haha Wow Sad Angry

(ThyBlackMan.com) Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history. ~Mutabaruka

The idea of reclaiming the abominable n-word n**ga—a racist term—as opposed to reclaiming one’s [stolen] history is reprehensible and serves as evidence of low self-esteem, simple-mindedness—lacking mental capacity and subtlety. Yet surreal as it may be there are many within the black community drawn to the twisted notion of re-claiming the n-word with unbelievable zest and zeal, having no interest whatsoever in re-claiming their stolen history.

When any group of people disconnects itself and/or is disconnected from its own historical tradition it is at the mercy of other people. Reading about someone else history and none about your own makes you psychologically unbalanced, which explains the demeanor of those who embrace the n-word. You will become people who don’t belong anywhere; without self-knowledge you have no orientation; it’s like a person walking around with amnesia, no memory. People are easily manipulated when they have no culture, no true identity or love of self.

White America has never lost touch with their European values and principles. They know who they are and do not discount where their heritage lies, dating back to ancient Greece and Rome. Blacks on the other hand—too—have a very rich and cultivated heritage but in many cases refuse to acknowledge that their roots are African. By denouncing African roots one is unknowingly advocating the once force-fed acceptance of European traditions, slavery, and disorientation of the Black African-American. Because of this many black people remain non-self-aware, lost souls or ventriloquists for another’s plight. Consider the fact that other than the Black African-American no other race of people are inclined to abandon their culture in an attempt to adopt and integrate into a Eurocentric culture. It’s time for Black America to come out from underneath the 400 year old anesthesia they’ve been subjected to and recognize the abnormalities in their behavior.

Africa is the Cradle of Civilization and Black African-Americans owe it to themselves and the sacred memories of their ascendants to re-claim their rightful place in the chronicles of world history as opposed to re-claiming a mind control word that relegates them to an inferior status imposed upon them by a racist society. The flying of the Confederate flag pales in comparison to what the iniquitous, soul-destroying n-word signifies, but yet Black America will rise up against the flying of that flag in a New York second while simultaneously paying homage and allegiance to the racist n-word n**ga.

Black people are the only people on the face of this earth who have been detached and separated from their ancient history and culture. Black African-Americans acceptance of being defined as the n-word is not the mindset of a free people. Ironically, some Black Americans will reject the notion of being referred to as an African but will embrace the n-word without hesitation, failing to realize that it is their oppressor who turned them against their Motherland, and trained them to honor and love the n-word with ardent and adoring esteem.

The following named scholars, though have been subjected to ad hominem attacks, serve as links to recovering Black America’s stolen history (Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr. Asa G. Hilliard and British Historian Basil Davidson) just to name a few. Their discoveries and findings about African history have never been disproven thus doing the 1980s as an alternative, rejecting incontrovertible evidence, they were all subjected to character assassination attacks in attempts to discredit, smear and dishonor them as legitimate sources of information. Rather than face the thought of black Africans having a history of their own racist naysayers fabricated exotic explanations resorting to ad hominem attacks on creditable black scholars in the process.

There did exist at one time mutual respect between black and white people, in fact there was no such thing as race, there was just simply people. Racism is a rather modern day sickness as one need to look no further than European art of the Renaissance which reflects an absence of racism, where black and white people take their place in the paintings with equal dignity.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is what initiated racism to legitimize the enslavement of black Africans. In order to justify chattel slavery there became a need to lie about the great Black Civilizations and its contributions to humankind; the LYING and cover up has never ceased. Much has been made of Africans selling Africans into slavery, but what is never mentioned is that prior to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade black and white people, Christian or Muslim were routinely enslaved. Europeans were enslaving Europeans, and Jews enslaving Jews. So the idea that Africans were enslaving other Africans was not an anomaly.

Moreover, significant slave trading by Arabs to black Africa had been going on since ancient times, the link between slavery and ethnicity (or, more popularly, ‘race’)—that is, between slavery and Blackness—was more or less non-existent—until, that is, it was forged by maritime Europeans in the form of chattel slavery.

