Dr. Maulana Karenga – ThyBlackMan.com

The Crassness, Cruelty and Criminality of Haitian Deportations: Resisting Trump’s Trampling on Lives, Laws and Futures.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 06:17:45 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) We and the world will always owe Haiti something special for its unique and singular contribution of breaking the back of enslavement in Haiti, expanding the realm of freedom in the world and then daring to aid others. Indeed, Haiti did for human freedom what the US founding fathers could not imagine or accept. And the French Revolution first outlawed enslavement in the country but not in the colonies, but driven by the Haitian Revolution, it included the colonies in its abolition of enslavement in 1794. However, France under Napoleon reestablished enslavement in 1802 and did not end it permanently and completely until 1848. Thus, Haiti offers a model and legacy of not only being the only country in history to free itself in revolutionary struggle against enslavers and aid others in their liberation struggles, but also through its struggle and victory, it opened liberated and living space for the beginning of the abolition of systemic enslavement in the world.

In this historic month of Insurgent Black August, we mark the 235^th anniversary of the beginning if the Haitian Revolution, August 21-22, 1791 and the 222^nd anniversary of the Haitian people’s Declaration of independence, January 1, 1804. We remember and raise up Haiti’s decisive defeat of its enslavers, their allied armies and political forces that sought to prevent and crush its national liberation; its revolutionary inspiration and assistance of liberation struggles in Latin America; and its becoming a beacon of African and human liberation, teaching possibility and achievement against all odds and enemies.

We reflect on and discuss this especially this month, even in the midst of our deep moral concern, understandable sadness and righteous anger about and resistance to the Trump regime’s trampling on the lives and futures of the Haitian people and laws to protect them. For we know resistance is not only opposition to oppressors and oppression, but also affirmation of the good and victories achieved and sustained and of our sacred, soulful, resilient, resourceful and beautiful selves. And we know too that resistance is also about aspiration, active aspiration for a new history and humanity in the world and willingness to work and struggle to bring this aspiration into being. Thus, in the midst of the vicious madness and vulgar meanness that define this gansta government and its racist rampage through the lives of our Haitian sisters and brothers, we reaffirm their humanity and human rights, their contribution to human freedom, and our continuing commitment to stand in solidarity and struggle with them. And as pan-Africanists, we understand their struggle as part and parcel of our own,

This June 25^th a servilely compliant Supreme Court handed Trump another weapon for his arsenal of wanton destruction he asked for, ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants and placing over 350,000 people at risk of being deported. Indeed, the deportations have begun in the most brutal, disruptive and disabling ways. These 350,000 vulnerable persons who came here seeking refuge, asylum and a better life are now being told and brutally shown that there is no balm in Gilead America, no sanctuary in the city or the countryside. Thus, once legal authorization to work and deportation protections had been taken from Haitians, it caused a parallel process of layoffs at various kinds of workplaces around the country. But despite all the racist chamber pot filth and falsehood Trump regularly throws out the White House windows, these are good neighbors, health care workers, professionals, business owners, taxpayers, family members and fellow faith tradition doers of good.

Haitians received TPS after the devastating earthquake of 2010 and in consideration of continuing political instability, insecurity and economic and political collapse rooted in a history of US imperial occupation, disruption, weapon supply to outlaw groups and gangs, overthrowing the first democratically elected president and placing a series of puppets to do the bidding of it and its European crime partners. And still, it rules and wreaks havoc in Haiti and delights in blaming its history of designed chaos and cultivated collapse on Haitians, the victims of this systemic evil.

There are several moral, legal and rational problems with Trump’s policies of persecution punishment and deportation. A key principle of international law concerning refugees and asylum seekers is they are to be saved from harm and danger not placed in it. The US cannot morally, legally or rationally argue for knowingly sending people in harm’s way, when the US government maintains a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti. Thus, it is morally wrong hypocritical and unjust to deport people to a country classified as unsafe and severely dangerous for Americans.

Moreover, given that many of the families are both citizens and migrants, this will mean separation and disruption of family life, adding to the cruelty of this unnecessary and racist policy. Also, many of the deportees are being sent back to places they have not lived in for decades, where family and social networks have been disrupted and people have been displaced in great numbers, and there is a clear lack of resources and infrastructure to ensure security and provide basic needs.

Surely, then, we must intensify and expand our efforts of support for the Haitian people. The legislative initiative H.R. 1689, authored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley which extends Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti for three years was an important victory. Now, we must struggle to ensure the passage of the parallel Senate bill S. 4814 which is stalled in the Senate and represents the last current legislative attempt to prevent another major humanitarian tragedy, save lives, keep families together and ensure a good future for the Haitian people.

Our task is to make an all-out sustained effort to get this bill passed with enough votes to override Trump’s promised veto. This means creating a national and global daily conversation about Haiti and the importance of this struggle; strengthening and expanding networks of cooperation in work and struggle among ourselves and with Haitian organizations; calling on faith communities and activist organizations to say more, question more and do more; using social and corporate media to center the issue of justice for Haiti and Haitian people; and strengthening our internal pan-African unity (Umoja) so that it is both principle and practice in the most transformative and effective ways. And in doing this we answer again the call to struggle across the centuries of two central leaders of the Haitian Revolution, Mambo Fatima and Houngan Boukman, who told us in words and the ways they gave themselves resolutely and unreservedly to the liberation struggle. They call to us saying, “Listen to the voice of freedom that speaks in all our hearts” and forms the foundation of the good future we all want and deserve, and then dare to struggle and achieve it.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Celebrating, Sustaining and Advancing Insurgent August: Honoring the Legacy By Self-Consciously Living It.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:13:34 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) By every measure and means of rational and relevant consideration, calculation and comprehension, August is a month of major historical markers and milestones for us as African peoples. Indeed, it is an August of revolution, revolt, rebellion, insurrection and resistance of various kinds, and therefore, we call it Insurgent August, the August of rising up in resistance. The root meaning of the word insurgence is to rise up, and for us it is to rise up with the full meaning of our battle call “Black People Rising”, rising up in resistance against systems, policies and practices negative to human life and the well-being of the world and rising up to imagine, work for, and achieve a shared and inclusive good for us, humanity and the world.

Indeed, it represents for us a call and commitment to continuously rise up in righteous and relentless resistance in opposition to evil, injustice and oppression; in affirmation of the good and our sacred and soulful selves, and in active aspiration to remake the world, as Nana Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune taught, and to forge in the furnace and fires of radically transformative struggle a future worthy of the best of what it means to be African and human in the world.