The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

During the 16th – 18th century, Africans enslaved approximately 1.5 million white Europeans in the Barbary Slave Trade, roughly 700 Americans were held as slaves between 1785 and 1815. African Muslims raided up the coastlines of Europe, particularly the British Isles but even as far as Iceland, kidnapping and enslaving white European Christians. The men were galley slaves, and the women were sex slaves. Further statistics suggest that Istanbul’s additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade (1650 – 1659) an additional 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, 2000 Irish children were taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade.

Black African-Americans must somehow [reclaim] their stolen history and identity; take charge of their lives and that of their children we can’t leave this to other people to do, they just are NOT going to do it. We must throw off this dependence on others to educate our children. Powerful people aren’t going to educate powerless people on HOW to think they educate you on WHAT to think.

We must explain to our children what racism [really] is, their very survival depends on having this knowledge as they will not learn about it through the American academia system. There are many facets of racism some of which is to make sure people have no memory, no collective memory that is true and real; they can have individual identity but not a “collective” one. Another example is to teach the people the so-called superiority of the oppressor over themselves, culturally, intellectually and every other way. Control the socialization process of the people which is done by the destruction of their past making them irrelevant in the pages of history.

With all of the available Black scholars and historians, it is unfathomable how we do not take the initiative to set the record straight regarding the true history of the Black civilization. Far too many Blacks, and whites for that matter, are left with the impression that the Black race have never contributed anything to civilization and that the legacy primarily is limited to enslavement and a jungle habitat. For Black African-Americans to allow themselves to be intimidated into thinking such falsehoods are true, serves as validation of paternalistic and enslaved minds lacking the desire to want to think for self. Such continued inertia assures an infinite span of mental enslavement for the Black race. Self-internalizing and perpetual use of the n-word serves as a psychological conduit for this type of bondage.

Staff Writer; H. Lewis Smith

This talented brother is the founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc., http://www.theunitedvoices.com author of Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-Word, and the recently released book Undressing the N-word: Revealing the Naked Truth, Lies, Deceit and Mind Games https://www.createspace.com/4655015

Also follow Mr. Smith on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/thescoop1.

0 Shares

Flip

Stefan Pyles says:
March 17, 2016 at 7:11 pm
Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history. ~Mutabaruka
An Uneducated White Guy’s Thoughts on Black People
By Stefan Pyles
I dislike the geographic parameters imposed by the term “African history.” It relegates the history of African people, which, as you note later, is synonymous with “human beings,” to a specific place. I will use the Jewish people here to construct a point.
I perceive the Jews as a cultural-ethnic embodiment of the principle of self-determination. The history of the Jewish people, albeit bloody and depressing, is the history of a people fighting relentlessly to remain untethered to states and other religions. Indeed, the Jewish people represent cultures and ethnicities as multifaceted and variegated as any evolutionary history. Rather than submit themselves to their political and religious notions or vice versa, they blend them all together, from Hassidic to Orthodox and beyond.
The Jews battled Egypt, Rome and most of Europe and Russia for about two thousand years. During the Middle Ages, the Jews were relegated from the guilds, aristocracy and monarchy because, simply, they were Jewish. In turn, they were forced into the financial and cultural sectors because Christendom frowned upon usury, which is ironic as the charging of interest is fundamental to feudalist and mercantilist society, and the Catholic Church harbors specific and strange contempt for creativity that does not aggrandize the Catholic faith. The absurdities are seemingly endless and utterly out of step with anything Jesus Christ said even remotely. Martin Luther’s denunciation of the Catholic Church, which brought about the Protestant Reformation, had everything to do with the fact the Catholic Church had abandoned the teachings of Christ in all but name and image. Martin Luther King, Jr. made this exact same point not only to racist Southerners and the KKK, but to the passive white churches in the North, much as Paul of Tarsus to the churches of Asia.
– Eric Williams wrote about capitalism and slavery and observed that most of the European societies, at the time America was still dealing with it, were in the process of moving away from it not for any moral reasons; although, the French Revolution ended the institution for political reasons. The European nations ended slavery because it cut into their profits. It’s actually far more expensive to own slaves than pay laborers, which means not only is slavery morally repugnant, it’s capitalistically inefficient. The irony.
Many Jews live in Israel. However, Israel is by no means a representation of Jews generally. Zionism has as many Jewish opponents as it has proponents. Indeed, this same schism emerged during Lincoln’s presidency among blacks: Stay in America or found a new society of blacks in Africa. Both came to fruition.
Liberia, as it was to where many of the more “radical” freed slaves immigrated, did not became an Israel for blacks. (About my usage of the word “radical:” I don’t know what word is appropriate here: homesick and righteously repulsed come to mind. I do not use “radical” negatively. I only mean to note that more blacks stayed in America than blacks who went back to Africa.)
If you plot the developments of the North and South post-Civil War, you will find that the South too was stunted by the “slavery chapter.” Africa’s problems since the birth of modernity derive from countless factors, and Liberia’s relative lack of progress would require a much fuller analysis, but at the time of the migration to Liberia, the rest of the world was nowhere near the industrialization America had already achieved. Europe was immersed in revolutions and civil wars and would remain so until, well, now.
– The colonial storm that struck Africa prohibited Liberia engaging in trade with like surrounding nations, and itself became immersed in the mayhem of diamonds and ivory and other useless bourgeois commodities extracted at the cost of no less than human dignity. The South, as the American North was the only nation really focused on industrial growth and the expansion of education, suffered this same problem, as well. Trade is great for fledgling nations. It’s tendency to construct a monolith of inequality is for another thesis, as well. I consider the Civil War the true American Revolution. What we call today the “American Revolution” was nothing more than a bourgeois coup that ousted one set of white-wigged aristocrats for another. The true American Revolution involved millions of immigrants who had escaped the mayhem of the Old World and found themselves oppressed on American shores, as well as conscientious Northerners, native Americans, and slaves. (Karl Marx even wrote Lincoln a letter in which praised his war on the Confederate bastion of western bourgeois insanity.) The Civil War was no civil war at all. It was the Old World v. a rainbow coalition that formed at a time of necessity to ensure the actualization of the last cosmopolitan nation the Earth will ever host.
“African history” does not allow for the history of black people to reach any depth or scope. As Israel does not represent the Jews, Africa does not represent blacks.