Insurgent August is a special marking, then, in which we remember and raise up the concentration of struggles, events and people in this month committed to regaining our freedom and building a liberated world and way of being human that is unencumbered and unmarred by any form of oppression and injustice. Indeed, we celebrate this sacred narrative we call Black history remembering our constant and costly struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves. For as Nana Harriet taught “freedom is not bought with dust”, but rather regained and achieved in a life and death struggle. And it is this insurgent history of righteous and relentless resistance that concentrates itself in the month of August across time and space in the world and calls us to remember and honor this legacy by self-consciously living and advancing it in the varied ways and spaces required.

This means remembering, reflecting on and taking seriously the reality that ours is a history of liberation struggles, and of a culture founded and formed in these struggles directed towards radical transformation and bringing and ensuring good in the world. These struggles were and remain a liberated and liberating process and practice before, during and after August, every day, year, decade and century. In a word, it was and is a practice of life and living itself. And thus, it is full of enduring lessons of life, love and struggle. It is in this context that we speak of celebrating and honoring the legacy of Insurgent August and the larger liberation struggle and history of which it is a valuable and instructive part.

We mark our arrival in this country in August 1619, in enslavement and resistance on ships and boats, beaches, and plantations as a beginning focal point. But it is safe to say, we were in resistance every day and month in Africa already, not only against enslavement, but also against colonialism and imperialism, its systemic crime partners. Long before the Amistad arrived in Long Island, New York in August 1839, seized by enslaved Africans, there were surely many other mutinies and continuous forms of resistance. Indeed, in August 1729 enslaved Africans rose up in rebellion and freed themselves from the enslavement ship, Clare Galley.

Nana Harriet Tubman taught us during the Holocaust of enslavement that we do not escape from our history nor the moral obligation to fight for and win a shared and inclusive freedom for everyone. And Nana Frederick Douglas assured us that struggle is indispensable to progress and freedom. These are lessons and teachings from the text of living practice given to us not only by Nana Harriet and Nana Douglass in their high risk liberation activities, but also by enslaved African revolts led by Nanas Gabriel and Nanny Prosser in August 1800 and by Nana Nat Turner in August 1830 and others in and outside of the month of August. We write and speak here in memory and honor of these freedom fighters, these audacious, steel-willed and self-sacrificing insurgents, daring to rebel and resist against all odds, mindful martyrs who offered their lives and deaths in the interest of African and human freedom.

As always, the Haitian revolution which began August 22-23, 1791, was and remains a singular, signature and world transforming achievement in Haitian, African and human history. It is a model and mirror for us and the world in all that it overcame and achieved, freeing the Haitian people and assisting others in their liberation struggles and contributing a crucial turning point in the international struggles to eventually abolish human trafficking and enslavement and the genocidal savagery and suffering it imposed on us.

Certainly, the Watts Revolt in August 1965, is a fundamental turning point and central reference for the decade of the 1960s, which was defined by hundreds of revolts of varying scale and scope. During this period of uprising and resistance, numerous organizational, ideological and philosophical initiatives were developed, including our organization Us and its Simba, (Young Lions) formation. And so was Kawaida philosophy out of which I created the Nguzo Saba and Kwanzaa, a pan-African holiday created as an act of freedom, an instrument of freedom, a celebration of freedom and a practice of freedom, and now celebrated by millions throughout the African global community.

The celebration of Black August which began in August 1979 is also an important part of our special focus on Insurgent August. It is dedicated to remembering and supporting Black prisoners, freeing Black political prisoners, honoring the lives of the struggles of prisoners resisting oppression, and demanding prisoners’ rights which has been a continuing struggle since the 1960s. Also, it is out of the Ferguson Revolt of August 2014 against police violence that a forest fire of resistance was ignited around the country which intensified our liberation struggle and brought the Black Lives Matter Movement to international prominence at a critical juncture in our history.

Our commitment to righteous and relentless struggle, then, has a long and honored lineage in this country and the world. And again, the month of August offers us concentrated proof of this practice over centuries of lived experience, both imposed by others and initiated by us in insurgent resistance. Again, this insurgent resistance has filled the calendar and content of our days, years, decades and centuries. And every act of our righteous and relentless resistance reaffirms Nana Malcolm’s teaching that wherever we are is a battle line. Indeed, our response to injustice and oppression is always and everywhere resistance of every kind and audacious insurgence at every level and line of battle.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Righteously Remembering Nana Ida B. Wells: Troubling And Transforming The Waters.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:33:57 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) In righteously remembering and retrieving the enduring legacy of Nana Ida B. Wells- Barnett, we practice the morality of remembrance, honoring a womanist warrior who troubled and transformed the life-shaping waters of the world. She was an awesome ancestor, one of those whose name we will always honor, whose praise poems we will always write and recite, and whose life is a book of lessons we will always read with reverence and pass on as a legacy of the highest value. Nana Ida B. Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was born during the Holocaust of enslavement and became orphaned at the age of sixteen when her mother and father died in a yellow fever epidemic.

Resisting the separation and parceling out of her sisters and brothers, she decided, against all odds and advice, to quit school, get a job and take care of them. It was a sign of the commitment, courage and will that would carry her through and beyond the many difficulties and fierce opposition she would face. And she rose in the ranks of African American leadership through an extraordinary combination of intellect, strategic planning, insightful writing, hard work in critical areas, audacious self-assertion, admirable resiliency and an iron and resistant will.

Certainly, she lived in a critical period in Black history, the reversal of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, Caveman Charlie and “Beast-Lady Lynch,” savage White terrorism and the brutal burning of Black towns, and racist mob murder as a way of life. It is her work in the muck and mire of this racist South and compliant North that Ida B. Wells came into her own and taught us audacious African ways to walk, work, struggle and stand tall in the world.

Nana Ida was a tireless journalist, organizer, lecturer, teacher and activist in numerous organizations and had collaborated with the major leaders of her time. Her ideas foreshadowed and prefigured womanist, Black Power, armed self-defense, civil and human rights, and related discourse and initiatives in our contemporary conversations. In fact, she made a major contribution to Africana womanism which is clear in her commitment to self-definition, ethical grounding, male/female partnership in equality, family, community and social action. It is obvious also in her refusal to place in conflict the liberation of Black people and the liberation of Black women. Indeed, she insisted on joining the two in a total liberation of all, as exemplified in her work with her husband and partner in struggle, Ferdinand Barnett.

Embodying the self-defining womanist, she asked in an article on the mission and meaning of women, “What is or should be woman?” And she answered: “Not merely a bundle of flesh and bones, nor a fashion plate, a frivolous inanity, a boundless doll, a heartless coquette – but a strong, bright presence, thoroughly imbued with a sense of her mission on earth and a desire to fill it; an earnest, soulful being, laboring to fit herself for life’s duties and burdens, and bearing them faithfully when they come; but a womanly woman for all that …”

It is this stance as an aware, socially active, self-assertive, and “womanly woman,” willingly bearing the burdens and obligations at hand, that was a source of the inner strength that gave her courage to struggle for both racial and gender justice. These struggles were pursued in her work as an organizer, institution-builder, anti-lynching, civil rights and human rights advocate and in her collaborating with other leaders whose names we know and also honor – Nanas Douglass, DuBois, Garvey, Bethune, Terrell, Randolph.

Nana Ida was a “race woman,” uncompromisingly committed to the freedom and well-being of her people. Like Nana Marcus Garvey, whom she admired and who admired her, she was for “race first.” She argued there was no substitute for unity, self-help, self-reliance, and constant struggle. And she stressed strong community institutions, the essentiality of education and economic strength, constant vigilance and ceaseless struggle.

In an article, “Freedom of Political Action,” she criticized African Americans for being too tied to one party or the other without critical assessment. Prefiguring a similar position of Nana Malcolm X, she declared she was neither a Democrat nor Republican, but an African American seeking justice and freedom for her people.

Wells-Barnett also argued against uncritical allegiance to leaders and for critical assessment of leadership in terms of how it furthered the objective desired above all others: “the well-being of (Black people) as a race, morally, socially and intellectually.” And in another article on “Functions of Leadership,” she asked of leaders “how many of them are exerting their talents and wealth for the benefit or amelioration of the conditions of the masses?” Moreover, she asked “What material benefit is a ‘leader’, if he does not, to some extent, devote his time, talent and wealth to the alleviation of the poverty, and misery and elevation of his people?”

It is Nana Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s courageous, constant and uncompromising struggle against lynching which brought forth the best of her virtues and values, and reaffirmed her role as a leader of great merit and meaning. Clearly, she played a crucial and vanguard role in exposing the racist terrorism and savagery of lynching, traveling widely in the U.S. and speaking internationally. Her anti-lynching lectures and writings were vital witness against this brutal and barbaric practice. She defined lynching as a “national crime,” “a color-line murder,” and “the cold-blooded savagery of White devils under lynch law.”

Also, Wells-Barnett raised the issue of armed self-defense and argued that in other places lynching had been prevented by this strategy. She stated that “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” Thus, long before Nanas Robert Williams and Malcolm X had argued the right to armed self-defense against murderous mobs in face of the failure of law, she had raised the option publicly.

Nana Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a towering woman and leader of her time, an extraordinary person which, as her Memphis Diary shows, was self-questioning, self-critical and caught up also in the ordinariness of life and living. And yet, she had a historic sense of herself and the moral meaning of the freedom struggle of her people. Her commitment, she said, was to constantly “trouble the waters” and transform the status quo. Indeed, an oppressor has no right to peace, if he dares to deny a people’s right to freedom and justice. And when we are attacked by the oppressor in our fight for freedom and justice, we are to remember her defiant words of wisdom: “with me it is not myself nor my reputation, but the life of my people which is at stake.”

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Again, The Music and Magic of Blackness: The Centering and Sustaining Beauty of Soul.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 02:12:59 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) Closing out this month of celebrating Black Music, I would like to do some sankofa sharing of some essential sensitivities and thoughts about the meaning and magic of Black music. Although we celebrate June as Black Music Month, every day and hour is an open space for making and celebrating our music. We do it not only in writing, playing and performing of sounds and songs. But also, we do it in the way we live our lives, do our work and wage our daily struggles. And at the heart and center of these struggles is the overarching struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves and hold on to and constantly expand our humanity under the most inhumane and dehumanizing conditions. And this celebration of our music and ourselves is also in the righteous and upraising rhythms of our beautiful Blackness and in the melodies and harmonies of our togetherness, our loving and sharing good.

It is important to note that when we talk here of the beauty, music, magic and miracle of Blackness, we are using a synonym for our Africanness. For Black is a colloquial term for the color, culture and consciousness that speaks to our being African. And being African is actively appreciating and honoring our unique and equally valid and valuable way of being human in the world. It is the self-defining and particular cultural way we live our lives and open ourselves up to love; dance and do music; practice our faith traditions; cherish and challenge our children; fiercely fight for freedom; constantly seek justice; delight in doing good and walk gently in peace, but with dignified defiance in the practice of resistance.

For Blackness is not only an identity, but also a duty defined by that identity. Indeed, we are a soul people in radically evil oppression and righteous and relentless struggle to end it. Our identity, then, is also one born in struggle, a dignity-affirming, live-enhancing, world-preserving liberation struggle. Therefore, in the 1960s, we raised up the reaffirmation of the beauty of our humanity and Africanness in the declarations “Black is Beautiful” and “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” And we defiantly put forth the prophecy and pursued the promise and practice of freedom with the battlecry “Liberation Is Coming From A Black Thing.”

At the heart and center of the music, magic and miracle of our Blackness is this rich and generative notion and reality of soul. And we use the term in at least five basic ways: as a spiritual concept; a defining Black character trait and spirit; a category of cultural distinctiveness; an expression of the beauty and depthfulness of our being and becoming; and a measure and standard of African excellence. In the Sixties, I defined soul as an inner sense of ourselves defined by creativity, sensitivity and impulse. This speaks to our capacity to conceive and create magic and miracle, beauty and meaning in the midst of ugliness and meaninglessness, and to develop and defend free space in the midst of unfreedom. It speaks also to our depth of feeling, a sensitivity to others, to beauty and good, but also to human suffering and a will to end it. And the notion of soul speaks also to a creative and sensitive impulse also called improvisation. But I want to keep the word impulse which suggests a spontaneous urge and natural inclination to act in beautiful, creative and sensitive ways in art, love and life in general.

In other words, soul is an internal creative capacity, a centering and sustaining spirit and inner strength that undergirds our resilience and resourcefulness, our adaptive vitality and human durability in the face of the most radical evil, injustice and oppression. It is in this context that we recognize the Divine presence in and with us as our ancestors taught. And in the depth of our appreciation of the unbreakable spirit within us, we give it a spiritual interpretation. Thus, when we look back over all we encountered and overcame and rejoiced in it, we are amazed at the miracles and magic we’ve made and yet giving due honor to the Divine in us and with us, as the ancestors taught. This is the message and meaning of Sis. Clara Ward’s instructive sacred praise song, called gospel, “How I Got Over.” She says and sings, and we wonder with her: “My soul looks back and wonders how I got over.” And she thinks and thanks the Divine.

But soul is also and above all in its most definitive, distinctive and inclusive sense a cultural concept. It speaks not only to the depth of our spirituality, but is a defining Black character trait and spirit which undergirds, infuses and informs our being and constant becoming. We are again a soul people, soul men and women, soul sisters and brothers. We call our food – soul food, our music – soul music, our Sunday forums on life and struggle – Soul Sessions, and we designate as soulful our preaching, teaching and talking good. And Curtis Mayfield assures us that no matter what happens “We got soul and everybody knows, it’s all right.”