Moreover, I will cite Dave Chappelle. Mr. Chappelle said that he loves black people because they are so great at making lemonade with lemons. I agree wholeheartedly. Rather than adopt the cynical perspective, which necessarily perceives the continued enslavement of blacks as lacking any positive narrative, I prefer the idealistic narrative, which necessarily attempts to reconstruct history to highlight the lemonade and therefore encourage others not to perceive a hopeless cause now utterly reduced to violent revolution, but rather a hopeful cause characterized as leaps and bounds and chutes and ladders no less just, righteous and worth realizing than any other the human race has known.
– Another important character I want to mention is Saartjie Baartman, or the “Hottentot Venus.” Despite whites using her a traveling showpiece, she is remembered for her wit, tenderness, intelligence, and beauty, which, unfortunately, no one would have witnessed had she not been paraded about like a mannequin. She made lemonades of a whole society of lemons. THAT is African history, in my opinion. I wish to have known her.
For instance, let’s take the history of Africa since the American Civil War. Yes, black Americans still endure a relatively less harsh form of enslavement, but Africa’s history has been even more miserable, because the Dutch, the British, etc. I like to think that my ancestors, the Scottish and Irish, who themselves fought with the Union, helped blacks to gain some sort of freedom in America that blacks in Africa still do not possess equally.
– Indeed, you could rephrase the entire quote this way:
“Slave history is but a chapter in the rich history of black people. The post-Civil War American chapter of that history clearly demonstrates the bravery, innovativeness and fortitude of the black survivors of the holocaust that ensued during the first centuries of the Colombian Exchange.”
As the Jews wrestled with God and against the other religions and states of man, so the blacks wrestled with God and against the religions and states of man. In this light, I consider blacks the Jews of the West, and therefore Martin Luther King, Jr. a Christ-like figure.
– Nelson Mandela was, in my opinion, the last noteworthy statesmen on Earth.
Mr. Obama has regretfully faced the primacy of the American corporate-state leviathan, as well as the menacing behemoth of China, which has in every way conspired against America since Nixon, who I believe arranged the assassination of Mr. Kennedy. J. Edgar Hoover obviously arranged the assassination of Mr. King. Indeed, I think China arranged the 9/11 terrorist attacks and through proxy states like Iran and North Korea, has facilitated the rise of Anonymous and ISIS as mechanisms to destabilize America.
Mr. Mandela refused early release from a hell-hole Apartheid prison so as not to abandon his comrades for the sake of appeasing politically the White Apartheid state. Mr. King, as well, rebuked the notion of appeasement and bravely faced death in order to demonstrate, much as Christ, that facing head-on and nonviolently the leviathan of Confederate state-religion was necessary to overcome it.
Moreover, I agree with both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
For people without the intellectual curiosity or aptitude to seek higher education, focus on the labor market is crucial. However, for the intellectually apt and curious, focus on higher education is crucial.
Now, I wish to make the larger argument:
Overcoming slavery is confined neither to one nor twelve facets of civilization. It is confined insofar as civilization itself in confined. And this necessarily includes philosophy, metaphysics, science, literature, film, etc.
A people is not one thing or another.
Consider this: as blacks were enslaved on fields in the antebellum South, many are now enslaved on fields of AstroTurf, or gang or hip-hop turfs: tribalism is a construct that emerges when solidarity is impossible because the unilateral domination of the Establishment is so effective, or because communality generally is impossible circumstantially. Indeed, the field is a useful metaphor for the state of blacks. Prison fields are sardine-packed full of black men who have faced nothing but obstruction to opportunity since day one of American life.
I do not believe institutional racism exists. If you will, allow me to explain.
Institutional racism means the Jim Crow laws, 3/5 Compromise, Dred Scott Decision, etc. Those constructs specifically dealt with the dehumanization of black people for racially motivated reasons. The Drug War and like policies, while racially motivated initially, have now reached so deeply into every facet of society that even spoiled white kids have felt its merciless sting.
Moreover, nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything for or against slavery specifically, because the Constitution was originally vague and egalitarian. Additionally, the Bill of Rights specifically applies to all people. However, as constitutional amendments have come and gone, the initial conditions have changed so profoundly that only a pure return to the Constitution and Bill of Rights could manifest the egalitarianism it was originally designed to realize, despite the statuses or colors of the human hands in which it was placed.
– Consider this: the 14th Amendment was the key amendment in ending the institution of slavery. However, that amendment was used recently to codify the abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous notion that “corporations are people.”