Thus, we see soul not only as defining us, our music and way of life, but as a distinctiveness of peoplehood and personhood. It is one of the characteristics that makes us distinct without needing to claim superiority. It is this special distinction of peoplehood and culture that we treasure greatly and defend against the imitations of our lives and the appropriations of our culture by others in exploitative and insensitive ways.

The notion and expression of soul in our music or our lives in general also speaks of the depthfulness and beauty of our Blackness as both being and becoming, ever striving to come into the constantly expanding fullness of ourselves. I speak here of a centering and sustaining soulfulness as expressive beauty, a meaningful and moving beauty, revealing and reaffirming, eloquent, artistic and evocative, sensitive and suggestive of the good. And this soulful expressiveness can be shared with or without words or sounds or even symbols. It can reveal itself in the music we make in loving close or simply be naturally embodied in the goodness and sacredness of ourselves, as sites of witness and wonder.

When I talk of the centering and sustaining beauty of soul, it is to speak not only of what is aesthetically pleasing to our senses, but also what is ethically pleasing to our sense of the good. And thus, the beauty and Blackness of our soul and ultimately ourselves must always be demonstrated and reaffirmed in the goodness we do, share in righteous and relentless struggle for and achieve in the world. In this sense, soul is also ultimately a standard and measure of our excellence in every sense of the word.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Regaining the Audacious Assertiveness of African Liberation: Reflective Gleanings From Our Histories of Resistance.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Fri, 22 May 2026 01:46:29 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) The month of May is the month of Haji Malcolm X and also the month of African Liberation Day (ALD), and it brings with it instructive histories and ever renewed commitments of continued and victorious struggle. Indeed, both the Black liberation struggle in the US and Haji Malcolm’s central role in it and the liberation struggles on the African continent offer us a rich and ongoing resource for reflective gleanings from our shared histories of righteous and relentless resistance. ALD is a day of gathering to reinforce the bonds between us. And it is a day of reflection, remembrance and recommitment, of discussion and decision-making that builds strengths for our continuing liberation struggles. And at the heart of all our struggles is the shared goal and the awesome responsibility of liberating Africa as a continent and world community, harness and control our human and material resources, uplift and enrich the lives of the masses of our people, and as Nana Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah urged, return to the stage of human history as a self-conscious and powerful “force for good in the world”.

Indeed, as Nana Mwalimu Julius Nyerere stresses, our central and sustained efforts must be for the liberation and upliftment of our people. Thus, he states that “all the reasons for African unity can be summed up in one phrase – the welfare of the people of Africa”. And this refers to all Africans everywhere, throughout the global African community, continental and diasporan Africans. And I note and reaffirm the goals and goods, as Mwalimu put forth, of freeing our people from oppression, poverty, internal war and conflicts, and creating a context of security and peace infused and undergirded with justice, are still to be achieved and enjoyed.

The 1960s were decades, as we say, when the fires of freedom raged with revolutionary intensity on the continent and in the diaspora and around the world. And we were confident that Nana Frantz Fanon was right, that we were morally compelled to dare achieve a new history for Africa and humankind, “set afoot a new human being” and create a new context for their flourishing. Certainly, we were conscious of the power, perversity and missing human parts of the oppressor, but we believed a people united and conscious of its enemy and itself could not be defeated. We reasoned that yes, a people in revolutionary motion could be interrupted, delayed, and even experience devastating setbacks, often interpreted as defeats. But ultimately, if they embraced a radical refusal to be defeated, they could not and would not be defeated and would eventually be victorious.

It is here that the concept and practice of audacious assertiveness is so essential and it is this spirit that we must recapture if we are, as Haji Malcolm said, “liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy” and build the good world we all want and deserve to live in. When we speak of audaciousness and audacious assertiveness, we mean being self-consciously daring, defiant, fearless, innovative, risk-taking, outrageously in opposition to oppression, and again irreversibly committed to a radical refusal to be defeated. And it means daring to believe in our people and their capacity to be themselves and free themselves, and create and share goodness in the world. It perhaps will seem more aspiration than reality to talk of defeating the international corporate system of oppression and predation involving various forms of anti-human activity, i.e., imperialism, enslavement, colonialism, settlerism, genocide, ecocide and the savagery that accompanies them. But this has been the nature of our struggle to defy all odds and refuse to be disarmed, dispirited or diverted from the ultimate goal of liberation and ever higher levels of human life.

Here, I think of Nana Harriet Tubman, her courage and commitment, her refusal to be deterred by the odds against her and our people, remembering and daring to regain the freedom of our people who supported her and the freedom struggle. I think of Nana Jacob Marenga of Namibia, master strategist and tactician, uniting the ethnic groups into a fighting force and liberation movement and defying and defeating the genocidal German oppressors whenever and wherever they could in over 50 battles. And I think of our mother and father and all our mothers and fathers who were not declared soldiers, but in countless ways, contributed to the liberation struggle, kept the faith and held the line on the good, the right and the possible.

Clearly, we must love and serve our people, especially if we emerge as leaders. For as Nana Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune taught us, “the measure of our progress as a (people) is in precise relation to the depth of faith in our people held by our leaders”. Nana Amilcar Cabral teaches us that “We must practice revolutionary democracy in every aspect” of our lives, i.e., shared power, inclusive participation, respecting each other, each other’s work and our shared responsibilities. And in doing the work and waging the struggle for liberation, he says, we must “Mask no difficulties; tell no lies; and claim no easy victories”.

As I have maintained since the 60s, following Nana Fanon, everything depends above all on the consciousness, capability and commitment of the masses of our people and our relationship with them. So all programs for African liberation must place their needs at the top of any agenda worthy of the name. And always and everywhere maximum participation of the people in building their own lives and future and choosing their ways and movement forward is indispensable. For the needs of the people are real and they deserve and have a right to a good, meaningful and fulfilling life.

In addition, we must continue to demand and achieve from our former enslavers and colonizers and current oppressors: long overdue reparations; debt cancellation; the end of resource robbery by corporations through predatory proxy armies, dictators and corrupt officials; return of riches stolen and compensation for those unrecoverable; and the end of violation of the sovereignty and self-determination of the countries of Africa, Haiti and throughout the world African community.

Also, we must continue to build and expand global pan-Africanism, stand in solidarity with all African peoples and other oppressed and struggling peoples of the world. Especially must we oppose the genocidal war armed by the UAE and others in Sudan; the savage imperialist oppression of Haiti; the genocide, ecocide and land theft by Israel against the Palestinian people; the wars of aggression against Lebanon and Iran by Israel and the US, in criminal partnership; and the Trump regime’s immoral and illegal blockade and its gansta threats to Cuba’s welfare, sovereignty and self-determination.