What was once used to free slaves was later used to enserf citizens. It’s not the Constitution that’s the problem, and therefore not institutional racism with which we are faced. It is merely people and centuries of complexity stacked upon bastard power and backward philosophy.
People must interpret and enforce laws. And I do believe that anyone can be racist. Here’s why: when you place the term “racism” within the narrow definition of who has power and who doesn’t, it does not address the inherent ignorance and depravity of racism as a belief and ideological construct. I heard once someone say, “Blacks can’t be racist.” To mean, this says, “Blacks can’t get ignorant.”
However, I believe that what unites us as a species is our collective ignorance. Anyone can be racist, but not everyone can have power in a system in which racist people have and control power.
Indeed, neither classism nor racism truly deals with fundamental inequalities and perversities within the coliseum of power dynamics.
Slavery is merely the state of material powerlessness. But even a slave, such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass, can exercise power of mind and spirit to attempt to overthrow oppression, or at least rescue others from it.
The “N-word,” which I recognize is as ridiculous as the real word, but I refuse to say it because it even sounds mean, was once a benign label for people with black skin. (Ironically, if you consider man’s origins in Africa, white peopled are the “colored” ones. I laugh when I think about it, but just so I don’t cry at the sheer backwardness. I appreciated Randall Kennedy’s book “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word”.) It was appropriated by slavers and thus became an instrument of oppression. Blacks’ appropriation of the term as a benign pronoun simply resets it to its original status as nothing more than a label.
Linguistically, this appropriation represents a victory of the enslaved over the slaver because language is one of, if not the, most important tool humans employ in the construction of civilization. Indeed, although a linguistic victory hardly notes the persistent struggles blacks face elsewhere, it at least indicates that the first steps toward liberation have been taken. Language is how we define and narrate civilization and our places and roles within it. Linguistic changes characterize greater metaphysical and material changes and so language itself is the intermediary canvas on which material and metaphysical evolution occur.
Yes, there is far to go and yes the “N-word” no longer serves any evolutionary purpose, but it’s appropriation by blacks is by no means indicative of antebellum “slave-mentality syndrome.” It represents, however, that the idea of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois have not been implemented effectively or vastly enough.
Lastly, “slave-mentality syndrome” is a psychological term employed atavistically, I believe, to denigrate those who have not achieved an equivalent state of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment. Psychology itself is a pseudo-science no different than the demonology employed by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Scientology, which is ruthlessly contemptuous of reason and faith, is predicated almost entirely on the draconian employment of psychological terms to dehumanize people into absolute submission. Radical Islam, the Soviets, the Nazis and the U.S. federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies employ these tactics, as well. And to the doom of this mode of civilization no less. Rather than understand one another an iota, these types of groups employ vicious, atavistic and Orwellian psychobabble to destroy the intellectual and spiritual identities of people so they are likelier to obey and conform or not attempt to fight back when the military-industrial blitzkrieg descends in a rain of hellfire and in broad daylight.
Reply
nDaviD says:
November 21, 2015 at 4:21 am
The context of the word n*gger; what is the definition? producejustice.com is neely fuller jr’s website. Also, gus t renegade of the c.o.w.s podcasts/archives with neely fuller jr https://archive.org/details/TheCowsRadioShow
Reply
H. Lewis Smith says:
October 4, 2015 at 4:03 pm
@Marque Anthony ~ You are being presumptuous and condescending. You are not privileged to knowing just what knowledge I have about mind control and behavior modification which is far more extensive than you assume it to be. Allow me to remind you that you do not have a monopoly on knowledge in the fields that you say you are an expert in.
Reply
Marque Anthony says:
October 4, 2015 at 3:45 am
To The Author, also look into behavior modification and artificial frequency devices that access the human brain.
Reply
Marque Anthony says:
October 4, 2015 at 3:44 am
To The Author,
My field of expertise is in deprogramming our people from slavery mindsets and illusions or lies that have been accepted as fact. As for brainwashing, indoctrination and mind control, may I recommend that you request my research on these areas. I would also suggest that you go to http://www.uspto.goy or even Youtube to research the many mind control devices that are patented and used by the government. You could also research NLP and subliminal programming.
Reply
Marque Anthony says:
October 4, 2015 at 3:41 am
To The Author:
You say what we “prefer” to call ourselves and you say what we were “referred to”, but regardless of either – WE ARE NOT BLACK. Black is the color of your car tires, not you skin, nor has it ever been. The change in what our people call ourselves is clearly the search for identity and the lack thereof. But one thing is certain, we should not be defined by others and we should not be called what we are NOT! As for the Moors, I think they are not the only ones who can define themselves – especially with ancestry databases that are present today. For example, I know the exact genealogical breakdown of my background and so does my wife.
Email me your contact information to brainstormonline@yahoo.com so we can speak directly.
Reply
H. Lewis Smith says:
September 29, 2015 at 2:00 pm
@Marque Anthony – Just for the record back during the 60s we as a people were being referred to as Colored and Negro. Collectively, we decided as a group to no longer be identified as Colored or Negro but to call ourselves Black, Afro-American and/or African American.
Today we are no longer united as to what to call ourselves. Some of us prefer African American and not the term Black, those who prefer Black despises the term African American, then to a lesser degree there are some who are falling back on the slave term Negro. Then there is segment who say they are Moors. Regardless what you and I may think or believe Marque, we cannot arbitrarily take it upon ourselves to make the call as to what we as a race are to be called.
I address this issue extensively in my book “Undressing the N-word” and trust me when I say to you there is much more to all of this than what meets the eye. You may be surprise to learn that in my opinion both Black and African American are inappropriate terms for us to use. The only one’s among us who can make a valid case as to what to call themselves are the Moors. Whatever, we call ourselves it’s imperative that the term is linked to a country or nation, which isn’t the case with the usage of the terms Black or African-American.
Some of the things you point out I also allude to in my book so our thinking is pretty much alike on this issue, clearly we as a group are suffering from an identity crisis, question is what to do about it? Calling ourselves Black or African-American is not the answer for neither term identifies or connects us with a country or nation. The importance of this is dealt with in my book. Will be in touch with you at the email address you provided.
Reply
Marque Anthony says:
September 29, 2015 at 12:26 am
To H Lewis Smith
The first thing is WE SHOULD DEFINE OUR PEOPLE and nobody else should even attempt to. With all the genealogical info, ancestry etc, it’s not hard. Every other ethnic group including Africans, Haitians and Jamaicans defines themselves not by color, but rather by geographic area, tribe, family and family name, country etc.
We can start by calling ourselves African Americans – atleast that is what we are. Not niggas, not niggers, not homies, not dogs, not chicks, not hoes (Nikki Minaj, Amber Rose etc.), not homeboys, not my peeps.
The Asian does not allow people to call him yellow man. The Mexican does not allow himself to be called brown man. The Native American does not allow himself to be called red man. And Caucasians are not even white, my notebook paper is white.
Email me at brainstormonline@yahoo.com and even include your contact number if you would like to talk about these things. By the way, you wrote an excellent article.
Reply
H. Lewis Smith says:
September 29, 2015 at 12:13 am
@Marque Anthony~ Your point relative to the color black is understood and well received. The one question I have for you is what should we refer to ourselves as? And bear in mind there are those who can and will present a strong case as to why we shouldn’t refer to ourselves as African-Americans either. To be candid I’ve been wrestling with this question for a number of years and have yet to come up with an answer, some will say we should refer to ourselves as Moors…maybe, then again maybe not. Looking forward to your thoughts.
Reply
Marque Anthony says:
September 28, 2015 at 11:45 pm
The first thing we have to do is realize WE ARE NOT BLACK. Black is the color of your car tires and your shoes, not your skin. That is a fact. We were called BLACK by white oppressors so they could draw a distinction between us and them – light and dark, night and day, good and evil. Look up BLACK in the dictionary then look up WHITE.
It is dangerous indoctrination for a group to redefine us as something we are not, as something they attribute to a bunch of negatives and as something neither our people nor God defined ourselves as. Then what do we do instead of realizing this? Our people go and defend the right to be called something we are not.
When you were taught your colors in preschool, you know you were taught the color in the crayon box that matches your skin was BROWN, not BLACK. We cannot break free if we keep allowing others to define us and then accept and defend it.
If you know your colors, you know your skin is NOT BLACK. If you say BLACK is a culture, wrong again. That’s not what racists see it as. That’s not what the dictionaries define it as. Don’t make excuses for what you are NOT. I challenge all of you to look up the terms BLACK and WHITE in the dictionary. I challenge you to wake up from slave programming.
They know you will never break free if you keep letting them define you and your people. Email me if you need factual and verifiable PROOF of the plan to brainwash and indoctrinate us. brainstormonline@yahoo.com
Reply