These positions are rooted in our self-understanding and resultant self-assertion as a world encompassing people who know themselves as a key moral and social vanguard in the world. Our task, then, is to know our history and honor it, as our ancestors, in any ways we can in this our time and place and dare to lay the basis for a future worthy of the name and history African.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Uplifting and Linking Mother’s Day and May Day: Living the Legacy of Labor Struggles for Inclusive Good.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Sat, 09 May 2026 02:50:52 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) As I think lovingly and appreciatively of my mother on this coming Mother’s Day and reflect on this past May Day, I remember that it was my mother and father who taught me the dignity and duty of work and worker, and the role of work and workers in serving our community and humanity, and in making and remaking the world. And they taught me also the equally important meaning of work as a self-defining, self-developing and self-affirming activity. I speak here, then, not of toil, the exhausting and demeaning drudgery engaged in to eke out a living and provide for the bare necessities of life. Rather, I speak of work, an activity essential not only to our making a living but also to our conceiving and making a life, an activity vital to our self-understanding and the way we engage and build our world and thus, certainly worthy of respect and demanding of justice.

Nana Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mother and father, of the same spiritual faith and a similar generation as my mother and father, taught him the dignity and worth of work in its service to humanity, as my mother and father taught us, drawing from a long and honorable tradition of work. In his classic speech on this topic in Memphis, supporting the strike and demands for decent wages and working conditions of the sanitation workers, Dr. King reaffirms this position, saying to the striking workers and their supporters, that they are rightfully “demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor”. And he noted that “So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But…whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth”. Thus, in the best of our ethical sensibilities, thought and practice, all workers deserve respect, just pay, appropriate conditions of work, and the right to organize and assert their interests.

We stood and stand in active solidarity with the millions in this country and around the world who participated in marking May Day (International Workers’ Day) in demonstrations, deliberations and resolute commitment to continue the struggle against war, ICE, genocide, injustice, fascism and all forms of oppression. For at the heart of all these labor and other struggles must be, and is for us, the collective and collaborative commitment to achieving a shared and inclusive good for everyone, everywhere and the sustained well-being of the world and all in it.

What I want to do here, then, in uplifting and linking Mother’s Day and May Day is to center the legacy of labor struggles in our history, especially those led by Black women that form a core of our larger struggle for freedom, justice and a shared and inclusive good and those that are caringly attentive to the overlooked, undervalued and vulnerable, as my mother and father taught. Let us first pay rightful homage to our ancient ancestors, the original world builders, working their will on the world to extract and share good from the earth – the early gatherers, farmers and fishermen and fisherwomen, herbalists and healthcare workers, the builders of houses and temples and all other workers who worked to bring a shared good in the world. We pay homage also to the workers who launched the first strike in recorded history at a worksite in ancient Egypt called Set Ma’at, the Place of Justice c. 1170 BCE. Indeed, artisans and ordinary workers stopped work, sat in, marched, petitioned and disrupted the regular order of things. They told the officials that they were not only striking because of the late wages and the hunger that this caused for them and their families, but also because “There is injustice in this place”. Their concern was beyond the essential need for wages and centered the issue of the dignity of the worker and the respect and just compensation due to them.

We pay rightful homage also to the women and men free of mind and heart who did not accept their status in enslavement and resisted being objects of labor, sex and entertainment by striking, breaking tools, destroying crops, escaping and returning to free others, and exercising the right and responsibility to revolt and be free. And we pay homage to the Black washerwomen or launderers who built a labor union, the Washing Society, and organized a strike in Atlanta, Georgia in 1881 to win higher and uniform wages; and to Nana Nannie Helen Burroughs, an educator and organizer, who founded the National Association of Wage Earners in 1921; and to Nana Rosina Corrothers Tucker, labor organizer, civil rights activist, and educator who worked as a union organizer for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and served as the first president of its International Ladies Auxiliary, 1938. Also, we pay homage to Nana Dorothy Bolden, founder of the National Domestic Workers Union of America in 1968; to Nana Clara Day who co-founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974; and to all other labor and life waymakers and bridges who carried us over and led us forward.

Finally, we pay homage to the labor leader and activist Nana Fahari Jeffers who with her husband, Ken Seaton-Msemaji, co-founded the United Domestic Workers of America in 1977. They were grounded in Kawaida philosophy and its organizing thought and practice and linked their work to the United Farm Workers movement given that both were primarily composed of women, people of color and immigrants and not rightly valued by the larger labor movement. Indeed, Nana Fahari said in being inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame, “It’s an honor as a woman and it’s an honor as an African-American woman. There are many women who make groundbreaking, enormous contributions to our community that we will never meet or hear of, and I want them to know that their work is valued and recognized and that it has made a difference”.

Here she reaffirms the dignity, centrality and sustaining character of Black women’s labor and our need to recognize and respect them, their work and their role in bringing good into the world. And I thought here of how my mother was both a domestic worker and a farmworker, and I remembered and rejoiced in the many other roles and responsibilities she joyfully assumed for our family and our community. And I reflected again about our moral obligation to seriously and joyfully honor and live the legacy of our foremothers and forefathers by continuing the sacred work and struggle for freedom, justice and a shared and inclusive good for all of us and for all the earth.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Genuinely Sensing the Sacredness of the World: Seriously Engaging Another Us-On-Earth Day.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 03:49:23 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) As we celebrate Us-On-Earth Day again this year, I want to raise again the urgent and ongoing need for us to understand this day and our approach to it as not simply concerns about the earth, but also about us on the earth and what it means to us as well as to the earth and all in it. For this day and month of marking, reminding and reflection offer us an ongoing invitation and opportunity to actually become meaningfully engaged in personal and social practices that recognize and respect our relationship and responsibility to the health and well-being of the natural world. For we realize and respond to the inescapable fact that the health and well-being of the world is interdependently and inseparably linked to that of our own and that of the whole of humanity. Indeed, the Kawaida Maatian ethical imperative of serudj ta requires that we link well-being with right doing and good doing in the world in order to repair, renew and remake the world. In a word, we are to relate rightly, act justly and walk gently in the world.

Central to our relating rightly, acting justly and walking gently in the world is seeing and sensing the world and all in it as sacred. This does not mean we don’t or can’t also have special sacred places, but it means that we should recognize and respect the fact that the special sacred space is located in and part of a larger sacred space, the world. In our earliest sacred texts, the world was seen and sensed as sacred for several reasons and all of them were interrelated and central to the transcendent respect they had for the spiritual, natural and social worlds of humans. In the Kawaida Maatian ethical tradition rooted in ancient Egyptian sacred teachings, humans are part of an interrelated reality of concentric circles of relatedness. In their identity as images of God, they are spiritual beings; in their embeddedness in nature, they are natural beings; and in their lives, work and struggles in society, they are social beings. And each of these must be seen, approached and engaged as interrelated, interdependent and inseparable.

What I want to do here is share some of the essential teachings of our ancestors on how we can relate rightly, act justly and walk gently in the world. Starting with some of our most ancient texts and ending with some of our modern texts on the sacredness of nature, I want to share how they sensed and engaged the world as sacred and worthy of transcendent respect. In the classical spiritual and ethical texts of ancient Egypt, the Husia, the Great Praise Poem to the Divine by Pharaoh Akhenaten stands out as an excellent example reaffirming the sense of the sacredness of the world. He says in this great work: “You are beautiful, great, radiant exalted above every land…sustaining all you have made…people, cattle, animals and all there is. You make a Nile (for Kemet) deep in the earth and you bring it because of your love that cause the people to live…all other lands, you make a way of life for them also. You place a Nile in the sky and it comes to them”. In this praise poem the Pharaoh Akhenaten speaks of the beauty and sacredness of the world suggesting it is goodness of itself, a creation of the Divine, and a means of sustainment and beauty for human beings everywhere. He also stresses the equal access to and right to the necessities of life which the earth provides as a Divine endowment, “and everyone can see this so that they may live rightly”.

Also beautiful in the spiritual, ethical and aesthetic sense is the definition of holiness by a Bakwena (Setswana) person given to a colonial missionary who saw holiness in a less inclusive and therefore incomplete way. Approaching holiness as a wholistic and inclusive reality, he stressed in his definition that not only is spirit sacred, but also the earth and all in it. Thus, he says, “When abundant rains fall during the night and wash all the world, trees and cattle clean and the air breathes clean; and the rising sun shows a drop of dew on every blade of grass, that to us is holiness”. In a word, the forms, contents and processes of the world are both sacred and beautiful.

Another important sacred text which teaches us to recognize and respect the sacredness of the earth and all in it and our moral responsibility to care for it and do good for it is the Odu Ifa. It tells us, that “those whose turn it is to take responsibility for the world, they should do good for the world”. Clearly, it is our time and our responsibility, we, the living, conscious and capable, to take care of the world and do good for the world in the ways we each and all can.

Our ancestors also taught that “the world should stop making sacrifices for wealth, and instead make sacrifices that would protect the earth from its enemies. In this way, we will live”. And again, this calls for us to sense the sacredness of the earth and all in it and relate, act and walk in dignity-affirming, life-enhancing and world-preserving ways.

In more recent times, Nana Dr. George Washington Carver gives us a beautiful model of sensing and appreciating the sacredness of the world. A highly accomplished and respected scientist, he also was a very spiritual person, combining it all in the way he conceived and lived his life and did his work. Sensing and seeing the world as sacred, he spoke of how he did “love the things God has created, both animate and inanimate”. Advancing love of creation as a sacred space of living, learning and working, he taught that if you approach nature with genuine love and a will to learn, it will give up its secrets just as other loved ones do. Nature, he taught, has wonderful stories to share and awesome goodness to give, if we love it and learn its languages and lessons. Indeed, he said, “the singing birds, the buzzing bees, the opening flower and the budding trees, along with other forms of animate and inanimate matter, all have their marvelous creation story to tell”. And “more and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature (around) us”.

Nana Dr. Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement whose model offers a framework for environmental work in the world, also stressed “love for the environment,” as an indispensable value which teaches us to see and sense the earth as sacred. She taught an active caring for the world which “motivates one to take positive action for the earth, such as planting trees and ensuring that they survive; nurtur(ing) those trees that are standing; protect(ing) animals and their habitat; conserve(ing) soil”; and other related life-affirming and world-preserving activities. And she urged us to have and demonstrate “gratitude and respect for the Earth’s resources” and “valuing all that the earth gives us and because of that valuation, not wanting to waste any of it”.

Again, then, in our deep sense of the sacredness of the earth and all in it , let us dare to relate rightly, act justly and walk gently on earth. Let us relate rightly, embracing an expansive understanding of ourselves that reaffirms our ancestral teachings of the unity of being, the oneness of life, and the interrelatedness and interdependence of the whole world. Let us act justly in and for the world and for ourselves, giving everyone and everything in the world their rightful due. It means respecting the earth as our honored ancestors taught, i.e., for:

1) its intrinsic value as a goodness in itself;

2) its status as a divine creation and sacred space,

and

3) its being a central and indispensable source of our shared well-being, sustainment, our sense of the sacred and beautiful, and our expansive concept of ourselves and our responsibility.

And let us walk gently in the world asserting ourselves in the world as good relatives to all in it, without species arrogance, abuse, and insensitivity to other living and inanimate beings and without conscious or unconscious complicity in the plunder, pollution and depletion of the world by our own practices. In a word we must see and conduct ourselves not only as human beings (watu), but also as (walimwengu) with joyful responsibility for the well-being and shared good of the world and all in it.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Centering and Cultivating Black Love: A Complementary and Species-Compelling Need.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:24:38 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) As we close out two months of commemoration and celebration of the history of our people, I reach back to retrieve and reaffirm thoughts on centering and cultivating Black love. It is not an exaggeration to state that there is no issue of greater importance, urgency or enduring impact in terms of the foundation, functioning and future of us as a community and a people than the quality of male/female relationships. Indeed, this speaks not only to the health and wholeness of our people, but also of each member of the community and to how we imagine and either forge or forfeit a good future for our children. So, the issue of quality relationships between men and women and boys and girls is not just about coupling, cuddling and masterful moves. Nor is it about sexual seduction and consumer things about which they think they will die if they don’t get. And it is not just about the increase in desperate and hope-to-die claims that they will never love, be hurt or hassled, trust or try to build a relationship again. Indeed, the intensity of the denial only demonstrates how deep and enduring the need to love and be loved is.

Surely, then, it is about something deeper, more ancient and indispensable, something our ancient sacred texts tell us is inherent in the conception, creation and functioning of the world – the complementary and species-compelling need for male and female love, presence and cooperative practice in the world. For the Husia and Odu Ifa speak to the need we have not only for each other in spiritual, natural and social ways, but also the need of our togetherness to create and sustain the good in family, society and the world. And it is within this ancient and ongoing African understanding that we must conceive, build, sustain and make flourish our relationships and teach our children likewise by the most careful instruction and self-conscious example.

There are so many things that block the road toward realization of the togetherness in love we long and live for. There is racism that degrades and devalues, sexism that teaches submission and domination, and materialism that makes things and money the measure and meaning of everything. There is also unemployment and vulgar individualism, Eurocentric drama, drugs and unrealizable dreams, the prison system and broken promises, the media and the mean and merciless streets, and a long history of Holocaust, horror and other forms of oppression at the hands of our oppressor. So, the wonder is not that we have problems, but that so many of us have survived and solved them and went on to build rock-strong, stable and loving relations worthy of the highest praise and promise. Indeed, the point is not that we have problems – for that’s only human; the issue is how we solve them in the most gentle, loving and effective ways.

Love is the heartbeat and hope of any real, reciprocal and enduring relationship, and we must understand it not simply as an emotion, but also as a practice. For at its best, love is ultimate appreciation, attentiveness and consideration that expresses itself in the mutual investment in each other’s happiness, well-being and development. It is ultimately a reciprocal, deeply rewarding and awesome giving of ourselves and receiving the same from another as a sacred exchange.

Here it is important to make a distinction between pleasure and happiness. For pleasure is satisfaction of the senses, but happiness is satisfaction of the heart and mind. Pleasure is a time and space limited satisfaction of desires by external events and experiences, but happiness is an enduring inner satisfaction. And love, as mutual giving, engenders such an enduring inner satisfaction, enhances our sense of well-being and enriches our development as persons and human beings.

At the heart of the practice of love is active commitment to an Afrocentric value system which teaches and reinforces our essential identity as bearers of divinity and dignity, and requires us to approach and treat each other and our relationships as sacred and worthy of the highest respect, care and consideration. Since the Sixties, I’ve taught that the Nguzo Saba is that African-centered value system and that we can use it to build our relationships and community and enrich our lives.

The first principle is Umoja (Unity) which stresses the good and need of togetherness in the most principled and purposeful ways. It teaches us to remove all thoughts, emotions, speech and conduct which undermine our togetherness and pull us apart. At one with each other, we will see ourselves in each other and sense our divinity, reaffirm our dignity and develop an identity meriting a high respect and place among men and women.

Kujichagulia (Self-determination) teaches the right and responsibility to choose, to choose who we will be and it requires that each of us be allowed and encouraged to be who we are in the most positive and progressive sense without crass criticism, hindrance or negative questioning, but always within the framework of the requirements of togetherness and common ground. And it teaches us that the ground of our choosing must always be from within the context of our own culture and its highest values. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) teaches us active working, building and struggling together to clear space for our love to grow, to transform ourselves so that we feel and fit right and rightfully together and to take collective responsibility for the good and bad, right and wrong, the beautiful and ugly that strengthen or undermine our relationships.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) teaches us the principle and practice of shared work and shared wealth, that we not make money the measure and central meaning of all things and to reject debilitating disputes and disagreements about it. And it requires us to avoid materialism and consumerism of the dominant society, value each other more and those qualities that reflect strength of character and depth of commitment.

The principle of Nia (Purpose) teaches us that we must live purposeful lives, share goals, aid each other in realizing our different yet interrelated goals and work toward things that strengthen each of us. At the heart of this practice must be the goal of building a friendship defined by our thinking good of each other, wanting and working for the good of each other, doing good to and for each other, and sharing good with each other as a fundamental principle and practice of love and life.

Kuumba (Creativity) urges us to pursue the positive, avoid the negative, to constantly reaffirm the dignity and worth of each other, and our need for each other and to avoid all conversation and acts that degrade and violate the sacredness of each person and the relationship itself. And it means that we, as the ancestors taught in the Husia, must strive always to quickly and eagerly to raise up what is in ruins, repair what is damaged, rejoin what is severed, replenish what is depleted, set right what is wrong, strengthen what is weakened, and make flourish what is insecure and undeveloped in our relationships.

Finally, Imani (Faith) urges us to trust and believe in the good, and in our capacity to create it and share it. It encourages us to produce a new paradigm and practice of Black love and live it as a conscious need and undeniable necessity of life. And this means bringing into being a new man and woman who truly live for and through each other and pass on this lesson and legacy to future generations.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Bombing, Beheading and Laying Waste the World: Regarding Iran, Israel, the US and Existential Threats.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:41:42 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) Mad Max Trump and Thunderdome Netanyahu have taken the world to war again, offering us a pre-apocalyptic picture of apprehensions, vulnerabilities, catastrophes and consequences to come, pretending an existential threat to them when they, themselves, are a real threat to the world and their own countries. For anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge knows there will be consequences, blowback and strike back of various defensive, retributive, disruptive and destructive kinds. Representing the savagery of the civilization they claim to be protecting, they continue to wage a genocidal war against the people of Palestine and glory in language of epic fury, bloodlust and carnage as they now attack Iran. Joined at the hip, heart and head in racist thoughts and imperialist thuggery, they have begun an immoral, illegal and illogical aggression against Iran which is posed as a war of necessity but is clearly a war of calculated criminal choice.

It is immoral because it has no just cause, its claims are infested with lies and gaslighting illusions, and its consequences to the Iranian people, others and the world are senseless, needless and wide spread death and destruction. It is illegal because it violates domestic law, the Constitutional requirement for Congress to declare war. And it violates international law which requires UN approval of the war as justified and prohibits aggression against the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of a people and is considered one of the most serious crimes and concerns of humanity. Indeed, as the sacred text, Odu Ifa, teaches “War ruins the world” and all in it and thus, affects us all.

And this war is illogical, for its camouflaged excuses are contradictory and continuously concocted and changed post facto, and it is hostile to sound moral and political reasoning, reasoning about respecting and saving human life, protecting the earth, privileging peace, and rightly choosing negotiation and diplomacy rather than mutual destruction. Indeed, much of what the US wanted was agreed to, and yet, following Israel’s model of bombing to kill the Palestinian negotiators during the ceasefire negotiations, the US and Israel launched their war of aggression against Iran while talks still were ongoing and promising.

As they go to war, their war cry is the early man concept and practice of beheading the enemy, whether persons or whole peoples, calling it “decapitation” to make it sound less savage. But whether they call it decapitation, targeted killing, wet work, assassination or some other word, it is rooted in and reflective of a culture of war worshipping and beheading and celebrating it by dancing around the fire and asking the whole group to join the celebration. The circles of fire are gone but the bloodlust and the calls to celebrate beheadings are still present as nightly news, accounts and announcements of enemies bombed and decapitated, not only enemy heads of state and leaders, but also everyday people and little girls at school in Iran or at all ordinary places and special spaces in Palestine. As Trump stated, taking a page out of Netanyahu’s killing-fields warbook for genocide in Palestine, “Bombs will be dropping everywhere”.

And they have cultivated and coerced a cast of obsequious and cartoonist characters around them to call out when prompted “off with their heads; off with their heads” as the first and last solution to an endless list of problems. Thus, whether it’s an attempt to decapitate or behead the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and genocide or the officially-declared threatening and problematic Iranian government, they must be beheaded, killed as both a preferred solution and a terrorizing sign and signal to others of their vulnerability and of the viciousness and vengefulness of the long imperialist axe. Indeed, in spite of the pablum of promises to put America first, we are told by a Republican senator and born again MAGA acolyte trying to justify the unjustifiable war that really, “America First is to kill people who wish us ill with a record of trying to destroy us in the region”, i.e., The Middle East, Western Asia, a region of great imperial interests and coerced and expected regional compliance.

If we are to ever get out of this moral desert created by the death cult of war and wealth worshippers, Americans must give up the moral evasion that characterizes so many of their ongoing positions on critical issues facing this country and the world. It is not enough to lament Trump’s not following procedures and breaking laws, we must also stress the central moral concern of this issue which is the commitment to kill without conscience and to brag on quick massive and effective slaughter by the US and Israel. It is as if we felt comfortable applauding and praising the Nazis blitzkriege or lightning wars and practices of genocide and carnage against Jews, Gentiles and peoples of color designated as unworthy of life and freedom. Indeed, it is rejection of this morally vicious and vulgar practice that opens the way to honestly confronting all other issues.

Let’s be honest, we must also deal with the elephant of ethical issues represented by Israel in the room. And we cannot continue to favor, fund, foster and even follow Israel in its genocidal and imperial wars against Palestine, Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere. Israel, clearly a client state, is also secure in its ability to shape US domestic and foreign policy as recent discussions and events reaffirm. Indeed, according to a New York Times article, Netanyahu has bragged about this in a secretly recorded 2001 conversation, saying “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” Thus, Israel dragged the US into both wars against Iran for its own interests.

Also, important here is the loss of a critical moral force in American society in which too many Jewish Zionists and Christian Zionists have sacrificed the best of their faiths for the worst of their feelings and fantasies about Palestinians, especially on the issues of genocide in Palestine and the equal human worth and rights of the Palestinian people. And this has led to brutal suppression of campuses and persons and communities of all kinds, including Jews, themselves, but especially Palestinians and Muslims, here and around the world who dare speak out and struggle for the equal worth and human rights of Palestinians and all human beings.

There is no person or people in the world who has moral immunity from criticism, and no oppressor who has equal moral status to the oppressed or a greater claim to rights of self-determination, security and conditions for a good and meaningful life. If an oppressor has the same moral status as the oppressed and is also posed and treated as superior, then there is no right or justice in the world, and there is no moral problem or social penalty in oppressing those who are less powerful and less capable than others.

It is also important to reject and resist the Hitlerian lie that Trump and Netanyahu have any real concern for the Iranian people and their right to be free from oppression whom they are bombing and beheading with what they admit is a fury of overwhelming violence. An invader and oppressor cannot bring freedom; the people themselves must wage the decisive struggle to free themselves and direct the course of the lives and future whether in Iran or Palestine.

And finally concerning the issue of existential threat, one of the greatest threats to a people is itself, if it is addicted to illusions and fantasies about itself and others. This makes it deaf to truth, blind to injustice, vulnerable to moral evasion and ultimately to destroying itself. For a society that cannot see and concede its own problems cannot solve its problems. And a society that cannot solve its problems cannot survive its problems.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

Remembering and Re-Reading Woodson: Envisioning An Emancipatory Education.

Dr. Maulana Karenga — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 04:22:10 +0000

(ThyBlackMan.com) In remembrance, retrieval and reaffirmation. Clearly, in this important month and historical moment of celebrating Black History through remembrance and recommitment to ever-deeper study and emancipatory practice, our minds easily turn to the writings and life work of the father of Black History Month, Nana Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950). For it is Dr. Woodson who framed and laid the foundation for our celebration of Black History Month, having given his life to writing, teaching and advocating history as an indispensable core of any real, useful and emancipatory education. And it is he who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1915), the Journal of Negro History (1916), and Negro History Week (1926). However, out of his many works, none of his writings have been more read, referenced and raised as worthy of the most careful and continued study than his Mis-education of the Negro, a historically grounded critique of the then existing educational system which, with appropriate reconsiderations and revisions, remains highly relevant, even today.

Dr. Woodson, who received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard, was a well-placed educator who had served as a teacher, school principal, and professor and dean at Howard University and West Virginia State College. Thus, he had participated on the various levels of education as teacher, administrator and critical observer and had gained intimate and extensive knowledge of how the educational system disadvantaged Black people through what he termed mis-education. There are several critical elements in Woodson’s concept of mis-education and his envisioning an emancipatory education.

First, Dr. Woodson argues for what we called in the 60’s a relevant education and after Molefi Asante, an Afrocentric education, one rooted in the historical, social and overall cultural reality of Black people. And he found the misreading, falsification and manipulation of history a core practice and cause of the mis-education of Black people. Thus, he says at the outset, “only by careful study of the (African American) himself and the life he is forced to lead can we arrive at the proper procedure in this crisis”, i.e., the mis-education of Black people and the socio-economic and political disadvantages this imposes, aggravating the condition of oppression.

Secondly, Woodson places the process of enabling the self-determination in thought and practice of the student at the heart of the educational enterprise. Therefore, he states that “the mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think for himself and do for himself”. For Woodson, this emphasis on cultivating in students an enhanced agency, i.e., the will to think and act in a self-determined way, is not for frivolous, selfish or self-enslaving ways. On the contrary, it must be an emancipatory education, one that is both a promise and practice of freedom. Thus, he says, “the only question which concerns us here is whether these ‘educated’ persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor”.

Moreover, Nana Woodson contends that the educational system is undergirded by and duplicates a philosophy and “ethics” which justify and facilitate White domination through a racist protocol of disabling and controlling the minds, and therefore, the person and actions of Black people. As he says, in perhaps his most quoted passage, “when you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his proper place and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary”. What is produced here, Dr. Woodson argues, is an “enslaved mind” which is derivative and disadvantaging rather than original and enabling. Such a mis-educated Black intellectual becomes “a hopeless liability to the race”, little more than a duplicate descendent of the original White mis-educator.

Dr. Woodson also places great emphasis on service to the masses and education as a vital power and process for such service. He tells us we should not adopt class attitudes and behavior based on acquisition of a university education. On the contrary, he says, we “should redefine higher education as a preparation to think and work out a program to serve the lowly rather than live as an aristocrat”. Here he argues for “translating the idea of leadership into service”, i.e., developing a concept of leadership which is defined by and embodied in the ancient African virtue of service to the people, especially the most vulnerable among us.

To rightfully serve the people, Nana Woodson stresses repeatedly the practice of education as a process of emancipation and empowerment that leads to progressive and continuous development. “The education of any people must begin with the people themselves”, he states. Indeed, “History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thoughts and aspirations of the people”. This requires, he maintains, understanding their historical back-ground and current condition, and developing an educational program and practice which teaches their real history, frees their minds and empowers them in their struggle for a liberated life and decent living.

Finish story here; Remembering and Re-Reading Woodson: Envisioning An Emancipatory Education.